THE MAN WHO MIKED.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1716, 18 January 1905, Page 7

THE MAN WHO MIKED.

(By Walter J. Mowbray.)

Leila Arlington elevated her delicate nose with an air of ineffable disdain. “Don’t talk such utter nonsense!”

she snapped. ••You’re quite bore enough as it is! Marry you indeed! Two , hours of your society per week is ample, thank you!” Roderick Raynor appeared somewhat crestfallen. But he quickly recovered himself. “All right, c-ld man,” he said lazily, as he .stretched himself on the grass at her feet. Leila Arlington rase with an air of outraged dignity. “I won’t be called £ old man!’ ” she burst out furiouslyThen, as if realising that this was net the way to assert the dignity in question, she reseated herself and opened her parasol with a jerk. • Oh, all right !” returned the accommodating Roderick. “But you could say so without getting so beastly bristly about it, couldn’t you ? I’ll call you ‘old woman’ if you prefer it. But I imagined you’d think that rather costermongery, don’t you know.” Leila’s nose took a still higher level. "You’re a horrid, vulgar little man!” she said disdainfully. “I can’t think why I tolerate you !” Roderick nodded sympathetically. "It is a. bit of a mystery,” he admitted reflectively. ‘Let’s talk about it. It’s as interesting as most things we discuss, and we might arrive at some definite solution, which would be quite phenomenal.” Leila treated the proposition with cold indifference. For five whole minutes there was silence. Then Roderick said :

“But I say old m —, I mean Leila, what makes you hate me so? Really—” His companion lowered the attitude of her head with a sigh of regret. But the withering glance which she bent upon his prostrate six feet of manhood, amply compensated her for this temporary condescension. "Because I do!” she replied promptly. Now, no man in his right mind would dream of protesting against an argument so conclusive, particularly when that argument falls, as it invariably does, from a woman’s lips. But then Roderick was not in his right mind. No man is. who is in love. "But that’s no reason at all!” he protested. Leila regarded him with mingled pity and contempt. “I think I'll go indoors,” she said, observing the hopelessness of imparting any reasonable view of the case to one so obtuse. “You only come here when you’ve nothing else to do.” Roderick sprang up. * * r>y Jcve!” he exclaimed. “That’s a positive fib, Leila! I’d come here every blessed day—three times a day—if you’d let me!” Leila laughed merrily. "Well,” she said, “I’ll put you to the test. You can come to-morrow at five.” With which gracious permission, she rose, and, with her dainty lace parasol poised artistically above her still more dainty head, disappeared among the trees. * * * * There was a sharp ring at the electric bell. The call-boy slammed the lid of his desk on the penny illustrated bloodcurdler slipped down from his elevated perch and glanced apprehensively at the indicator. His face fell and lie disappeared in the direction of chief’s sanctum. Roderick Raynor looked after him with a thrill of dismay. It was three o’clock. Presently the call-boy re-appeared. “Mr Preston wants to see you, sir,” he said, addressing himself to Roderick. Raynor rose and went into the office of his chief.

“Ah!” said Mr Preston, looking up from his writing-table, “I want you, Mr* Raynor. Please see that the door is closed.” Roderick did 60.

“That’s right,” approved his chief. “Now' come and sit down here. The fact is, we have had a communication from the Durham Trust in reply to a proposal from ourselves or. the question of amalgamation. I may as well admit that we are anxiuos to effect this conjunction of the two most powerful trusts connected with the industry. But we believe we have the pull on the Durham people, and we are. therefore, driving as hard a bargain as we can. The Durham Trust have kicked at this, and write a somewhat aggressive letter, which I now desire to answer.

“The reply will he a lengthy one, and I want you to take down in shorthand the letter I shall dictate, and afterwards to transfer it to type and dispatch it by to-night’s post. I shall reply in the same spirit as the communication evinces. Of course I need not impress upon you the necessity for complete secrecy in these negotiations. It was the confidential nature of the transaction that induced me to send to you.”

Roderick mumbled his thanks for so good an opinion on the part of his chief. In his heart he was silently reviling the oronosal for amalgamation. And to

add to his bitterness, lie well knew that the implied compliment of his chief was merely a salve to liis rising realisation that the task before him involved an houir’s overtime.

It wasn’t so much the shorthand. That could bo scribbled off in no time. It was the subsequent typing. His memory carried him hack to former communications arising in this way. The weary waste of words had made him dizzy as he looked at them. But then he had had nothing else to think about. To-day—Great Heavens, it made him sick to remember it! He had been invited by Leila to call upon her at five o’clock!

With the air of a martyr he sat down to his work. The first part of the hideous task was finished by three fortyfive, and he rapidly collated the sheets of shorthand. Then his chief rose.

