"You're not going to drag him back to Paris!"

Again there was annoyance in her voice, and Lars Larssen made a quick resolution. He answered: "Certainly not, if you don't wish it. Rather than that, I'll come myself to Monte."

"That's charming of you!"

"The least I can do. I'll wire later when to expect me."

"Many thanks."

When the conversation had concluded, the shipowner called the young secretary and asked him to bring in the new "Thor" travelling typewriter he had purchased that afternoon. Larssen had proved right in his guess of the make of machine with which his sc.r.a.p of typing had been done.

"Take a letter. Envelope first," said Larssen.

"You want me to take it direct on the machine, sir?"

"Yes." The shipowner began to dictate. "Monsieur G. R. Coulter, Rue Laffitte, 8, Paris.... Now for the letter.... Cherbourg, March 15th."

"Any address above Cherbourg?"

"Not at present. 'Cherbourg, March 15th. Dear Coulter, I am called away to Canada on business. The matter is very private, and I want my trip kept very quiet. I leave affairs in your hands until my return. Get my luggage from my hotel and keep it in the office. If anything urgent arises, my name and address will be Arthur Dean, Hotel Ritz-Carlton, Montreal.'"

The young secretary went white, and his fingers dropped from the keys of the typewriter.

"Sir!"

It was a moment of crisis.

"Well?" asked Lars Larssen sharply.

"A letter like that, sir...!"

"You don't care to go to Canada?"

"It's not that, but----" He stammered, and stopped short.

Lars Larssen allowed a moment of silence to give weight to his coming words. He drew out a cheque-book from his breast-pocket and very deliberately said: "Make yourself out a cheque for a usual month's wages, and bring it to me to sign. That will be in lieu of notice."

Arthur Dean took the cheque-book with shaking fingers and went to the adjoining room.

When at length he came back, he found the shipowner making out a telegram. He stood in silence until the telegram was given into his hand, open, with an order to send it off to London. His glance fell involuntarily on the writing, and he could see that the wire was to call over somebody to replace him.

"I don't think this will be necessary, sir," said Dean, with a tremor in his voice which told of the mental struggle he had been through in the adjoining room, when his career lay staked on the issue of a single decision.

It was not without definite purpose that Lars Larssen had put the cheque-book into his hands. He knew well the power of suggestion, and used it with a master-hand. He could almost see the young secretary torn between the thoughts of a miserable 8 on the one hand, and the illimitable wealth suggested by a blank cheque-book on the other.

"Understand this," answered Larssen. "Whichever way you decide matters nothing to me from the business point of view. I can get a dozen, twenty men to replace you at a moment's notice. If you don't care to go to Canada, you're perfectly free to say so. Then we part, because you're useless to me. Aside from the purely business point of view, I should be sorry. I like you; I see possibilities in you; I could help you up the business ladder."

"That's very good of you, sir."

"Wait. I want you to see this matter in the proper light. You have an idea that what that letter represents could get you into trouble with the law. That's it, isn't it?"

Dean coloured.

"Now see here. I stand behind that letter. My reputation is worth about ten thousand times yours in hard cash. Would I be mad enough to risk my reputation unless I had looked at every move on the board?"

"I didn't think of that at the time."

"Exactly. Now you see the other side of the picture. If you want half an hour to make up your mind once and for all, take it. Consider carefully what you'd like to be in the future: clerk or business man. Two pound a week; or six, ten, twenty, fifty a week. That represents the difference between the clerk and the business man in cold cash."

"I've made up my mind, sir," answered Dean firmly.

"Good!" said Lars Larssen, and held out his hand to his young employee.

"There's the right stuff in you!"

To have his hand shaken in friendship by the millionaire shipowner was as strong wine to Arthur Dean. He flushed with pleasure as he stammered out his thanks.

A couple of hours packed with feverish activity followed. Lars Larssen knew that Clifford Matheson had the habit of carrying a small typewriter with him on his journeys, in order to get through correspondence while on trains and steamers. Many busy men carry them. This habit of Matheson's was exceedingly useful for his present purpose. The letter that Arthur Dean was to post off at Cherbourg--one to the Paris office of Clifford Matheson and one of similar purport to the London office--would only need the signature in holograph. Larssen had several of Matheson's signatures on various letters that had pa.s.sed between them, and these he cut off and gave to his employee to copy.

He criticised the s.p.a.cing and the general lay-out of the letter already typed, showed Dean how to imitate Matheson's little habits of typing, and arranged that the letters dictated should be retyped on hotel paper at Cherbourg and posted there. Dean was to catch a night train to Cherbourg, take steamer ticket there for Quebec, and proceed to Montreal. There were a host of directions as to his conduct while in Canada, and as Larssen poured out a stream of detailed orders, searching into every cranny and crevice of the situation, the young clerk felt once more the glamour of the master-mind.

Here was an employer worth working for!

Early next morning Dean was at grimy Cherbourg, and after posting off his letters he sent the following telegram to Mrs Matheson at Monte Carlo:--

"Sailing this morning for Canada on 'La Bretagne.' Urgent and very private business. Larssen, Grand Hotel, Paris, will explain. Sailing as Arthur Dean to avoid Canadian reporters. Good-bye. Much love."

As the liner lay by the quayside with smoke pouring from her funnels and the bustle of near departure on her decks, a telegram in reply was brought to Arthur Dean. He opened and read:--

"Most annoying. Cannot understand why business could not have been given to somebody else. However, expect nothing from you nowadays. Where is Riviere? Not arrived, and no line from him."

Riviere? Who was this man? Lars Larssen had made no mention of this name. It was the one facet of the situation of which the shipowner knew nothing--the one unknown link in the chain of circ.u.mstance.

Arthur Dean could only send a frantic wire to Lars Larssen, and the liner had cast off from her moorings before an answer came. This is what the shipowner found awaiting him at his hotel:--

"Mrs M. wants to know where is Riviere. Reply urgent. Who is Riviere?"

CHAPTER VI

THE BEGINNING OF A NEW LIFE

On the morning of March 15th, Clifford Matheson lit a blazing fire in the laboratory of a tumbledown villa in Neuilly in order to destroy the clothes and other ident.i.ty marks of the financier.

For some months past he had been leading a double life--as Clifford Matheson the financier, and as John Riviere the recluse scientist. He had chosen to take up the name of his dead half-brother because he had been taking up the latter's life-work.

The motives that had urged him to this strange double life were such as a Lars Larssen could scarcely comprehend. Every man has his mental as well as his physical limitations. The keenest brain, if trained on some specialized line, will fail to understand what to the dabbler in many lines seems perfectly natural and reasonable. Larssen, a master-mind, had his peculiar limitations as well as smaller men. His brain had been trained to see the world as an ant-heap into which some Power External had stamped an iron heel. The ants fought blindly with one another to reach the surface--to live. That was the law of life as he saw it--to fight one's way to the open.