With All My Worldly Goods (3 page)

Hastily she tossed her things back into her case, and scribbled a note to Bruce Mickleham. It wasn’t a very brave way of doing things, she supposed, but she simply couldn’t face any more arguments or cold condemnation.

She let herself quietly out of her door and, clutching her case in one hand, she went quickly towards the lift.

She had almost reached it when his voice said coolly behind her:

“Do you mind telling me what you are doing?”

It was ridiculous to start so guiltily, and there was a little touch of bravado in her manner as she turned to face him. He was standing in the doorway of his room, surveying her quite dispassionately.

“I’m going away—back to the club where I was.”

“But I thought you had no money.”

“A—a friend is going to lend me some until daddy comes.”

“Come here a minute,” he said, without moving.

“No. Why?” She knew she sounded ridiculously defensive.

“Because there is something I must say to you, and it can’t be said in an hotel corridor.”

She came slowly over, and he stood aside for her to pass into his room. After a second’s hesitation she went in.

“It isn’t any good,” she told him hastily. “I don’t want to stay here, and there is no reason why I should. It will be only a week or two until daddy comes, and I want to stay at the club.”

“I am sorry,” he said. “But it isn’t possible.”

“Why not?” She looked full at him, and saw for the first time that there was a nervous little pulse beating in his cheek.

He passed his hand over his hair.

“I didn’t mean to tell you this way. I wanted to wait until my sister could come tomorrow and break it to you. But there is no question of your staying anywhere, my child, until your father comes, because he won’t be coming. You see—he died in New York the night before the boat sailed. And he made me his executor and your guardian.”

CHAPTER
TWO

Lenora had the
confused impression that the floor rose up and hit her.

Everything was a blur for a minute or two, and there was a loud singing in her ears. She didn’t seem able to see anything or feel anything.

Then she slowly became aware of the pressure of someone’s hand at the back of her neck, and things began to clear again. She was sitting in a chair and that hand on her neck was forcing her head down, so that the blood ran to her numb brain once more, and consciousness was coming back.

She struggled slightly, the hand was immediately withdrawn, and she felt herself lifted and laid back in the chair.

At the back of her dazed mind she thought: That would be Bruce Mickleham’s way of reviving you. No tender words and eau-de-cologne for him. He took you by the scruff of the neck and shoved your head between your knees.

But at least it was effective.

“Drink this,” his voice ordered somewhere beside her.

She obediently drank from the glass that was held to her lips. She didn’t really want his arm round her, but it was there, supporting her, whether she liked it or not.

“Better?”

“Yes, thank you.”

She lay back again and looked at him now, and as she did so she saw that he too was pale.

“I’m sorry,” she said shakily. “I’ve never gone right out like that before.”

“No, it’s I who should be sorry. I had to stop your going away, of course, but it was a clumsy way of breaking it.”

“It—it’s quite true then?” She stared up at him piteously, as though, even now, he might relent and tell her he had only been frightening her.

“I’m sorry, but—yes.”

“How did it happen?” she said in a whisper.

“Are you sure you want to hear now?”

“Yes, please.”

“He had a terrible heart attack in the hotel in New York. He had been having them for some while, but this was much more serious than any of the earlier ones.”

“He never told me,” Leonora said dully.

“No. He always had the idea it would be worrying you unnecessarily. As I expect you know”—he hesitated, and then added in a slightly gentler tone than his usual abrupt one—“your father was an incurable optimist He was quite unable to believe that he was mortally ill.”

Yes, she could imagine that. Her father would scarcely recognize death even when it stood beside him. Somehow, those words brought him back with unbearable clearness.

She leant her head on her hand, trying to force back the tears. The last thing he had done was to send her that joyous, loving telegram about their future together. And all the time she had been making those plans, anticipating his happy home-coming, he had really been lying dead in a New York hotel, three thousand miles away.

There was silence for a minute or two. And then she said in a husky little voice.

“Please go on.”

“There isn’t very much more to tell. I happened to have business in New York, and had travelled with him from Mexico City, so that was how I was there. We had known each other very well for some years, and when he knew it was just a matter of an hour or two until the end, he had a solicitor called, made his will, and appointed me your guardian. I already knew about your being left alone after your aunt’s death—he used to talk of you a great deal—so that when he asked me to go to you by the boat in which he himself would have travelled, it seemed the best solution.”

