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Updated: May 24, 2025
It was in a strange hand, at once cramped and fluttering, which puzzled the recipient a good deal; it was a long time before even the signature unravelled itself. Then he forced himself to decipher it, sentence by sentence, with a fierce avidity. It was from General Kervick. The next morning Thorpe astonished his young companions by suggesting an alteration in their route.
"It was merely," Kervick ventured, in an injured tone, "that I can be as loyal as any man alive to a true friend." "Well, I'll be the true friend, then," said Thorpe, with impatient finality. "And now this is what I want to say. I'm going to be a very rich man. You're not to say so to anybody, mind you, until the thing speaks for itself. We're keeping dark for a few months, d'ye see? lying low.
Would you mind asking him or shall I?" An abrupt silence marked this introduction of a subject upon which the couple had differed openly. Thorpe, through processes unaccountable to himself, had passed from a vivid dislike of General Kervick to a habit of mind in which he thoroughly enjoyed having him about.
His pursed lips and knitted brows were eloquent of intense mental activity. "Well, do you see any objections to it?" demanded Thorpe, at last. "I do not quite see the reasons for it," answered the other, slowly. "What would you gain by it?" "How do you mean gain?" put in the other, with peremptory intolerance of tone. General Kervick spread his hands in a quick little gesture.
A little later, a hansom deposited the couple at the door of the Asian Club, and Thorpe, in the outer hallway of this institution, clicked his teeth in satisfaction at the news that General Kervick was on the premises.
That's enough said, eh? Do you follow me? And about my family affairs, I'm not likely to talk to the first comer, eh? But to you I say it frankly they've behaved badly, damned badly, sir. "Mrs. Kervick lives in Italy, at the cost of HER son-in-law.
Thence, after some brief but very agreeable business, and a hurried inspection of the "Court" section of a London Directory, he drove to a telegraph station and despatched two messages. They were identical in terms. One sought General Kervick at his residence he was in lodgings somewhere in the Hanover Square country and the other looked for him at his club.
The idea that perhaps old Kervick had found him out, and patched up with him a scheme of blackmail, occurred to him, and in the unreal atmosphere of his mood, became a thing of substance. With blackmail, however, one could always deal; it was almost a relief to see the complication assume that guise. But if Gafferson was intent upon revenge and exposure instead?
"It's a part of what I must know, in order to help you. I believe you're a widower, aren't you, General?" The other, after a quick upward glance, shook his head resentfully. "Mrs. Kervick lives in Italy with HER son-in-law and her daughter. He is a man of property and also, apparently, a man of remarkable credulity and patience." He paused, to scan his companion's face.
He might have had London at his beck and call, and yet of all that the metropolis might mean to a millionaire, he had been able to think of nothing better than that it should send old Kervick to him, to help beguile his boredom with dominoes and mess-room stories! Pah! He was disgusted with himself.
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