Delphi collected works o.., p.593
Delphi Collected Works of Peter Cheyney Illustrated, page 593
“Well, to cut a long story short, she writes me a whole lot of letters. Then she goes off and I don’t see her any more. O.K. Well, about three months ago I got a letter from some guy called Laroq — Etienne Laroq — and this bozo says that it’s going to be well worth my while to come over here, and not only does he say this but he also sends my fare. He says that when I get over here maybe me and him can do some business together.
“Well, I come over and just at this time you get that ad of yours in the paper for a chauffeur, so I killed two birds with one stone by taking the job with you.”
“And what did Laroq want?” asked De Salen.
“Nothing very much,” Skendall replied. “He wants to buy them letters she wrote me and I’m goin’ to sell ’em to him.”
The Rector’s mouth opened in astonishment.
“But you can’t do that, Skendall,” he said. “If this lady has written you some indiscreet letters in circumstances such as you have divulged to us, you couldn’t possibly think of selling those letters to anybody else.”
Skendall looked at his employer in amazement.
“Why not?” he said. “They’re my letters, ain’t they, and there’s nobody can stop me selling them to him. I can do with two hundred and fifty quid.”
De Salen turned to the Rector.
“I begin to get the idea,” he said. “Laroq wants to buy the letters from Skendall here so that he can blackmail the Countess. Evidently she has got something that he wants.”
And in his own mind De Salen was perfectly certain that he was right. He knew Laroq’s technique, and he knew that he’d stop at nothing to get what he wanted.
“Look here,” he said to the chauffeur, “I’m going to be perfectly frank with you. Mr. Laroq is a rather extraordinary individual. He’s simply using you in order to blackmail that unfortunate woman with the foolish letters that she wrote to you. Probably she regrets writing them, probably she regrets the whole thing. You know the law in this country is very tough on blackmailers.”
“You’re telling me?” said Skendall. “But you boys have got it all wrong. I ain’t blackmailing nobody, and it ain’t blackmail for me to sell a set of letters that belong to me for £250 to some guy who wants to buy ’em. That’s what I have been seeing the Countess about. I told her that if she liked to raise the ante and pay me a bit more I’d sell her the letters back again, but she says she ain’t got the money, and anyway she thinks I ought to give the letters back to her, a thing which I am certainly not going to do.
“No,” said Skendall, shaking his head quite definitely. “I reckon this job is quite an ordinary bit of business, and I reckon I’m going to sell those letters to the Laroq guy. After all, the Countess made use of me when she wanted to, didn’t she, so I reckon this is where I am going to make use of her.”
He stood in the moonlight, his uniform cap slightly over one eye, a smile on his handsome face.
“You know, Skendall,” said the Rector, “it seems that you are a most unmoral person.”
“Maybe,” said Skendall, “I don’t know what it means, but maybe I am. Anyhow that’s the way it is. The point is if anybody likes to give me £250 for those letters they can have ’em, and if I don’t get the dough by tomorrow morning I’m going to sell ’em to Laroq. I reckon I’m tired of this place anyway. I’m going back home. With that dough I could start a frankfurter stand some place, which is a thing I have always wanted to do. Well, good-night, Reverend,” he said.
He raised one finger to his cap, turned on his heel and walked off.
De Salen and the Rector stood there looking at each other. “A rather difficult situation,” said the Rector. Eustace nodded.
“I’m inclined to agree with you,” he said. “I wish I knew where your chauffeur kept those letters.”
“I know that,” said the Rector, “I’ve got them. Some little while ago he gave me a sealed packet which he asked me to keep in the safe. I expect that would be the letters.”
“Well, in that case, it’s easy, Rector,” said De Salen. “We simply destroy them. That settles the whole argument.”
“Oh, no, Sir,” said the Rector. “Two wrongs don’t make a right. The fact that Skendall is misbehaving himself is no reason why I should commit an act which, besides being obviously dishonest, is also to my way of thinking quite immoral. I shall most certainly not destroy the letters.”
