3.
Mr Goble's jaw fell. He had been waving his hands in another spacious
gesture, and he remained frozen with out-stretched arms, like a
semaphore. This evening had been a series of shocks for him, but this
was the worst shock of all.
"You--what!" he stammered.
"I own the piece," repeated Jill. "Surely that gives me authority to
say what I want done and what I don't want done."
There was a silence. Mr Goble, who was having difficulty with his
vocal chords, swallowed once or twice. Wally and Mr Pilkington stared
dumbly. At the back of the stage, a belated scene-shifter, homeward
bound, was whistling as much as he could remember of the refrain of a
popular song.
"What do you mean you own the piece?" Mr Goble at length gurgled.
"I bought it."
"You bought it!"
"I bought Mr Pilkington's share through a lawyer for ten thousand
dollars."
"Ten thousand dollars! Where did you get ten thousand dollars?" Light
broke upon Mr Goble. The thing became clear to him. "Damn it!" he
cried. "I might have known you had some man behind you! You'd never
have been so darned fresh if you hadn't had some John in the
background, paying the bills! Well, of all the . . ."
He broke off abruptly, not because he had said all that he wished to
say, for he had only touched the fringe of his subject, but because
at this point Wally's elbow smote him in the parts about the third
button of his waistcoat and jarred all the breath out of him.
"Be quiet!" said Wally dangerously. He turned to Jill. "Jill, you
don't mind telling me how you got ten thousand dollars, do you?"
"Of course not, Wally. Uncle Chris sent it to me. Do you remember
giving me a letter from him at Rochester? The check was in that."
Wally stared.
"Your uncle! But he hasn't any money!"
"He must have made it somehow."
"But he couldn't! How could he?"
Otis Pilkington suddenly gave tongue. He broke in on them with a loud
noise that was half a snort and half a yell. Stunned by the
information that it was Jill who had bought his share in the piece,
Mr Pilkington's mind had recovered slowly and then had begun to work
with a quite unusual rapidity. During the preceding conversation he
had been doing some tense thinking, and now he saw all.
"It's a swindle! It's a deliberate swindle!" shrilled Mr Pilkington.
The tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles flashed sparks. "I've been made a
fool of! I've been swindled! I've been robbed!"
Jill regarded him with wide eyes.
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean!"
"I certainly do not! You were perfectly willing to sell the piece."
"I'm not talking about that! You know what I mean! I've been robbed!"
Wally snatched at his arm as it gyrated past him in a gesture of
anguish which rivalled the late efforts in that direction of Mr
Goble, who was now leaning against the safety-curtain trying to get
his breath back.
"Don't be a fool," said Wally curtly. "Talk sense! You know perfectly
well that Miss Mariner wouldn't swindle you."
"She may not have been in it," conceded Mr Pilkington. "I don't know
whether she was or not. But that uncle of her swindled me out of ten
thousand dollars! The smooth old crook!"
"Don't talk like that about Uncle Chris!" said Jill, her eyes
flashing. "Tell me what you mean."
"Yes, come on, Pilkington," said Wally grimly. "You've been
scattering some pretty serious charges about. Let's hear what you
base them on. Be coherent for a couple of seconds."
Mr Goble filled his depleted lungs.
"If you ask me . . ." he began.
"We don't," said Wally curtly. "This has nothing to do with you.
Well," he went on, "we're waiting to hear what this is all about."
Mr Pilkington gulped. Like most men of weak intellect who are preyed
on by the wolves of the world, he had ever a strong distaste for
admitting that he had been deceived. He liked to regard himself as a
shrewd young man who knew his way about and could take care of
himself.
"Major Selby," he said, adjusting his spectacles, which emotion had
caused to slip down his nose, "came to me a few weeks ago with a
proposition. He suggested the formation of a company to start Miss
Mariner in the motion-pictures."
"What!" cried Jill.
"In the motion-pictures," repeated Mr Pilkington. "He wished to know
if I cared to advance any capital towards the venture. I thought it
over carefully and decided that I was favorably disposed towards the
scheme. I . . ." Mr Pilkington gulped again. "I gave him a check for
ten thousand dollars!"
"Of all the fools!" said Mr Goble with a sharp laugh. He caught
Wally's eye and subsided once more.
Mr Pilkington's fingers strayed agitatedly to his spectacles.