“I see. It was really—very—kind of you.”

“It was also my legal duty,” was the slightly cool reply.

“It all sounds rather a lot of fuss over one unimportant girl,” Leonora said sadly.

“Your father was very anxious that everything should be explained to you quite clearly.”

“There can’t be very much to explain.” She sighed and pushed back the heavy wave of hair that hung over her forehead. “Except—oh yes, of course, he had some idea that he had made a fortune, poor darling, hadn’t he?” She smiled faintly and wistfully. The tale of fortune all seemed a little pitiful now.

“He was perfectly correct in his idea,” Bruce Mickleham said coldly, as though he didn’t much like her lack of interest. And then he added with a curious lack of expression. “Your father left you something like seventy thousand pounds.”

She thought for a moment she was going to faint again. But she shut her eyes very tightly, to stop the room going round. Then she opened them and said rather faintly: “What—did you say? Seventy—thousand—pounds.”

He inclined his head without speaking.

“But he
couldn’t.
He—he simply hadn’t got it,” she muttered in stupefaction.

“On the contrary, I assure you, he had at least that when he died. Probably more.” Again Bruce Mickleham spoke as though her incredulity tried his patience considerably.

“But
how
! Where did it come from?” Leonora felt vaguely that to keep on asking questions like this somehow held off the full realization of her father’s death a little longer.

Bruce Mickleham looked at her rather curiously.

“Your father didn’t tell you much about his work—or rather, his hobby, did he?”

“You mean his interest in Aztec culture and history?”

“Well—put it that way, if you like.”

“Yes,” Leonora assured him. “He wrote quite a good deal about it from time to time. But how could that have anything to do with his making a fortune?”

Bruce Mickleham didn’t answer at once. Then he said thoughtfully:

“I expect you know that when the Spaniards invaded Mexico in the sixteenth century, although a tremendous amount of the Aztec treasure fell to the lot of Cortez and his countrymen, even more is supposed to have been hidden away. Almost all the Aztec nobility eventually perished in the struggle, and the secret of their hidden treasure was believed to have perished with them.”

He paused a little inquiringly, and Leonora said:

“Yes. That much I know. Daddy spoke of it more than once in letters. He even made some joking reference to finding treasure trove once when I was a little girl, but I don’t think he ever took the idea seriously himself.”

Bruce Mickleham looked at her sombrely and slightly shook his head.

“You’re wrong there. For the last three years of his life it became almost an obsession with him. That was
why he would never come home. He hung on month after mon
th, believing almost daily that his search would be rewarded. He loathed the place by the end. You do if you’re English and have to live there. It becomes a hot, dreary hell.”

Leonora drew back sharply, half repelled by the bitterness in his voice, half hurt by the fact that he seemed to know her father so much better than she.

“I didn’t know anything about this,” she said troubledly.

“No, of course not” He brushed that aside impatiently. “Isn’t the sort of thing you tell a woman.”

“Were you—were you engaged on the same search, too?” she asked a little diffidently.

“No,” he said flatly and coldly. Just that—no elaboration. She was uncomfortably silent for a few seconds, and then said:

“But in the end, my father was successful? You mean that he really found hidden treasure from the sixteenth century?”

“Yes,” Bruce Mickleham said.

“It doesn’t seem possible. It’s like a melodrama.”

“Yes,” Bruce Mickleham said, as though speaking half to himself: “It was like a melodrama.”

“Do you mean jewels and gold and that sort of thing?”

“Most of it consisted of uncut jewels, I believe. Stuff you can always dispose of fairly easily if you don’t unload it on the market too quickly.”

“But”—Leonora frowned doubtfully—“I should have thought it was almost the kind of story that would make a stir in the papers. It seems funny that I just never heard a word about it.”

Bruce Mickleham smiled.

“One doesn’t broadcast that sort of thing more than one can help. Especially in Mexico. I think your father simply turned his find gradually into money which he invested. It was the wisest thing to do.”

