CHAPTER I
BASIL THORNFORD sat in the New Oxford Street tea-shop which faces the slanting junction of Shaftesbury Avenue, and defied the world with a light heart.
He had quarrelled with his only living relative in London about half an hour ago, he had £43 6s. 7d. in his pocket (he had just counted that, with some satisfaction), and he was sitting with his back to the wall, at a table which was otherwise solitary - a position which gave him a pleasant imagination of security and isolation, as he looked at the assorted sprinkling of office denizens who were fortifying themselves with glasses of hot milk and cups of coffee around him.
He had come up to London three weeks ago, leaving a guardian who very surely did not desire to see him again, to join a brother fifteen years older than himself, who considered the relationship justified him in the imposition of longer hours and the disbursing of smaller remunerations than were endured or received by any other members of his crowded office. But Basil Thornford had differed.
Devereux was a good business man, and it had not been good business to drive his brother too hard. But he had been ignorant of one vital fact, which no one had been allowed to know. That was the £50 which Basil had won as a fifth share in a Cross-word prize in Tuckworth's Journal two months ago. No one had been allowed to know of that £50, except the Pickston grocer who had obliged him by cashing the cheque.
Having the amount in your pocket, is it likely that you would listen patiently to a brother who tells you that he will give you five shillings a week for the first year (besides buying your clothes), and after that - well, we will see how you go on?
Five shillings is a small sum. You can't save much out of that. And, if you were twenty-one last month, you will agree that a year is a long time.
Why, if he saved two-and-sixpence a week, he would scarcely replace the £6 13s. 5d. which he had already spent from his original capital! Not much Dick Whittington business about that.
Besides, there was the way Devereux laughed. Even the quarrel this morning had seemed like a joke to him. No doubt he thought he would find him at home when he got back this afternoon - in his car. And the programme had been that Basil should follow about two hours later - by bus.
"If you think you can get a better job, you'd better try." That had been what he had said, and Basil had replied, "That's the first thing we've agreed about since I came here." And then he had laid down the letter which he had been told to take to Furnival Street and wait for a reply, picked up his hat and walked out. And so here he was It would have happened a week ago, only that he had had an idea. Supposing he went on for six months, or even twelve, and studied the business intensely during that period? Might he not then open in opposition, and by superior foresight and organizing capacity so capture and control the trade, that in two or three years (if not less) he would be magnanimously taking over the Dickinson & Thornford firm? In imagination, he had written cheques for Devereux's creditors with a liberal hand. He had even given him a place in his own firm, not at five shillings a week, but at a figure sufficient (if he were careful) to keep on the comfortable villa where he now resided, and in which Basil had received the hospitality of an attic room. He wouldn't want Devereux to be turned out of that. Not Ethel, anyway. He rather liked his brother's wife. Which was natural enough, as she liked him. But, all the same, Devereux would have to be careful if he went on living there. He was rather fond of discoursing on the importance of being careful with money. So let him try it himself.
But he had rejected this project. He applied the appropriate lines of the Rev. F. H. C. Doyle's poem to the wisdom and moral courage which he had displayed in this decision.
He had considered the inadequacy of his available capital, even when augmented by such sums as could be saved out of five shillings a week. He had observed that the business of an East India merchant requires a more substantial capital, if it is to be conducted on liberal lines. The rejection of this alluring dream showed the clear-sighted judgment which made his ultimate success such an obvious thing.
And as he had drunk his coffee, and gazed reflectively upon the moving crowd, he had seen the adventure of life which was before him, in all its glory. He sat there solitary, unknown. So he would remain. Predatory, hawk-like, taking tribute from the wealth of the unsuspecting city. He knew that criminals usually work in gangs, and are betrayed by their associates. Besides, they are known to the police. They are so frequently men of low character, easy to separate from the more respectable fellows. Too often, they do sordid, despicable things, rather than those that are splendid and spectacular. They may be urged to such courses by actual want, whereas he was independent, through the capital he possessed. He could look round at a serene and isolated leisure, deciding where he should swoop. What, for instance, about robbing a bank? There could be no real harm in that. But there would be no hasty decisions with him. He must look round. And, first of all, he must remove his personal possessions from 46 Western Road before Devereux got back. There was no use in having another wrangle with him.
As he concluded these reflections, and prepared to leave, he observed that a young woman of some physical attractions had seated herself at his table. He picked up a check that was near his cup, and she interposed to say in a rather pleasant voice:
"I think that's mine, isn't it?"
So, on examination, it proved to be. His own had fallen on to the floor. He thanked her briefly for the correction, as he rose to go. But he was not going to be drawn into so dangerous a conversation. He knew better than that. What are the words of François Villon?
Good luck has he that deals with none!
You cannot be too careful to avoid female entanglements when you are about to adventure upon a life of crime.
CHAPTER II
BASIL walked to the end of Tottenham Court Road, looked round in what he felt to be a satisfactorily predatory manner, as an invader may gaze upon a captured city, which he will sack at his own convenience. Then he mounted the Richmond bus.
A life of crime cannot be commenced too soon. Well aware that the distance that hc proposed to travel required a ninepenny fare, he boldly purchased a sixpenny ticket. At Hammersmith, an inspector boarded the bus. Was his first experiment to end in failure? No, he remembered with satisfaction that his ticket was still in order for the distance covered. It was even returned to him politely, and when he left the bus, twenty minutes later, he was able to congratulate himself upon the result of his first adventure. He had successfully withheld threepence from the hands of the spoiler. He felt that a shilling honestly earned would have given him an inferior pleasure. It was worth even the somewhat uncomfortable feeling he had had during the last quarter of an hour of the journey, when the conductor had paraded between the seats calling out Fares please. Any more fares? in what had sounded to him a very suspectful voice. . . . Wouldn't it be a good plan to put the threepence aside? To begin to accumulate the results of successful criminalities, to see how much could be gathered before his present capital disappeared? Realizing the soundness of this plan, he transferred the amount to his hip-pocket.
These reflections occupied him during the short walk that took him to the door of his brother's house.
Here he must ring, for the fraternal tyranny had withheld the latch-key for which he had asked. He did hope Ethel wouldn't make any scene! Suppose she telephoned to Devereux, and they tried to stop him going away? Of course they could not do that. He was old enough to please himself. Yet he felt a natural relief when the maid said that Mrs. Thornford was out - and would he like any lunch?
He decided that he certainly would. He had a very healthy appetite. And, besides, was it not rather in the style of spoiling the Philistine and the Egyptian to lunch thus at his brother's table after he had repudiated him and his a couple of hours ago?
Well, perhaps hardly that, considering he had done more than two days' work for which he was unpaid. And now he would have to pay for the next meal. Thinking of this melancholy fact, he ate well.
It did not take him long to pack his clothes, and the few books that were his. They filled two rather large suitcases, and the books made them heavy. Still he could carry them a short way, if he must.
He got downstairs without bumping the suitcases very loudly, and Irene, who was washing up in the basement, continued to sing, It will be glory for me in undisturbed serenity. It was a song of which she was fond, and it could only be rendered with a full voice when her mistress had gone to town. Such opportunities should not be lost in listening, simply because Mr. Basil was moving about the house.
He went into the lounge to get the fountain-pen that he had left there rather carelessly the night before, and noticed a little pile of silver and copper on the mantelpiece. He realized that a criminal of the baser sort would have picked it up, but he would levy toll in lordlier ways than that. Not Ethel's housekeeping money, anyway. But he remembered the two days' salary (not counting the morning) which was due to himself. That would be one and eightpence - counting the same amount for Saturday as though it were a full day. He took this, leaving a little note under the pile:
DEAR ETHEL,
I've taken one and eightpence that Devereux owes me. I suppose he won't be mean enough not to give it you back.
Good-bye,
BASIL.
That would show them his magnanimity, alone with the whole sum in his power, and having scorned to take advantage of opportunity.
Ethel did not think of it in that way when she read the note, not being aware that he had embarked upon a life of crime. But she actually cried at the thought of him, penniless and alone in the London streets. How far would one and eightpence go? Such is the folly of women.
CHAPTER III
BASIL walked down the quiet suburban road, feeling the weight of his personal property to be somewhat excessive - even without the underclothing that had gone to the wash, which must be regarded as lost for ever. It was early summer, and quite warm in the afternoon; and the worst of having two suitcases of about equal weight is that you can't change hands. Not to do any good that is. And you don't want to lay them down in the road looking a fool, and not knowing whether Ethel's taxi may pass you at any moment, and she seeing you more likely than not. Ethel didn't miss much. No, it was better to hurry on to the end of the road, and get to where you might find a taxi yourself.
When he did succeed in hailing a vacant vehicle, he was somewhat hot and dishevelled and bad-tempered, but he had formed his plans with great subtlety while he had had lunch, and he now said, without hesitation, "Isleworth, please," and asked to be put down at the tea-shop just beyond the Rose and Crown. And so he sat there for the best part of an hour, getting up what appetite he could while his lunch slowly receded into the past, and considering what name he should take. He knew that it is a common error among money-lenders and other criminals to adopt names of an impressive unreality, such as Fortescue Plantagenet, or Percival Montmorency, but he knew better than that. John Williams would be a better choice. It would be easier to believe in a name like that. Not the kind that anyone would be likely to choose, unless it were closely related to him. John Williams it should be. . . .
The bus stopped almost opposite, on the other side of the road. He took a ticket to Gower Street without attempting an illicit deduction. He told himself that it would be too conspicuous to the conductor (he having two suitcases under his care) to make it worth trying. His forbearance showed the skill of the master-criminal.
At 5 p.m. John Williams had taken a bed-sitting-room (third-floor back) for a pound a week, and the landlady had so far failed to read his true character by his face, that she had actually refrained from asking for the deposit which she required from the more volatile of her ever-changing guests.
Reflecting on this omission, he realized with a natural satisfaction how well he had been equipped by nature for the profession in which he had resolved to qualify.
He did not go out again that evening, being fully occupied in unpacking and distributing his possessions, and in the further and somewhat difficult negotiations with the landlady which followed his belated recognition of the fact that he had made no bargain in respect of attendance, or the provision or cooking of meals. He found Mrs. Postler to be coy of figures under these headings. She professed lack of experience. She said that most of the guests "does for theirselves in their own rooms." But the passage of a ten-shilling note for the provision of bread and cheese and bacon and new-laid eggs assisted her imagination to the point of agreeing upon experimental terms for the first week, after which she said vaguely that they must see how they got on.
This payment reduced the capital of John Williams contra mundum to £42 12s. 4d., apart from the three pennies isolated in his hip-pocket. He considered the safeguarding of this capital with some anxiety. A bank would have been the obvious resort, but in what name should he approach such an institution? It might be awkward for John Williams to have to sign a cheque as Basil Thornford. As to John Williams - suppose he should deposit his money in that name, and find an unexpected difficulty in getting it back? Suppose he forgot just how he had signed, and the bank asked him to prove his identity? It would be extremely difficult to produce living or documentary witnesses who could establish him in that name. No; the identity of John Williams was of too tender an infancy to be subjected to such an experience. Give it time to grow.
Besides, was it not more consistent with the profession of banditry which he had adopted to guard that which was his with his own arm or his own wit rather than to rely upon the protection of those upon whom he was to wage a plundering war? Was there not even some lack of chivalry in accepting such assistance from them? No, he would be his own guardian, both of the fortune which was his already, and that which he was about to win.
But to carry it with him on all his enterprises was a risk which should be avoided, if possible. He looked round for a safe hiding-place. His reading told him that the floor ought to have a loose board. Perhaps it had, but as it was completely covered with a nailed-down carpet it was not easy to reach.
