“Well,” Mallows answered reluctantly, “if you put it like that—”
“But I only put it like that to make you see things reasonably. As a matter of fact your connection with this new company is enough to bring your little performance with the iron chair pretty near proof. But I got at it from the other side. See here—you’re much too clumsy with your fingers, Mr. Mallows. First you go and tear the tip of your middle finger opening your brougham door, and have to get court plaster from me. Then you let that court plaster get frayed at the edge, and you still keep it on. After that you execute your very successful chair operation. When the eyes of the others are following the bicycles you take the chair in the hand with the plaster on it, catching hold of it at the place where a rough, loose, square nut protrudes, and you pitch it on to the track so clumsily and nervously that the nut carries away the frayed thread of the court plaster with it. Here it is, you see, still in my pocket-book, where I put it last night by the light of the lantern; just a sticky black silk thread, that’s all. I’ve only brought it to show you I’m playing a fair game with you. Of course I might easily have got a witness before I took the thread off the nut, if I had thought you were likely to fight the matter. But I knew you were not. You can’t fight, you know, with this bogus company business known to me. So that I am only showing you this thread as an act of grace, to prove that I have stumped you with perfect fairness. And now the hundred. Here’s a fountain pen, if you want one.”
“Well,” said Mallows glumly, “I suppose I must, then.” He took the pen and wrote the cheque. Dorrington blotted it on the pad of his pocket-book and folded it away.
“So much for that!” he said. “That’s just a little preliminary, you understand. We’ve done these little things just as a guarantee of good faith—not necessarily for publication, though you must remember that as yet there’s nothing to prevent it. I’ve done you a turn by finding out who upset those bicycles, as you so ardently wished me to do last night, and you’ve loyally fulfilled your part of the contract by paying the promised reward—though I must say that you haven’t paid with all the delight and pleasure you spoke of at the time. But I’ll forgive you that, and now that the little hors d’œuvre is disposed of, we’ll proceed to serious business.”
Mallows looked uncomfortably glum.
“But you mustn’t look so ashamed of yourself, you know,” Dorrington said, purposely misinterpreting his glumness. “It’s all business. You were disposed for a little side flutter, so to speak—a little speculation outside your regular business. Well, you mustn’t be ashamed of that.”
“No,” Mallows observed, assuming something of his ordinarily ponderous manner; “no, of course not. It’s a little speculative deal. Everybody does it, and there’s a deal of money going.”
“Precisely. And since everybody does it, and there is so much money going, you are only making your share.”
“Of course.” Mr. Mallows was almost pompous by now.
“Of course.” Dorrington coughed slightly. “Well now, do you know, I am exactly the same sort of man as yourself—if you don’t mind the comparison. I am disposed for a little side flutter, so to speak—a little speculation outside my regular business. I also am not ashamed of it. And since everybody does it, and there is so much money going—why, I am thinking of making my share. So we are evidently a pair, and naturally intended for each other!”
Mr. Paul Mallows here looked a little doubtful.
“See here, now,” Dorrington proceeded. “I have lately taken it into my head to operate a little on the cycle share market. That was why I came round myself about that little spoke affair, instead of sending an assistant. I wanted to know somebody who understood the cycle trade, from whom I might get tips. You see I’m perfectly frank with you. Well, I have succeeded uncommonly well. And I want you to understand that I have gone every step of the way by fair work. I took nothing for granted, and I played the game fairly. When you asked me (as you had anxious reason to ask) if I had found anything, I told you there was nothing very big—and see what a little thing the thread was! Before I came away from the pavilion I made sure that you were really the only man there with black court plaster on his fingers. I had noticed the hands of every man but two, and I made an excuse of borrowing something to see those. I saw your thin pretence of suspecting the betting men, and I played up to it. I have had a telegraphic report on your Exeter works this morning—a deserted cloth mills with nothing on it of yours but a signboard, and only a deposit of rent paid. There they referred to the works here. Here they referred to the works there. It was very clever, really! Also I have had a telegraphic report of your make-up adventure this morning. Clarkson does it marvellously, doesn’t he? And, by the way, that telegram bringing you down to Birmingham was not from your confederate here, as perhaps you fancied. It was from me. Thanks for coming so promptly. I managed to get a quiet look round here just before you arrived, and on the whole the conclusion I come to as to the ‘Avalanche Bicycle and Tyre Company, Limited,’ is this: A clever man, whom it gives me great pleasure to know,” with a bow to Mallows, “conceives the notion of offering the public the very rottenest cycle company ever planned, and all without appearing in it himself. He finds what little capital is required; his two or three confederates help to make up a board of directors, with one or two titled guinea-pigs, who know nothing of the company and care nothing, and the rest’s easy. A professional racing man is employed to win races and make records, on machines which have been specially made by another firm (perhaps it was the ‘Indestructible,’ who knows?) to a private order, and afterwards decorated with the name and style of the bogus company on a transfer. For ordinary sale, bicycles of the ‘trade’ description are bought—so much a hundred from the factors, and put your own name on ’em. They come cheap, and they sell at a good price—the profit pays all expenses and perhaps a bit over; and by the time they all break down the company will be successfully floated, the money—the capital—will be divided, the moving spirit and his confederates will have disappeared, and the guinea-pigs will be left to stand the racket—if there is a racket. And the moving spirit will remain unsuspected, a man of account in the trade all the time! Admirable! All the work to be done at the ‘works’ is the sticking on of labels and a bit of enamelling. Excellent, all round! Isn’t that about the size of your operations?”
