“Now,” said Arthur Lawson, “what about it? You cannot move without me, and I have not the least intention of allowing you to move. I don’t care if Dow’s Patent is never used at all. And let me tell you something more Mr. Williams. I have proof of what you did, and proof of what Mr. McAuley did before you in the matter of the two documents. I shall not hesitate to publish the truth if you compel me to do so, and I shall not count the cost.”
Williams and McAuley were thinking; Sir Andrew wished he had not come. It was Williams, as usual, who got to the end of his thinking first.
“You won’t be too hard on us, Mr. Lawson?”
“I must have those documents,” said Arthur Lawson. “I must have them now, before I leave this room and before you leave it. What I shall do with them is my concern.”
“Mr. Lawson,” broke in McAuley anxiously, “you won’t mind if Mr. Williams and my brother and I have a word or two together?”
“Not so long as you don’t go out of my sight,” said Lawson. “You can talk where you are.”
There was nothing for it. They laid their heads together and in low tones Williams, still the master mind, Sir Andrew only once whispering agreement, made James McAuley understand that the battle was lost. It was he who spoke.
“Very well, Mr. Lawson,” he said. He unfastened that little button which was in the inner left-hand breastpocket of every coat he wore, he drew out the two envelopes, which had seen so much, and which came out untorn but a little frayed. He handed them over the table.
Arthur Lawson slowly and deliberately pulled out the contents of each, carefully verified them, put them back, and then held the two envelopes firmly in his hand and rose.
“Thank you, Mr. Williams,” he said. “Thank you, gentlemen. I fancy Mr. des Cuoyes will not be back this evening. Good night.”
. . . . . . .
Honest Jack Williams did not get home that night till well after two. On his way there, in a belated taxi, for all those miles, he muttered over and over again to himself Arthur Lawson’s words, “I have proof.” An awful doubt arose in his mind, as he tiptoed in at the door, lest he should wake his wife, and very softly shut it behind him; and his first action was to go at once into the side room where was the little cupboard with the photographs and the attested copies. He switched on the light. The little cupboard on the wall opposite stood wide open, and it was empty.
Chapter XVIII
At about a quarter to ten the next morning, Friday, Arthur Lawson was jotting down under two or three headings a memorandum upon a card.
He had no need to think out his plan; it was simple, as his plans always were, and he had settled it long ago. What he wrote down on that card was nothing more than this:
1st. W.H. Persuade him to take not less than??
2nd. Chief villain.
3rd. Persuade W.H. Trust.
Such headings do not need to be written down you say. You are right. It was a habit or fad. He always did it.
That done, he rang up Wilfrid Halterton, and having got him, reminded him he was expected at ten.
“I would never have arranged to come to you,” he said, “only it’s a question of time for what I’m doing afterwards. You’ll understand when I see you. I wanted you here for fear I might be just too late for the next thing I have got to do. Come in at once. That’s right. You’ll find me all alone in my study.”
Arthur Lawson spent the intervening few minutes until Halterton should arrive in sending for his secretary and asking her to look up in the index—the card index —under “Williams, J.” at what hour the politician usually reached his office. She came back with the news, “Never later than 10.30, Mr. Lawson; sometimes earlier, but never later.”
“Thank you,” said Lawson. And as though he had not the best memory in London, he solemnly pulled out his card again and jotted down “10.30, or as soon after as possible,” after the word “villain.” Five minutes later Mr. Halterton, who had whizzed through the Park, was announced.
. . . . . . .
Meanwhile, at the Home Office John Williams was considering and reconsidering and counter-considering.
It was the devil of a business! He could see no way out. “I never did like Jews!” he muttered to himself. But it was a little late in the day to act upon that sentiment. One thing grew up larger and larger before him like a storm-cloud. He mustn’t be caught until he had thought out all the possibilities. So! When Lawson said he had proof of this double purloining of documents he wasn’t bluffing! He said he would spend without reckoning, and so he had. It was he who had those photographs by now!
