“So," answered Mac, "I think," he went on, "must God."
§
Mac took May home. A single basement room beneath a public house next to its damp cellar was "chez May," as Mac said, forcing a smile at the squalor.
"What's that?" May had inquired.
"French," Mac had replied.
May attempted to tidy the few objects assembled in the room that illustrated it was inhabited by beings other than rats. She showed Mac the pump faucet in a corner—an indication, Mac noted, that this had probably once been a washroom: this it was that kept the lovely young woman so clean.
"The water's cold," May said, "but it's as fresh as . . ." She sought a word and received only a kiss from Mac. Then he left.
In the hansom cab he eventually hailed, some way from the Holborn pub, he determined to enter the life of this woman. Her tenacity in the face of a horrifying present and terrifying future was astonishing. He smiled at the thoughts his sympathy had elicited.
"May," he said aloud.
George MacDonald had failed to become a doctor—only just. The lure of a more sybaritic life style at Harvard had destroyed his concentration more effectively than cancer does tissue. After which—no second chance. So his sharp eye and dextrous fingers had turned to other means of satisfying a brilliant mind. But his sense of humanity had remained—as had his need for adventure. He was determined to actually hurt no one—and if he failed at that too, then it would be only because the victim was himself.
Behind the locked doors of his rooms at the Terminus Hotel, Mac persevered, despite the late hour, at his task, bent over a table scrutinizing several sheets of paper glowing beneath an oil lamp. He shifted his chair, took up a pen, dipped it into a phial of pale blue ink, made his hand comfortable, then wrote a signature quickly and accurately. It was not his own. He repeated the procedure on a second rectangle of paper. He put down the pen, breathed deeply, then examined both signatures against what was in fact—on a third sheet—the name of a London bank manager. He had issued to Mac a bill of exchange; now Mac had created two facsimiles. The signature was the penultimate step; more enjoyable, to Mac's mind, was the "process of figures," as he called it. The date the bill had been acquired and the sum to be drawn. He watched the ink drying slowly; remembered the cheroots he'd bought during the day and took one from the slim leather holder in his pocket.
Mac stood up, stretched, then crossed to the long windows. He opened them and stepped over the low sill out into the cold air onto a small balcony. Leaning against an ornate cast-iron railing, Mac peered up into the murky sky hoping to find even a single star—and did, eventually. He lit his cheroot from a box of Lucifers and threw away the match, which arced toward the gutter. Whether star or gutter he never afterward remembered, but some association brought into focus the image of a lovely woman as she might become; and the figures in Mac's mind with which he was toying dissolved. Mac was content to think only of May.
Noyes
WHEN Edwin Noyes stepped out of the gates of New Jersey's State Prison at ten minutes past nine on the morning of March 3, 1872, he had lost three years and two months of his existence.
He had been at home several weeks when a telegram arrived for him from England. It was from Mac and stated simply, "Wait." Thus, as winter weather moved toward spring and Connecticut assumed all the life he had not seen since January 1869, although his appreciation of the world outside four walls was still intense, his anticipation for the future elsewhere increased daily, as did his impatience. On his knees in Sunday church, Edwin could think only of England, Great Britain and an Empire; he had read nothing but English history since the Atlantic cable which had recharged his imagination. The congregation rose, sang a hymn, sat down and prepared for the sermon. The preacher's every word of divine wrath seemed to Edwin aimed directly at the only surviving male Noyes in Hartford. His mother and two sisters were part of a small-town life that for him had palled. New York had stimulated his ambition; he had wanted more of everything until he had entered the bank on his last day of freedom, more than three years before Edwin Noyes had been persuaded to present a forged check, together with stolen bonds; it was a calculated risk, which he might well have pulled off—but had not. Sharp eyes at the bank recognized the imperfect imitation, then double-checked against serial numbers already in circulation from the police, immediately discovering the bonds for what they were. Edwin Noyes was apprehended and charged. He had been able to say little of import. Names he knew meant nothing to the detectives who questioned him. Had he been less impulsive and taken advice from Mac never to become involved with men he did not know well enough to trust, things would have been different. His friends had been abroad, out of touch and therefore unable to help; and thus Edwin's reward for his efforts was not a large share of the spoils but incarceration.
The sentence he received quite obviously changed his life. Eventually poor health, the loss of flesh on bone, a raw, dark-eyed look he had assumed, his catatonic depressions served finally to convince the authorities that they should release him. He had returned "home" to endure the nightmare of disgrace, shame amongst his family and hypocrisy from the community. Only, it seemed, in church were all men equal.
The sermon finished with fire and brimstone being flung at the vast majority of the world's population, past, present and future. The congregation stood up and, as the preacher regained his breath, found the appropriate number for the final hymn. A small organ ended the service, playing a background dirge for Edwin's thoughts as he filed out of church with the crowd, some lingering to brush shoulders and exchange time and place for assignations that evening.
The general gossip outside in the clear air allowed Edwin Noyes pause to look up at the empty blue sky falling to a crisp horizon of trees still bare from Connecticut's harsh winter. But the faint warmth of March sunlight was almost intoxicating, and what few birds braved the cold air chirped enthusiastically. All around Edwin, the congregation continued to enjoy one another's company. Only Edwin remained silent, in a world of his own—oblivious to the gay conversation that conveyed the small talk of small minds.