He might push a few one-pound notes under the carpet, but, in the highly unlikely event of Mrs. Postler having it up in his absence for cleaning purposes, there might be difficulty in convincing her that it was his property that had come into her possession. It might be even more hazardous to go out after informing her of where he had deposited them. Such are the worries that only the wealthy know.
Finding no other solution to the problem, he decided to carry his capital in his pocket until some change of circumstances should relieve his difficulties. If possible, he would exchange it into a less bulky form. In the end, he put twenty pounds into the wallet in his breast-pocket, and distributed the remainder into other pockets in a spirit of caution on which he had occasion to congratulate himself a few days later, and which confirmed the cool, impartial self-judgment which recognized, and had the honesty to admit, the Napoleonic qualities which fitted him for the enterprise he had undertaken.
Four days later, he was seated at breakfast, eating the stale egg which Mrs. Postler had provided, and occupied with reflections which had less than his usual mental resilience.
In the first place, his hip-pocket still contained no more than three pennies. He had resolved that thought should precede action, and there would have been no occasion for worrying over this short period, if it had not passed without supplying him with any satisfactory plan of campaign for the days to follow.
He had declared war upon the organized wealth and power of the unregarding community around him, which is a very exhilarating thing to do, but the concentrated thought of three days had suggested no more fruitful and profitable method of attack than the popular sport of shop-lifting, to which he felt an almost invincible disinclination. This was not, he assured himself, because of any fear of the risk to his own liberty which it implied, nor any doubt of his capacity to operate successfully, because, should he decide upon it, he would give it the Napoleonic consideration which it required. Neither was it because the profession of shop-lifting is almost a monopoly of the female half of the community. Why should he not demonstrate once again, as has been done in other feminine domains, such as cooking or dress-designing, the superiority of the male?
No. It was rather that it had an aspect of retail pettiness. It was almost - dishonest. He had no love of dishonesty. But to sack a city is not dishonest. Under suitable circumstances, it is as natural as to tax it. It is the question of broad vision. What had Lord Tennyson to say on the subject?
Without crediting Alfred Tennyson with sufficient enterprise to have faced the world as he was now doing, he realized the soundness of that assurance, and believed him without difficulty.
But when he looked to them for any concrete suggestions, the poets were less helpful. They might enunciate
(even Wordsworth, of all people!) with great cheerfulness; but when you looked to them for any concrete suggestions - well, they simply weren't there.
Yesterday his predatory wanderings had taken him round the Caledonian market.
He had seized no prey, but he had conducted a prosaic commercial transaction by which he had acquired a very antiquated copy of Every Man's Own Lawyer for fivepence.
He had considered reasonably that the age of the book would not substantially reduce its value to him. Its laws might be obsolescent, but its catalogue of crimes would remain as suggestive as on its day of publication.
It had proved a disappointing book. It was not only its exposure of the fact that most of the warfare which the individual makes on the community is of an utterly unprofitable kind, with no possible issue but his own undoing. Worse than that was the realization that there were so few crimes which it was in his power to commit.
How could he commit bigamy? How could he sell meat after hours? How could he fail to keep a poison register, or succeed in keeping a manservant without a licence? How could he purloin a locomotive, which is expressly forbidden by the by-laws of the Great Western Railway Co., with a penalty of £5 for the first offence, and much heavier liabilities for anyone who persists in collecting these curios?
It was theoretically possible for him to commit a criminal assault upon the somewhat austere female who occupied the room on the other side of the landing, but in practice (and particularly after the way in which she had snubbed him yesterday) he knew that it could not be. He would be far too shy.
What remained? Could he break a lease? Could he leave his children to the public charge? Could he move cattle without a licence into an infected area? Could he issue base coin, not knowing where they were to be obtained?
It remained that he could commit murder, or retail theft, or send explosives by post. A poor choice.
He learnt that there are penalties provided also for those who fail to commit suicide, but there was no consolation in that. He did not want to fail in anything that he undertook, even with the satisfaction of knowing that it was illegal to do so.
So he wandered out disconsolately, and in the window of a little shop in a back street in Clerkenwell he noticed a half-filled stamp-album, which he purchased for 5s., and took it to a dealer in the Strand, who gave him 32s. for it, after they had talked for an hour, and soaked off some of the stamps.
He sat in a tea-shop for some time after that, suffering from a natural depression. Was he being driven, by powers which he could not rule, back to all the monotonies of those who make their livings in conventional ways? It was a bitter thought, and yet, if in three days he had only made threepence by nefarious means, and £1 7s. by legitimate barter, what must the deduction be?
And yet, what is three days?
He wandered back into New Oxford Street, surveying the shop windows and the moving crowds with a pleasant sense of ownership, such as a young wolf may feel as he surveys the feeding flock from the wood's edge. He may never have caught one yet, but there is the pleasant consciousness that they are his destined prey. As he approached Charing Cross Road, he noticed a shop which had been temporarily occupied by one of those travelling auctioneers who present gold watches and rings to the public with a generosity which cannot be expected to continue long in one locality. Must not others benefit also?
The floor of the shop was a cleared space, with a rostrum at its further end. It was crowded with spectators, mostly of the idly curious kind, but doubtless containing also the necessary percentage of fools, by whom the entertainment would be financed. The experienced eye of the auctioneer searched the crowd unwinkingly for his appropriate prey, while his mouth continued to pour out the glib audacities by which he mesmerized them to the folly which would seem so inexplicable when they got outside, with ten shillings gone from their pockets and a sixpenny parcel of something they did not want under their arms.
John Williams was aware that the auctioneer was looking upon him in a respectful and admiring way. "Show it to that gentleman on the right," he shouted to the assistant who was carrying round a very gaudy clock (positively one of the very last three) which were to be given away practically for nothing as an incentive to a good Saturday afternoon's trade.
John Williams shook his head. He had no use for a clock. Faced by the noxious article, he reluctantly consented to handle it. He said, "Very nice, I'm sure," as he laid it back on the tray.
As he did so, he noticed a hostile glance which the attendant gave to a slim, sandy-haired youth with a rather furtive manner who was pressing against his side, perhaps even more closely than was necessitated by the crowd round them. He heard, "Here, clear out, we don't want your sort here," spoken in a low voice. Doubtless the auctioneer felt that he could abstract all the spare money from his audience that they could afford to lose without the competition of the cruder practitioner. The attendant seeing that he was not yet sufficiently mesmerized for a bid, passed on to the charming of riper prey.
It was a couple of minutes later that there was a sudden pressure around him. The crowd seemed to be bearing on him from two sides at once. Turning in his effort to free himself, he saw the sandy head of the youth whom he had heard the attendant warn, very close behind him. With an instinctive caution his hand went to his breast pocket, as it did a good many times during the day. But this time the result was less satisfactory than usual. The wallet was not their. Neither, when he looked again, was the sandy head. A dreadful fear was in the heart of John Williams, but the Napoleonic brain continued to function. He connected the two disappearances instantly, and in the same instant he was elbowing his way to the door. He reached it just in time to see the youth mixing with the pavement crowd, and pursued him at the quick walk which he had himself adopted. Complicating the angry determination to recover his property, he was already conscious of some doubt of how to proceed. His plans had been made entirely to suit his new profession. He was to be what a lawyer might describe as a crimor. He had not anticipated the less satisfactory position of the crime.
Suppose he were to seize the young man by the arm and demand his property. He supposed that a denial would naturally follow. What then? Should he give him in charge? And, if so, by what name? From what address? How should he prove that the money was his?
Anyway, he must have a try. He quickened his pace further, and was almost upon his prey when the sandy head turned. Their eyes met. The youth ran.
Naturally, Basil followed. He had the better legs of the two, and the chase would have been a short one on a clear course. But the thief dodged through the traffic, and slanted leftward up Hart Street. Basil, trying to follow a moment later, found the swift rush of vehicles had become too dense for immediate passage. When he got over, at some risk to himself, he was only able to follow in time to see the youth turn in at the side of St. George's Church. But he had put on such speed, with the thought of that £20, the theft of which had been practically admitted by the flight, that he caught sight of him again as he followed along the passage at the left hand of the Church.
Where the passage turns at the back of the church, there is a short flight of steps, and a gate, which is open in the day, as the youth doubtless knew, beyond which is a railed-in yard, and an exit to Little Russell Street. Just beyond the steps there is another short flight which descends to a detached Vestry Hall, and down these steps the youth threw something as he passed, which Basil, now close at his heels, supposed to be the wallet which had been taken from him.
The device, which is as old as Atalanta (and doubtless older), had its usual result. Basil ran down the half-dozen steps instead of continuing the pursuit to a certain capture. He picked up a heavy pocket-case larger and much better filled than his own.
Seeing that it was not his, he pushed it hastily into his pocket and resumed the chase. But the minute gained had been well used. The short length of Little Russell Street was bare between the crossings of the two side-streets that lead to the British Museum. He might have gone either way. Basil ran to the right, and a boy, kicking his heels against the wall, pointed him backward with a grin. He ran into Coptic Street, but he knew as he did it that the pursuit had failed.
His twenty pounds was gone, but what had he got in its place? He must find a quiet locality for its examination It did not require exceptional intelligence to divine that it had been stolen, like his own. To examine it in public might be a dangerous thing to do. If the owner should stroll along, or a suspicious constable ask him to explain his possession, it might not be easy.
Prudence counselled that he should defer examination till he should be in the solitude of his own room. Gower Street was close at hand. He restrained his curiosity while he walked there at a brisk pace.
CHAPTER IV
TWENTY minutes later, John Williams was packing his suitcase in frantic preparation for an instant flight. He had had one astonished glance at the contents of the pocket-case, one sudden memory of the misguided caution which had caused him to insert a card that morning into the stolen wallet - a card that had stated that it was the property of John Williams of 26B Gower Street, N.W.1 - and his resolution was taken.
As he entered, he had met Mrs. Postler going out with a string bag on her arm. Doubtless, she had the weekend shopping on her hands. She would be gone for an hour. Before then he would have fled from her roof for ever. It had become an unavoidable incident of the situation that he should leave without the formality of notice, or requesting her to present her bill. He might, after fuller consideration, have decided to leave some silver on the table as an approximately accurate offering, but he remembered the profession of criminality which he had undertaken. He had no time for the debating of moral problems. He hardened his heart with a recollection of the stale eggs which had been laid before him. He confirmed his judgment with the memory of how easily he had left his brother's house at about the same hour of the day. The essential thing was to be gone - to be gone somewhere beyond the possibility of pursuit. Somewhere where he could think in peace.
Ten minutes later, his two suitcases were deposited beside the conductor of a Hampstead bus.
Having recovered his breath from their rapid haulage clear of the dangerous vicinity of Gower Street, and having time for cooler reflection as the bus proceeded northward, he considered that it was improbable that he had anything to fear (at least immediately) from police pursuit. He decided that the thief must either have thrown the pocketbook away in mistake for his own or he must have abstracted it from its owner too recently to have had any opportunity of investigating its contents. But, even so, when he saw the reward which would be offered (surely that was a certainty!) would he not immediately get on the track of John Williams, to whom he had thrown it, whose address had been so obligingly supplied in his own wallet? Well, perhaps not. Looking at it coolly, even if he saw the offer of the reward, and should connect it with the pocketbook that he had thrown away, he might hesitate to venture on a call upon the man he had robbed, though he might arrange for others to do so. More probable, and more imminent, was the danger that he had been aware of the contents of that which he had thrown away in a panic error. Would he not risk everything for its recovery?
