The Missing Angel, Erle Cox [suggested reading TXT] 📗

CHAPTER XXXI

It was little consolation to Geraldine that in both the evening and

morning papers the press photographers had done her ample justice. The

caption beneath the pictures of herself that conspicuously decorated

every account of the case, were flattering but facetious. She did not

like to see herself described as “Geraldine Brand, the lovely girl with

the lively left.” Beneath another she read, “Who wouldn’t risk a black

eye?” But her sense of humour came to the rescue as she and Billy

discussed the events of the afternoon.

 

Billy was fighting mad when he heard of Nicholas’s share in her

tribulations, and it was only with difficulty that she made him recognise

the utter futility of any attempt at reprisals.

 

Geraldine’s own sentiments towards Mr. Senior were actually less friendly

than those of Billy. To her, it was clear that in the Court, she alone,

saw him as the tall, distinguished stranger. To the others he must have

appeared as the bent and bearded septuagenarian. The exhibition she had

made of herself in her attempt at retaliation made her boil when she

thought of it. What perturbed her most was her own unquestioning

acceptance of Tydvil’s explanation of Nicholas’s identity, preposterous

as it was.

 

Despite that knowledge, she wondered at her lack of fear. During her

brief interview with Nicholas in Tydvil’s room she had experienced a

fascination she could not resist. Again, as on her first encounter, she

had felt the impact of power that radiated from him. Behind the banter of

his words, and the sardonic humour of his eyes, she sensed something

terrible that was beyond her comprehension. Whatever it was it did not

affect her as being evil, nor had it frightened her. Her feeling was more

of awe than anything else.

 

Nevertheless, intuition warned her that there was peril in the

fascination he exercised. A shudder went through her at the thought of

the possibilities that might be masked by the almost irresistibly

attractive humanity he had assumed. Tydvil, she recognised, had taken him

at his face value. Geraldine was not deeply religious. Her wholesome

conscience was her chief guide and guardian. Her common sense rejected

the principle of evil as being embodied in horns, hooves and barbed tail

as ludicrous. She felt that the Nicholas Senior she had met could be more

dangerous than any composite zoological creation of mediaeval

ecclesiastical imagination.

 

Since knowledge of the truth regarding Tydvil had come to her, she had

turned over in her mind the incongruousness of Nicholas busying himself

with Tydvil’s petty affairs and escapades. It seemed like using, a

mountain to crush a gnat, until she reflected that Tydvil would be but

one among millions who were being affected by the same influence, unseen

and unknown to her.

 

But there had gradually grown up in her a fierce determination to save

Tydvil in spite of himself. It was more a desperate resolve to match

herself against the unseen force than to protect Tydvil from the

consequences of his folly. Her animosity against Nicholas Senior had

become violently personal. He had roused a dauntless spirit that nested

under her flaming helmet. Taking Nicholas on his own valuation she argued

to herself that he must be vulnerable. Nothing was invulnerable in the

Universe but the will of its Creator. Therefore, somewhere, Nicholas had

a spot through which he could be struck.

 

But her first obstacles were in Billy, who looked askance at her taking

the risk of fighting Nicholas, and in Tydvil himself, who was either

blind or indifferent to her peril.

 

Though Billy was deeply impressed by Nicholas’s activities, his

antagonism was very human and natural. He urged on Gerry that Nicholas

was a nasty bit of work with which she had no need to become involved.

 

“Look, Gerry!” he said when they discussed the question, “if Tyddie is

mug enough to get himself mixed up with all the devils in Hades, why

should you risk getting singed fighting his battles?”

 

“Tell me,” she demanded, “what I looked like yesterday when I pointed out

the tall, dark stranger to that old savage, Mainwaring?”

 

Billy strove manfully, but failed to hide his mirth at the recollection.

 

Geraldine reached for, and obtained, a firm handful of hair, and shook

her finger in a face that was incapable of evasion. “Yes, Billy, laugh!

Go on, laugh! I know I looked like a prize idiot. Just as I did when I

called that pompous ass Bingleton a brute. He was, too. But who caused it

all? Tell me that!”

 

“Crikey, Gerry!” gurgled Billy. “I didn’t…Leggo my hair! Do you

want a bald husband?”

 

But Gerry, disregarding his protests, went on. “Nicholas Senior He did

it. He’s the man I’m after. Do you think I’m letting him get away with

that?”

 

“Poor Devil!” grinned Billy as she relinquished her hold. “He’ll wish

himself home again if you do get a strangle hold on him.”

