The Man of Dangerous Secrets

by Maxwell March

  Then Sir Ferdinand Shawle took his leave somewhat abruptly and went off, leaving the memory of a quiet, ruthless personality in their minds and an impression of a cool limp hand in their own.

  As soon as he was out of earshot, Jennifer turned to her father.

  “What an extraordinary man, Daddy! How can he have had an avuncular interest in me all my life? I’ve never seen him before. It was very nice of him to want to give us a dinner party at his house, but it was a little odd, wasn’t it?”

  Sir Henry shrugged his heavy shoulders and looked thoughtfully out across the cocktail bar with unseeing eyes.

  “F. S. is a very odd man,” he said slowly. “But a very influential man. Naturally I don’t want to offend him. However, putting all that aside, I’ve known him for many years, and I expect having heard so much about you from me he does regard you as a kind of niece. Be a good girl and accept this invitation for my sake.”

  Jennifer laughed and patted his hand. “What’s the matter with you?” she said. “After all, what’s a dinner party? Of course we’ll go, won’t we, Robin?”

  Robin smiled at her. “Of course—Jennifer,” he said.

  “Who is Madame Julie?” The girl had turned to her father again.

  Sir Henry frowned. “She’s a social secretary, my dear,” he said. “A woman of quite good family, I believe, who attends to all Shawle’s entertaining for him. It’s very difficult for a man to do these things alone, you know. She’s a very ordinary woman, but quite nice. She’s been with him for two or three years, I should say. Anything else you want to know, Miss Inquisitive?”

  “No, nothing. I’m perfectly satisfied.” The girl’s tone was conciliatory. Then she turned to Robin. “I’m going to send you home now,” she said. “I’m not going to be one of those fiancées who keep you away from your work. You’ll ring me in the morning, won’t you?”

  “Of course I will.” Taken off his guard, Robin could not keep the enthusiasm out of his voice, and Sir Henry laughed, an explosion that was suddenly carefree and which chased the worry out of his eyes and the deep furrows from his forehead.

  “That’s the note I like to hear in a man’s voice when he talks to his girl,” he said. “Enthusiasm: there’s not enough of it these days. I suppose the bar’s too crowded, or are you going to kiss her here?”

  “Daddy, don’t be ridiculous!” Jennifer’s face was scarlet to the eyebrows. “Of course he isn’t. Run along, Robin. I shall be waiting for your call in the morning.”

  As Robin Grey walked out of Savoy Court into the Strand he whistled softly to himself. In the past twenty-four hours he had stumbled into the very midst of something which baffled him completely. In that brief interval he had caught glimpses of a web of intrigue and danger so closely knit that it seemed doubtful, if, once within it, one could ever escape.

  But, because of the girl, he did not hesitate. It was one of Robin’s peculiarities that he never deceived himself, and he knew now that, whatever Jennifer Fern’s reaction towards himself might be, he had fallen completely and helplessly in love with her.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Dealer

  “WELL, Bourbon, I hope you’re satisfied that the room is sound-proof. When you’ve finished prowling around the walls perhaps you’ll sit down and show us some of that control we hear so much about.”

  The pathetic but rather terrible little figure in the wheeled chair spoke sharply, and his voice, never lovely, was almost unbearable with the sneer in its timbre.

  The man who had been wandering round the panelled room with the aimless movement of one who finds the situation intolerable swung round now and came back to his seat at the head of the table.

  Rex Bourbon, one of the best known of the younger brokers, was not prepossessing at the best of times, but now, with the colour drained out of his heavy face and his thick hands fidgeting together, damp and cold in the warm room, he was definitely unattractive.

  He poured himself out a stiff whisky from the decanter in front of him and drank it down without answering the vitriolic figure who sat opposite him across the expanse of shining mahogany.

  Irritated by his silence, the other man spoke again.

  “You’re drinking too much. I heard that some weeks ago. Be careful. It isn’t only your own career you hold, remember.”

  Bourbon looked at the cripple with something like entreaty in his greasy eyes.

