The Talleyrand Maxim, J. S. Fletcher [the false prince series TXT] 📗

knew, too, that she was a woman who would fight hard in defence of her own interest, and for the interests of her children.

Always keeping his ears open to local gossip, especially where money was concerned, Pratt had long since heard that Mrs. Mallathorpe was a keen and sharp business woman. And now he was not surprised when, having slowly and carefully read the copy of the will from beginning to end, she laid it down, and turned to him with a business-like question.

"The effect of that?" she asked. "What would it be—curtly?"

"Precisely what it says," answered Pratt. "Couldn't be clearer!"

"We—should lose all?" she demanded, almost angrily. "All?"

"All—except what he says—there," agreed Pratt.

"And that," she went on, drumming her fingers on the paper, "that—would stand?"

"What it's a copy of would stand," said Pratt. "Oh, yes, don't you make any mistake about it, Mrs. Mallathorpe! Nothing can upset that will. It is plain as a pikestaff how it came to be made. Your late brother-in-law evidently wrote his will out—it's all in his own handwriting—and took it down to the Mill with him the very day of the chimney accident. Just as evidently he signed it in the presence of his manager, Gaukrodger, and his cashier, Marshall—they signed at the same time, as it says, there. Now I take it that very soon after that, Mr. Mallathorpe went out into his mill yard to have a look at the chimney—Gaukrodger and Marshall went with him. Before he went, he popped the will into the book, where old Bartle found it yesterday—such things are easily done. Perhaps he was reading the book—perhaps it lay handy—he slipped the will inside, anyway. And then—he was killed—and, what's more the two witnesses were killed with him. So there wasn't a man left who could tell of that will! But—there's half Barford could testify to these three signatures! Mrs. Mallathorpe, there's not a chance for you if I put that will into the hands of the two trustees!"

He leaned back in his chair after that—nodding confidently, watching keenly. And now he saw that the trembling fingers were interlacing each other, twisting the rings on each other, and that Mrs. Mallathorpe was thinking as she had most likely never thought in her life. After a moment's pause Pratt went on. "Perhaps you didn't understand," he said. "I mean, you don't know the effect. Those two trustees—Charlesworth & Wyatt—could turn you all clean out of this—tomorrow, in a way of speaking. Everything's theirs! They can demand an account of every penny that you've all had out of the estate and the business—from the time you all took hold. If anything's been saved, put aside, they can demand that. You're entitled to nothing but the three amounts of ten thousand each. Of course, thirty thousand is thirty thousand—it means, at five per cent., fifteen hundred a year—if you could get five per cent. safely. But—I should say your son and daughter are getting a few thousand a year each, aren't they, Mrs. Mallathorpe? It would be a nice come-down! Five hundred a year apiece—at the outside. A small house instead of Normandale Grange. Genteel poverty—comparatively speaking—instead of riches. That is—if I hand over the will to Charlesworth & Wyatt."

Mrs. Mallathorpe slowly turned her eyes on Pratt. And Pratt suddenly felt a little afraid—there was anger in those eyes; anger of a curious sort. It might be against fate—against circumstance: it might not—why should it?—be against him personally, but it was there, and it was malign and almost evil, and it made him uncomfortable.

"Where is the will!" she asked.

"Safe! In my keeping," answered Pratt.

She looked him all over—surmisingly.

"You'll sell it to me?" she suggested. "You'll hand it over—and let me burn it—destroy it?"

"No!" answered Pratt. "I shall not!"

He saw that his answer produced personal anger at last. Mrs. Mallathorpe gave him a look which would have warned a much less observant man than Pratt. But he gave her back a look that was just as resolute.

"I say no—and I mean no!" he continued. "I won't sell—but I'll bargain. Let's be plain with each other. You don't want that will to be handed over to the trustees named in it, Charlesworth & Wyatt?"

"Do you think I'm a fool—man!" she flashed out.

"I should be a fool myself if I did," replied Pratt calmly. "And I'm not a fool. Very well—then you'll square me. You'll buy me. Come to terms with me, and nobody shall ever know. I repeat to you what I've said before—not a soul knows now, no nor suspects! It's utterly impossible for anybody to find out. The testator's dead. The attesting witnesses are dead. The man who found this will is dead. No one but you and myself ever need know a word about all this. If—you make terms with me, Mrs. Mallathorpe."

"What do you want?" she asked sullenly. "You forget—I've nothing of my own. I didn't come into anything."

"I've a pretty good notion who's real master here—and at Mallathorpe Mill, too," retorted Pratt. "I should say you're still in full control of your children, Mrs. Mallathorpe, and that you can do pretty well what you like with them."

"With one of them perhaps," she said, still angry and sullen. "But—I tell you, for you may as well know—if my daughter knew of what you've told me, she'd go straight to these trustees and tell! That's a fact that you'd better realize. I can't control her."

"Oh!" remarked Pratt. "Um!—then we must take care that she doesn't know. But we don't intend that anybody should know but you and me, Mrs. Mallathorpe. You needn't tell a soul—not even your son. You mustn't tell! Listen, now—I've thought out a good scheme which'll profit me, and make you safe. Do you know what you want on this estate?"

She stared at him as if wondering what this question had to do with the matter which was of such infinite importance. And Pratt smiled, and hastened to enlighten her.