No, perhaps not even then. As he got cooler, he began to see that his first impulse might have exaggerated the importance of a speedy flight. And yet - no, the sooner the better. He could not have stayed there without continued fear. A reward might even be announced in the evening papers. What should prevent the thief going to the police, and saying, "I saw it stolen by a man named Williams. This is his address. Seize him quickly, and the reward will be mine!" Living under an assumed name, without honest occupation, found in possession of such a prize, what credible defence could he hope to make? No, he was best away.
He walked some distance from the bus, down a drab side-street where scores of small bow-windowed houses were repeated in two monotonous rows. Many of them displayed window-cards offering "apartments" to be let, and at one of these, which looked somewhat cleaner than its competitors, he stopped, and quickly acquired the first-floor front from a vacuous-faced woman for eighteen and six-pence a week, payable in advance in lieu of references, which she evidently considered a more than satisfactory alternative.
He gave the name of Percy Rogers, and said that he was a traveller in the motor trade, but had just been engaged by new employers who would not require him to take up his duties till the first of the coming month. That was a precaution, in case he should not want to be seen abroad during the next few days.
The woman inquired whether he would like a meal, and received an emphatic affirmative. Meals would be extra. Of course. He understood that? Yes, that was quite clear. With cheerful celerity she laid the table, and offered him the luxury of a stale egg.
CHAPTER V
WITH a self-control which he assured himself was more Napoleonic even than the high standard of his general conduct, he forbore a fuller examination of the pocketbook, of which he had as yet had no more than one bewildering glimpse, until he had eaten the meal, and it had been cleared away.
It was not only that he must lock the door. He wished to do it when he could be reasonably sure that he would be undisturbed. He might wish to keep it locked for some considerable time, and he did not wish to do anything which would draw the attention of Miss Sporethought (at least, that was w hat her name had sounded like to him: it was probably wrong) to any singularity in his conduct. Who knew what might be in the newspapers on Monday morning? Suppose she should knock at the door while he had the contents scattered on the table, and he must decline to open? She might look through the key-hole!
That, at least, he would prevent. What fortune that there was a key in the door! He would hang a handkerchief over it.
He went to the door with this satisfactory intention, and found a preliminary and unexpected difficult. The key would not turn. At least, it would not do so when the door was shut. A short consideration of this dilemma showed him that it was beyond remedy unless the door should be rehung, or the slot in the jamb be enlarged. The latter was the more promising method, but there was a metal plate to be removed, for which a screw-driver was a necessity
He considered that the most impecunious or innocent of lodgers may desire to sleep in a room which can be locked at night, or to leave his humble possessions secure from promiscuous intrusion when he goes out in the day. He summoned Miss Sporethought to his assistance, and laid the problem before her.
She responded to his diffident protest with an interest which was friendly but aloof. She assured him that she hadn't knowed it to be like that, and that Mr. Latkins had been accustomed to put a chair under the handle when he was dressing, which was a needless precaution, she being one as would always knock if it was a gentleman's room. As to a screwdriver, she didn't rightly know. . . . After which, she retired to the basement, and fetched a coal-hammer.
Percy Rogers said that it didn't matter at all.
The lady having withdrawn, Percy put the chair into the required position, draped his handkerchief over handle and key, satisfied himself that the window was sufficiently protected from the observation of anyone in the bedrooms on the opposite side of the road, and drew the pocketbook from his hip-pocket.
It was of such bulk that it came out with difficulty, bringing the lining with it. Being opened, it displayed two major pockets, both fully stuffed, the one with paper money, and the other with miscellaneous documents. It did not appear probable that, with such a mass of material, there would be any difficulty in identifying its owner, and Percy Rogers may have shown how rapidly he was graduating in criminality when he commenced his investigation by emptying the paper money upon the table rather than directing his attention to the other pockets. But even that had some unusual features, such as would have enabled the average detective of fiction to deduce the appearance and character, if not the absolute identity of its owner, in the minutest detail.
First, there were six banknotes, neatly and flatly folded together. Four of them were for £1,000 each, and the remaining two were of half that value.
Percy noticed that the four £1,000 notes were numbered consecutively, as were the two others. They were uncreased, except for their present folding. It was a simple deduction that they had come straight from a bank, and that they represented a single transaction.
Second, there were nine banknotes of various denominations, from five pounds to fifty, some clean, some soiled, and one of twenty pounds being very dirty and badly torn at one corner, amounting to a total of £270.
Third, there was a U.S.A. thousand-dollar bill, and another for twenty-five.
Fourth, there was a banknote for £100, with five £1 notes folded inside it. "C. V.'s com. 18th" was pencilled on the outside of the note.
Besides these evidently allocated notes, there were no pound or ten-shilling notes there. Evidently, the owner of the pocketbook kept his petty cash loose in his pocket.
Percy Rogers added this wealth, making a total of £5,375 in English money, and something over £200 in that of the United States of America.
It was a comfortingly substantial sum. Sufficient to enable him to endure the thought of the £20 he had lost without any very unpleasant sensations, but he was not ignorant of the fact that banknotes are easy to trace, and may be very difficult to negotiate. Banknotes of £1,000 might be almost impossible for a young man whose name was only acquired during the afternoon. He remembered reading something about a white elephant. To negotiate them so that he could obtain their value without his own detection might be an impossible thing to attempt. To put them aside perhaps for many years, until a propitious opportunity should occur, might be the only prudent course if he should decide to retain that which had, almost literally, been thrown into his lap.
But there was the prospect of a reward being offered. Indeed, was it not rather a certainty, with such a sum at stake? Might it not be a case in which honesty would be actually the most profitable policy to pursue? But if the identity of the owner should become evident from the contents of the second pocket, as he expected to find, would not he be criminally liable for its detention, if he waited for such a development. The thought naturally led him to resume his investigations.
CHAPTER VI
IT was late when Percy Rogers went to bed, and even then he found sleep to be an impossible thing. He was so far relieved in mind that he felt clear of any responsibility for failing to communicate with the owner of the property which had come so strangely into his possession.
He had examined the whole of the documents with care, and they showed neither the owner's name nor any address which could be connected with him. They gave clues in plenty, but they were such as would need time and trouble to investigate, such as he could not be expected to undertake on Saturday night, nor, for that matter, on Sunday, either. Percy Rogers might be a man of particularly strict principles on the subject of Sabbath observance. He was not clear as to the extent of the legal obligation (if any) of a citizen making such a find to communicate it to the police, and there were several reasons why he would be reluctant to do so. Apart from that, he must await the announcement of a reward, when he would consider his position anew. The pocketbook had evidently belonged to some one of wide and varied interests, which was not surprising in view of the amount of cash which he carried about, but those interests appeared to be of a somewhat mysterious, and even sinister description.
Twice, in the midnight hours, Percy Rogers got out of bed, switched on the single electric light, and referred again to the papers which were scattered upon the table. In doing this he found fresh stimulus for the imagination, but little of a clearly informative character.
There were several slips of paper, bearing memoranda or messages which appeared to relate mainly to appointments, either past or future, and which were in different handwritings. There was Ins. R. Corner H. St. Sth. 5.15 p.m. 17th. "Ins." might be an Inspector or an Institution. It might mean something quite different. It would require a dictionary to exhaust its possibilities. The names of many streets in London commence with H. And this one might be in Bristol or Manchester!
There was Belcher refuses unless double for Cox. There were many people in London bearing one or other of those respectable names. They were the kind of memoranda which might be conclusive in proving the identity of an owner already found, but less useful at an earlier stage of inquiry. This one was in another hand from the others, and had the aspect of an anonymous message which the owner of the pocketbook had received.
There was a clue of another kind in a cheque on the Farmers' First National Bank of Nashville, Tennessee, for three thousand dollars, drawn to self by Silas T. Winger, payment of which had been refused. This cheque was dated May 13th, 1930, and folded up with it was a cutting from the Tennessee Times dated July 2nd, 1930, relating how the body of Silas Winger had been found, freely perforated with bullets, in his own yard.
The juxtaposition of these two documents might have no sinister significance, but Percy Rogers felt an excusable measure of doubt on this point as he lay awake in the night. The cheque drawn to himself by the unfortunate Mr. Winger, which had passed into other hands, and then been stopped by him, had too much of the suggestion of an illicit or blackmailing payment made under threats, or in a moment of weakness of which he afterwards repented. The shot-riddled body, too, seemed likely to represent an act of vengeance for that dishonoured cheque.
There were other papers which, when this idea had once taken root in his mind, appeared to be of a vaguely menacing character. Lists of names, or initials, amounts, and dates, giving an impression of far-reaching power, which was yet of such a nature that its documentary records must be by implication rather than by clear statement, even when they were in the possession of him by whom that power was controlled.
Of one thing Percy felt sure. The owner of that pocketbook was not a man who would accept his loss in a meekly Christian spirit. If he should call for it, Percy felt that he should much prefer to be out at the time.
But he was not destitute of courage. Since Tuesday morning, he had endeavoured vainly to graduate in the school of crime. If he were being introduced to it by a path which he had not sought, could he reasonably complain? He resolved to face the event confidently and, with a pleasant sense of adventure before him, he went to sleep at last.
CHAPTER VII
THE next day, Percy Rogers remained indoors. He had no occupation except the furtive re-examination of the documentary contents of the stolen property which he had so innocently acquired, and the reading from his small-library of poetry, in which he was unable to discover any passage really appropriate to his present situation, which was an unusual experience.
He became increasingly dissatisfied with the name which he had too hastily adopted yesterday. He considered with some relief that he had not yet mentioned it to anyone except Miss Sporethought, and he felt confident that she was not a lady of a very accurate memory. Beside that, he had gained an impression that she was rather deaf. And he comforted himself with the thought that, though his own hearing was good, he wasn't very sure of her own name.
He resolved at last that there could be no harm in destroying a name so young, so weak, that it might even be questioned whether it had arrived at the point of parturition from his own mind. You might call it still-born.
At the same time, he did not wish to arouse any suspicion of the simple straightforwardness of his character. He had observed that Miss Sporethought had called him Mr. Rogers more than once already. He felt that, even if she were a little deaf, it would cause surprise if he were to say, "Pardon me, Miss Sporethought, I don't think you could have heard quite distinctly. My name isn't Rogers, it's Throckmorton" - or even Gillespie. No, it must really begin with R. How about Rodney? Not too startling. Not like Plantagenet. And yet manly. Quite a naval, adventurous sound. And he would return to the John of his first choice. Too many changes were confusing. You don't want to forget your own name. It isn't done.
John Rodney - of where? He felt the necessity for some background to the personality which he was about to create. Why not Plymouth? A naval town. He had visited it when he was six. Had actually stayed there for several months. It gave him a feeling of confidence, of familiarity, which he could not have felt in claiming the acquaintance of Middlesbrough or Barrow-in-Furness. And it had a Hoe. He could talk quite familiarly of the Hoe. The only trouble was that he had no idea what a Hoe is.
Perhaps Portsmouth would be better. "
All the way by Fratton tram, down to Portsmouth 'Ard."
That was a very apposite recollection. Who could doubt his acquaintance with Portsmouth when he talked familiarly of the Fratton tram?
At the laying of the evening meal he inquired timidly whether his landlady could oblige him with a sight of the newspaper which he had seen delivered with the morning milk. She met this request with so much cordiality that he was encouraged to announce the name which had been his since the previous midnight. She accepted the correction without displaying any unmannerly suspicion, and volunteered to lend him books, if he were short of reading, from her own resources, to which he replied with a suitable gratitude.
