Come into my Parlour Read Free Page B

He showed great gallantry at the time he was wounded and was given the M.C.
    â€œAfter the war he took up journalism; not regular work, but unusual assignments that took him abroad again. As a special correspondent he saw the high spots of the Graeco-Turkish war of nineteen nineteen, and the Russo-Polish war of nineteen twenty. Then he spent a lot of time in Central Europe, studying the development of the new states that emerged from the Versailles and Trianon Treaties—Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and so on. It was through his articles on such subjects, I believe, that he came into touch with that formidable old rascal Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust.”
    Grauber’s solitary eye flickered slightly and he suddenly sat forward. “So you know about him, do you? My compliments,
Herr Admiral;
he keeps himself so much in the background that I thought hardly anyone here had the least idea of the power he wields behind the scenes on every major problem concerning the British Empire.”
    â€œOh, yes, I know about him.” The Admiral’s thin mouth twisted into a cynical smile. “He took seven thousand marks off me at baccarat one night at Deauville in nineteen twenty-four, drank me under the table afterwards and sent the money back next morning with a charming little note to the effect that, seeing the poor state of Germany’s post-war finances, he did not feel it fair to take such a sum off one of her secret agents at a single sitting. You can repeat that story if you like. I have often related it as a lesson in good manners, to my subordinates.”
    â€œSince there is nothing in it which redounds to the credit of the Service to which we both have the honour to belong, I would not dream of doing so,
Herr Admiral,
” Grauber said pompously. “But tell me, was that your only meeting with him?”
    â€œBy no means; and I am quite certain that he would not have returned the money but for the fact that we were old friends and had had many good times together when we were young. In those days he was a subaltern in a crack cavalry regiment, and he won a particularly well-deserved V.C. in the Boer War. I used to stay with him at his lovely old home, Gwaine Meads, in Shropshire. There have been Gwaine-Custs living there ever since the Romans gave up their attempts to subdue the more savage tribes of Britons on reaching the Welsh Border; and I don’t doubt that the place is still maintained in almost feudal state, since he’s as rich as Crœsus.”
    â€œYet he had to resign his commission on account of his debts,” putin Grauber. “It’s very remarkable that a hunting and shooting squire, of all people, should have succeeded in amassing such a vast fortune.”
    â€œHe is a very remarkable man. But in his young days titles and connections counted. When he left the Army he got himself taken on to the board of a few not-too-sound companies in the City. Before they were much older his co-directors found that they had given a seat to a wolf in guinea-pig’s clothing. But they had no cause to regret it. With that hearty innocent laugh of his he did them out of half their profits, but the half he let them keep was ten times as great a sum as they had ever made before. They used to send him to Turkey, Egypt and India. He could twist Orientals round his little finger, enable his companies to pay twenty per cent dividends and keep the rest himself, for ‘man’s time’, as he used to call it.”
    Grauber shook his head in puzzled wonder. “These English, they are incredible,” he murmured, as the Admiral went on:
    â€œYet for over half a century he has managed to maintain his extraordinary fiction that he is just a lucky fool. I’ve heard him say a score of times in that booming voice of his: I’ve an eye for a horse or a pretty woman, but no brains—no brains at all,’ and he’s said it so often that people have really come to