The Wicked Marquis. E. Phillips Oppenheim

your lordship!" his interlocutor gasped.

      "Precisely," the Marquis assented. "It is, I believe, a few days after the period when my tenants usually pay their rents."

      "Your lordship," Mr. Wadham said, speaking with every attempt at gravity, "if every one of your tenants paid their full rent and brought it into this office at the present moment, we should still be unable to pay the interest on the mortgages due next month, without further advances from the bank."

      "These mortgages," the Marquis remarked thoughtfully, "are a nuisance."

      So self-evident a fact seemed to leave little room for comment or denial. The Marquis frowned a little more severely and withdrew his forefingers from the desk.

      "Figures, I fear, only confuse me," he confessed, "but for the sake of curiosity, what do my quarterly rents amount to?"

      "Between seven and eight thousand pounds, according to deductions, your lordship," was the prompt reply. "That sum I presume will be coming in from your agent, Mr. Merridrew, within the course of a few days. The interest upon the mortgages amounts to perhaps a thousand pounds less than that sum. That thousand pounds, I may be permitted to point out to your lordship, is all that remains for the carrying on of your Grosvenor Square establishment, and for such disbursements as are necessary at Mandeleys."

      "It is shameful," the Marquis declared severely, "that any one should be allowed to anticipate their income in this way. Mortgages are most vicious institutions."

      Mr. Wadham coughed.

      "Your lordship's expenditure, some ten or fifteen years ago, rendered them first necessary. After that there was the unfortunate speculation in the tin mines—"

      "That will do, Mr. Wadham," his client interrupted. "All I desire to know from you further is a statement of the approximate sum required to clear off the mortgages upon the Mandeleys estates?"

      Mr. Wadham, Senior, looked a little startled. His son stopped whistling under his breath and leaned forward in his chair.

      "Clear off the mortgages," he repeated.

      "Precisely!"

      "The exact figures," was the somewhat hesitating pronouncement, "would require a quarter of an hour's study, but I should say that a sum of two hundred and twenty thousand pounds would be required."

      "I have not a head for figures," the Marquis acknowledged gravely, "but the amount seems trifling. I shall wish you good-day now, gentlemen. Two hundred and twenty thousand, I think you said, Mr. Wadham?"

      "That is as near the amount as possible," the lawyer admitted.

      The Marquis drew on his gloves, a sign that he did not intend to honour his adviser with any familiar form of farewell. He inclined his head slightly to Mr. Wadham, and more slightly still to Mr. Wadham, Junior, who was holding open the door. The small boy, who was on the alert, escorted him to the front steps, and received with delight a gracious word of thanks for his attentions. So the Marquis took his departure.

      Mr. Wadham, Junior, closed the door and threw himself into the chair which had been occupied by their distinguished client. There was a faint perfume of lavender water remaining in the atmosphere. His eyes wandered around the further rows of tin boxes which encumbered the wall.

      "I suppose," he murmured, "it's a great thing to have a Marquis for one's client."

      "I suppose it is," Mr. Wadham, Senior, assented gloomily.

      "Father, do you ever feel at ease with him?" his son asked curiously. "Do you ever feel as though you were talking to a real human being, of the same flesh and blood as yourself?"

      "Never for a single moment," was the vigorous reply. "If I felt like that, John, do you know what I should do? No? Well, then, I'll tell you. I should have those tin boxes taken out, one by one, and stacked in the hall. I should say to him, as plainly as I am saying it to you—'We lose money every year by your business, Marquis. We've had our turn. Try some one else—and go to the Devil!'"

      "But you couldn't do it!" Mr. Wadham, Junior, observed disconsolately.

      "I couldn't," his father agreed, with a note of subdued melancholy in his tone.