"I may have been a fool," he cried shrilly, "though I was perfectly
willing to risk the money, had it been applied to the object for
which I gave it. But when it comes to giving ten thousand dollars
just to have it paid back to me in exchange for a very valuable
piece, of theatrical property . . . my own money . . . handed back to
me . . . !"
Words failed Mr Pilkington.
"I've been deliberately swindled!" he added after a moment, harking
back to the main motive.
Jill's heart was like lead. She could not doubt for an instant the
truth of what the victim had said. Woven into every inch of the
fabric, plainly hall-marked on its surface, she could perceive the
signature of Uncle Chris. If he had come and confessed to her
himself, she could not have been more certain that he had acted
precisely as Mr Pilkington had charged. There was that same
impishness, that same bland unscrupulousness, that same pathetic
desire to do her a good turn however it might affect anybody else
which, if she might compare the two things, had caused him to pass
her off on unfortunate Mr Mariner of Brookport as a girl of wealth
with tastes in the direction of real estate.
Wally was not so easily satisfied.
"You've no proof whatever . . ."
Jill shook her head.
"It's true, Wally. I know Uncle Chris. It must be true."
"But, Jill . . . !"
"It must be. How else could Uncle Chris have got the money?"
Mr Pilkington, much encouraged by this ready acquiescence in his
theories, got under way once more.
"The man's a swindler! A swindler! He's robbed me! I have been
robbed! He never had any intention of starting a motion-picture
company. He planned it all out . . . !"
Jill cut into the babble of his denunciations. She was sick at heart,
and she spoke almost listlessly.
"Mr Pilkington!" The victim stopped. "Mr Pilkington, if what you say
is true, and I'm afraid there is no doubt that it is, the only thing
I can do is to give you back your property. So will you please try to
understand that everything is just as it was before you gave my uncle
the money. You've got back your ten thousand dollars and you've got
back your piece, so there's nothing more to talk about."
Mr Pilkington, dimly realizing that the financial aspect of the
affair had been more or less satisfactorily adjusted was nevertheless
conscious of a feeling that he was being thwarted. He had much more
to say about Uncle Chris and his methods of doing business, and it
irked him to be cut short like this.
"Yes, but I do think. . . . That's all very well, but I have by no
means finished . . ."
"Yes, you have," said Wally.
"There's nothing more to talk about," repeated Jill. "I'm sorry this
should have happened, but you've nothing to complain about now, have
you? Good night."
And she turned quickly away, and walked towards the door.
"But I hadn't _finished!_" wailed Mr Pilkington, clutching at Wally.
He was feeling profoundly aggrieved. If it is bad to be all dressed
up and no place to go, it is almost worse to be full of talk and to
have no one to talk it to. Otis Pilkington had at least another
twenty minutes of speech inside him on the topic of Uncle Chris, and
Wally was the nearest human being with a pair of ears.
Wally was in no mood to play the part of confidant. He pushed Mr
Pilkington earnestly in the chest and raced after Jill. Mr
Pilkington, with the feeling that the world was against him, tottered
back into the arms of Mr Goble, who had now recovered his breath and
was ready to talk business.
"Have a good cigar," said Mr Goble, producing one. "Now, see here,
let's get right down to it. If you'd care to sell out for twenty
thousand . . ."
"I would _not_ care to sell out for twenty thousand!" yelled the
overwrought Mr Pilkington. "I wouldn't sell out for a million! You're
a swindler! You want to rob me! You're a crook!"
"Yes, yes," assented Mr Goble gently. "But, all joking aside, suppose
I was to go up to twenty-five thousand . . . ?" He twined his fingers
lovingly in the slack of Mr Pilkington's coat. "Come now! You're a
good kid! Shall we say twenty-five thousand?"
"We will _not_ say twenty-five thousand! Let me go!"
"Now, now, _now!_" pleaded Mr Goble. "Be sensible! don't get all
worked up! Say, _do_ have a good cigar!"
"I _won't_ have a good cigar!" shouted Mr Pilkington.
He detached himself with a jerk, and stalked with long strides up the
stage. Mr Goble watched him go with a lowering gaze. A heavy sense of
the unkindness of fate was oppressing Mr Goble. If you couldn't gyp a
bone-headed amateur out of a piece of property, whom could you gyp?
Mr Goble sighed. It hardly seemed to him worth while going on.