As he waited for his mother and sisters—sitting on the buckboard that would take them back to the Noyes homestead—Edwin thought fondly of Mac, Austin and George. He breathed deeply at the idea of possibly joining them. His memory found a moment when they—all four—had shared the same passion to have whole what they had, as yet, only tasted. Delmonico's had been a heady place that evening, and New York had seemed to be made only for the whims of the four of them. Whatever was decided could be accomplished. They drank a toast—glasses brimming, as were their eyes with the shared fire of youthful ambition.
Now, more than three years later, Edwin Noyes smiled to himself as the memory reached a crescendo of proposed intentions and the laughter of comradeship obliterated the hell that had followed. This rime he would be sure to heed Mac's advice. Instructions would come eventually; he would wait.
His gaze wandered across the fields to the forest edge. Why, there, in the distance, where the four first stood out in the sunlight, he could almost see the portals themselves, and he heard again Austin speak the words as glasses met in a toast to "the Four Hundred."
The Bank of England
IN 1872, the world crown rested squarely on English velvet. The foreign trade of the United Kingdom was more than that of France, Germany and Italy put together and nearly four times that of the United States. There were five dollars to the English pound sterling. Income tax was down to fourpence in a pound, which then consisted of two hundred and forty penny units.
The population had risen astronomically, and although agriculture was still Britain's largest industry, the country exodus to the cities allowed textiles to flourish beyond expectation. Three quarters of a million people were engaged as domestic servants, half a million in the mines and quarries. Exports exceeded two hundred million pounds per year—a staggering sum.
Wages rose sharply at the beginning of the 'seve
nties, and with the price of food almost constant, even the poorer classes were able to save. The records of the decade-old Post Office Savings Bank reveal accounts totaling eighteen million pounds.
Sterling, anchored to the gold standard for nearly thirty years, guaranteed that the five-pound note could be exchanged for five gold sovereigns and had become the currency of international finance as English was already the language. Other national currencies were bought and sold at fixed rates, which created stability. The custodian of the standard of sterling was the Stock Exchange.
Within sight of St. Paul's Cathedral, this Exchange was centered in what is known in London as "the City." This was ultimately controlled by the guardian of Britain's, and hence the Empire's, entire financial reserve—the Bank of England.
§
"Gentlemen, the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, the 'eart of an empire..."
The driver of the open carriage doffed his hat and looked over with obvious respect at the huge and imposing building. Greek columns ended in Corinthian capitals which supported a long architrave, above and behind which were two further stories. In the center of the base of huge stones which gave the impression of might and solidity was the entrance, guarded by uniformed doormen who observed the melee passing to and fro as the city bartered toward its lunchtime crescendo.
Three passengers in the open carriage followed the driver's example and slowly removed their hats as he turned toward them to continue his speech. He was displeased with the attitude of at least the one whose rejoinder to his last remark had been the facetious " 'eart of gold" in mimicry of his Cockney accent. More so because he resembled the Prince of Wales. He knew quite well that words from Jenny Lind's current song had no place here before these hallowed portals. Even as the three appeared formidable by their wealth, he gave them a long stare of appraisal before speaking.
"You gentlemen be Yankees, no doubt?"
The reply of "Indeed we are, sir" from the other American who was attending to him was, therefore, no surprise. Only the arrogance was irritating: after all, rich or poor, cab driver though he might be, he was still British.
"You should 'a' stayed in the Empire."
The driver smiled in open sympathy with the sentiment felt by all who were loyal to Victoria's England.
"We chose to take our leave," said the third man absently. This shocked the driver, and the grin and nudge one man gave to the other, sprawled there on the seat, angered him.
"You'll regret it one day, without a doubt—you mark my..."
He was about to finish when the hypnotic eyes of the third man turned for a moment from contemplating the Bank and all its worth to dwell on the driver at the reins, who was immediately subdued.
"... if you'll pardon me sayin' so," he finished lamely.
The third man stared a moment longer, then back at the Bank—seemingly in deep thought. The driver was unable to speak—"taken, as it were," he said afterward, "as if a demon was lookin' up at me." But that was long afterward, when the entire world knew what those first glimmering ideas had sparked off in that man's brain.
Before the driver cracked his reins over the backs of both horses, he said, "It's pride what I'm speakin' with, sirs—pride." He remembered the tears that came welling up, proof of his wife's loving opinion of him as an old softie, and as he was to relate in many a bar, he would always remember, in that last glance he took at the three before he drove off to other sights, "Two was laughin', 'appy-go-lucky like, but the other..."
Here he learned to pause knowingly, as if prior insight had given him an edge over the forces of the entire world's law and order.
"The other," he would repeat, "was lookin' at 'the Old Lady' as if . . ." And here again his story, polished through the years, would halt before a mesmerized audience. Looking about him to see if any women were present and assuring himself that what few there were would appreciate his ending, he would finish, "... as if he was gonna have down her drawers, pay for 'is whistle an' gap-stop 'er minge."
