Nicky-Nan, Reservist Part 32

"All the more reason why it shouldn't come through a German lottery,"

replied Mrs Polsue, examining the coin.

"I tell you for the last time that I only threw lotteries out as a suggestion. There's many ways to come into a fortune besides lotteries. You can have it left to you by will, for instance--"

"Dear, dear! . . . But never mind: go on. How one lives and learns!"

"And the other day the papers were full of a man who came into tens of thousands through what they call a Derby sweep. I remember wondering how cleaning chimneys--even those long factory ones--could be so profitable in the north of England, until it turned out that a sweep was some kind of horse-race."

"The Derby, as it is called," said Mrs Polsue, imparting information in her turn, "is the most famous of horse-races, and the most popular, though not the most fas.h.i.+onable. It is called the Blue Ribbon of the Turf."

"Indeed? Now that's very gratifying to hear," said Miss Oliver.

"I didn't know they ran _any_ of these meetings on teetotal lines."

"As I was saying," her friend continued, "the gowns worn are not so expensive as at Ascot, and I believe there is no Royal Enclosure.

But the Derby is nevertheless what they call a National Inst.i.tution.

As you know, I disapprove of horse-racing as a pastime: but my brother-in-law in the Civil Service used to attend it regularly, from a sense of duty, with a green veil around his hat."

"I suppose he didn't want to be recognised?" Miss Oliver hazarded.

"He didn't go so far as to say that Government Officials were compelled to attend: though he implied that it was expected of him.

There's an unwritten law in most of these matters. . . . But after what I've told you, Charity Oliver, do you look me in the face and suggest that the Derby horse-race--being run, as every one knows, early in the London season and somewhere towards the end of May, if my memory serves me--can be made to account for a man like Nanjivell, that humanly speaking shouldn't know one end of a horse from another, starting to parade his wealth in the month of August?"

"You've such a knack of taking me up before I'm down, Mary-Martha!

I never said nor implied that Mr Nanjivell had won his money on a horse-race. I only said that some people did."

"Oh, well, if _that_'s your piece of news," said Mrs Polsue with her finest satirical air, "it was considerate of you to put on your bonnet and lose no time in telling me. . . . But how long is it since we started 'Mister'-ing Nanjivell in this way?"

Miss Oliver's face grew crimson. "It seems to me that now he has come into money--and being always of good family, as everybody knows--" She hesitated and came to a halt. Her friend's eyes were fixed on her, and with an expression not unlike a lazy cat's.

"Oho!" thought Mrs Polsue to herself, and for just a moment her frame shook with a dry inward spasm; but not a muscle of her face twitched.

Aloud she said: "Well, in your place I shouldn't be so hot, at short notice, to stand up for a man who on your own showing is a corrupter of children's minds. Knowing what I've told you of the relations between this Nanjivell and Mrs Penhaligon, and catching this Penhaligon child with a gold coin in his hand, and hearing from his own confession that the man gave it to him, even _you_ might have drawn some conclusion, I'd have thought."

"I declare, Mary-Martha, I wouldn't think so uncharitably of folks as you do, not if I was paid for it. You're annoyed--that's what you are--because you got Mr--because you got Nanjivell watched for a German spy, and now I've proved you're wrong and you can't wriggle out of _that!_"

"Your G.o.dfather and G.o.dmothers did very well for you at your baptism, Charity Oliver. Prophets they must have been. . . . But just you take a chair and compose yourself and listen to me. A minute ago you complained that I took you up before you were down. Well, I'll improve on that by taking you down before you're up--or up so far as you think yourself. Answer me. This is a piece of gold, eh?"

"Why, of course. That's why I brought it to you."

"What kind of a piece of gold?"

"A guinea-piece. My father used to wear one on his watch-chain, and I recognised the likeness at once."

"Quite so. Now when your father happened to earn a sovereign, did he go and hang it on his watch-chain?"

"What a silly question!"

"It isn't at all a silly question. . . . Tell me how many sovereigns you've seen in your life, and how many guineas?"