“And after all that,” Leonora said slowly, “he died before he could spend any of the money he had struggled to get. Oh, it does seem hard!”

“Well, at least your father’s good fortune makes things a great deal pleasanter for you,” he reminded her, “even if it is too late for him to enjoy himself.”

“Yes—I suppose so.” Leonora spoke listlessly. She was thinking of all the things they had meant to do together. There wouldn’t be much point in doing them alone. And suddenly the tears were very near again.

“You’re extremely matter-of-fact for someone who has just come into a fortune,” she heard him say, and she felt astonished and somehow hurt at his lack of understanding. She didn’t raise her head, because she didn’t want him to see the tears in her eyes. She said in a low voice:

“But money doesn’t seem very important when you’ve just lost someone you love, does it?”

There was a slight pause.

“Doesn’t it? I don’t know. I’ve never loved any one,” he stated badly.

“You’ve never—loved—any one?” She looked at him then in spite of the tears, her blue eyes dark with a sort of horrified pity.

He didn’t say anything. He watched her as though something about her expression fascinated him. And, for some reason, as she looked back at him, that strange sense of pity deepened.

Involuntarily, she put out her hand and just touched his.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, with an odd little inflection of tenderness in her tone. “How awful for you.”

That seemed to recall him abruptly to himself. He drew his hand away sharply, giving it a startled glance, almost as though he might find a mark where she had touched him.

“Don’t be absurd,” he said roughly. “I don’t know what you mean.” And, turning away abruptly, he went over to the window, where he stood staring out into the lighted street, his big frame blocking out most of the glow of the London night sky.

There was silence for quite a while, and Leonora wondered why she
had
said anything so extraordinary.

Then slowly the full force of her position began to overwhelm her.

She was alone in the world.

Her father had gone. Aunt Sophie had gone. There was this strange talk about her having come into a fortune, but it didn’t really register in her tired mind.

The only thing which really mattered was that she had no one. No relations; no friends, except Martin, who was miles away; no—

Suddenly she stopped. She knew there had been one other tremendous fact besides her father’s death and this unimaginable fortune. It had stayed in the back of her mind until this moment, but it fell into place with an almost physical shock now, dwarfing even the other two incredibilities.

She might have no relations and no friends. But—unbelievably—she had a guardian. For the last misguided action of her poor trusting father had been to make her the ward of Bruce Mickleham.

Leonora was not without her share of courage, but just now she felt something near panic.

“Mr. Mickleham—”

He turned at once.

“Did you—did you mean quite literally that you had been made my guardian for the time?”

“Yes. I mean just that.”

“And that I have to do what
you
tell me?” The emphasis showed her distaste.

A very faint smile touched his grim mouth.

“That would be a very satisfactory interpretation of the case from my point of view. But in practice you may fall a little short of it.”

Leonora spoke quickly, her voice shaking slightly with the intensity of her feeling. “I may as well be quite frank. I hate the whole idea.”

“Yes, I know. You think you hate me too, don’t you?”

Just for a moment he smiled as he had when he had given her back her ticket at the station. And at that smile Leonora felt her heart turn over. It was so utterly compelling, yet it was gone so quickly that she felt she must call it back with a cry of protest.

Shaken at the effect it had on her, she got hastily to her feet

“I—I think I must go to bed now. I can’t talk any more. We must discuss the—future in the morning.”

He stood aside for her to pass at once, but when she had reached the door he said quietly: “Lora.”

She stiffened, and then spoke without turning round.

“That was my father’s name for me. I’m not sure that I want you to use it.”

“I know no other by which to call you. I have heard of you as Lora ever since I met your father.”

She didn’t answer that directly. She turned to face him.

“What is it you want?”

“About this hating business,” he said slowly. “Don’t decide upon it too quickly. It’s going to be so much easier for both of us if you—don’t hate me.” Very lightly he touched her cheek with his fingers. “And now good night.” And with that he took hold of her gently and put her outside the door.

It was perhaps the most astounding part of an astounding evening, Leonora thought as she went slowly along to her own room.

It was less than an hour since she had left this place—as she had supposed for ever. Now she was back once more, and although the room was unaltered in any respect, she, and her whole life, had undergone a profound change.