Miss Sporethought's library was inherited from very respectable Victorian ancestors. She examined it for such fare as she felt would be most suitable for a pleasant-mannered young gentleman whose name was Rogers one day and Rodney the next, but remained Thornford on his pyjamas, and produced Little Meg's Children and The Swiss Family Robinson. He had not read either of these books previously, and found the first to be of an absorbing interest, but the adventures in the tropic menagerie appeared to verge on the improbable in several places.
So the day passed, and the next morning came without any plan of action having been clearly determined.
Percy Rogers's inclination had been to remain in a safe seclusion while watching for the announcing of a reward of a sufficient magnitude. Perhaps a hundred pounds. Perhaps five. And the grateful owner could scarcely do less than recompense him for the twenty pounds which he had lost in so good a cause. It had been, as it were, the bait that had hooked the prey. Then there had been the equally necessary exhibition of John Williams's swift and fearless pursuit through the crowding perils of the New Oxford Street traffic. Yes, he could not hesitate over the twenty pounds. . . . So Percy Rogers had thought. He had remembered a good phrase to describe his strategy. "Masterly inactivity." He was not sure whether he had read it somewhere or it had originated in his own mind, but anyway it was a good phrase. Far better than "Wait and see."
But John Rodney waked in a different mood. He remembered that "the best defence is attack" which is also a good phrase, and much more congenial to one who has been confined for about forty hours in a bed-sitting room of a dull and ugly complexion. He was quick to observe the disadvantages of immobility for a leader whose Intelligence Department has not been organized.
How was he to learn of the offered reward unless he should examine the output of the daily press? Miss Sporethought might be unable to observe the difference between Rogers and Rodney, but she could scarcely fail to conclude that she had given shelter to a fugitive criminal, if she should be asked to bring him in about thirty newspapers daily, while he remained in the voluntary confinement of his own room. Most probably, she would search the papers herself, and identify him with some desperate thief or coiner, and inform the police. Suppose he should be unable to prove that he was not the man they sought? The idea of a long term of imprisonment for some one else's crime was peculiarly distasteful. He seemed, somehow, to be graduating backwards in his new profession. Instead of committing crimes such as would place him high in the romanceful records of those who give battle to the coercions of their fellow-men, he felt himself to be drawing nearer to the grotesque humiliations of those who are accused of evils for which they have no responsibility - grotesque, that is, in such a case as his. He had thought to commit picturesque crime with sufficient enterprise and originality to escape the prosaic penalty: he felt himself to be in danger of the penalty, without having committed any crime at all.
Or at least - he supposed there was a certain amount of illegality in his abrupt departure from his Gower Street lodging, without the usual detail of a receipted bill. But, guilty or innocent, it would be all the same if he were apprehended with that pocketbook in his possession. His changes of name, to neither of which could he demonstrate any well-rooted attachment, and his sudden flight from Gower Street - he felt that there would be no more to be said!
But that was not all. He was not sure that it was the worst. He had a vision of the owner of that pocketbook as a man of violence and blood, now pursuing a vengeful search for the thief who had abstracted it from its natural home. He felt instinctively that he was a criminal like himself. At least, not quite like himself. Not a brilliant amateur, but a professional of a particularly brutal, greedy and unscrupulous kind. One whose enemies lay shot-riddled in the back-yard. Being unfamiliar with the American language, he imagined the unfortunate Silas in a small brick-paved enclosure, lying beside the pump.
But John Rodney was undismayed. He felt some confidence that his retreat would not be discovered, some comfort in the size of London. He was of the temperament which is inspired by the call to action. He felt that it was indeed John Rodney contra mundum. The nautical associations of the name produced Dobell as the appropriate poet:
He hummed the defiant song to a tune of his own improvisation, while the fried haddock cooled on his plate. As he came to the last line, his plans were formed.
He would go straight to the Holborn Library, and make a thorough search of the daily papers for any record of the loss of the pocketbook in the news columns, or any offer of reward among the advertisements. After that - well, it must depend upon the result of that search. He did not omit to consider that he would be returning to the district in which he had met the thief, and where he might be likely to be encountered, if he were really seeking him. But he reflected also, with a soundness of judgment which gave some support to his own estimate of his Napoleonic potentialities, that he knew the way to the Holborn Library, and that he had no familiarity with any other public reading-room. It is those who look round, who loiter and hesitate, who are observed by others. Let him go straight to his purpose, and he would be secure from any probable observation among the crowds of the London streets.
But as he rose to go he became aware of another difficulty. Was he to carry about with him not only the residue of his own capital, but the large sum of which he had become the, say, custodian? Was he to leave it in the unlocked room?
Impatience for action led him to a quicker decision than he might otherwise have reached. He realized that banknotes for £500 and £1,000 are unlikely to attract the cupidity of the casual pilferer. They would be safer in the suitcase that had a lock of a sort - the other had none - than in his pocket, which had been picked once already. So - more doubtfully - might the American notes also. The smaller banknotes might be too tempting a lure for anyone who might explore his belongings while he was away. He distributed them among his numerous pockets, together with the money which was more legitimately his own. Even an expert pickpocket would have to work for a considerable time before he could completely rob him. Finally he endeavoured to insert the pocketbook in the hip-pocket in which he had carried it previously, and from which he had abstracted it with so much difficulty.
But the lining, which had been strained and torn on the last occasion, now refused to entertain such a proposition again, even though the contents had been somewhat diminished. The cracking sound which followed his impatient effort to force it down warned him that it could no longer be considered a safe, even if it were still a possible means of carrying it.
In fact, the pocketbook would have attempted the descent of his trouser-leg much more readily than it would consent to be withdrawn through the aperture of the damaged pocket, and it was while he was struggling to overcome this difficulty that Miss Sporethought gave a perfunctory knock at the door, and entered to clear the table.
Very fortunately, though he could not have foreseen this, she observed sufficient of his gymnastics to have it firmly fixed in her mind that he was starting out with a black pocketbook of somewhat unusual bulk. As a fact, he left it behind, for after that experience he waited till she was going down with the tray, and deposited it in the suitcase with the major banknotes. He thought again, as he did this, how formidable must be the man in whose ample pocket it had doubtless dropped to a safe and roomy depth.
CHAPTER VIII
JOHN RODNEY spent a long morning in the reading-room of the Holborn Library. He had to make a detailed examination of about twenty possible newspapers, and his labours were appreciably prolonged by the development of a chronic indisposition to allow any other seeker of news to brush against or behind him. Considering his recent experience and the fact that he had several hundred pounds of paper money distributed over his person, we cannot blame him for his timidity, though the resulting inconvenience to himself and others was sufficient to cause one of the library assistants to observe him with a fixed suspicion as the morning advanced. He did not, fortunately, regard him as shifting his position with any criminal purpose, or he would have summoned a constable - and what would have happened subsequently can be a matter of conjecture only - but he considered that he was probably suffering from some disease of irritability, which might be of a contagious character, such as an eczema of a particularly malignant kind, and he was only restrained by constitutional timidity from requesting him to withdraw.
The result of this sensitiveness in a rather crowded room, and the intervals of waiting for such papers as were in use - intervals which increased in length as the list of those which he had still to inspect diminished - was that it was some hours before he was able to feel complete assurance that the owner of the stolen property was accepting his loss without any public outcry. To consider his position in the light of this knowledge, and to remedy an internal void which was becoming clamorous, he decided to cross the road to the tea-shop in which he had made the momentous resolution from which these adventures sprang.
In this decision, he remembered his purpose not to hesitate or loiter in the streets, but to start out for a clear objective. We may observe an illustration of the sinister result of wealth, as it has been asserted by the philosophers. On Saturday morning he had walked the streets with a feeling of careless security, almost of possession; now he traversed the same pavements with anxiety and apprehension. . . . There was a similar thought in his own mind, but he put it differently. Before, he had wandered upon the streets as a hawk quarters the sky, lean and predatory and alert. Now he was like a prey-laden wolf, looking neither to right nor left, but seeking only the sheltered lair where he might batten at leisure on that which his teeth have seized. We may object that this metaphor is imperfect, as most metaphors are, but it gave John Rodney a very comfortable feeling as he crossed New Oxford Street, resolutely disregarding the unconscious constable who was directing the traffic at the point from which he had pursued the flying thief to St. George's Church, only forty-eight hours ago.
CHAPTER IX
JOHN RODNEY, seated with his back to the wall, at the same table which he had occupied five days earlier, considered his position again. Senses of affluence and hunger had united to urge the ordering of a good meal, and it was not till he had consumed a liberal plate of steak-and-kidney pie, and was progressing more sedately through a double portion of suet roll that he felt in the mood to survey the field of action, and decide upon the tactics which it required.
He admitted freely in his own mind that the guns of the Betsy Jane had not yet thundered round with any remarkable consequence. But that did not show that he had not handled the privateer with a captain's skill. The knowledge which the morning had brought might be of a negative character, but it was no less essential to have it. He had the wit to see that such sums as his pockets held are not stolen or dropped about in the London streets without some outcry from their owners - unless those owners are at war with their fellow-men too openly to claim their help, or allow their knowledge.
Had he, he wondered, actually become possessed of a fortune which would be left in his hands without protest? Could he even cash the larger banknotes without any difficulty being raised? Might he not be doing an actual service to humanity by withholding the money from the particularly hardened criminal who might use it for very sinister purposes - perhaps, even, to hire assassins who would leave other shot-riddled bodies beside American or English pumps. Was he not doing this potentially noble action at the greatest personal risk to himself, knowing how certainly his own body, if his action should be discovered, would be objectionably plugged with lead in a similar manner.
Warmed by the coffee with which his meal was concluded, he began to plan for the retention of the money, and its realization. Suppose he should go abroad? To America, for instance. He supposed that, having bought his passage by the use of the smaller notes, he would be able to negotiate the larger ones in greater safety in an alien land. He could represent them, one or more at a time, as a legacy being sent to him from England, or as presents from an indulgent parent, to assist in establishing him in a new land. And he could use that thousand-dollar bill without difficulty as soon as he had landed there.
It was an additional evidence of the Napoleonic mind that even such details as that were not over-looked.
He could see only one difficulty. He had no passport. He knew enough of the procedure to recognize that John Rodney might have to commit wholesale and very dangerous forgery to establish an identity more plausible than the simple truth that he had come into existence during the weekend.
Considering how probably this vexatious detail might obstruct his plans, he became conscious of the isolation from his fellows which he had so light-heartedly chosen, and a sense of loneliness, if not apprehension, such as he had not felt previously, invaded his mind. And it was while he was under the influence of this depressing emotion that a low and pleasant voice asked him if he would mind passing the salt.
He withdrew his eyes from the contemplation of the gangway of the liner, so difficult to ascend without the ticket-of-leave which modern governments issue when they transfer their citizens, as it were, from one jail to another, to observe the young lady whom he vaguely remembered as having shared the table with him six days ago. This was not one of the coincidences which are so frequent in the real drama of life, and so carefully eliminated from its fictitious presentations. It was a most natural thing. Those who sit at the same table in the same tea-shop at the same hour of the day will soon observe the presence of others who do the same.
Yet John Rodney felt a faint surprise, even a faint resentment, as he looked round for a salt-pourer which was not there. Even had it been so, the table was not large. She could surely have reached for it without opening conversation with a male stranger in that shameless manner. He was in doubt as to whether he should answer her at all, when he was disconcerted to observe the merriment in her eyes. Was it a joke, or some cryptic phrase, the meaning of which he was too innocent, or too ignorant, to comprehend? Then his glance followed hers, and he observed that the article she required was in his own hand. Not that he had been using it for his coffee, nor that he had required it for the suet-pudding which he had recently finished. He had been playing with it in idle fingers while his mind was on the undiscovered mines and unploughed prairies which he would locate or tame when he had overcome the difficulties of the intervening Atlantic.