“All right,” said De Salen, “if you won’t destroy them, you won’t.”
They walked on in silence. Presently they came to the Bevaston Road and began to walk towards the village. Eustace imagined that they were going in the direction of the Rectory.
“No, Sir,” said the Rector firmly. “I could not make it march with my conscience to destroy those letters. It would be wrong. They are the property of Skendall and he is, in fact, entitled to do what he likes with them. At the same time,” he continued with a sigh, “I wish I could find some way of reaching his better feelings and getting him voluntarily to return the letters to this unfortunate woman.”
“So do I,” said Eustace. “Although obviously she’s an idiot to have written them to him in the first place. I could spank that woman. She must be an awful fool.”
“Most certainly she has been foolish,” he said.
He stopped suddenly and looked at De Salen with a brightening eye.
“Look here,” he said. “I’ve an idea. Let’s go back to the Rectory and I’ll get Skendall to come into the study and we’ll talk this thing over again. We’ll treat him as an equal — socially and morally. You,” he went on, talking quickly with a certain excitement which had seized him as a result of the dramatic situation in which he found himself involved, “must supply the dramatic element. It must be your business to draw a picture which will reach Skendal’s better and more humane instincts. You must show him what awful misery and unhappiness this Laroq can cause the Countess if he obtains possession of the letters.
“Then,” continued the Rector, “at the crucial moment, just as Skendall begins to crack — I think that is the word that is usually used — I will make him another offer. I have saved up eighty pounds towards the restoration of the antique carving on the east wall of the Rectory which I regret to say was knocked down and quite ruined last month by a touring car driven by an inebriated Czecho-Slovak. At the crucial moment I will offer Skendall this eighty pounds if he will sell me the letters. Possibly he will consent, in which case the matter is at an end and we will return them to this unfortunate young woman.”
De Salen considered the suggestion. Eventually:
“Well, Rector, I’ll try anything once,” he said, “but I can’t see it working. This Skendall is as tough as they make them. He just can’t see our point of view. He can’t see that he is, in effect, making himself a party to a most immoral act. He’s simply thinking in terms of two hundred and fifty pounds and a hamburger stand somewhere on Lower Broadway, and whether any amount of talk will reach his humane instincts, as you call them, is, to my mind, extremely problematical.”
The Rector sighed once more.
“We can but try,” he said bravely.
IT was three o’clock in the morning, and De Salen and the Rector had put in two hours’ work on Skendall without any effect whatever.
The night had become sultry, and in spite of the fact that the Rector had opened the French windows of his study they were all uncomfortably hot.
The Rector sat at his desk gazing despairingly at Skendall, who, coatless, his shirt collar unbuttoned, and a glass of the Rector’s best port in his hand, lounged on the settee, his long well-shaped legs stretched out in front of him, a picture of poise, indolence and complete nonchalance.
“Say, listen, Reverend, an’ you other guy,” he said. “Why in the name of heck don’t you see that you got this thing all wrong? What’s the good of your tellin’ me that what I’m doin’ is screwy. Them letters belong to me, don’t they? O.K. An’ when it comes to morals let me tell you somethin’. I reckon it wasn’t exactly moral for the Countess to go for me in a big way just because she was fed up with this Italian guy she had a shindig with — the guy she now wants to get married to. Another thing, there is a girl in New York who is also nuts about me, an’ if I don’t show up there pretty soon with enough dough to start up this hamburger proposition, well I reckon that she ain’t goin’ to sit around waitin’. She’s just goin’ to take a run-out powder on yours truly an’ hitch herself up with a guy who runs a pump an’ flat tyre business around the block. If I wanta get that girl I gotta get back quick an’ I gotta get back with the dough.”
He drew in his legs and leaned towards them.
“Listen,” he said. “You guys talk about morals. Well, when I was comin’ over here I told Lillah about this business an’ she says: ‘Go on, Tony, you go an’ collect an’ come back an’ maybe I’ll make an honest man outa you.’”
He stopped suddenly and a faraway look appeared in his eye. He brisked up as if the thought of the girl in New York had started a new train of thought.