 

“Oh, if only I knew how!” Her voice was deep in its sincerity of purpose.

 

“Some of those evangelical parsons talk of wrestling with the Devil,”

Billy ventured. “You might engage one to train you.”

 

“Idiot!” murmured Geraldine. “Can’t you think of anything?”

 

“Come here!” He held out his arms and Gerry responded. As she settled

herself comfortably, he said, “How about trying to persuade him to swap

Tyddie for Amy? Then everyone would be happy.”

 

“Except Mr. Nicholas Senior. Do you think he’s that sort of fool?” she

said disdainfully. “Would you swap Tyddie for Amy?”

 

“Lord forbid!” replied Billy piously.

 

“Well, why should he? Although,” she added, “I should think Amy would be

a far greater asset for his purposes.”

 

“What I can’t understand about Tyddie is why, if he did want to go on the

binge, he didn’t come to me, instead of going to the Devil.” Billy’s

voice sounded as though he felt Tydvil’s judgment was at fault.

 

Smothered by the lapel of his coat, he heard a chuckle. “What’s so funny

about that?” he demanded.

 

“Nothing, dearest,” came from his lapel. “I was just thinking it might

have amounted to the same thing.”

 

“What you deserve is…” he began.

 

She raised her face to him.

 

There was a long pause, and then as he looked down into the laughing eyes

again, he said, “You didn’t deserve that, anyway. What you really

deserve, is to be married to Nicholas Senior—you’d make a fine pair.”

 

“If he got what he deserved, he would be married to Amy.”

 

“I didn’t think you were so vindictive, Gerry.”

 

“When I think of those two I could bite them both,” she said. “That cat,

Amy, is just as much to blame for everything as Nicholas is.”

 

“Urn! Maybe you’re right. Poor old Tyddie didn’t have much chance between

them.”

 

“And,” she went on, “don’t forget that clear Amy is under the happy

impression, that you, William Brewer, are her guilty partner in her

flaming romance!”

 

“Makes me scared stiff to think of it,” Billy admitted. “Lord! Who’d have

thought that Tyddie would put that across dear Amy?”

 

“I’m not worrying about her,” Geraldine replied. “But if Tyddie lets you

in for any more trouble, I’m going to make him wish he’d never been

born.”

 

“Yes, and if Amy gets hold of me in mistake for Tyddie, I’ll be wishing

the same wish.”

 

“Then, there will be three of you with but a single thought,” Geraldine

released herself. “Because, when I’m finished with Amy, her outlook on

life is going to be very bleak.”

 

“There was a time,” Billy observed as his eyes took in the picture made

by Gerry as she straightened her disordered hair before the Tydvil’s

mirror, “when I had a reputation for enjoying a scrap. But I was the dove

of peace compared with you, darlint.”

 

“It’s not fighting I love, Billy,” she assured him.

 

He caught sight of the reflection of her face in the mirror. A minute

later he was shooed out of the room by a Geraldine who demanded to be

informed if he thought she had nothing to do but comb her hair every five

minutes.

 

When Tydvil arrived at the office that morning, his humour was joyous and

mischievous. He came in with the morning papers under his arm, and placed

them on the table without a word, but with provocative intent. Each

upturned page displayed a portrait of his secretary. He left them there,

an incitement to warfare during the whole of their morning routine. As a

challenge to Geraldine’s refusal to notice them, he paused now and again

in his dictation to admire his picture exhibition, and to compare the

portraits with the original.

 

Said Geraldine, as she began to collect her papers, “If you had been a

badly brought-up schoolboy, your behaviour might be excusable; as the

head of C. B. & D., it’s disgraceful.”

 

“You’re certainly in a position to criticise my behaviour.” His laugh was

derisive. “Who was it used abusive language to an eminent counsel? Who

was it who tried to pull the leg of the Supreme Court judge? Who was it

nearly had herself run in for contempt of court? You, to talk of

disgraceful behaviour!”

 

“I suppose,” her voice was full of menace, “you, and your very

distinguished and noble friend, Mr. Senior, have been enjoying the

ridicule I underwent.”

 

“Well, yes,” Tydvil responded. “To be honest, I think enjoying is the

correct word.”

 

“It’s refreshing to find you honest about anything these days.”

 

“The injury was apparently inflected by a blunt weapon; probably a girl’s

tongue,” said Tydvil to his blotting pad. “Injury!” She sniffed

disdainfully.

 

He leaned forward on his folded arms on his table. “You might have