"Oh," he said, "I'm sorry. . . . I wasn't noticing."
"Yes, I could see that. Thanks."
Having said that, she gave her attention to the egg-on-toast which was before her, leaving him with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction. Had she shown a disposition to continue the conversation, he would have withdrawn into a diffident silence. Had she shown any evidence of shyness or self-consciousness, it would have silenced him as effectually. But she did neither, going on with her own meal very composedly, and taking no further notice of him. He had an uneasy doubt that she might think him a fool. And the feeling of isolation, of which he had been conscious when he was so disconcertingly interrupted to pass the salt, resumed its ascendancy. He looked at that alluring, indifferent face without remembering the wisdom of Villon, or that poet's own warning that it was of no practical 'value. When the waitress deposited a cup of tea at the right elbow of the consumer of the egg-on-toast, he stretched out an instant hand to pass a basin of sugar which was already somewhat nearer to her than himself.
"Thanks. I don't take sugar."
He was sure now that he was an object of amusement only. He remembered last week's absurd incident of the wrong check. Yet he felt that the impression could be removed if he could establish a more intimate contact. The Rodney spirit stirred at the thought.
"Do you always come here about this time?" He heard the words as though they were spoken by another, and was conscious as he did so of the appalling nature of such a question when addressed to a young and attractive stranger.
Dark-browed eyes, of a blueness not previously experienced by a waiting world, were directed upon him in cool but not unfriendly scrutiny.
"No. Do you?"
A voice that was low and musical curtness of the seven-lettered reply. There was some encouragement also in its interrogative, which invited the conversation to continue. With an increase of masculine confidence, Rodney avoided a direct answer - what would be the use of committing himself to a daily visit till he knew more of her own movements? - "I thought I saw you here last week."
"It depends upon when I can get away from the office."
There was no question in that. She seemed to have forgotten his existence again. But she was not going yet. She was giving the waitress a further order. She appeared to have as good an appetite as himself. He had finished half an hour ago, but there is no law against occupying a chair after a meal is eaten. The conversation had to continue.
"I come in any time. I've got nothing particular to do just now."
Fleda Collingwood considered him with professional interest. This was another, there was no doubt of that. She knew the signs. Did he need crushing? Scarcely that. She did not think him to be of an aggressive kind. Rather, it was a case for investigation. Who knew but it might even be - - She did not recognize either his nautical or predacious characters. Her thought was that he might be rather a dear, but not fit to be out alone in a world where man-eaters abound. With feminine ease she took the opening that his answer gave.
"I suppose it isn't easy to get anything now while business is so bad, if you're once out. What's your line?"
It was a simple question, and one which he had himself invited when he opened such a conversation, but it was obviously disconcerting. He felt a disinclination to introduce himself as a master-criminal, which did not originate solely in the reticence of discretion. Besides, he had done little yet to justify such a boast. Were he to say, "I decided to be a criminal, but have had some difficulty in finding out how to begin," he had a well-grounded doubt as to the way in which the information would be received. Even in poetic metaphor, were he to say, "I am a lean hawk hovering over the London streets," or "I am a prey-laden wolf, creeping back to my secret lair," it might have no better result. She might laugh.
He reminded himself in vain that the greatest criminals of history have experienced the fidelity of admiring women. All the evidence of literature may be gathered to support that position. Sir Walter Scott came appositely to his mind:
Yet sung she, "Brignall Banks are fair,
And Greta's woods are green.
I'd rather rove with Edmund there
Than reign our English queen."
But perhaps if he had said that he was bent on living a nameless life, but wasn't sure how best to begin, the effect might have been different.
No, she might be repelled, or - very much worse - she might be amused. It was too great a risk.
She observed his confusion, and added:
"I'm sorry if I've asked anything I shouldn't. You needn't tell me if it's the Secret Service, or anything criminal.
She had no intention of making a good guess, nor suspicion that she might have done so. She expected that it was Art. She recalled the agonies which she had observed in a rather pimply young poet, when he had been struggling to tell her of the secret epic which had already developed to the extent of an unfinished prelude of seventy thousand lines. And he had written her six pages the next day, without a single allusion to her own eyes (which were really rather exceptional), all about how greatly he should value her opinion as to whether silver or argent might be the better adjective to describe the moon. To which she had replied on a post card "Don't lose any sleep over that. Call it a Dutch cheese." And that had been the end of him. Was she hooking another here? If so, he was not going to lay bare the secrets of his soul in a Lyons' tea-shop.
He was saying:
"I only came up to London about three weeks ago. I've been thinking of going abroad, but haven't settled anything yet. I don't suppose I shall." He had realized while he spoke that it hadn't been a good plan. A man shouldn't set off rashly like that. Anyway, he should marry first. Women are notoriously scarce in the new lands. "But this isn't a very good place to talk about things like that."
She looked at him with inscrutably friendly eyes, considering this remark in a doubtful mind. Was it a hint? If so, he was certainly coming on. She did not deny that he was a rather attractive boy. Was she going to fall in love with him in earnest? Not till she knew more, anyway. But she meant to find out. She was annoyed that her experienced heart was beating more quickly than usual, and she had a little difficulty with her breath (but nobody could have guessed that) as she said:
"Do you really mean you've got nothing to do?"
"No. I've done what I came out for today. . . . Would you - - "
He hesitated for a second how to put it, where he should ask her to go. Obviously not to the sharing of Miss Sporethought's hospitalities. But she closed the pause quickly:
"I've finished at the office today. I thought of going to Kew. You might come along, if you've got nothing better to do." She added, inconsequently, "There's not much fun going alone. I promised Johnny Williams he could come, but he's got measles."
John Rodney, amid the bewildering bliss of this unexpected development, felt a stir of jealous anger against the unknown Johnny. What right had he to a name which had been used by himself, if only for a few days? More important, what right could he ever have had to go to Kew in such company? But his jealousy declined as he considered the probable character of this absent rival. Had he continued the name, he felt sure that no one would have called him Johnny. Most certainly, he would not have developed measles at such a time. A futile, spineless man. How fortunate that he had not continued a name which would have been shared with such a character.
They rose together, and he stretched out a hand for her check in a movement which she frustrated easily.
"You tried that last week," she said, smiling. "But I'd rather pay my own debts."
They were both slightly intrigued as to what the other might think or mean concerning that remark, both knowing that she was deliberately misinterpreting the former incident, and they had an inarticulate feeling that they were getting on rather easily.
"It wouldn't have mattered. I've got lots," he said.
A remark which stirred a natural curiosity in its hearer. What was he really, and who? He was neatly but not affluently dressed. His tie hadn't cost more than three and sixpence, if that. Probably just careless about dress, as some boys are. Mary Daffern always said it was a good sign. Didn't think too much of themselves, and wouldn't want to spend it all on the wrong back.
"We'd better know who we are," she said. "My name's Fleda Collingwood."
"Mine's - John Rodney."
She noticed the instant's pause, and had a passing doubt. Was he reluctant that she should learn his name, or was it a lie? Was he the kind of cad who would not give his true name to a girl? Well, she would soon decide about that.
"It seems to be a case of Admirals All," she said lightly.
"Yes. Do you like Newbolt?"
"Yes. Of course. It's this way for the bus to Kew."
CHAPTER X
IT was after ten, and the summer dusk was falling, as John Rodney, after twice turning up the wrong road, and once passing the house, owing to the disordered state of his mental processes, rang the bell (for he had not been entrusted with a latch-key) at Miss Sporethought's door.
It is always pleasant to wander in Kew Gardens on a sunny afternoon, when the chestnuts are flowering. Fleda must have noticed their attractions of sight and scent, for she had mentioned them at least twice, but to John Rodney (if that were still his name, which is difficult to say, as he was undecided himself) for all he had noticed they might have been spruce-firs, or even asparagus.
At 3.30 he had learnt that Miss Collingwood was a rather important clerk in the legal offices of Bletchworth, Inkfield & Morrison. That she was an only child. That her mother was dead. That her father, she thought, was in Canada; but, wherever he was supposed to be, she always heard of him from somewhere else. That he sometimes sent her considerable sums of money when he was in funds, and cabled her to send as much as she could back when he wasn't. That he supposed her to be studying at the London University, but she had preferred to establish herself with a more regular and less flighty income than his remittances provided, generous though they often were. And that she shared a ground-floor flat, garden included, at 7 Hagen Road, Shepherd's Bush, with Mary Daffern, an arrangement of a nominally precarious duration because Mary was always engaged to be married to some one or other (usually other), but never did. Mary was an artist, employed by an eminent firm of antique dealers, and so skilled in her work that she had once been allowed to assist in the faking of an Old Master, which had actually deceived an expert at the National Gallery. Or, at least, she said so. Fleda said that you would like Mary, though (with an unusual lapse into Mary's own slang) she was rather a scream.
At four, he had returned these confidences with a very vague and mendacious account of the early life and experiences of John Rodney, the circumstances under which he had come to London, his financial resources and prospects, and the impulse which had Induced him to consider the advantages of a wandering life.
At 4.30, when they were having tea together in apparent amity, he had absent-mindedly pulled out a handkerchief in such a way as to scatter a quantity of banknotes to the winds of Kew.
As he had commenced chasing the notes, he had dropped the handkerchief, which Fleda had retrieved. She had appeared more interested than surprised when she had observed the initials which were marked upon it.
At five, she had been so kind to him with eyes and voice, and they had found so much on which they were in accord as they had talked of indifferent things, that he had been led to assume that they would meet again on a very early occasion.
At 5.5, she had let him know how much she enjoyed having an afternoon at Kew with some one who didn't give his own name. She enjoyed it once - but not more. At 5.30, by means of that definite hint, and without showing any eagerness for an amended narrative, she had Delilahed him into a somewhat expurgated but moderately veracious account of his thoughts and actions and experiences since he had arrived in London.
At six, she had led him to fill in the gaps and revise the inaccuracies of this imprudent confidence. And, after that, they had really talked.
Somewhat to his relief, and perhaps surprise also, she had not shown any visible emotion on learning that he stood, by his own choice, on the threshold of a career of crime. She had not appeared particularly impressed or even interested. With the practical sagacity of her sex, she had accepted the improbable truth as readily as she had rejected the more plausible imaginations which he had told her previously, and when she knew it she had held him down for two hours of talk, until they had parted at her own gate, to the single question, What was to be done with the money which had come into his possession?
If only Johnny Williams had not had the measles, he would have been the one to decide the problem. (Basil cursed the worm - under his breath, of course - what could you expect from a bally ass with a name like that?) He was sound in judgment, fertile in expedients, and with a knowledge of the branches of criminal law which the clients of Bletchworth, Inkfield & Morrison were specially addicted to violating, such as she did not profess to have.
But as the detention of the money being illegal in the absence of any means of identifying the owner - well, if she were Basil, she wouldn't be too sure about that. She knew the law to be a very intricate and dangerous thing, netting the feet of the unwary in sometimes unexpected ways. But it was also true that unsuspected rocks of refuge might be found by those with the skill to search, even amid the sea of penalties where the unguided guilty drown. There was no telling at all. But it was the sort of question on which Mr. Morrison's opinion would be particularly valuable.
The infatuated Basil had listened to the utterance of those alluring lips (they were really rather well modelled) with no disposition to dispute their counsel. It had been, indeed, a very great relief to find such a confidante, and to have his narrative received with such quick belief and in such a practical spirit. But was it the kind of tale to be lightly confided even to a firm for whom Miss Collingwood worked?