"You want—a steward," he said. "A steward and estate agent. John Mallathorpe managed everything for himself, but your son can't, and pardon me if I say that you can't—properly. You need a man—you need me. You can persuade your son to that effect. Give me the job of steward here. I'll suggest to you how to do it in such a fashion that it'll arouse no suspicion, and look just like an ordinary—very ordinary—business job—at a salary and on conditions to be arranged, and—you're safe! Safe, Mrs. Mallathorpe—you know what that means!"

Mrs. Mallathorpe suddenly rose from her chair.

"I know this!" she said. "I'll discuss nothing, and do nothing, till
I've seen that will!"

Pratt rose, too, nodding his head as if quite satisfied. He took up the copy, tore it in two pieces, and carefully dropped them into the glowing fire.

"I shall be at my lodgings at any time after five-thirty tomorrow evening," he answered quietly. "Call there. You have the address. And you can then read the will with your own eyes. I shan't bring it here. The game's in my hands, Mrs. Mallathorpe."

Within a few minutes he was out in the park again, and making his way to the little railway station in the valley below. He felt triumphant—he knew that the woman he had just left was at his mercy and would accede to his terms. And all the way back to town, and through the town to his lodgings, he considered and perfected the scheme he was going to suggest to Mrs. Mallathorpe on the morrow.

Pratt lived in a little hamlet of old houses on the very outskirts of Barford—on the edge of a stretch of Country honeycombed by stone-quarries, some in use, some already worked out. It was a lonely neighbourhood, approached from the nearest tramway route by a narrow, high-walled lane. He was half-way along that lane when a stealthy foot stole to his side, and a hand was laid on his arm—just as stealthily came the voice of one of his fellow-clerks at Eldrick & Pascoe's.

"A moment, Pratt! I've been waiting for you. I want—a word or two—in private!"

CHAPTER VI THE UNEXPECTED

Pratt started when he heard that voice and felt the arresting hand. He knew well enough to whom they belonged—they were those of one James Parrawhite, a little, weedy, dissolute chap who had been in Eldrick & Pascoe's employ for about a year. It had always been a mystery to him and the other clerks that Parrawhite had been there at all, and that being there he was allowed to stop. He was not a Barford man. Nobody knew anything whatever about him, though his occasional references to it seemed to indicate that he knew London pretty thoroughly. Pratt shrewdly suspected that he was a man whom Eldrick had known in other days, possibly a solicitor who had been struck off the rolls, and to whom Eldrick, for old times' sake, was disposed to extend a helping hand.

All that any of them knew was that one morning some fifteen months previously, Parrawhite, a complete stranger, had walked into the office, asked to see Eldrick, had remained closeted with him half an hour, and had been given a job at two pounds a week, there and then. That he was a clever and useful clerk no one denied, but no one liked him.

He was always borrowing half-crowns. He smelt of rum. He was altogether undesirable. It was plain to the clerks that Pascoe disliked him. But he was evidently under Eldrick's protection, and he did his work and did it well, and there was no doubt that he knew more law than either of the partners, and was better up in practice than Pratt himself. But—he was not desirable … and Pratt never desired him less than on this occasion.

"What are you after—coming on a man like that!" growled Pratt.

"You," replied Parrawhite. "I knew you'd got to come up this lane, so I waited for you. I've something to say."

"Get it said, then!" retorted Pratt.

"Not here," answered Parrawhite. "Come down by the quarry—nobody about there."

"And suppose I don't?" asked Pratt.

"Then you'll be very sorry for yourself—tomorrow," replied Parrawhite.
"That's all!"

Pratt had already realized that this fellow knew something. Parrawhite's manner was not only threatening but confident. He spoke as a man speaks who has got the whip hand. And so, still growling, and inwardly raging and anxious, he turned off with his companion into a track which lay amongst the stone quarries. It was a desolate, lonely place; no house was near; they were as much alone as if they had been in the middle of one of the great moors outside the town, the lights of which they could see in the valley below them. In the grey sky above, a waning moon gave them just sufficient light to see their immediate surroundings—a grass-covered track, no longer used, and the yawning mouths of the old quarries, no longer worked, the edges of which were thick with gorse and bramble. It was the very place for secret work, and Pratt was certain that secret work was at hand.

"Now then!" he said, when they had walked well into the wilderness.
"What is it? And no nonsense!"

"You'll get no nonsense from me," sneered Parrawhite. "I'm not that sort. This is what I want to say. I was in Eldrick's office last night all the time you were there with old Bartle."

This swift answer went straight through Pratt's defences. He was prepared to hear something unpleasant and disconcerting, but not that. And he voiced the first thought that occurred to him.

"That's a lie!" he exclaimed. "There was nobody there!"

"No lie," replied Parrawhite. "I was there. I was behind the curtain of that recess—you know. And since I know what you did, I don't mind telling you—we're in the same boat, my lad!—what I was going to do. You thought I'd gone—with the others. But I hadn't. I'd merely done what I've done several times without being found out—slipped in there—to wait until you'd gone. Why? Because friend Eldrick, as you know, is culpably careless about leaving loose cash in the unlocked drawer of his desk, culpably careless, too, about never counting it. And—a stray sovereign or half-sovereign is useful to a man who only gets two quid a week. Understand?"

"So you're a thief?" said Pratt bitterly.

"I'm precisely what you are—a thief!" retorted Parrawhite. "You stole John Mallathorpe's will last night. I heard everything, I tell you!—and saw everything. I heard the whole business—what the old man said—what you, later, said to Eldrick. I saw