Would Lawson try to give up the contract altogether? Hardly. There were plenty of other preliminary documents. Was Lawson standing out for some enormous price for Dow’s Patent? Hardly. These millionaires like to add to their millions, but the whole episode hadn’t looked like that, it had looked like some kind of revenge—heaven knows what for! Was Lawson going to come with a set scheme? If so, what sort of chance was there of Williams coming into that scheme?
He knew the brain against which he was pitted. He himself had talked to poor Halterton of “the game.” He must have his own plan perfectly clear before he could play his part. He must be ready to meet Lawson’s attack at any point … he would have to think out all the possible directions from which that attack might come … it was bewildering enough, and the acute necessity for delay began to torture him. He sat there at his big table, for almost the first time in his life, at any rate for the first time in the last active political years, almost at a loss for invention. He felt that to anyone who could have seen him thus he must have presented that sort of dull, vacant anxiety which he had noticed in so many of his colleagues, which he had secretly laughed at in so many of his colleagues, when he had been preparing the attack.
So he sat, postponing all work, staring at the leather of the table-top, and sinking deeper and deeper into irresolution.
. . . . . . .
A mile away, in Lawson’s study, the master of the house was ending his persuasion of his friend. He had already got up as though to go out, and yet Wilfrid Halterton, though getting up at the same time, had not given him his reply.
“I shall have to act as though you had answered, Halterton,” he said. “I can’t wait much longer. It’s perfectly plain sailing. You’ve a right to it, and I intend you to have it. It’ll be in my name, and I shall pay the dividends over into your bank automatically, anyhow. After all, you’re quite willing to have the managership, after you retire; that’s what you didn’t want to get about, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” answered Halterton, “it is. But … but. … This is different somehow … actual cash, you know, and shares.”
Arthur Lawson smiled his slight smile.
“You oughtn’t to be in politics, Halterton,” he said dryly. “There aren’t many politicians who get nervous at the word shares—and as for cash! But I tell you again, you can’t avoid it. The shares’ll be in my name, but they’ll be secured under a Trust, and I have told you where the dividends will go. I’m determined that you shall be secure. So that’s that. Do you mind waiting for me here till I come back? I may be half an hour, I may be a little more. But I’ll see that you’re in time for the House at noon. There’ll be only a little winding up to be done.”
“Very well,” said Halterton, “I’ll wait.”
And he sank down into the big low arm-chair which des Cuoyes had filled those few days ago, and all his long body took on an attitude of relaxation, and his face was changed too. He had been saved!
. . . . . . .
Before that big desk at the Home Office John Williams still pondered and pondered. Then, in the midst of his pondering, right across that huge dark storm of doubt and hesitation which had so pitifully clouded him, came the stab of a lightning flash …. He suddenly remembered … Lord! the Katanga business of the year ‘thirty-eight, just after he had got into the House.
He suddenly felt cold. He also felt slightly sick. … By
God, yes! He had been frightened to death at the time, for Lawson had got caught, and Lawson might have lost heavily. And Lawson knew about him, William, and that altered cheque. But when Lawson came out on the right side of the ledger, and when one month after another passed and nothing had happened, the fear dulled down, and at last he had snapped his fingers at it.
Why, in politics men forget anything after a year or two. And this was over twenty years. … But it was still deadly. It never occurred to Honest Jack Williams in those days that Arthur Lawson would ever be more than the pretty big thing he had already become all those years ago. Now he was on top of the world. But what was much more important was that under no conceivable circumstances—till this dreadful week—could he have thought of Lawson as an enemy. He was far too much above him for that, and in much too different a kind of world. But here was Lawson as an enemy—at any rate, preparing to attack—and as the full implications of that half-forgotten Katanga deal developed before the unfortunate Home Secretary’s mind, like the threatening arms of an octopus, it maddened him.
It was an unfortunate moment for what happened next. For what happened next was the appearance of the messenger, who handed him a card and a name—and the name was the name of Arthur Lawson.
The Home Secretary just managed to control himself, and to speak in a quiet voice.
“Tell him I’m not at the office,” he said.