“Well, yes,” Mallows answered, a little reluctantly, but with something of modest pride in his manner, “that was the notion, since you speak so plainly.”
“And it shall be the notion. All—everything—shall be as you have planned it, with one exception, which is this. The moving spirit shall divide his plunder with me.”
“You? But—but—why, I gave you a hundred just now!”
“Dear, dear! Why will you harp so much on that vulgar little hundred? That’s settled and done with. That’s our little personal bargain in the matter of the lamentable accident with the chair. We are now talking of bigger business—not hundreds, but thousands, and not one of them, but a lot. Come now, a mind like yours should be wide enough to admit of a broad and large view of things. If I refrain from exposing this charming scheme of yours I shall be promoting a piece of scandalous robbery. Very well then, I want my promotion money, in the regular way. Can I shut my eyes and allow a piece of iniquity like this to go on unchecked, without getting anything by way of damages for myself? Perish the thought! When all expenses are paid, and the confederates are sent off with as little as they will take, you and I will divide fairly, Mr. Mallows, respectable brothers in rascality. Mind, I might say we’d divide to begin with, and leave you to pay expenses, but I am always fair to a partner in anything of this sort. I shall just want a little guarantee, you know—it’s safest in such matters as these; say a bill at six months for ten thousand pounds—which is very low. When a satisfactory division is made you shall have the bill back. Come—I have a bill-stamp ready, being so much convinced of your re
asonableness as to buy it this morning, though it cost five pounds.”
“But that’s nonsense—you’re trying to impose. I’ll give you anything reasonable—half is out of the question. What, after all the trouble and worry and risk that I’ve had—”
“Which would suffice for no more than to put you in gaol if I held up my finger!”
“But hang it, be reasonable! You’re a mighty clever man, and you’ve got me on the hip, as I admit. Say ten percent.”
“You’re wasting time, and presently the men will be back. Your choice is between making half, or making none, and going to gaol into the bargain. Choose!”
“But just consider—”
“Choose!”
Mallows looked despairingly about him. “But really,” he said, “I want the money more than you think. I—”
“For the last time—choose!”
Mallows’s despairing gaze stopped at the enamelling oven. “Well, well,” he said, “if I must, I must, I suppose. But I warn you, you may regret it.”
“Oh dear no, I’m not so pessimistic. Come, you wrote a cheque—now I’ll write the bill. ‘Six months after date, pay to me or my order the sum of ten thousand pounds for value received’—excellent value too, I think. There you are!”
When the bill was written and signed, Mallows scribbled his acceptance with more readiness than might have been expected. Then he rose, and said with something of brisk cheerfulness in his tone, “Well, that’s done, and the least said the soonest mended. You’ve won it, and I won’t grumble any more. I think I’ve done this thing pretty neatly, eh? Come and see the ‘works.’”
Every other part of the place was empty of machinery. There were a good many finished frames and wheels, bought separately, and now in course of being fitted together for sale; and there were many more complete bicycles of cheap but showy make to which nothing needed to be done but to fix the red and gold “transfer” of the “Avalanche” company. Then Mallows opened the tall iron door of the enamelling oven.
“See this,” he said; “this is the enamelling oven. Get in and look round. The frames and other different parts hang on the racks after the enamel is laid on, and all those gas jets are lighted to harden it by heat. Do you see that deeper part there by the back?—go closer.”
