Adrien Leroy | Page 3

leg over the last hurdle?"
Leroy's race resumed its usual air of bored indifference.
"Ah, yes, so you told me. My dear Stan, I'm awfully sorry! I had completely forgotten." He looked round the table. "Any of you seen the papers?" he inquired. "Last night was the first of the new comedy at the Casket--how did it go?"
Frank Parselle laughed. "I was there," he admitted. "Ada played finely, but they hissed once or twice."
"Lost on my horse and on my new play. That is bad luck!" exclaimed Adrien, looking, however, very little disturbed by the news. "It must be withdrawn."
"Certainly," agreed Vermont amiably. "Certainly."
"By Jove! what did you tell me the mounting cost?" asked Parselle, addressing Vermont, but glancing significantly at the others.
"Three thousand pounds," answered Vermont glibly, while Adrien ate his fish with the most consummate indifference.
"Three thousand for four nights, that's about it. The public ought to be grateful to you," said Shelton with a tinge of sarcasm in his voice, as he nodded across at Leroy.
Adrien laughed.
"Or I to them," he said cheerfully. "It's no light thing to sit through a bad play. But how is that, Jasper? You said it would run."
"I?" protested Vermont, with a pleasant smile. "No, Adrien, not so certainly as that. I said I thought the play well written, and that in my opinion it ought to run well--a very different thing. Eh, Shelton?"
"Ah!" replied Shelton, who had been watching him keenly. "So you were out in your reckoning for once. It is to be hoped you didn't make the same mistake with the colt. I think you were also favourably inclined to that, weren't you?"
"Yes," admitted Vermont, leaning back with an admirable air of content. "I laid my usual little bet, and lost--of course."
"You should have hedged," said Shelton, who knew as a positive fact that Vermont had done so.
"I have no judgement," Vermont responded deprecatingly. "I am a man of no ideas, and I admit it. Now Adrien is all acuteness; without him I should soon go astray. I am supposed to look after his interests; but, by Jove! it is he who supplies the brains and I the hands. I am the machine--a mere machine, and he turns the handle!" He laughed gently at his own joke, and held up his glass for replenishment.
"A pretty division of labour," commented Shelton, with a faint sneer. "Now we give you the credit for all the tact and business capacity."
"Ah, what a mistake!" replied Vermont, spreading out his fat hands with a gesture of amusement. "Well, since you give me credit, I will assume the virtue, though I have it not."
He changed the subject adroitly to one of general interest; and as the wine came and disappeared with greater rapidity, the talk ran on with more wit and laughter, Vermont always handling the ball of conversation deftly, and giving it an additional fillip when it seemed to slacken. Adrien Leroy spoke little; though when he did make a remark, the rest listened with an evident desire to hear his opinion.
At length Vermont rose, with a lazy look round.
"Well, I must be off," he said smoothly. "Good-night, Adrien. I shall be with you to-morrow at twelve."
Having bade the rest of the company a hasty adieu, he turned once more to his host.
"Good-night, Shelton," he said smilingly. "Thanks for the excellent dinner. Rome would not have perished had you lived with the last of C?sars."
"And Adrien Leroy would not go to the dogs so quickly, if you did not show him the way," murmured Shelton inaudibly, as Vermont departed, with the bland smile still hovering round his thin lips.

CHAPTER II
Outside the club door, Vermont's motor was drawn up at the side waiting for him. He looked at his watch, and was surprised at the lateness of the hour. Stepping hastily into the vehicle, he held up two fingers to the chauffeur, who apparently needed no other instructions; for the car glided off, and Vermont, as he passed the club, looked up at the windows with an ugly smile.
As Lord Standon had said, few knew his origin or his business; but, in reality, his antecedents were of a very ordinary nature. He was the son of a solicitor who had lived with but one object in his sordid life, namely, the desire to make his son a man of position with the power to mix as an equal among that portion of society which only came to Malcolm Vermont when it wanted its scandals glossed over, or to obtain money. Ill-natured people were apt to hint that he had amassed his wealth by means of usury and the taking up of shady cases. At any rate, he made sufficient to bring up his son in luxury and send him to Oxford, where Jasper had first come in