He got up and walked over to the Rector’s chair.
“Look, Reverend,” he said, looking down on the incumbent, “you said you’d give me eighty pounds if I sold you those letters, didn’t ya? O.K. Well, I reckon you trusts me, don’t ya? I reckon you think I’m a good guy. O.K. Well, I’m goin’ to show you somethin’. You get that eighty pounds an’ you get the letters outa the safe an’ bring ’em to me here. But I don’t want any more talk or any more wisecracks outa either of you guys. I’m goin’ to handle this business in my own way, see?”
The Rector got up.
“Very well, Skendall,” he said. “We’re in your hands, and I don’t know whether I can trust you or not, or what you intend to do, but I’m going to take a chance.”
He went out of the room. De Salen lit a cigarette and watched Skendall, who had walked over to the window and was looking out on to the moonlit lawn with a smile playing around his well-curved lips. De Salen didn’t like this new phase at all. It seemed to him that Skendall was going to make sure of getting another eighty pounds on the deal and still go through with his original idea; that all their efforts had merely shown this enterprising Yankee chauffeur the strength of his position.
After some minutes the Rector came back. In one hand he held an ordinary foolscap envelope, the flap of which was stuck down with rather soiled stamp-paper edging. In the other he held some banknotes. He held both hands out to Skendall.
“There, Skendall,” he said. “I’m going to trust you. I’m going to rely on the inherent goodness which, I know, is somewhere in you; the goodness that I thought I recognised when I gave you your job here.”
Skendall grinned. He took the packet and the banknotes, placed the packet carefully in his hip pocket and counted the eight ten-pound notes, which he stowed away in his breeches pocket.
“Now,” he said, “I reckon we can get down to cases. I reckon that we will all go up an’ see this Laroq guy; but I want you two to know that I gotta handle this job in my own way. I got an idea — a big idea — an’ maybe, if you two just stick around an’ keep your traps shut, I can pull it off. Is that O.K. by you?”
“It’s O.K. by me,” said the Rector. “And I’m certain that it’s going to be O.K. by this gentleman too.”
De Salen nodded.
“I agree,” he said. “I don’t see that there’s anything else to do.”
“All right,” said the chauffeur. “Come on, you bozos, let’s get goin’.”
De Salen says that he will never forget the scene at the cottage, or the expression on Etienne’s face after they had knocked Mavison up, gained admission and sent for Laroq.
They grouped themselves like rival armies, Laroq, on one side of the dining-table with Mavison in his rear, regarding De Salen with a baleful eye, for he had already sensed, by the presence of Skendall, that Eustace had been up to something.
On the other side of the table the Rector sat. De Salen leaned up against the book-case on his right-hand side, whilst Skendall, his coat and shirt collar still unbuttoned, his hands in his breeches pockets, regarded Laroq with his usual cynical smile.
“Now, listen here, Mister Laroq,” he said, “an’ don’t talk until I let you in on the set-up. These two guys — the Reverend and this other one — have been on to me about sellin’ you them letters the Countess wrote me. They been tellin’ me that the deal’s immoral an’ that I’m just an ornery durn son of a so-an’-so to let you have ’em because they reckon that you’re goin’ to blackmail the Countess some way or another with ’em.
“An’ they mean what they say. The Reverend here has given me eighty pounds if I won’t let you have the letters. He’s prepared to do without mendin’ the Rectory wall where some guy knocked a coupla dolphins off it when he was all tanked up, providin’ the Countess can be O.K.
“All right,” he continued, “an’ that ain’t all. On the way up here this other guy,” — he indicated De Salen with his thumb— “says he will add another twenty pounds, makin’ a total of a hundred in all, if I will not sell you the letters, but will hand ’em over to the Rector so’s he can burn ’em. Well, what are you offerin’?”
Laroq smiled. Sitting there, De Salen thought he looked rather like the devil himself, in a crepe-de-chine dressing-gown.
“My original offer holds good, Skendall,” he said softly. “In fact,” he went on, “I am prepared to increase it somewhat.”