"O-oh! . . . I think I see what you mean-"

"I congratulate you, I'm sure! Now, I won't swear, but I'm morally certain that guineas haven't been what they call in circulation for years and years and years."

"You're always seeing them in subscription lists," Miss Oliver objected. "Take our Emergency Fund--'Charles Pendarves Tresawna, Esq., J.P., twenty-five guineas.'"

"I seem to remember that the Squire paid by cheque," said Mrs Polsue drily.

"But the guineas must have been there, in the Bank. . . . Oh, I see!

You mean that a guinea being worth twenty-one s.h.i.+llings--"

"That's right: you're getting at it. Though I declare, Charity Oliver, there are times when I don't know which is furthest behind the times--your head, or the coquelicots you insist on wearing upon it. But now I hope you'll admit I was right, and there's a mystery about Nanjivell. Whether 'tis mixed up with his immorality or separate I won't pretend to decide, or not at this stage."

"But anyway you can't make out a guinea-piece to be German,"

maintained Miss Oliver with a last show of obstinacy.

"I don't say 'yes' or 'no' to that just yet," Mrs Polsue replied.

"The newspapers tell us the Germans have been h.o.a.rding gold for a very long time. But you mentioned the Bank a moment ago--or did I?

Never mind: it was a good suggestion anyway. Wait while I send across for Mr Pamphlett."

"Why, to be sure," said Mr Pamphlett, "it's a guinea--a George the Second guinea." He pushed back a corner of the cloth and rang the coin on the table. "Sound . . . and not clipped at all. There's always its intrinsic value, as we say: and one of these days it will have an additional value as a curiosity. But as yet that is almost negligible. Oddly enough--" He broke off, fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and produced a guinea almost precisely similar. Miss Oliver gasped: it was so like a conjuring trick.

"Where did Miss Oliver get this one?" asked Mr Pamphlett, laying his right forefinger upon the guinea on the table while still holding the other displayed in the palm of his left hand.

"I got it," confessed Miss Oliver, "off that youngest child of Samuel Penhaligon's, who told me it had been given him as a present by Mr--by Nicholas Nanjivell."

"WHAT?"

She blanched, as Mr Pamphlett stared at her. "His eyes," as she explained later, "were round in his head-round as gooseberries."

"Well, I suppose I oughtn't to have taken it from the child. . . .

But seeing that he didn't know its value, and there being something of a mystery in the whole business--as Mary-Martha here will explain, though she will have it that the man is a German spy--"

"Stuff and nonsense, ma'am! . . . I beg your pardon: you're quite right: there _is_ a mystery here, though it has nothing to do with German spies. I rather fancy I'm in a position to get to the bottom of it."

On Sat.u.r.day, almost at blink of dawn, the Penhaligons started house-moving. Mrs Penhaligon had everything ready--even the last box corded--more than thirty-six hours earlier. But she would neither finish nor start installing herself on a Friday, which was an unlucky day.

The discomfort of taking their meals on packing-cases and sleeping on mattresses spread upon the bare floor weighed as nothing with the children in comparison with the delightful sense of adventure.

Neither 'Bert nor 'Beida, when they came to talk it over, could understand why their mother was in such a fever to quit the old house. Scarcely ten days before she had kept a.s.suring them, almost angrily, that there was no hurry before Michaelmas. It was queer, too, that not only had she forbidden them to accept even the smallest offer of help from Nicky-Nan when he showed himself willing (as he expressed it) for any light job as between neighbours, but on 'Bert's attempting to argue the point with her she had boxed 'Biades' ears for a quite trifling offence and promptly collapsed and burst into tears with no more preparation than that of throwing an ap.r.o.n over her head.

"She's upset," said 'Bert.

"If you learn at this rate, you'll be sent for, one of these days, by the people up at Scotland Yard," said 'Beida sarcastically. But you cannot glean much intelligence from a face which is covered by an ap.r.o.n.

"She's upset at leavin' the house. Women are like that--always--when it comes to the point," 'Bert persisted.

"Are they? I'll give you leave to watch _me_. And I'll bet you sixpence."