PAGE 7
The Swindler’s Handicap
by
The outburst was so unexpected and so forcible that at first Babbacombe stared at the man in amazement. Then, with that spontaneous kindness of heart that made him what he was, he grabbed and held his opportunity.
“My dear fellow,” he said, not pausing for a choice of words, “you are talking infernal rot, and I won’t listen to you. Do you seriously suppose I should be such a tenfold ass as to offer the management of my estate to a man I couldn’t trust?”
“What reason have you for trusting me?” West thrust back. “Unless you think that a dozen years in prison have deprived me of my ancient skill. Would you choose a man who has been a drunkard for your butler? No! Then don’t choose a swindler and an ex-convict for your bailiff.”
He swung around with the words and shut the window with a bang.
But again Babbacombe took his cue from that inner prompting to which he had trusted all his life. For the first time he liked the man; for the first time, so it seemed to him, he caught a glimpse of the soul into which the iron had been so deeply driven.
“Look here, West,” he said, “I am not going to take that sort of refusal from you. We have been together some time now, and it isn’t my fault if we don’t know each other pretty well. I don’t care a hang what you have been. I am only concerned with what you are, and whatever that may be, you are not a weak-kneed fool. You have the power to keep straight if you choose, and you are to choose. Understand? I make you this offer with a perfectly open mind, and you are to consider it in the same way. Would you have said because you had once had a nasty tumble that you would never ride again? Of course you wouldn’t. You are not such a fool. Then don’t refuse my offer on those grounds, for it’s nothing less than contemptible.”
“Think so?” said West. He had listened quite impassively to the oration, but as Babbacombe ended, his grim mouth relaxed sardonically. “You seem mighty anxious to spend your money on damaged goods, Lord Babbacombe. It’s a tom-fool investment, you know. How many of the honest folk in your service will stick to you when they begin to find out what you’ve given them?”
“Why should they find out?” asked Babbacombe.
West shrugged his shoulders. “It’s a dead certainty that they will.”
“If I can take the risk, so can you,” said Babbacombe.
“Oh, of course, I used to be rather good at that game. It is called ‘sand-throwing’ in the profession.”
Babbacombe made an impatient movement, and West’s hard smile became more pronounced.
“But you are not at all good at it,” he continued. “You are almost obtrusively obvious. It is a charm that has its very material drawbacks.”
Babbacombe wholly lost patience at that. The man’s grim irony was not to be borne.
“Take it or leave it!” he exclaimed. “But if you leave it, in heaven’s name let it be for some sounder reason than a faked-up excuse of moral weakness!”
West uttered an abrupt laugh. “You seem to have a somewhat exalted opinion of my morals,” he observed. “Well, since you are determined to brave the risk of being let down, I needn’t quibble at it any further. I accept.”
Babbacombe’s attitude changed in an instant. He held out his hand.
“You won’t let me down, West,” he said, with confidence.
West hesitated for a single instant, then took the proffered hand into a grip of iron. His blue eyes looked hard and straight into Babbacombe’s face.
“If I let you down,” he said grimly, “I shall be underneath.”
IV
It was not till the middle of December that the new bailiff moved into his own quarters, but he had assumed his duties some weeks before that time, and Babbacombe was well satisfied with him. The man’s business instincts were unusually keen. He had, moreover, a wonderful eye for details, and very little escaped him. It soon came home to Babbacombe that the management of his estate was in capable hands, and he congratulated himself upon having struck ore where he had least expected to find it. He supervised the whole of West’s work for a time, but he soon suffered this vigilance to relax, for the man’s shrewdness far surpassed his own. He settled to the work with a certain grim relish, and it was a perpetual marvel to Babbacombe that he mastered it from the outset with such facility.