  “For heaven’s sake shut up, Fisher. Can’t you see I’m all on edge? This is the second time in a fortnight we’ve been summoned. It’s getting on my nerves, I tell you.”

  Caithby Fisher, chairman of Armaments Limited, stirred in his wheeled chair and laughed unpleasantly.

  “You should have thought of that in the beginning,” he said. “Fifteen years ago, when the temptation was offered, you fell like the rest of us. Now you’ve got to take the consequences, as we all have. Do I have to remind you that if one of us loses his nerve there is quite a variety of fates awaiting the rest of us? What would it be for you, Bourbon? The end of a promising career, certainly; but a prison sentence—fifteen years’ hard labour, I should say. Or no—let me see—that clerk of yours died, didn’t he? All the same, I doubt whether they could hang you.”

  “Shut up!” The younger man’s voice rose to a scream. “I can’t stand it.”

  The third man in the room, who until now had taken no part in the conversation, raised his head. Sir Ferdinand Shawle did not believe in interfering unless circumstances demanded it, but now his quiet, chilling voice echoed softly through the room.

  “Do I have to remind you, Fisher, that this is my house? If you must bicker, save it for your own office. As for you, Rex, in the adjoining room my guests are gathering to celebrate the engagement of Jennifer Fern to the young man who is of such interest to us all. This panelling is sound-proof for all ordinary purposes, but I can’t guarantee it to keep your hysteria a secret.”

  Bourbon threw out his hands. “I’m sorry, F. S.,” he said. “Are we still waiting for Sir Henry? It’s the waiting that gets on one’s nerves.”

  He got no further. The door opened, and two men came in. Sir Henry Fern, pale and unhappy, was followed by his partner, Nelson Ash.

  This individual was in many ways the most extraordinary man in the room.

  He was above normal height, loose-limbed and gracelessly built, and his scanty hair was of that peculiarly unattractive type of colourless blond which does not seem to alter with age. He was now nearly fifty, but his hair and scant brows were both of this unattractive colour. For the rest, he had a thick white skin which puckered into folds over his small pale eyes, and his voice when he spoke was high and reedy.

  The five men nodded to one another in silent greeting and took their places round the table. Sir Ferdinand appeared to have adopted the position of chairman by unanimous consent, for it was he who spoke briskly, jerking the troubled minds of the others to attention.

  “Well,” he said, “who has the message?”

  No one spoke, and a frown of irritation passed over the banker’s lean face.

  “Come,” he said. “We have no time to lose. We can’t put off the evil day by fencing. Who has the message?”

  Sir Henry Fern pulled himself together with an obvious effort.

  “I’m sorry, F. S.,” he said. “My mind was on other things. It came to me this time. Here it is.”

  From the breast pocket of his tail coat he drew out a wallet which he opened carefully on the table. A single slip of grey-blue paper fell out upon the wood, and, picking it up, he passed it to Bourbon, who sat next to him, who in turn handed it to Sir Ferdinand.

  The banker read the paper, and the others, watching his face anxiously, saw no sign of the emotion which the message might have produced.

  “The girl again,” he said softly.

  “Read it—read it!” Rex Bourbon’s tone betrayed his agitation.

  “All in good time. Your nerves are in a bad state, Bourbon. If our situation were less precar
ious,” he said, with a sardonic smile, “I should suggest a visit to a psycho-analyst. But in the circumstances, despite professional etiquette, perhaps not. However, just to set your mind at rest, I will as usual read the message aloud.”

  He cleared his throat and began, his dry impersonal voice lending an added chill to the words.

  “‘Fern’s daughter has become officially engaged to a man who is a professional detective, standing high with both Scotland Yard and the Secret Service. Since it seems highly probable that the engagement is an artifice entered into by the girl in an attempt to discover the truth of her position, it is obviously necessary that her association with this young man should cease instantly. In view of the disastrous and futile attempt upon Tony Bellew, I do not immediately advocate Grey’s violent removal. Find some other method if possible. But should you be unsuccessful within one week from this date, then the more usual and direct method must be adopted. THE DEALER.’“

  There was silence after the cold voice had finished speaking. It was Bourbon who finally took the lead.

