The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [4884]
"I'm through with Audrey. That's all," she said.
And the man across regarded her with a sort of puzzled wonder.
Her indignation against Clayton took the form of calculation; and she was quick to pursue her advantage. In the library she produced the new and enlarged plans for the house.
"Roddie says he has tried to call you at the mill, but you are always out of your office. So he sent these around to-day."
True to the resolution he had made that night in the hospital, he went over them carefully. And even their magnitude, while it alarmed him, brought no protest from him. After all the mill and the new plant were his toys to play with. He found there something to fill up the emptiness of his life. If a great house was Natalie's ambition, if it gave her pleasure and something to live for, she ought to have it.
She had prepared herself for a protest, but he made none, even when the rather startling estimate was placed before him.
"I just want you to be happy, my dear," he said. "But I hope you'll arrange not to run over the estimate. It is being pretty expensive as it is. But after all, success doesn't mean anything, unless we are going to get something out of it."
They were closer together that evening than they had been for months. And at last he fell to talking about the mill. Natalie, curled up on the chaise longue in her boudoir, listened attentively, but with small comprehension as he poured out his dream, for himself now, for Graham later. A few years more and he would retire. Graham could take hold then. He might even go into politics. He would be fifty then, and a man of fifty should be in his prime. And to retire and do nothing was impossible. A fellow went to seed.
Eyes on the wood fire, he talked on until at last, roused by Natalie's silence, he glanced up. She was sound asleep.
Some time later, in his dressing-gown and slippers, he came and roused her. She smiled up at him like a drowsy child.
"Awfully tired," she said. "Is Graham in?"
"Not yet."
She held up her hands, and he drew her to her feet.
"You've been awfully dear about the house," she said. And standing on tiptoe, she kissed him on the cheek. Still holding both her hands, he looked down at her gravely.
"Do you really think that, Natalie?"
"Of course."
"Then - will you do something in return?"
Her eyes became shrewd, watchful.
"Anything in reason."
"Don't, don't, dear, make Graham afraid of me."
"As if I did! If he is afraid of you, it is your own fault"
"Perhaps it is. But I try - good God, Natalie, I do try. He needs a curb now and then. All boys do. But if we could only agree on it - don't you see how it is now?" he asked, trying to reason gently with her. "All the discipline comes from me, all the indulgence from you. And - I don't want to lose my boy, my dear."
She freed her hands.
"So we couldn't even have one happy evening!" she said. "I won't quarrel with you, Clay. And I won't be tragic over Graham. If you'll just be human to him, he'll come out all right."
She went into her bedroom, the heavy lace of her negligee trailing behind her, and closed the door.
Clayton had a visitor the next morning at the mill, a man named Dunbar, who marked on his visitors' slip, under the heading of his business with the head of the concern, the words, "Private and confidential."
Clayton, looking up, saw a small man, in a suit too large for him, and with ears that projected wide on either side of a shrewd, rather humorous face.
"Mr. Spencer?"
"Yes. Sit down, please."
Even through the closed window the noise of the mill penetrated. The yard-engine whistled shrilly. The clatter of motor-trucks, the far away roar of the furnaces, the immediate vicinity of many typewriters, made a very bedlam of sound. Mr. Dunbar drew his chair closer, and laid a card on the desk.
"My credentials," he explained.
Clayton read the card.
"Very well, Mr. Dunbar.