Yes. If Fleda were to be believed it very certainly was. It appeared that Mr. Morrison would be very little interested in the moral questions at issue. They might interest Fleda, but not him. And even she couldn't help seeing that if the previous (we can scarcely say the original) owner were a desperate criminal (as seemed very likely indeed), it might be almost a public duty to deprive him of the means of doing further evil. That is, of course, if it could be done without flagrant illegality, or too much personal danger. Yes. It was a case in which Mr. Morrison's advice would be of particular value.
So they had parted at last, with the understanding that he would call tomorrow morning and see Mr. Morrison (and of course Ethelfleda), and he had come away with a feeling of relief that he had confided his problem to so intelligent and sympathetic a hearer, and enabled by that relief to concentrate his thoughts upon the thousand-times more important memories of the parting kindness in Miss Collingwood's eyes, and of a wilful strand of dark brown hair, and the arm softness of a chance-touched arm, and the things she had said or implied about himself, and other equally momentous matters.
Being, as we may have observed, of a direct and impetuous character, looking rather at the desired goal than the intervening obstacles, he debated in a pleasurably excited mind how soon he might put forward a formal proposal of marriage (if a formal proposal should be required for so obvious and inevitable a culmination) and had regretfully resolved not to risk the possibility that she might discover a lack of respect for herself if he should be too hasty in the assumption of her consent. He was, he knew, deeply versed in the subtleties of the female heart, and he saw additional reason for caution when he considered the ease with which she had detected the mendacities of his earlier narrative, and the prompt decision with which she had declined to continue their acquaintance on that basis. No, he would spoil nothing by lack of patience or self-control. He would wait years, if need be, for the certainty of so great a stake. Or, say, till Saturday.
Filled with such thoughts, even the romantic dreams of a successful career as a master-criminal, which had occupied him for the past six days, grew dim in out-line and pale in colour. With the decision to place the problem of the finding of the pocketbook in the capable hands of Messrs. Bletchworth & Co., he felt subconsciously that he had rejoined his kind, and it was with a mind at peace with an ecstatic world that he rang Miss Sporethought's bell, and faced that lady in the narrow hall.
"Perhaps," she said, in a voice which she intended to be grim, but which might more accurately be described as agitated, "you'll tell me, Mr. Thornford what it all means."
Waked abruptly thus from his dreams, whether of a girl's hair or a life of crime, to the challenge of his discarded name and the evidence of an insurgent reality, Basil Thornford replied with a coolness and self-control which gave some ground for hoping that he might prove equal to a greater emergency.
"If you would be rather more explicit, Miss Sporethought," he suggested politely.
"Don't tell me!" the perturbed female responded, as he stood silent, repressing an inclination to reply that he had no wish to do so, with a sound instinct that such flippancy would be ill-received, she became more explicit in her own way.
"Don't tell me as you don't know. You comes here hiding in more names than you can't count, with the manners of a young gent as ever was, and you goes off for the day, and then there's them round the door as a decent woman doesn't want to know, and it's 'Does John Williams live here?' and 'Oh, it's Rodney now, is it?' and 'You stand aside, ma'am, we'll have a look for it in his room, if you please.' "
"You didn't let them go upstairs?"
"How could I have stopped them, being two of the biggest brutes that you'd ever see? They'd have gone up whether I'd liked or not if I hadn't said I'd seen you take it out when you went, and they wouldn't find it there if they searched till they were blue in the face, and it was that, or Constable West happening along the other side of the road, and I says 'out of my hall now, or I yells fit to wake the dead, and we'll see what the law says to them as gives a decent woman such a fright inside her own door,' so they says there's no harm to me either meant or done, and they backs out a bit, and I wasn't half long slamming the door, either. . . . And then, when I went out shopping, there was the two of them at the end of the road, and if one doesn't follow me into every shop where I goes, and then they join up again when I comes back, and there they are now for all I know, though I expect they've had a few words with you before now, if they are."
"Then don't you think it might be a good idea if we close the door?"
"I'm not that sure as I ought to let you come in
"Oh, yes, you are, Miss Sporethought. You see, you've done that already. There, that's better. Now suppose we go somewhere where we can talk it over more comfortably. I don't know whether they're still there or not, because I missed my way and went up the wrong road, and came down from the other end, by the canal. Of course they wouldn't expect anyone to come home by that way, but it seems to have been rather lucky for me. I rather think this is my lucky day. Now, Miss Sporethought, you've been a real sport keeping those men out as you did, and, if you'll come upstairs, I'll tell you what all the fuss is about, and tomorrow I'll have the best lawyers in London at work, and when they get on their tracks there'll be no more trouble for you."
CHAPTER XI
"I DON'T want nothing to do with the law," Miss Sporethought announced definitely, as soon as she was seated, rather statuesquely, upon a hard chair against the wall of the room which she had let to this pleasant-mannered young gentleman of the many names. She was a brave and soft-hearted woman, and she knew that she was going to be talked over whatever the evil deeds that could be laid at his door, or the troubles into which he had fallen. The excitements of the day had not dissuaded her from cooking him a very appetizing supper, which she had insisted upon carrying up before she would listen to the explanations which he was prepared to offer, and every woman who is rather proud of her own cooking will know how difficult it is to be as angry with a man as he most often deserves while he is eating, with an evident satisfaction, the meal which she has prepared.
The remark was therefore of the nature of an insurance against the consequences of an impending fall. When the time for her surrender came she wanted one thing to be clear in advance. She didn't want anything to do with the law.
She was, in fact, a blameless woman with a dark past. For five more or less happy months, twelve years ago, she had reasonably supposed herself to be legally married to a commercial traveller, who had undertaken the investment of her modest fortune; and she had then opened the door to a. detective officer who had broken the news that she was last on the list of four matrimonial consorts scattered over the southern counties of England, without counting the one whose bones had just been dug up from a cabbage-patch in a Biddlescombe garden. With a pathetic fidelity, she had stood by the wretched man on his short and certain way to the gallows, and had assigned whatever could be recovered of her own money to the legal gentleman who had undertaken the profitable futility of his defence. After that, she had changed her name to as nearly as she could recollect that of the maiden days of her maternal grandmother, and moved from Balham to her present residence, with an excusable desire to avoid spending the remainder of her life in narrating her experiences to insatiable neighbours, and their unnumbered friends. To have to give her real name in a public court. . . . No, that must be understood in advance.
Tactfully avoiding allusion to the meaning of the double negative, Basil assured her that there would be no occasion for her to do so. He had used the short interval while she was bringing up the tray to decide how much of the truth it would be wise to tell, and to contrive the decent draping of that which he felt need not be exposed too nakedly. He concentrated therefore upon the episode of the pocketbook, and emphasized the facts that his own money had been stolen, and that he was seeking legal advice regarding that which had been thrust upon him. He then completed his confidence by unlocking the suitcase and showing the pocketbook, and the banknotes for £5,000, to his astonished landlady.
"I don t know as I'd 'a' had the nerve if I'd 'a' knowed that," she admitted with a frightened frankness. "I hope as you won't go out again, Mr. Thornford, and leave them be'ind here."
"I'll promise not to, if you'll tell me how you got on to that name."
"Seeing as it's on all your clo's - -
"Oh, yes, of course. Doesn't that show that I didn't really mind whether you knew or not?"
"I wouldn't say but it does," she admitted doubtfully. Basil's readiness in retort did not prevent a rather dismal inward realization of his deficiencies in the arts of the expert criminal, and it had been rather for his own justification than her deception that he had advanced this argument. After all, it had all been more or less of a game. He hadn't really cared.
He got rid of the agitated lady with the completion of his meal and the necessity for removing the well-cleared plates. She went down with the comforting assurances that sausages-and-mash had always been his favourite dish, and that Bletchworth & Co. would know how to deal with her unsavoury callers without any necessity for her to establish contact with the machinery, of the law.
But, being left alone, Basil lost something of the easy confidence that had been assumed for the pacification of Miss Sporethought rather than as an expression of his own feeling. It was no welcome knowledge that he had been traced to his new lodging, nor that he was being so diligently sought by men of the character which her narrative indicated. It confirmed his suspicion of the lawless nature of the man from whom the money had been taken, and it showed that he was not of a disposition to endure the loss. If he could not appeal to the law, it followed that Basil had nothing to fear from that direction. His peril was that his opponent was not likely to be deterred by any legal scruples, nor to shrink from any personal violence which would recover his property. There was, of course, the simple expedient of handing it over, but it was not one which Basil felt it at all palatable to entertain. He had lost £20 of his own money and, if he were right as to the characters of those with whom he was dealing, he had no assurance that they would reward an honest return, even to that amount, nor had he any proof that they had any better title to it than his own. There was in him also a fighting spirit which resented the method of the approach which would have invaded his room in his absence, and as he considered the matter he resolved to resist or outwit them, at any rate till he had heard what Messrs. Bletchworth & Co. would advise. Perhaps the feeling that it would be a rather ignominous anti-climax to the evening's narrative, if he should have to call there in the morning with the news that the money was no longer in his possession, was not the lightest weight in the scale of decision. He remembered also that a continuing reason for calling at those legal offices might be of the first importance in the pursuit on which he had resolved - might be even a vital necessity if it were to result in a capture by Saturday! - and the money assumed a greater value as he pursued that thought to its logical and delightful end. When you meet a girl of such exceptional quality he saw clearly that the right thing to do is to marry her as quickly as possible. Why lose time? You might die. Think of that. And the marrying of girls is an operation which money assists. It may not be a vital necessity. It wouldn't be, if you hadn't got any. But if you have - yes, it assists.
He saw that there is much to be said for the creed of Rob Roy, as set out by the exemplary Wordsworth. "The simple plan" was particularly applicable to the present circumstances. Let it be open war.
And foul fall he that blenches first.
That was the spirit in which to operate. And what, in the name of the safety of five thousand pounds, was the operation to be?
He saw the probability that if he should go to bed, and get up in the morning in the usual way, it would be to learn that callers were at the door, and he had sufficient imagination to anticipate a very difficult interview. Or they might meet him outside. He wasn't sure that he would like that, either.
There was a third possibility, of an equally cheerless kind. They might come in during the night. The thought led him to switch off the light, draw back a curtain, and push himself between blind and window, to examine the state of his defences. The window frame was old and rotten, and fitted badly. A knife thrust up from outside would easily push back the bolt. There was a lamp almost opposite on the further side of the road, and by its light he surveyed a bare and silent road. The short summer night was not really dark. There was no sign of gathering foes. No ladder against the sill.
But he felt that he could not sleep without some better assurance that he would not wake with a pistol against his head. There was a heavy china ornament on the mantelpiece. With the aid of a spare bootlace, he suspended it from the window-bolt, so that if the bolt were disturbed it would bang against the glass, or, if it were cut, it would fall. There would be noise enough then.
But suppose they were to invade the house from the back - which would be a quieter and more probable way? There was no lock to his door. There could be no better defence there than the chair-back under the knob. He looked round for weapons. He was extraordinarily ill-equipped in that way, whether for a battle with desperate criminals, or a career of personal crime. His eyes rested upon the water-jug of his rather primitively furnished room. Flung with precision at a head intruding either by door or window, it might have a very quieting effect. He put it beside the bed.
