Nobodys Man

Nobody's Man, by E. Phillips
Oppenheim

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Oppenheim
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Title: Nobody's Man
Author: E. Phillips Oppenheim

Release Date: December 19, 2005 [eBook #17356]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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MAN***
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NOBODY'S MAN

by
E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM
1921

NOBODY'S MAN
CHAPTER I
Andrew Tallente stepped out of the quaint little train on to the
flower-bedecked platform of this Devonshire hamlet amongst the hills,
to receive a surprise so immeasurable that for a moment he could do
nothing but gaze silently at the tall, ungainly figure whose unpleasant
smile betrayed the fact that this meeting was not altogether accidental
so far as he was concerned.
"Miller!" he exclaimed, a little aimlessly.
"Why not?" was the almost challenging reply. "You are not the only
great statesman who needs to step off the treadmill now and then."
There was a certain quiet contempt in Tallente's uplifted eyebrows. The
contrast between the two men, momentarily isolated on the little
platform, was striking and extreme. Tallente had the bearing, the voice
and the manner which were his by heritage, education and natural
culture. Miller, who was the son of a postman in a small Scotch town,
an exhibitioner so far as regards his education, and a mimic where
social gifts were concerned, had all the aggressive bumptiousness of the
successful man who has wit enough to perceive his shortcomings. In
his ill-chosen tourist clothes, untidy collar and badly arranged tie, he
presented a contrast to his companion of which he seemed, in a way,
bitterly conscious.
"You are staying near here?" Tallente enquired civilly.
"Over near Lynton. Dartrey has a cottage there. I came down

yesterday."
"Surely you were in Hellesfield the day before yesterday?"
Miller smiled ill-naturedly.
"I was," he admitted, "and I flatter myself that I was able to make the
speech which settled your chances in that direction."
Tallente permitted a slight note of scorn to creep into his tone.
"It was not your eloquence," he said, "or your arguments, which
brought failure upon me. It was partly your lies and partly your tactics."
An unwholesome flush rose in the other's face.
"Lies?" he repeated, a little truculently.
Tallente looked him up and down. The station master was approaching
now, the whistle had blown, their conversation was at an end.
"I said lies," Tallente observed, "most advisedly." The train was already
on the move, and the departing passenger was compelled to step
hurriedly into a carriage. Tallente, waited upon by the obsequious
station master, strolled across the line to where his car was waiting. It
was not until his arrival there that he realised that Miller had offered
him no explanation as to his presence on the platform of this tiny
wayside station.
"Did you notice the person with whom I was talking?" he asked the
station master.
"A tall, thin gentleman in knickerbockers? Yes, sir," the man replied.
"Part of your description is correct," Tallente remarked drily. "Do you
know what he was doing here?"
"Been down to your house, I believe, sir. He arrived by the early train
this morning and asked the way to the Manor."

"To my house?" Tallente repeated incredulously.
"It was the Manor he asked for, sir," the station master assured his
questioner. "Begging your pardon, sir, is it true that he was Miller, the
Socialist M.P.?"
"True enough," was the brief reply. "What of it?"
The man coughed as he deposited the dispatch box which he had been
carrying on the seat of the waiting car.
"They think a lot of him down in these parts, sir," he observed, a little
apologetically.
Tallente made no answer to the station master's last speech and merely
waved his hand a little mechanically as the car drove off. His mind was
already busy with the problem suggested by Miller's appearance in
these parts. For the first few minutes of his drive he was back again in
the turmoil which he had left. Then with a little shrug of the shoulders
he abandoned this new enigma. Its solution must be close at hand.
Arrived at the edge of the dusty, white strip of road along which he had
travelled over the moors from the station, Tallente leaned forward and
watched the unfolding panorama below with a little start of surprise. He
had passed through acres of yellowing gorse, of purple heather and
mossy turf, fragrant with the aromatic perfume of sun-baked herbiage.
In the distance, the