“I shall go now,” he said. “You’ll see to the sending off of the typed transcript, Mr Raynor. Good evening.”

Roderick . returned the salutation of his chief with a curious lack of enthusiasm, and the moment he was alone, he wantonly wasted a full five minutes in swearing softly to himself. Hi's repertoire exhausted, liis mind became easier, and he took the sheets of shorthand over to a typewriter that stood in a corner of the office. There were four sheets in all. The first was written upon one side only. The second was positively black W'ith hieroglyphics from top to bottom and on both sides. The third wasn’t so bad, and was also covered on one side only ; while the fourth might easily have been dispensed with, for it contained but three lines of shorthand all told. Sheet number two, therfore, contained the bulk of the letter, and he groaned as he looked at it.

The keys of the machine rattled like the pelting of bullets from a brass howitzer, and he came to the end of the first sheet. He lifted his fingers and glanced feverishly in the direction of the clock. Twelve minutes past four! It would he turned five ere he could hope to finish -ne whole transcript. If he could only have put time back by the space of half-an-hour! But it was imbecile to wish such impossibilities as that. He had a vague idea that much more depended on his appointment with Reila to-day than appeared on the surface. It was just possible she had been teasing him the day before and that today she would relent. The thought made him grow uncomfortably hot and distracted. He snatched at the remaining sheets. The second one slipped down an inch or two showing the top lines of sheet three. He glanced at them and was surprised at discovering that sheet three followed sheet one with apparent consecutiveness. It was merely a coincidence, hut it gave him an idea. Of course, it was his duty to follow on with sheet two. But sheet two was the worst of the lot. lie looked round the office as though seeking inspiration, and his eye fell on the clock. The next instant he had crammed sheet two into his pocket, and was rattling away for dear lTfe on sheet three. At twenty minutes to five lie sealed down and addressed a bulky looking

packet, put on liis hat and gloves, and hailed a hansom.

"The other fellows ‘mike’ when they get a chance,” he muttered as he bolwed along. "Why the dickens shouldn’t I! It’s beastly risky, but I’m in for it now. I won-der what Leila will say!” His face assumed a pfeasanted aspect as he let his imagination run riot on this speculation. Once on the way he stopped to post the curtailed communication to trie Durham Trust then drove on as before. ■?€• ‘Two minutes late!” Leila, pointed a scathing forefinger at the handsome gilt clock upheld by corpulent cupids, and sat upright on the crimson satin couch cushions to deliver sentence of eternal banishment. Roderick dropped dejectedly into a chair. “Go on,” he said resignedly. “I might have foreseen this reception and saved my neck from the hangman.” Something in his tone caused Leila to pause. She sat regarding him attentively for a moment or two. Finally she .said: “Roddy, you’ve been doing something unusual—clever or something of that sort, you know. Tell me what it is.” The young man lit a cigarette. u “Oh, it won’t interest you,” he said, bluntly. Leila nodded. “That’s more than probable,” she agreed. “But I w r ant to know, all the same.” Roderick emitted two thin columns of smoke from his nasal organ. “Don’t do that-, you nasty boy!” commanded Leila. “You’ll he turning your ears into smoke-stalks next! Now tell me what all this tragedy air is about.” “Oh, nothing,” responded Roderick, gloomily. “It’s a case of suicide, that’s all.” Leila smiled reasuringly. “O'h, come!” she said, “you don’t expect me to believe that, do you ? I couldn’t imagine you committing suicide, you know.” Roderick flicked the ash from his cigarette. “It’s done already,” he affirmed mysteriously, and waited to be questioned again. But Leila adopted other measures for discovering the truth. ©he simply leant back on her delicate cushions and began gracefully waving her pearlhandled fan to and fro, with a rhythmic motion that was particularly soothing to herself and particularly exasperating to her companion. It brought him, in a very few minutes, to the level of explanation. “I was referring,” he said, witli a fine show' of supreme indifference, “not. to physical, but to moral suicide.” There was no abating of the pearlhandled fan, not so much as the tremor of Leila’s long, dark lashes. Roderick fidgeted on his seat. It would have to come out in the long run, and it might as well be done now. Anything to stop that infernal faiiT”

“I shouldn’t Have got here till six,” lie began deliberately, “if I hadn’t done it. You see, I had to type a private communication of great importance, and the beastly tiling had to go off at once. So I cut out all the middle of the letter and boiled it down to suit the time at my disposal.”

He stopped. There was a hasty movement in the direction of the conchcushion. Leila’s fan had dropped unheeded by her side, and she was sitting bolt upright. “You’re an untrustworthy man,” she affirmed with emphasis. But her gloriously dark eyes were softer than usual. Roderick nodded.