He lit a cigarette carefully.
“I don’t know what these two have been telling you, Skendall,” he went on, with a malicious look in De Salen’s direction, “but I should like you to know that you are perfectly within your legal rights in selling me the letters, and you will he a fool if you do not take advantage of my offer.
“Remember that young woman of yours who is awaiting you in New York — Lilian — isn’t that her name? Don’t you want to marry her before that other fellow gets her just because she is tired of waiting for the man whom she sent off to England with a brave smile to collect the shekels that will start that hamburger business? You know women, Skendall. Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but it also gives the other fellow the chance he’s been waiting for.”
Laroq paused artistically to allow the full import of his words to sink in.
“Hand over those letters to me, Skendall,” he said, “and I will here and now hand you three hundred pounds — an increase of fifty on my arrangement with you, and,” he continued, “I will give you exactly two minutes from the time I stop speaking to make up your mind. Consider, Skendall, I paid your fare over, but if you sell these letters to these two people here I shall certainly not pay your fare back to New York, which I will do if you accept my offer.
“If you take their hundred pounds you will arrive back in New York with about seventy pounds at best, and you certainly can’t start a hamburger business with that. On the other hand if you take mine, I pay your return fare and you land with three hundred.
“Well, what are you going to do? What do you think Lilian would want you to do? You’ve got two minutes to make up your mind.”
They all watched Skendall who, slowly bringing his hands out of his breeches pockets, brought with one of them the Rector’s eighty pounds. De Salen’s heart sank.
Skendall looked at the Rector, and pushed the notes towards him.
“I’m sorry, Reverend,” he said. “Maybe you’ll think I’m a lousy heel; that I oughta be shot for this. O.K. Well, you’ll just have to excuse me for livin’, that’s all, because this Laroq guy has just said something that has sorta made up my mind for me. He just said what do I think Lillah would want me to do. Well, I know the answer to that one all right.”
He fumbled in his hip pocket and brought out the packet of letters.
“This is what Lillah would tell me to do,” he said, “an’ I’m goin’ to do it.”
He grinned at Laroq.
“Listen you,” he said, “hand over that three hundred and another fifty for my fare back home an’ I’m goin’ to give you these letters!”
Laroq smiled. His smile went from Skendall, on whom it rested pleasantly, then to the Rector, and on to De Salen where it rested for a moment charged with a cynical hatred.
He got up and left the room. Whilst he was away no one spoke, but Mavison — that ex-crook — looked at De Salen with an expression of mild triumph.
When Laroq returned he held the notes in his hand. He counted them out — seven fifty-pound notes — on to the table. Then he pushed them towards Skendall.
Skendall picked up the notes, stowed them away in his breeches pocket and threw on to the table the foolscap envelope. Laroq picked it up.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I think that our interview is ended.”
He turned towards De Salen.
“As for you, Eustace,” he said. “You can pack your bag and get out. You thought you were being awfully clever, didn’t you? You thought you were going to upset my plans? Well, it seems that you were not sufficiently intelligent, and, for your especial benefit, you might like to know that before I am through with these,” — he held up the envelope— “I shall make twenty times the sum that I paid Skendall here for them.”
Skendall grinned. Then, as Laroq was about to open the envelope, he produced a cigarette from behind his left ear and lit it from one of the candles on the table.
“You won’t,” he said to Laroq. “You won’t make a durn nickel out of ’em.”
Laroq was unperturbed.
“And may I ask why not?” he said.
“Sure,” said Skendall easily. “I’m on to your game. You know durn well that the Countess has made it up with that Italian guy of hers and they’re goin’ to be married. I reckon you was goin’ to stick to those letters until after she marries him next month an’ then — knowin’ that he’s a rich guy an’ that she’ll have plenty of dough when she’s his wife — you was goin’ to work the black on her an’ collect plenty outa her; otherwise you was goin’ to tell her you’d send him the letters an’ let him know that she’d been writing silly love-letters to a chauffeur.”