  “I know you’re all looking at me,” he said. “I know you’re all thinking that it was I who bungled the Bellew business. But it wasn’t, I tell you. It wasn’t. I knew at the secret ballot that you all thought I had drawn the name. But I hadn’t. It was one of you others. I swear it.”

  A slow, unpleasant smile spread over Sir Ferdinand’s mask-like face.

  “‘Methinks the lady doth protest too much,’” he quoted softly, and went on in the briskly practical tone he assumed for business dealings: “Don’t excite yourself, Bourbon. If the Dealer intends to punish he will doubtless do it in his own way. And now, as a matter of form, Henry, how did you receive this message?”

  The old man rose to his feet. He looked much older. His shoulders drooped, and his very blue eyes were dull.

  “In the usual way,” he said. “When I came down to breakfast it lay on the top of my letters. The postmark was simply ‘London.’ Both the address and the summons which told me we should all meet here at seven o’clock tonight were typewritten. There was no clue,” he went on, fighting to keep his voice steady, “no clue to tell me of the identity of this blackmailing fiend who has bled us white for all these years, the monster who has turned us into the slaves we are.”

  Bourbon poured himself out another drink. His hand was trembling so that the heavy cut decanter rattled against the glass disconcertingly.

  “I can’t stand it,” he said thickly. “I can’t stand it any longer. One of you,” he went on, glaring round the room, “one of you is the Dealer. One of you sits and laughs at the agony of the others. Sometimes I feel I’d rather have the disgrace, I’d rather have the imprisonment, than this incessant mental torture, this uncertainty, this knowledge that any day one may be forced to pay new demands, or, worse still, to commit some crime for which the penalty may mean anything, even death.”

  “Very prettily said,” snarled Caithby Fisher from his wheeled chair. “But if we’re going to start one of those interminable arguments about the identity of the Dealer, then I am leaving. After all, as I see these things, I am not shocked by the wickedness of our—master.” His voice sank. “I am impressed by the cleverness, the colossal power of the man. Think of it,” he went on softly. “Here we are, five wealthy men. Fifteen years ago we were trapped, all of us, in different and ingenious ways. It was pointed out to me, so subtly that I hardly realized that the suggestion came from an outside agency, that the manufacture of a certain document bearing my signature and some others, exhibited only once in the right quarters, might be worth a quarter of a million to me. It was not until I had achieved my end that I awoke to discover the incriminating document spirited out of my safe and myself completely in the power of a man only known to me by his pseudonym—the Dealer.”

  He paused and looked round at the strained faces of the men seated at the table.

  “You all have some such story,” he said, his sharp, rather cruel little eyes gleaming as his glance travelled from face to face. “All except you, Sir Henry, whose case is, I think, even more unfortunate than my own. However, I tell you I have a respect for the Dealer, and if, as I believe, he is one of us seated round this table tonight, I offer him my sincere congratulations. Had I been as clever as he, I should sit where he is sitting now.”

  Bourbon opened his mouth to burst out impetuously, but the sinister significance of the last part of the cripple’s remarks was not lost upon him and he checked himself in time.

  Sir Ferdinand tapped on the table with his signet ring.

  “If you are ready, gentlemen,” he said, “as it is growing late I suggest that we follow our usual procedure when the Dealer sets us a specific task and take a secret ballot to decide which among us is to be responsible for the young man in question. As usual I will prepare slips of paper. Bourbon will mix them and we will draw in turn.”

  “Gentlemen, this must stop.”

  The words were so strangled that it was some moments before his audience realized that it was Sir Henry who had spoken. He tottered to his feet now and stood facing them, a pathetic and a desperate man.

  “I must speak,” he said. “You, Fisher, have pointed out the helplessness of our position very clearly. I am not a fool. I have given my money, I have seen myself beggared, and I have countenanced crimes from which as an honest man I shrink. But this merciless persecution of my child must stop.”

