The Man of Gold by Evelyn Hervey Read Free Book Online Page A

whichshe had gone over and over in her mind till she knew it as well as she knew the list of the names of the Kings and Queens of England, she was thinking.
    What had made him do it? How could he over years and years have stored away coin after coin in that way? How could he have deprived his two little grandchildren of all that they might have had, even down to their never having so much as visited a sweetshop? How could he have deprived his own son of even the trifling amount of a cab fare so that he had been overcome with embarrassment in front of a prospective governess? How could he have deprived himself of food, warmth, clothes?
    As she came towards the end of her recital she saw that into the old man’s eyes there was creeping again his look of habitual cunning. She welcomed it even. It was better far than the look of stony death that had greeted her first words.
    When at last she had come to a breathless end the miser spoke.
    It is all that I have,’ he said, glancing up at her with patent slyness. Those few sovereigns stored away there. All that I have. It is best to keep them there in that fashion, you know. Banks are never to be trusted. Servants peep and peer into anybody’s bank book.’
    Miss Unwin thought of the ‘servants’ in the house on the other side of the cobbled yard. Old Mrs Meggs, hardly able to read. Herself, perhaps. Though of course she was not a servant, the old man very likely considered her such. But she had been in the house only a few weeks, while that deep little pit of hidden sovereigns must have taken years to amass. Besides those in the other hiding-places elsewhere in the house which she was sure existed.
    The thought of them must have manifested itself somehow in her expression. And the consumedly avaricious man looking up at her had at once seen that she had penetrated his next secret.
    ‘You know where they are?’ he barked out. ‘You havepoked and pried till you have found the others?’
    ‘No, sir. No. I would scorn to do anything of the sort. I have told you by what accident I came upon that one hiding-place. I have done nothing to seek out any more.’
    Suddenly the little old man pushed himself to his feet, tumbling down from his high chair. His white skull of a face darkened to red anger such as Miss Unwin had not seen in all the time she had been in his house.
    ‘You lie!’ he screamed. ‘You lie. You lie.’
    Then, as if even through his wild swirl of rage some old remnant of the caution with which up till now he had kept his fearful secret had returned, he dropped his voice to a fierce hoarse whisper and thrust himself forward nearer to her.
    A wave of nauseating breath spumed out at her, and she saw, unpleasantly close, the line of yellowy irregular teeth, all loose in the oddly blue-looking gums.
    She stepped back a pace.
    ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘I do not lie.’
    She must have been able to convey in the words all the inner belief that they carried, because the old man slowly clambered back on to his chair.
    ‘There is very little there, there where you saw them,’ he said. ‘There is much less than it appears. The pit is shallow, very shallow. There cannot be more than fifty pounds there. Not even so much.’
    Miss Unwin thought of the neat piles of softly glowing coins she had seen. The recess beneath the flagstone might not be all that deep but she had no doubt that each pile of sovereigns in it must contain fifty coins itself. And there had been too many piles to count before she had ordered the twins to slide back the stone that covered them.
    But the old miser, she knew, needed to believe that his secret had not been wholly penetrated.
    ‘Yes, sir,’ she answered. ‘I am sure that the sum I believed I saw there may not be so very great. Butnevertheless I felt it my duty to tell you that the presence of even that much money in a place where it can be reached is known to your granddaughters. And to myself.’
    The old man pushed his big hairless head