"That's very short notice."

"You can get them on the telephone. If they're here to-morrow morning and consent--there ought to be no difficulty about that--you three Directors can sick the lawyers on to me at once and fix up the security deeds in a day or so."

"You ought to have been born an Englishman!" said the baronet admiringly.

"One point occurs to me. Let's keep this matter close until the prospectus is actually launched. I don't want any Stock Exchange 'wreckers!' trying to stick a knife into my back. You know some of their tricks?"

"Certainly--certainly!"

"I don't think I'd even mention it to your daughter. Women--even the best of them--can't help talking."

"Women are not meant for business," agreed the baronet sententiously.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

LARSSEN'S APPEAL

In pursuance of his second move, Larssen had to see Miss Verney. To write to her would probably be fruitless waste of time; and it was emphatically not the kind of interview to delegate to a subordinate. He had to seek her in person.

It was curious to reflect that, in this tangle of four lives, the balance of power had shifted successively from one to the other. At first it was with Matheson. A letter of his had brought the shipowner hastening to Paris to see him. Later, it was Larssen who sat still and Matheson who hurried to find him. Later again, it was Olive who held decision between the two men. And now Elaine.

As soon as he had settled the underwriting affair with Sir Francis and his two co-Directors, Larssen went straight to Wiesbaden to the surgical home, and had his card sent in to Elaine.

Elaine received him in the garden of the home, under the soft shade of a spreading linden, where she had been chatting with another patient. Near by, a laburnum drooped in shower of gold over a bush of delicate white guelder-rose as Zeus over Danae. Upon the wall of the home wistaria hung her pastel-shaded pendants of flower, like the notes of some beautiful melody, sweet and sad, along the giant staves of her stem. A Chopin could have harmonized the melody, weaving in little trills and silvery treble notes from the joy-song of the nesting birds.

The bandages had been removed from the patient's eyes, and she wore a pair of wide dark gla.s.ses side-curtained from the light.

After a few conventional words of greeting and inquiry, Larssen drew up a chair beside hers. "You're wondering why I've called on you," he began. "You're thinking that a stranger--and a busy man at that--wouldn't have travelled to Wiesbaden merely to inquire after you.

You're thinking that I want something."

"What is it you want from me?" asked Elaine with frank directness.

"I want your help," returned Larssen with an a.s.sumption of equal frankness.

"My help! For what?"

"For Matheson."

"And what is this help you want from me?"

"It's simple enough, but first let me spread out the situation as I see it. If I'm wrong, you'll correct me.... To begin with, Matheson is a man of complex character and high ideals. The latter have been snowed under in his business career. He's like an Alpine peak. From the distance, it looks cold and aloof, but underneath there's a carpet of blue gentian waiting to spring out into blossom when the sun melts off the snow-layer. I don't pay idle compliments when I say that I haven't far to look for the sun that's melting off the snow."

He paused.

Elaine remained silent, but Larssen's vivid metaphor went home to her.

"I used to admire Matheson as a financier," pursued the shipowner. "Now I respect him as a man. He's put up the fists to me over what he believes to be his duty to the British public, and I like him all the better for it."

"You threatened Mr Matheson that you would have me dragged into a divorce court if he didn't sign agreement to your prospectus."

It was a definite statement and not a question, and from it Larssen judged that the financier had told her everything from start to finish.

"I did, and there's where my mistake lay. One mustn't threaten a man of Matheson's calibre. Please understand this, Miss Verney, all question of divorce is dead."

"It would make no difference to me."

"It was fine of you to say so to Mrs Matheson. You've pluck."

"Then you've been talking matters over with Mrs Matheson?"

"Certainly. I want to arrive at a final settlement for all of us."

"How?"

"That's where I want your help. First let me complete my lay-out of the situation.... Matheson is a man of high ideals. But he tangled up his life pretty badly on the night of March 14th, when he tried to cut loose from his old career. It was a mistake. We've both made mistakes, he and I. The unfortunate part is that the consequences don't fall on us. They fall on Mrs Matheson and yourself. You note that I place Mrs Matheson before yourself? That's deliberate."

Again he paused, but Elaine did not make any comment. She guessed now what Larssen had come to say to her, and a shiver of fear went through her. Not fear of Larssen as a man, but as a spokesman for Fate. In the deliberate unfolding of his statement, there was the pa.s.sionless gravity of Fate.

Guessing her thoughts, Larssen's voice deepened as he continued: "I definitely place Mrs Matheson before yourself. She is his wife. He married her for better or worse. However mistaken he may have been in his estimate of her, he must keep to his promise of the altar-side. She is his wife. As a man of honour, Matheson's first duty is to stand by his wife. I don't want to wound your feelings, believe me. But I have to say this: you must realise Mrs Matheson's point of view."

"I think I do."

"Do you realise that she is eating her heart out in loneliness?"

"I didn't know."

"I do know. I went to see her a couple of days ago at Thornton Chase.

The change in her these last few weeks startled me. I deliberately say this: you have, unknowingly, dealt her a blow from which she will never recover. She is naturally far from strong, and though I'm not a doctor, I venture to make this prophecy: within three years, Mrs Matheson will be dead."

A low cry of expostulation came from Elaine.

"It's an ugly, brutal fact," pursued Larssen, pressing home his advantage to the fullest extent. Now that he had probed for and reached the raw nerve of feeling, he intended to keep it tight gripped in the forceps of his words. "It's brutal, but it's true. Unwittingly, you have shortened her life."

"I've sent Mr Matheson away," faltered Elaine.

"I guessed that. But will he stay away from you?"

"Yes."

"I doubt it."

"We've said good-bye!"

"But he writes to you?"