Dorrington felt a push at his back and the door was swung to with a bang, and the latch dropped. He was in the dark, trapped in a great iron chamber. “I warned you,” shouted Mallows from without; “I warned you you might regret it!” And instantly Dorrington’s nostrils were filled with the smell of escaping gas. He realised his peril on the instant. Mallows had given him the bill with the idea of silencing him by murder and recovering it. He had pushed him into the oven and had turned on the gas. It was dark, but to light a match would mean death instantly, and without the match it must be death by suffocation and poison of gas in a very few minutes. To appeal to Mallows was useless—Dorrington knew too much. It would seem that at last a horribly-fitting retribution had overtaken Dorrington in death by a mode parallel to that which he and his creatures had prepared for others. Dorrington’s victims had drowned in water—or at least Crofton’s had, for I never ascertained definitely whether anybody had met his death by the tank after the Croftons had taken service with Dorrington—and now Dorrington himself was to drown in gas. The oven was of sheet iron, fastened by a latch in the centre. Dorrington flung himself desperately against the door, and it gave outwardly at the extreme bottom. He snatched a loose angle-iron with which his hand came in contact, dashed against the door once more, and thrust the iron through where it strained open. Then, with another tremendous plunge, he drove the door a little more outward and raised the angle-iron in the crack; then once more, and raised it again. He was near to losing his senses, when, with one more plunge, the catch of the latch, not designed for such treatment, suddenly gave way, the door flew open, and Dorrington, blue in the face, staring, stumbling and gasping, came staggering out into the fresher air, followed by a gush of gas.
Mallows had retreated to the rooms behind, and thither Dorrington followed him, gaining vigour and fury at every step. At sight of him the wretched Mallows sank in a corner, sighing and shivering with terror. Dorrington reached him and clutched him by the collar. There should be no more honour between these two thieves now. He would drag Mallows forth and proclaim him aloud; and he would keep that £10,000 bill. He hauled the struggling wretch across the room, tearing off the crêpe whiskers as he came, while Mallows supplicated and whined, fearing that it might be the other’s design to imprison him in the enamelling oven. But at the door of the room against that containing the oven their progress came to an end, for the escaped gas had reached the lighted candle, and with one loud report the partition wall fell in, half burying Mallows where he lay, and knocking Dorrington over.
Windows fell out of the building, and men broke through the front gate, climbed into the ruined rooms and stopped the still escaping gas. When the two men and the boy returned, with the conspirator who had been in charge of the works, they found a crowd from the hardware and cycle factories thereabout, surveying with great interest the spectacle of the extrication of Mr. Paul Mallows, managing director of the “Indestructible Bicycle Company,” from the broken bricks, mortar, bicycles and transfers of the “Avalanche Bicycle and Tyre Company, Limited,” and the preparations for carrying him to a surgeon’s where his broken leg might be set. As for Dorrington, a crushed hat and a torn coat were all his hurts, beyond a few scratches. And in a couple of hours it was all over Birmingham, and spreading to other places, that the business of the “Avalanche Bicycle and Tyre Company” consisted of sticking brilliant labels on factors’ bicycles, bought in batches; for the whole thing was thrown open to the general gaze by the explosion. So that when, next day, Lant won the fifty miles race in London, he was greeted with ironical shouts of “Gum on yer transfer!” “Hi! mind yer label!” “Where did you steal that bicycle?” “Sold yer shares?” and so forth.
Somehow the “Avalanche Bicycle and Tyre Company, Limited,” never went to allotment. It was said that a few people in remote and benighted spots, where news never came till it was in the history books, had applied for shares, but the bankers returned their money, doubtless to their extreme disappointment. It was found politic, also, that Mr. Paul Mallows should retire from the directorate of the “Indestructible Bicycle Company”—a concern which is still, I believe, flourishing exceedingly.
As for Dorrington, he had his hundred pounds reward. But the bill for £10,000 he never presented. Why, I do not altogether know, unless he found that Mr. Mallows’s financial position, as he had hinted, was not altogether so good as was supposed. At any rate, it was found among the notes and telegrams in this case in the Dorrington deed-box.
THE CASE OF MR. LOFTUS DEACON
I
This was a case that helped to give Dorrington much of that reputation which unfortunately too often enabled him to profit himself far beyond the extent to which his clients intended. It occurred some few years back, and there was such a stir at the time over the mysterious death of Mr. Loftus Deacon that it well paid Dorrington to use his utmost diligence in an honest effort to uncover the mystery. It gave him one of his best advertisements, though indeed it occasioned him less trouble in the unravelling than many a less interesting case. There were scarcely any memoranda of the affair among Dorrington’s papers, beyond entries of fees paid, and I have almost entirely relied upon the account given me by Mr. Stone, manager in the employ of the firm owning the premises in which Mr. Deacon died.
These premises consisted of a large building let out in expensive flats, one of the first places built with that design in the West-End of London. The building was one of three, all belonging to the firm I have mentioned, and numbered 1, 2 and 3, Bedford Mansions. They stood in the St. James’s district, and Mr. Loftus Deacon’s quarters were in No. 2.