Feeling that he had completed his dispositions for immediate battle, his mind reverted to the morning difficulty. Reviewing the probable course of events, he had a new fear. He saw that he must have been traced to his first lodging by the address in his wallet. From there he supposed that the two suitcases must have made him sufficiently conspicuous to enable diligent inquiries, assisted by the stimulating influence of a liberal expenditure, to locate him here. But he felt sure that Mrs. Postler would not have been dumb respecting her unpaid bill. Suppose that the police were already upon his track? Suppose he were arrested now, with this money in his possession, he would be in a very awkward hole. The most sanguine imagination could hardly see him emerge triumphantly acquitted, and with the money still in his possession. No, he had better leave during the night. He must hide or wander till he could call at the offices of Bletchworth & Co., and take counsel with those experienced lawyers as to his future plans.
But even this resolution was not easily taken. If his enemies lurked without, would he not be walking into their hands? Would he not be at their mercy in the deserted streets? Absurdly burdened with his two suitcases, would he not be equally incapable of defence or flight?
There was another risk. Men who walk burdened in the midnight hours may be questioned by the police. Probably are. What plausible explanation could he give?
But all these dangers did not alter the fact that if the two visitors of yesterday were waiting on the doorstep tomorrow morning, he would be faced by a very difficult interview.
It was a full hour after midnight when his final decision was taken, and then he did not venture to go to bed lest he might oversleep. He dozed in the fireside chair, with the jug beside him.
At about four o'clock, he roused himself, and packed his suitcases. He laid thirty shillings on the table with a note beside them "I think I'd better go early, but I hope this is enough." Then he went down the creaking stairs with his boots in his hand. He only ventured to bring one suitcase at a time, feeling that it would be the quieter way. It would be so easy to make resounding bumps on those narrow stairs, but when he learnt how much noise even one of them could make in the night, he regretted that he had not descended with a single rush, leaving his awakened landlady to call after him if she would.
But it was done at last, and he had put on his boots, and loosed the chain, and shot back the two bolts, and turned the squeaking lock, and there had been no sign of life either from Miss Sporethought or the lady-lodger whom he had not seen, but of whom he was vaguely aware as occupying the second floor, and he was walking a very silent, echoing pavement in the pleasant coolness of the summer dawn.
There was no sign of his foes. Should he meet a policeman, he had resolved that he would be the first to speak. There had been an old time-table in his room from which he had looked up the time of an early morning train that left Euston for the North. That was what he was going to catch. Could the constable tell him where he could get a taxi at this early hour? Boldness would be the best way. Do we not know that.
Of course, if he should regard him as a probable burglar, or recognize him as the young man with the two suitcases who left his lodging-bill unpaid - - But to anticipate trouble is a very foolish thing.
The policeman was advancing from the further end of the empty street. Should he ask him about the taxi? He was less sure than he had been when he first thought of the plan. He was coming up the other side of the street. There was no need to cross over. He would just walk on in an assured way. But the policeman was crossing the street at a slant which was obviously intended to intercept him. A rather tall man, with long legs. It would be no use to run, even if he dropped his burdens. What a fool he had been to bring the two! Even if he'd known t hat half his belongings would be lost for ever, to leave them would have been the better way. Heaven only knew what he was in for now. He wouldn't ask about the taxi. Not to begin. Let the constable speak first. Perhaps nothing would happen if he just walked by with a confident air.
The experienced eye of the constable was upon him. He observed a young man who was obviously leaving for his summer holidays. One of those early morning trips. Perhaps ten days at Margate. The suitcases looked rather heavy. Probably some of Mother's home-made jam.
"Good morning, sir," he said, in his most affable tone.
"Good morning, constable.
It showed what could be done by a good nerve - and, of course, the Napoleonic mind.
CHAPTER XII
AT 9.57 a.m. Basil walked into the offices of Bletchworth & Co., and requested an interview with Mr. Morrison. After his nerve-shattering encounter with the lengthy constable, he had found himself entering upon a broader road, and observed a sign-board bearing the engaging legend "All buses stop here." He had not expected that any buses would appear at that hour, but he had an inspiration that he would have a more innocent appearance if he were standing waiting beside his luggage under the sign and his wearied muscles offered a supporting argument. He had not been there many minutes before he was fortunate in the approach of an empty taxi, returning to London from some distant hiring. He had driven to Euston, deposited his suitcases in the cloakroom there, washed, fed, and perhaps slept a little, and reached his destination with a sense of having defeated an army of lurking foes.
The outer office of Bletchworth & Co. was evidently intended for use rather than ornament. Its dingy linoleum floor-covering was worn into holes. Its counter and desks were grimy. The centre of one of its cane-seated chairs was a tangled hollow. Even on this pleasant midsummer morning, it had an air of depression which was unrelieved by a patch of sunlight on one of its dirty plastered walls. It seemed to share the despondencies of the constant stream of criminals who, with a retinue of their friends and alibis, occupied the four chairs and the painted bench provided for the use of clients while waiting an opportunity to narrate their woes. But there was no lack of cheerfulness in the brisk demeanour of the five junior clerks who shared the desks on the further side of the counter, and carried on their multitudinous duties in the intervals of answering callers, principals and telephones, being despatched on sudden errands, and keeping up an almost ceaseless undertone of chatter among themselves. To them, it was a lively, happy and exciting world.
From one of these young men, Basil now received a prompt if somewhat off-hand reception.
"Mr. Morrison? Well, you'd better sit down. He's engaged now. Not the Chislehurst case, I suppose?"
Basil denied the ambiguous distinction of being concerned in the Chislehurst case, of which he remembered vaguely having read something in the last week's news - a little matter of the abduction of a young girl under rather shocking circumstance for which one man was under remand (bail refused) and a warrant was out for another. He took the only vacant space, at the end of the wooden bench, beside an ill-shaven individual who sat oblivious of his surroundings, going over in his mind for the fiftieth time the romance which it had taken three days to construct. At any moment he might be told that Mr. Ducklin would see him, and if he could make Mr. Ducklin believe it - well, he wouldn't feel quite so much afraid of the witness-box as he did now. For Mr. Ducklin was not an easy man to deceive.
Basil sat quietly for a few moments, vaguely conscious of the atmosphere around him, of the black stubble on his companion's face, and of the two apprehensive bookmakers beyond him who were discussing the dismal prospect that it might mean a hundred quid to walk out of the magistrates' court that morning. Vaguely he was aware of a couple on the further side of the room who were discussing, almost to the point of a low-voiced quarrel, something to which the woman was urging, as it seemed, the reluctance of the man beside her. "You'd find," his voice rose for a moment, "if we had the sense to stand out - - " They didn't look to be of any criminal sort. Normally, timidly respectable people. What evil had brought them here?
He might have been more acutely conscious of these surroundings, perhaps even more critical of the near aspect of these and other examples, nondescript and unsavoury, of the class among whom he had aspired to graduate, but that every sense was alert for sign of the presence of the one whom he had really come to see. Was it likely that she would be in a part of the offices to which he would not penetrate? Would he be shown into Mr. Morrison's room, and expected to leave after the interview, without seeing her at all? Surely, as she had known that he would be calling at this time, she might have contrived to have come out to speak to him? Had she not promised that she would introduce his troubles to her principal's notice? And now Mr. Morrison was "engaged," and he was not of sufficient importance even to have his name sent in, and of Fleda there was no sign. And it was ten minutes past ten now, by the loud-ticking varnished clock that hung high on the opposite wall.
Well, he would see this Mr. Morrison, though how much he should say was an uncertain thing, and then he would wait till she came out at lunch. It was a proof of the measure of his infatuation, which, had she known it, should have been for Miss Collingwood a very pleasant subject of contemplation, that she could so occupy his thoughts even to the exclusion of those who were on his track, and from whom he had fled through the night.
A clerk came in from the corridor. "Where's Miss Collingwood?" he asked hurriedly. "Mr. Ducklin wants her to take down."
"She's in with Mr. Morrison about something. You'd better tell Miss Tonks."
"He won't say thank you for that." The two youths grinned at each other.
Basil was inspired to action. He advanced to the counter. "I think Mr. Morrison might like to know that I'm here - while Miss Collingwood's with him."
The clerk to whom he spoke looked a moment's surprise, and a moment's doubt, and then gave a careless "Righto!" and crossed over to the telephone. "Gentleman here, sir, says you want to see him while Miss Collingwood's with you. Yes, sir, that's the name." He turned to Basil. "You can go in. Second along the passage on the left. You'll see the name on the door."
Feeling like one who, after an unpleasant interview with the Recording Angel, is given sudden unexpected access to Heaven, Basil crossed the corridor, and entered Mr. Morrison's room.
CHAPTER XIII
MISS COLLINGWOOD, sitting at the further side of Mr. Morrison's desk, with a pencil in one hand and a note-book in the other, gave no sign of recognition beyond a quick lift of the eyes and the mere hint of a smile, but their effect was to draw Basil's attention so completely that his first attempt to establish contact with Mr. Morrison's hand went wrong by about two feet.
"I beg your pardon," he said, with nervous politeness. "I couldn't see very well at first. It was coming in from the light outside."
Mr. Morrison looked at him in his usual contemplative manner. Was he a fool? Was it nerves? Was he one of those partially blind people who aim to conceal their infirmity? He reserved judgment in a singularly acute and impartial mind.
"Miss Collingwood's been telling me of your adventure, Mr. Thornford. We needn't go over it all again, but there are a few points I want to clear up, and then we'll decide what's to be done. First, you'd better give me the Gower Street address - write it on this."
He pushed a memorandum-pad across the table and picked up his telephone. "Send Wilkes in. . . . Well, then, get him."
They sat silent for the next two minutes till Wilkes appeared. Mr. Morrison sat looking at nothing, as though half-asleep. He was a man of rather gross and shapeless form, with a large, bald head, faintly fringed with light-yellow hair. His face was fleshy. His eyes small and pale. His hands were fat, and the thick fingers showed nails which had been cut or bitten back till the flesh bulged over them.
He never went into court, having no gift of eloquence, or such graces as are supposed to influence the verdicts of juries. His power was exercised in that room, which he never left during business hours, and such hours were long in those offices. He gave his opinions definitely, his decisions without hesitation. He was never hurried. And he was seldom wrong.
In defence of the criminal population to which the majority of Bletchworth & Co.'s clients belonged, he had a singularly unprejudiced - his enemies would have said unscrupulous - mind. But he had his own code. There were things which he would not do, nor permit. And he would have absolute obedience. If a client questioned his methods or declined his advice, there would be no resulting argument. He would be politely but instantly told that it would be better for him to go elsewhere.
"Wilkes," he said, as that alert youth entered the room, "take a taxi at once to this address. Tell the lady that you've come from Mr. John Williams to pay his bill, which he was unable to do when he left last week, as she was out at the time. Tell her that he would have sent before, but he's" - he paused a moment, and then added deliberately, "had the measles."
There was a look of excusably puzzled surprise on the clerk's face, for he had a colleague of this not uncommon name who was away from the office with that malady, and he knew that it could not possibly have been he who had been staying at Gower Street, but he had learnt to do what he was told without needless questioning. He only said:
"How much ought it to be, sir?"
"You won't question that. She won't know that you don't know. You'll pay what she asks."
"We can't have any fuss about that," he explained, turning back to Basil as the clerk left the room. "When that's done, you'll be clear of the law, unless she's got a warrant out before now, and we'll know that in an hour's time. Can you describe the man who took your wallet?"
Basil did his best. "Not very clear. Had he a little scar over his left eye?"
Basil could not say.
"I understood you saw his face before he picked our pocket. Red tie?"
Yes, Basil remembered that, though he wouldn't have recalled it without the suggestion. He had seen it distinctly.
