The atmosphere of the room seemed to him, as he entered, a little strained. Billie looked pale and agitated. Mr. Peters looked rather agitated too. Sam caught Billie’s eye. It had an unspoken appeal in it. He gave an imperceptible nod, a reassuring nod, the nod of a man who understood all and was prepared to handle the situation.
“Come, Peters,” he said in a deep, firm, quiet voice, laying a hand on the clerk’s arm. “It’s time that you went.”
“Yes, indeed, Mr. Samuel! yes, yes, indeed!”
“I’ll see you out,” said Sam soothingly, and led him through the outer office and on to the landing outside. “Well, good luck, Peters,” he said, as they stood at the head of the stairs. “I hope you have a pleasant trip. Why, what’s the matter? You seem upset.”
“That girl, Mr. Samuel! I really think—really, she cannot be quite right in her head.”
“Nonsense, nonsense!” said Sam firmly. “She’s all right! Well, good-bye.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Samuel.”
“When did you say you were sailing?”
“Next Saturday, Mr. Samuel. But I fear I shall have no opportunity of seeing you again before then. I have packing to do and I have to see this gentleman down in the country….”
“All right. Then we’ll say good-bye now. Goodbye, Peters. Mind you have a good time in America. I’ll tell my father you called.”
Sam watched him out of sight down the stairs, then turned and made his way back to the inner office. Billie was sitting limply on the chair which Jno. Peters had occupied.. She sprang to her feet.
“Has he really gone?”
“Yes, he’s gone this time.”
“Was he—was he violent?”
“A little,” said Sam, “a little. But I calmed him down.” He looked at her gravely. “Thank God I was in time!”
“Oh, you are the bravest man in the world!” cried Billie, and, burying her face in her hands, burst into tears.
“There, there!” said Sam. “There, there! Come come! It’s all right now! There, there, there!”
He knelt down beside her. He slipped one arm round her waist. He patted her hands.
I have tried to draw Samuel Marlowe so that he will live on the printed page. I have endeavoured to delineate his character so that it will be as an open book. And, if I have succeeded in my task, the reader will by now have become aware that he was a young man with the gall of an Army mule. His conscience, if he had ever had one, had become atrophied through long disuse. He had given this sensitive girl the worst fright she had had since a mouse had got into her bedroom at school. He had caused Jno. Peters to totter off to the Rupert Street range making low, bleating noises. And did he care? No! All he cared about was the fact that he had erased for ever from Billie’s mind that undignified picture of himself as he had appeared on the boat, and substituted another which showed him brave, resourceful, gallant. All he cared about was the fact that Billie, so cold ten minutes before, had allowed him to kiss her for the forty-second time. If you had asked him, he would have said that he had acted for the best, and that out of evil cometh good, or some sickening thing like that. That was the sort of man Samuel Marlowe was.
His face was very close to Billie’s, who had cheered up wonderfully by this time, and he was whispering his degraded words of endearment into her ear, when there was a sort of explosion in the doorway.
“Great Godfrey!” exclaimed Mr. Rufus Bennett, gazing on the scene from this point of vantage and mopping with a large handkerchief a scarlet face, which, as the result of climbing three flights of stairs, had become slightly soluble. “Great Heavens above!”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Remarkable as the apparition of Mr. Bennett appeared to his daughter, the explanation of his presence at that moment in the office of Marlowe, Thorpe, Prescott, Winslow, and Appleby was simple. He had woken early that morning, and, glancing at his watch on the dressing-table, he had suddenly become aware of something bright and yellow beside it, and had paused, transfixed, like Robinson Crusoe staring at the footprint in the sand. If he had not been in England, he would have said it was a patch of sunshine. Hardly daring to hope, he pulled up the shades and looked out on the garden.