eyes drew his eyes, though what he saw in them does not matter. Indeed he could never remember. Only when he straightened himself again there was left on his mind a determination that not for seventeen or for seventy thousand pounds would he part with his ownership in this very unique fetish.
“No, thank you,” he said presently. “I don’t think I will sell the Yellow God, as Jeekie calls it. Perhaps you will kindly keep her here for a week or so, until I make up my mind where to stow her.”
Again Mr. Champers-Haswell uttered his windy whistle. That a man should refuse £17,000 for a bit of African gold worth £100 or so, struck him as miraculous. But Sir Robert did not seem in the least surprised, only very disappointed.
“I quite understand your dislike to selling,” he said. “Thank you for leaving it here for the present to see us through the flotation,” and he laughed.
At that moment Jeffreys entered the room with the documents. Sir Robert handed the deed of partnership to Alan, and when he had identified it, took it from him again and threw it on the fire, saying that of course the formal letter of release would be posted and the dissolution notified in the Gazette. Then the transfer was signed and the cheque delivered.
“Well, good-bye till Saturday,” said Alan when he had received the latter, and nodding to them both, he turned and left the room.
The passage ran past the little room in which Mr. Jeffreys, the head clerk, sat alone. Catching sight of him through the open door, Alan entered, shutting it behind him. Finding his key ring he removed from it the keys of his desk and of the office strongroom, and handed them to the clerk who, methodical in everything, proceeded to write a formal receipt.
“You are leaving us, Major Vernon?” he said interrogatively as he signed the paper.
“Yes, Jeffreys,” answered Alan, then prompted by some impulse, added, “Are you sorry?”
Mr. Jeffreys looked up and there were traces of unwonted emotion upon his hard, regulated face.
“For myself, yes, Major—for you, on the whole, no.”
“What do you mean, Jeffreys? I do not quite understand.”
“I mean, Major, that I am sorry because you have never tried to shuffle off any shady business on to my back and leave me to bear the brunt of it; also because you have always treated me as a gentleman should, not as a machine to be used until a better can be found, and kicked aside when it goes out of order.”
“It is very kind of you to say so, Jeffreys, but I can’t remember having done anything particular.”
“No, Major, you can’t remember what comes natural to you. But I and the others remember, and that’s why I am sorry. But for yourself I am glad, since although Aylward and Haswell have put a big thing through and are going to make a pot of money, this is no place for the likes of you, and now that you are going I will make bold to tell you that I always wondered what you were doing here. By and by, Major, the row will come, as it has come more than once in the past, before your time.”
“And then?” said Alan, for he was anxious to get to the bottom of this man’s mind, which hitherto he had always found so secret.
“And then, Major, it won’t matter much to Messrs. Aylward and Champers-Haswell, who are used to that kind of thing and will probably dissolve partnership and lie quiet for a bit, and still less to folk like myself, who are only servants. But if you were still here it would have mattered a great deal to you, for it would blacken your name and break your heart, and then what’s the good of the money? I tell you, Major,” the clerk went on with quiet intensity, “though I am nobody and nothing, if I could afford it I would follow your example. But I can’t, for I have a sick wife and a family of delicate children who have to live half the year on the south coast, to say nothing of my old mother, and—I was fool enough to be taken in and back Sir Robert’s last little venture, which cost me all I had saved. So you see I must make a bit before the machine is scrapped, Major. But I tell you this, that if I can get £5000 together, as I hope to do out of Saharas before I am a month older, for they had to give me a look-in, as I knew too much, I am off to the country, where I was born, to take a farm there. No more of Messrs. Aylward and Haswell for Thomas Jeffreys. That’s my bell. Good-bye, Major, I’ll take the liberty to write you a line sometimes, for I know you won’t give me away. Good-bye and God bless you, as I am sure He will in the long run,” and stretching out his hand, he took that of the astonished Alan and wrung it warmly.
When he was gone Alan went also, noticing that the clerks, whom some rumour of these events seemed to have reached, eyed him curiously through the glass screens behind which they sat at their desks, as he thought not without regret and a kind of admiration. Even the magnificent be-medalled porter at the door emerged from the carved teak box where he dwelt and touching his cap asked if he should call a cab.
“No, thank you, Sergeant,” answered Alan, “I will take a bus, and, Sergeant, I think I forgot to give you a present last Xmas. Will you accept this?—I wish I could make it more,” and he presented him with ten shillings.
The Sergeant drew himself up and saluted.
“Thank you kindly, Major,” he said. “I’d rather take that from you than £10 from the other gentlemen. But, Major, I wish we were out on the West Coast again together. It’s a stinking, barbarous hole, but not so bad as this ‘ere city.”
For once these two had served as comrades, and it was through Alan that the sergeant obtained his present lucrative but somewhat uncongenial post.
He was outside at last. The massive granite portal vanished behind him in the evening mists, much as a nightmare vanishes. He, Alan Vernon, who for a year or more had been in bondage, was a free man again. All his dreams of wealth had departed; indeed if anything, save in experience, he was poorer than when first the shadow of yonder doorway fell upon him. But at least he was safe, safe. The deed of partnership which had been as a chain about his neck, was now white ashes; his name was erased from that fearful prospectus of Sahara Limited, wherein millions which someone would provide were spoken of like silver in the days of Solomon, as things of no account. The bitterest critic could not say that he had made a halfpenny out of the venture, in fact, if trouble came, his voluntary abandonment of the profits due to him must go to his credit. He had plunged into the icy waters of renunciation and come up clean if naked. Never since he was a boy could Alan remember feeling so utterly light-hearted and free from anxiety. Not for a million pounds would he have returned to gather gold in that mausoleum of reputations. As for the future, he did not in the least care what happened. There was no one dependent on him, and in this way or in that he could always earn a crust, a nice, honest crust.
He ran down the street and danced for joy like a child, yes, and presented a crossing-sweeper against whom he butted with a whole sixpence in compensation. Thus he reached the Mansion House, not unsuspected of inebriety by the police, and clambered to the top of a bus crowded with weary and anxious-looking City clerks returning home after a long day’s labour at starvation wage. In that cold company and a chilling atmosphere some of his enthusiasm evaporated. He remembered that this step of his meant that sooner or later, within a year or two at most, Yarleys, where his family had dwelt for centuries, must go to the hammer. Why had he not accepted Aylward’s offer and sold that old fetish to him for £17,000? There was no question of share-dealing there, and if a very wealthy man chose to give a fancy price for a curiosity, he could take it without doubt or shame. At least it would have sufficed to save Yarleys, which after all was only mortgaged for £20,000. For the life of him he could not tell. He had acted on impulse, a very curious impulse, and there was an end of it perhaps; it might be because his uncle had