"So I supposed." He turned to Miss Collingwood. "Tell Peters to let Rafferty's gang know that I want Bolshie Joe here at five tonight. Tell them it's important - for him." He addressed Basil again. "None of the money gone?"
"No. I've got it just as it was. I've been spending from what's left of my own."
"Good. I'd better look at it."
Basil brought out the notes, and passed them over. Mr. Morrison looked at the neat little packet of £5,000, and tossed it, with scarcely a glance, into an empty wicker letter-basket which lay on the desk beside him. He examined the smaller notes with greater care, giving a close scrutiny to such marks or writing as appeared upon them, but he made no remark, tossing them one by one into the basket. When he came to the £100 note with the five £1 notes, and the attached memorandum, he gave them a thoughtful pause of consideration, and spoke for the first time:
"I'm afraid you're up against something here. Same pound-notes, I suppose?"
"Yes."
Mr. Morrison touched a bcll on his desk He passed the basket of notes to the clerk who entered "Have these listed fully. Numbers, marks, dates, everything. Keep them together as they are. Have it done at once, and bring them back."
Basil watched the departure of the wealth which was not exactly his, with an anxiety which was only partly allayed by the last three words. But for his confidence in Miss Collingwood, itself lacking in well-seasoned foundations, he might have made some audible protest against the way in which the money had appeared to be passing from his physical possession. As it was, he tried not to be anxious. But Mr. Morrison's next words gave him something else of which to think.
"I can't tell you yet whose money you've picked up, though I've made a rather likely guess. We'll go over the other papers you've got, and when we've done that I hope I shall be able to tell you more than I can now, though Miss Collingwood tells me they haven't meant much to you. But, if I'm right, there's only one of two things to be done with that money, and one's to hand it back to the man it came from just as quick as you can, and make your mind up that your own's gone, and the other is to put it in the strongest safe you can find, and lie low while we argue it out. And before I can tell you which I advise, I want to be a good deal surer than I am now whether he's on your track already, or whether you really gave them all the slip when you bolted from Gower Street. If you'll tell me just - - "
"There's no use going over that. I didn't give them the slip." Basil proceeded to relate the reception which had met him on his return, and his flight during the early morning hours.
Mr. Morrison looked almost disturbed. "You should have told me this as soon as you came in. Did you mention our name to the woman last night?"
"Yes. I think I did. I wanted to reassure her." Mr. Morrison's hand went to the telephone. "That you, Peters? Get through to Prothero's Hampstead office at once. Tell them that there have been two men hanging round the end of Rushton Road, watching a house there, Number - what is it? - Number 74. I want to know by phone whether they're still there, and, if so, who they're from. Tell him to ring me up from the nearest call-office. I'm waiting to know. And now, Mr. Thornford, let's see the pocketbook, and the rest of the papers."
There was silence during the next few minutes, as the lawyer examined the documents, one by one, without comment, punctuated only by the return of the basket of money which had been so carelessly handed over to the outer clerks.
As the silent moments passed, Basil forgot the ostensible object of his visit in contemplation of eyes which declined to meet his own, for Ethelfleda Collingwood was quite clear on one point. She was not going to flirt - even if she had felt in the mood, which she was not quite sure that she did - before the eyes of Mr. Morrison, who saw everything, even when he didn't look.
Mr. Thornford was a client whom she had introduced. That was doubtless why she had not been dismissed when he entered the room. If the time should come when the firm would have completed his business in such a way that it would be receipting a substantial bill, there would be a five-pound note for her, or it might even be ten. That was the way of the firm. But she was not going to represent the young man in any other capacity, after telling Mr. Morrison that she had never set eyes on him till yesterday. She kept her pencil ready, and her eyes on her idle note-book.
Mr. Morrison spoke at last, in his slow, deliberate way:
"If I am right, from these indications, of which I have little doubt, as to the ownership of this pocketbook, I must advise you, Mr. Thornford, for your own safety and peace of mind, to give us instructions to return it with its contents on such terms as we can arrange, whether bad or good. You would, I am bound to advise you, be in grave personal danger if you should delay to do so."
"Do you mean legal danger?"
"No; I don't think you need fear that at all."
"Do you mind saying whose you suppose it to be?"
"Not when I am sure. That is a point which I expect to clear up during the day. I cannot mention names till I know."
"May I ask if you think it belongs to any client of yours?"
"No. If I am right, he is not a man for whom we should act under any circumstances."
"What sort of man is he?"
"He is a blackmailer of international notoriety. Our general view is that all men are entitled to such defence or protection as the law provides, even for those who would have been outlawed, and so placed beyond its pale, by an earlier code. But we have always drawn the line at the defence of blackmail."
Mr. Morrison looked at his watch, as one who calculated, then he went on talking, as though it were his object to pass the time.
"There are two people calling here this morning who will have a very pleasant and unexpected surprise. Last month they dismissed a chauffeur without notice, or he walked out. Accounts differ. He came to us to sue them for board-wages in lieu of notice, and we issued process accordingly. On preparing the case for hearing, we found his tale to be uncorroborated, but he was relying upon the evidence of two previous servants, who had left more or less in the same way. We found that he had known one of these men - had known of both incidents - before he applied for the position. He admitted to me that he had threatened his employers, when he left, that these former servants would bear witness against them. Talking over his evidence with him, I formed two opinions. One was that he had applied for the position with an intention of leaving in the way he did, the other was that he was depending upon their reluctance to come into court under such circumstances, rather than upon the strength of his case, if they have the resolution to do so. They are calling here this morning, probably prepared to settle the claim. They will be told that there will be no appearance for the plaintiff, and they have consequently nothing to fear. I am telling you this anecdote, Mr. Thornford, so that - - "
The telephone rang, and Mr. Morrison picked up the receiver without haste, but without troubling to complete his sentence.
He listened without interruption to the message which he received, and then said only:
"Tell Peters to have a taxi at the door in three minutes. I shall want him to go to the Porchester Vaults." Then he turned to Basil. "Mr. Thornford," he said, with a quiet seriousness, "I'm afraid there's no time to lose. They were, as I supposed two of Buddy Callaghan's men. They had, it appears, knocked at No. 74 several times without obtaining any answer, after which they withdrew down the road. Then Miss - your landlady - came out, and they intercepted her, and asked where you were. She thought she would be doing you a good turn, and scaring them off, by telling them that you had come to consult us about them. Ten minutes ago, following this interview, they hailed a taxi, and directed the driver to the Pelican Hotel.
"I cannot tell what Callaghan will do when he knows that you have come here, but he is certain to have some of his gang outside within a few minutes, who will watch your movements, if they do nothing worse. It is fortunate that his men appear to have gone to take instructions from him, instead of coming here first. I have ordered a taxi, and will send a man I can trust with you, so that you can place this money at the Porchester Safe Deposit Vaults. After which, you had better make your way to some retreat that he will not easily find, and let us have your address. You'd better phone it, not write."
While he spoke, he drew a large envelope from a drawer at his side, into which he pushed the handful of notes, and passed them over.
But Basil did not offer to move. He did not like being bustled off in this way. He wanted to know more. He wanted to give his own decision about the money. Above all, he had thought of a better plan for communication than by telephone. An absolutely splendid plan. He said:
"I suppose you mean that this man, Callaghan, is staying at the Pelican?"
"Yes. Half London knows that."
"Then we've got five or ten minutes, anyway."
"Yes. Unless he has anyone near here whom he can get on the phone. But it's foolish to lose time. I never run needless risks."
Mr. Morrison spoke without haste, but he evidently expected his client to go.
"I won't lose any time, but I want to say one thing first. I've been thinking about this money, and I don't want to hold it back simply because it belongs to a crook who daren't ask the police to help. But I want what's fair. I want my own money repaid, because I lost it through picking this up, and I want ten per cent as a finder's reward. That's only what the police make you pay if you lose anything on a bus. If he'll agree to that, you can tell him he can have the rest. I'll let you know where I am a safer ay than writing or phoning. I'll call at Miss Collingwood's address, if she doesn't mind, and send a message by her. They'll never guess how I keep in touch with you, if I do that."
Mr. Morrison looked at Fleda, with a raising of interrogative brows.
"Yes, I don't mind," she said coolly, "if you think it's a good plan. He can't call here, unless he means to be followed back to wherever he is."
"Very well. That's understood. But, as to the ten per cent business, it's what the police do, as you say. As to whether it's good morality, or even good law, we've no time to discuss now. But that argument won't help you with Callaghan. He won't pay ten per cent if he thinks he can get it off you in a cheaper way, and perhaps not even then if you've made him feel a bit raw. There's only one safe place for you now, and that's where he won't look."
"Who is he?"
"He's an American gangster who's specialized in blackmailing the police. He used to boast that he was the safest man in Manhattan, because he'd written a diary and deposited it in a secret place from which it's to be published if he dies in any unorthodox way. But he must have got scared about something, because he came over here about three months ago."
"Why don't they send him back?"
"Because it's turned out that he was born in Liverpool, so he's an English subject; and there's nothing against him here. Yes, Peters, you were quite right to let me know. Mr. Thornford's coming at once."
CHAPTER XIV
IT was certainly puzzling. Basil happened to know the location of the Porchester Safe Deposit. Not, perhaps, sufficiently well to have walked straight there from Mr. Morrison's office, but quite well enough to know that the way did not lie through Bloomsbury's less frequented streets. They must be at least a mile out of their way. He remembered that Peters had spoken to the driver in a very familiar manner as they had got in. Evidently it was not a taxi hailed at random from the street.
He looked at the clerk who sat silently beside him. A third young man, with a colourless, very lean face, from which the cheekbones rose prominently; he seemed regardless of Basil's presence, and yet curiously alert and watchful.
Was he being abducted to some quiet place where he might be robbed, and perhaps murdered, with impunity?
He recognized some improbabilities in this idea, and yet it was queer; and £5,000, which is in such a position that it is extremely difficult for anyone who loses hold of it to make legal claim for its return, is an unusually tempting bait. It was true that it had been out of his possession already, and had been handed back, but what more natural than to have done that to allay his suspicions, causing him to bring the money in his own pocket to the place where it could be safely and finally taken? It was rather a humorous method, as though he should be politely cajoled to carry the essential rope to his own gallows.
Well, if it were really so, was it better to challenge the position at once, while they were still in the crowded streets, or appear unsuspicious until there might come some opportunity of escape? Perhaps a sudden dash from the taxi when they stopped in a traffic block. But the door on his side might be secured. He remembered that Peters had made a point of his getting in first, so that he sat by the unopened door. He must try it in such a way that no suspicion would be aroused should the ruse fail. "I think I'll get out a moment while we're standing here. There's a tobacconist just over the way." What could be more natural than that? But they were not running through crowded streets. They had just entered a very long one, which was almost bare of vehicular traffic from end to end. It was rather impatience to end a doubt which he did not seriously believe than a well-founded judgment that caused him to say:
"Going rather out of our way, aren't we, Mr. Peters?"
"Rather," that young man answered, in very hearty agreement, and with a smile which would have disarmed a more cynical questioner than Basil was ever likely to be, "we've come about two miles the wrong way, but we turn here."
"May I ask why?"
"Well, we started the wrong way, in case we were being watched; and we came here in case we were being followed. Not that we could have got away any easier if we were, but I just wanted to know. You see, you can never tell for sure in the crowded traffic. But we've had some long straight runs, with a clear road in the rear, and we've dome some quick turns in between. There's no one behind us now and, if they followed at all, they know that I'm taking you back to your room at Hampstead, or some other lodging up that way. If they see me get back, they'll know I've taken you a good distance, by the time I shall have been away."
Basil had a pleasant feeling that he was in very