With tremendous audacity the fraud bowed as each place was mentioned. "I hope to receive you in them all, dear lady. Mr. Vance also, I trust, will honor me with his company."
"Oh, I'll come and see you with pleasure," said I grimly. Mr. Monk impressed me as a kind of Casanova, so matchless was his impertinence. I wondered how an honorable girl such as Gertrude undoubtedly was, came to have so scheming an adventurer as a father. I was also puzzled to think why Mr. Monk, whom I knew to be almost penniless, should wish to marry a pauper aristocrat like Lady Mabel Wotton. But as yet I was not in a position to fit the pieces of the puzzle together, and had to await enlightenment from the arch-rogue himself.
"I just looked in, my dear ladies," said Mr. Monk, accepting the title of millionaire quite complacently, "to invite you to a box at the Curtain theatre early next week--Tuesday is the day, to be quite precise. There is a new play, which I think you will enjoy, Lady Denham."
"Delighted," she yawned. "I like going to the theatre. One can sit still all the time and say nothing."
"The performers on the stage say all that is to be said," replied Mr. Monk, smiling suavely. "Lady Mabel, may I count on you?"
"Certainly," she answered swiftly, with a sly glance at the scowling Weston.
"Thanks, no, Mr. Marr, I have to go back to Murchester. Leave's up."
"If I am in town I shall be delighted," I answered mildly, and wondered more than ever at the audacity of the little man. He knew that I could expose him as a fraud, and must have been puzzled to know why I did not, yet he had the hardihood to drag me into his schemes of posing as a millionaire.
"Then that is all settled. And now," he added, making a comprehensive bow, "really and truly I must take my leave. Perhaps Mr. Vance, I can give you a lift in my motor?"
"You are really too good," I replied, accepting promptly, and with scarcely a repressed chuckle.
"But I say, Vance, I want you to go to dinner at the Savoy with me, and afterwards to the Empire," cried Cannington, catching my arm, while Mr. Monk was shaking hands and taking his leave.
"My dear boy, in any case I must go home and dress. Let us change the dinner into a supper at the Savoy, and I'll come here at nine o'clock to accompany you to the Empire."