Mr. Deacon’s magnificent co
llection of oriental porcelain will be remembered as long as any in the national depositories; much of it was for a long while lent, and, by Mr. Deacon’s will, passed permanently into possession of the nation. His collection of oriental arms, however, was broken up and sold, as were also his other innumerable objects of Eastern art—lacquers, carvings, and so forth. He was a wealthy man, this Mr. Deacon, a bachelor of sixty, and his whole life was given to his collections. He was currently reported to spend some £15,000 a year on them, and, in addition, would make inroads into capital for special purchases at the great sales. People wondered where all the things were kept. And indeed they had reason, for Mr. Deacon’s personal establishment was but a suite of rooms on the ground floor of Bedford Mansions. But the bulk of the collections were housed at various museums—indeed it was a matter of banter among his acquaintances that Mr. Loftus Deacon made the taxpayers warehouse most of his things; moreover, the flat was a large one—it occupied almost the whole of the ground-floor of the building, and it overflowed with the choicest of its tenant’s possessions. There were eight large and lofty rooms, as well as the lobby, scullery and so forth, and every one was full. The walls were hung with the most precious kakemono and nishikiyé of Japan; and glass cabinets stood everywhere, packed with porcelain and faience—celadon, peach-bloom, and blue and white, Satsuma, Raku, Ninsei, and Arita—many a small piece worth its weight in gold over and over and over again. At places on the wall, among the kakemono and pictures of the ukioyé, were trophies of arms. Two suits of ancient Japanese armour, each complete and each the production of one of the most eminent of the Miochin family, were exhibited on stands, and swords stood in many corners and lay in many racks. Innumerable drawers contained specimens of the greatest lacquer ware of Korin, Shunshō, Kajikawa, Koyetsu, and Ritsuo, each in its wadded brocade fukusa with the light wooden box encasing all. In more glass cabinets stood netsuké and okimono of ivory, bronze, wood, and lacquer. There were a few gods and goddesses, and conspicuous among them two life-sized gilt Buddhas beamed mildly over all from the shelves on which they were raised. By the operation of natural selection it came about that the choicest of all Mr. Deacon’s possessions were collected in these rooms. Here were none of the great cumbersome pots, good in their way, but made of old time merely for the European market. Of all that was Japanese every piece was of the best and rarest, consequently, in almost every case, of small dimensions, as is the way of the greatest of the wares of old Japan. And of all the precious contents of these rooms everything was oriental in its origin except the contents of one case, which displayed specimens of the most magnificent goldsmiths’ and silver-smiths’ work of mediæval Europe. It stood in the room which Mr. Loftus Deacon used as his sitting-room, and more than one of his visitors had wondered that such valuable property was not kept at a banker’s. This view, however, always surprised and irritated Mr. Deacon. “Keep it at a banker’s?” he would say. “Why not melt it down at once? The things are works of art, things of beauty, and that’s why I have them, not merely because they’re gold and silver. To shut them up in a strong-room would be the next thing to destroying them altogether. Why not lock the whole of my collections in safes, and never look at them? They are all valuable. But if they are not to be seen I would rather have the money they cost.” So the gold and silver stood in its case, to the blinking wonderment of messengers and porters whose errands took them into Mr. Loftus Deacon’s sitting-room. The contents of this case were the only occasion, however, of Mr. Deacon’s straying from oriental paths in building up his collection. There they stood, but he made no attempt to add to them. He went about his daily hunting, bargaining, cataloguing, cleaning, and exhibiting to friends, but all his new treasures were from the East, and most were Japanese. His chief visitors were travelling buyers of curiosities; little Japanese who had come to England to study medicine and were paying their terms by the sale of heirlooms in pottery and lacquer; porters from Christie’s and Foster’s; and sometimes men from Copleston’s—the odd emporium by the riverside where lions and monkeys, porcelain and savage weapons were bought and sold close by the ships that brought them home. The travellers were suspicious and cunning; the Japanese were bright, polite, and dignified, and the men from Copleston’s were wiry, hairy and amphibious; one was an enormously muscular little hunchback nicknamed Slackjaw—a quaint and rather repulsive compound of showman, sailor and half-caste rough; and all were like mermen, more or less. These curious people came and went, and Mr. Deacon went on buying, cataloguing, and joying in his possessions. It was the happiest possible life for a lonely old man with his tastes and his means of gratifying them, and it went placidly on till one Wednesday mid-day. Then Mr. Deacon was found dead in his rooms in most extraordinary and, it seemed, altogether unaccountable circumstances.
The Arthur Morrison Mystery Page 13