The Lady and the Lord | Page 2

funny part about it! I offered several people ten per cent of the whole thing if they would finance the trip. That was businesslike, wasn't it?
"And I assured them that the estates were worth millions. But--you can believe me or not, as you like--they simply wouldn't listen. I tried everybody I knew, and scores of people I didn't know; but it was no use. Positively nothing doing!
"You've no idea how stuffy business people are! I thought at one time of trying you; but I knew you couldn't even pay your club dues as a general rule, so you were out of the question. I just didn't know what to do."
"How on earth did you get across, then?"
"Oh, I had enough money for a second-class passage; but by the time I'd tipped my cabin-steward, and paid the cab fare at Southampton, there was only forty dollars left; and it was even less when the money-changer had finished swindling me.
"I never was good at arithmetic, and in the end I called one of those delightful English policemen. He was polite, and even fatherly; and he wouldn't even look at the dollar I offered him; but he figured it out three times in his note-book, and got the result different each time, and in the end I had to take what the banker offered me. But I know he swindled me!"
"Did you go to a bank to change it?"
"Sure! Where else should I go? "
"What bank?"
"The London and Southwestern, I think it was called."
"And you called in a policeman?"
"I did."
"Whom did you see?"
"The manager, of course."
Now, the manager of a main branch of an English joint-stock bank is as consequential as an admiral of the fleet, and much more important.
"I'll go on with the story when you've finished laughing," she said.
"I'd give a year's income to have been there when it happened! Didn't he order you out of the bank?"
"Certainly not. He was as polite as possible. He offered me a chair, and made a clerk bring another one for the policeman, and left us to figure it out. He asked me, though, if I'd mind sitting in the outer office while we worked it out, because he was busy; but he wasn't in the least rude."
"Go on," I said. "I'm ready to hear anything after that."
"Well, of course I engaged a room at the best hotel. I had lots of trunks, and the only thing I could do was to throw a bluff; so I went to the best hotel, and took the best room there was in it. They must have thought I had millions."
"I don't see how you make that out. Millionaires don't travel in the second cabin, and they must have seen the labels on your trunks."
"What d'you suppose I tipped the cabin steward for? All my things were marked, 'Wanted on the voyage,' and I made him pull all the labels off before we got to Southampton and put on first-class labels."
"You ought to have been a criminal. But perhaps you are one. I'd better wait until you've told me how you got the money."
"I went to bed early the first night, because I wanted to think out a plan and I can always think better in bed than anywhere else."
"D'you mean to say that you hadn't thought out a plan before you started?"
"Oh! How stupid men are! How could I possibly make a plan when I hadn't any money, and didn't know where I was going to stop, or what Southampton was like or anything? It was different, of course, after I'd landed and had taken a room at the hotel. I was on the scene then. But, of course, I hadn't any plan until I got there."
"What was your idea, then? Just to trust to luck?"
"Something like that. At all events, the luck was all my way on that trip. But it didn't look very promising that first night. I lay in bed, and thought, and thought, and I couldn't make head or tail of it. And at last I gave it up and went to sleep.
"I felt better in the morning, but even then I realized that my chance of success was pretty thin. I hadn't enough money to pay one week's bill at the hotel. It was an expensive place, and I had to order expensive wine at dinner to keep up appearances. I'd got to be quick.
"So directly after breakfast I sent for the local directory, and looked through the list of lawyers. There were dozens and dozens of them; but I picked out the one with the most space allotted to him, and then looked him out in another part of the book, and found he was also the mayor. That was the man for me.
"I couldn't pay anybody's bill as things