  He turned round and faced the men who stared at him, impressed in spite of themselves at the passionate earnestness of his appeal.

  “My daughter is young,” he went on. “She is beautiful. She has her life before her. Fortunately her mother left her well provided for. In a rational world nothing should come to her but happiness. Why must she be victimized? I am thought by some to be a timid man. Sometimes I see myself as a criminal weakling. But this cannot go on. Do what you like with me, but let the child have her life and her happiness. If the Dealer is here, if one of you under the guise of a companion in adversity conceals the mind which has brought us all to this infamous slavery, then I appeal to him to stop this thing.”

  There was silence as his voice died away. Even Sir Ferdinand, normally so calm and so cynical, drummed an embarrassed tattoo upon the table with his slender, bony fingers.

  It was left to Nelson Ash, with his reedy voice and conciliatory manner, to answer the trembling old man who was his partner.

  “We appreciate your point, Sir Henry,” he said, blinking, his thick white eyelids almost covering his narrow eyes, “we appreciate your point. Of course we do. But consider the circumstances. After all, we’re all in the same boat, you know. I’m sorry for you,” he went on, the merest hint of unctuous hypocrisy in his thin voice. “I realize that from your point of view I myself am very much to blame. After all, you were away ill when the—er—regrettable incident occurred in our own case, which made the firm criminally responsible for the series of tragic happenings which led to the disgrace and suicide of our innocent accountant. But need I remind you that when you returned and the facts were made known to you, rather than risk the crash and disgrace which would have involved not only yourself but your innocent wife and daughter, you remained silent, and therefore rendered yourself liable to the machinations of our friend the Dealer.”

  Sir Henry Fern passed a trembling hand through his short grey hair as he sank down again at the table and sat bowed and helpless before the unanswerable logic of the man at his side.

  Ash went on. He had not risen, but leant sprawled across the table, one white hand emphasizing the important words in his discourse with an insistent and irritating gesture.

  “It is quite as painful to me as it must be to everyone else to bring up this next subject,” he said. “But since you seem to have forgotten it I feel I must remind you. This persecution of your daughter, as you call it, has been forced upon the Dealer, if not by you, at least by a member of your family. In removing the chances of your daughter’s marriage the Dealer is protecting
himself and us. In Morton Blount’s deed box lie all our fates.”

  The old man stirred. But as though he were enjoying the agony of his stricken partner, Nelson Ash went on.

  “This is an old story,” he said, “but I’m sure all our friends will forgive us if I repeat it to you. Sometimes I feel, Sir Henry, that you can never have understood it properly. Your brother-in-law, Morton Blount, was an extraordinary man. I need not go into his reputation as a criminologist, but when after many years spent in delving into our secrets, in tracing down one crime after another to our very doors, he suddenly gave up, to retire an apparently defeated man, there were many of us who wondered. It was not until his death, when we each received a copy of that dramatic little note, that we saw the truth and realized the terrible pitfall he had laid for us.”

  He leant further across the table towards the shrinking man. There was something sinister, something repulsive in his movement, and the hardened quartette who watched him were silent, fascinated by something almost subhuman in the intensity of his attack.

  “I think I could repeat that note to you, Sir Henry, almost verbatim. Perhaps you did not pay sufficient attention to your copy. Let me remind you. The final paragraph was very illuminating. After revealing that he had proofs which would imprison us all, if the gallows did not claim at least two of our number, he finished, if I remember rightly, something like this: ‘You may wonder why I have chosen to keep silent about these discoveries. Let me tell you. I realized from the beginning that there was one amongst you more culpable than the others. One whose pseudonym—the Dealer—hid the mind which held the rest of you in helpless bondage. I was determined that he should not escape his full toll of punishment. On continuing my investigations it came home to me one day that my own brother-in-law, the husband of the only woman I ever admired, the father of the child whom I loved as deeply as if she had been my own, was enmeshed so inextricably in this sordid web that I could not expose him without ruining my sister’s life and her child’s.’”