“I am,” he admitted gravely. “I w'ouldn’t have done it under any other circumstances, but, well, you know, old man, I positively had to, and that’s all about it.”

This time the appeallation of “old man” failed to evoke the usual peremptory command. Leila was looking at him with a new interest in her lovely dark eyes.

“I suppose it won’t he found out," she suggested. Roderick dropped the end of hia cigarette into the silver-gilt ash-tray that stood on the table beside him.

“I wish that were possible,” he re- | marked grimly. “It’s bound to be discovered in a day or two. And—well, it means a loss of half-a-million to our people, that’s all.” He made the assertion without faltering. Vague memories of his early childhood, and of a certain anedote he had then heard of the fate of one named Ananias recurred to him. But this was no time for retrospect. Present and future were quite enough for him just now. Leila gave a little gasp of amazement, not unmixed with pleasure. “Half-a-million ? !” she echoed, displaying two even row's of pearly-white teeth. “And you sacrificed half-a-million for—for me?” Roderick nodded. “Of course, it W'asn’t my money,” he reminded her. But the subtle flattery had done its work. Leila was in a transport of happiness. “Half-a-million!” she repeated again. And then, as a thought occurred to her: “I suppose it’ll be rough on you, Roddy ?” Roddy admitted that it would. “It’s the sack,” lie affirmed dejectedly. “And it’s ruin as well, for they’ll bill me aIL over the commercial world. In fact, I’m not sure but what they’ll rake up some beastly old Act of Parliament and get me five years’ penal servitude.” Leila’s eyes were becoming still more bewitchingly sympathetic. “And—-and you did it—for me!” she murmured. Roderick saw that his time had come and made so excellent a use of his opportunity, that the sound of a kiss was to he heard not long after, followed by another that was distinctly the product of feminine lips. And -when he re-ap-peared and turned his steps in the direction of his diggings, his manner was jubilant, liis step jaunty, and his hat might have been a trifle, only a trifle, out of the perpendicular.

“Ah! Mr Raynor. I wish to speak to you for a few moments. Close the door, if you please.”

The voice of Mr Preston was not so genial as on some occasions. Roderick knew instinctively that his hour had come. He closed the great man’s door and took his stand by the massive walnut writing-table.

“I wanted to speak to you about that communication you dispatched to the Durham people a few days ago,” proceeded his ciiief, eyeing him keenly the while. ’‘lt appears that less than one half of that communication was actually sent off. I have found this out, never mind how, and I have sent tor you m order to ask for some explanation of so unusual a proceeding.” .Roderick never quailed. “I am at a loss to understand you,” he said.

The great man smiled. “Where did you go on the evening of that day?” he demanded. Roderick appeared to ponder. “1 tinnK,” lie said reflectively, “that 1 spent a good part of tfie evening with a —a friend of mine.”. The smile broadened. “A lady?” he asked blandly. •Roderick admitted the nnpreachment. Mr ir'reston Knitted Ins brows, ms lace •wore a curious expression. as thougn one emotion within him was struggling with another, h inaily he said: “vv eh, Mr Raynor, i win not press you further for an explanation, .by a curious cfiance, the hurham people thougnt better or their reply soon after it nad been dispatched, and wrote to us again, conntermandmg their former communication and capitulating to our terms. The portion of our letter which, by some unexplained—er—accident—we will call it accident —Mr Raynor, was omitted from tne reply you dispatched, happened to be the pith of the whole matter, and positively bristled with sarcasm, as you may perhaps remember. Had the Durham people received jjais, it is more than probable that they would have again countermanded their communication and declined to treat further for the proposed 'amalgamation.

“By this—er —accident, thei’efore, we have been saved a vast amount of trouble, probably of money. 1 do not, of course, suggest that similar—er —accidents are to be commended. I trust, in fact* that this sort of thing will not occur agam. But, in view of the advantage arising therefrom in the present instance, I am willing to desist from prosecuting any inquiries as to reasons and motives, and other matters incidental to this—er —accident. That will do, Mr Raynor. You can return to your duties.” That night, Roderick told Leila that, his services being indispensable to his employers, the matter of the curtailed communication had been overlooked.

He added, that he had been induced, under great pressure, to confess the motive for his offence. His relations with her, Leila, were touched upon, though as delicately as possible, and his chief had declared that, only by his subsequent upon with the lady in question, would this assertion be verified. Here his imagination failed him. But it clinched matters effectually, for, the following Spring, the verification of his visionary statement was an accomplished fact.

And to this day Roderick Raynor is an enthusiastic advocate of the institution of “miking.”