The twist in the tale never failed to bring hoots of laughter. Even George Bidwell smiled at it years later when it had become a standard, if bawdy, joke, and when he too thought back and remembered his first sight of the Bank, he had to admit that coarse as the driver's analogy had been, he was not far wrong.
§
"So I left her in Calais with most of the proceeds. No doubt if a scandal has developed they'll all want it hushed up."
"And how much of it do you have left?" asked Mac.
"Of Blanc's money?" Austin replied. "After I'd paid our bills—little enough." He smiled to himself. "But memories I have aplenty."
Austin thought fondly of Elizabeth as he told Mac his story, ending with a passable imitation of her pronunciation of his hastily concocted alias "Frederick Albert Warren"— "as she knows me still," Austin finished with a grin. The Countess had decided to return to Wiesbaden slowly via the Casino at Monte Carlo, where Blanc had also established an interest. By the time she was in Wiesbaden again, the world would have turned; money and influence could, without too much trouble, quell diligent investigation, she believed. Then perhaps they could meet again. For a moment Austin was lost in thought and hardly heard Mac's own accounting.
"Well, my little waif May thinks the fripperies I've bought her are all kinds of finery. You shall see her smile—worth a bagful of British sovereigns."
Leaning on the rail of the river steamer, Mac too had succumbed to a private world and thought affectionately of the young woman to whom he'd developed an attachment. The River Thames sluiced by, and the other seventy or so passengers made as merry as was possible aboard the long, low steamboat as it chugged upriver toward Hampton Court.
George Bidwell concentrated more on the brown water, the swirls, eddies and tide lines, than he did on the riverside habitations. Watching the flotsam pass, he established the boat's speed. Then, as he counted absently, a figure came to him. It made sense. "One hundred thousand."
Standing on either side of George, Austin and Mac were disturbed by the softly spoken words, almost lost in sound from the out-of-tune piano playing in the saloon behind them.
It was the first phrase George had uttered since Tower Bridge. Austin looked at his brother. 'What's that?" he asked.
"George?" questioned Mac, concerned at his friend's introspection.
George looked slowly into Mac's face, his eyes probing. "Five hundred thousand dollars, Mac—each." Austin began to laugh and clapped his brother warmly on the shoulder.
"See, Mac, the woman for George is 'the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street'!"
At that moment the seemingly drunk pianist started up a barely recognizable version of "Barbara Allen." It interrupted them.
The second verse began, with voices joining in the well-known lyrics. Mac and Austin exchanged a glance and saw in each other's eyes the same disturbing sign of fear. Perhaps their initial reaction, had they discussed it, would have put an end to the scheme then and there; but arrival at an unfamiliar destination is always distracting.
" 'Ampton Court, ladies and gentlemen" from the boatman and a shuddering reversal of the twin screws as the boat drew alongside the jetty caused them both to look away and, under a blue sky filled with swiftly passing clouds, establish their first impressions of the Palace.
"Think on it, boys," said George Bidwell quietly.
§
Garraway's had been established on a corner of Exchange Alley, in the City, as a convivial meeting house in which to discuss prospective business.
George, Austin and Mac settled into one of the private alcoves ranged along a side of the large main salle de maison. They ate a light dinner. It was over coffee and brandy, as the waiter cleared their table and carried his tray through the crowd across to the serving hatch in the oak-paneled wall near the bar, that George signaled to Mac.
"Pull the curtain," he said. Mac did as instructed.
Shut off from the crowds in the secure privacy of what was now a small room, George savore
d his plan.
"Come, George—let's have it," said Austin. He leaned back in his seat and gave his brother full attention. .
"Money, boys," George began.
Austin absorbed the almost tangible atmosphere George had created in the alcove.
"George, we're here abroad. Time is ours, and we've money enough, so... ?"
He was ignored by his brother.
' 'What would you say was enough, Mac?''
Mac took the idea seriously. "Well—as you were saying —maybe—well, one hundred thousand," he replied.
"Dollars or pounds?" Austin asked with a laugh. He was vainly attempting to steer the conversation's course away from where he knew it was now headed.
"Pounds sterling," said George. Austin swallowed.
"Austin's right, George," said Mac quickly. "We all have plenty of money on us right now—and ways of making more."
Austin pulled out the bill of exchange he had meant to discount in Blanc's Casino.
"I've still got Mac's bill—undrawn," he said smiling, "which my lady Countess insisted I keep."
Mac leaned over and took it from Austin.
"Let's see it again," he said.
Mac examined the bill.
"I could do better—now. The clarity of the circles and depth of ink here is not..."
George took the bill from Mac and looked at the figure printed on it.
"Two thousand dollars is only four hundred pounds, Mac," he said.
"Bigger bills are a risk, George," began Austin. "The larger amounts are always checked more thoroughly—you know that."
"Then you need the letter of introduction, especially if you travel," interrupted Mac, "and a letter of credit. If they don't know you, George, they are going to be suspicious. If they do
. . ." Mac paused and shrugged. "You get caught with a forged bill."
"Then" George said, "we must think of other ways." "How?" Austin's voice was not firm. "With confidence, expertise..."
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