The messenger went out, and Honest Jack Williams with his strict regard for truth, saw to it at once that his words should not be a lie. Through the little side door behind his chair, the door in the corner near the window, he slipped out into the passage by which a man can get at the small winding staircase and avoid the main hall on his way out.
But Arthur Lawson had had occasion to enter the Home Office before, and he had thought of all that. Therefore it was that, even as Honest Jack Williams stood within a yard or two of flight and safety, he saw the austere figure of Arthur Lawson fixed before him in that passage.
“Mr. Williams,” said Arthur Lawson, “be good enough to come with me.”
In constitutional theory Honest John Williams was at that moment responsible for the whole machinery of the Executive. The King can do no wrong. But his Ministers are responsible to the House of Commons; and this particular Minister had been granted—by the House of Commons, I suppose, if not by them, then by himself, after arrangement with Mrs. Boulger— constitutional power by which all manner of things could have been done to Arthur Lawson.
But it has been remarked by more than one great authority that there is often a great difference between constitutional theory and practice; and the Home Secretary accompanied Arthur Lawson like a tame dog.
He was led through the hall, an exit that he did not usually take—it is reserved for lesser men. Lawson motioned him to get into the big motor-car outside, and gave the driver an address. It was the address of the offices of Durrant’s. On the way the conversation between the two men was brief and conducted in very short sentences, and without heat. It referred to the Katanga affair. And that interesting financial operation had been thoroughly recalled to Williams’s memory long before they reached the City, so that in the last bit of the drive up Queen Victoria Street Lawson had time to change the subject.
“By the way, Mr. Williams,” he said, “I’ll tell you why I’m taking you to Durrant’s. I want you to be good enough to go up to Mr. McAuley’s office—you’ll find he’s in—and give him this note. Don’t think me rude—I haven’t sealed it up. It’s quite simple. It’s only suggesting that he should make me allotment of a certain number of shares when the new flotation comes on. You’ll find he’ll be delighted to do it. Delighted to give you a little word for me to that effect. It must be signed by him, of course.”
“But I don’t know,” began poor Williams, as the car drew up at the door of the big offices.
“I do,” cut in Arthur Lawson sharply. “I know how he values Dow’s Patent—and other things. And you might tell him,” he added, looking out of the window as Williams stood on the doorstep, “that you and I are both unfortunately pressed for another engagement, and that” (he looked at his watch) “I shall have to be off in exactly ten minutes. I only want a line or two—signed. Mr. McAuley knows the value of even a few lines in a man’s own writing and signed.”
Arthur Lawson, alone in the car, leant back in an attitude rare with him. The morning had morally fatigued him. But he was going through with it. It was like driving a pack of cattle. He wouldn’t stop and let them spread.
It was not fully eight minutes when Williams appeared again.
“Thank you, Mr. Williams,” said Mr. Lawson, taking a fine embossed envelope from his hand. “Pray come in, and we’ll be going on to my house. But wait a moment——” He pulled out the paper within bearing McAuley’s signature, and nodded contentedly as he read it. “Yes, that’s right,” he said, and folded it up again. Then he pushed back the glass for a moment, said to his chauffeur, “Home!” slid forward the front pane again and leant back again at his ease.
“You won’t be hard on us, Mr. Lawson?” said Williams again anxiously. There was no reply. I am not sure even whether Lawson made a slight movement of his head. The Home Secretary hoped he did. And thus did the great financier, one of the very greatest of our financiers, conduct to Lawson House one of our most exalted statesmen.
There was little more to be done. Mr. Williams was motioned through the front door with just enough courtesy. He was not driven through it. The host proposed to lead the way, as he knew it better. Mr. Williams found himself once more in the presence of Wilfrid Halterton, who half rose, and then sank back again, as though not eager for any renewal of friendship.
But when the door of that little study was shut, the master of the house pulled a small table forward, asked Halterton to take a chair at his side, Williams to sit opposite him, and then began.
“Mr. Williams, I have brought you here on a matter of important business, and I shall not detain you long. I have asked Mr. Halterton to be here, that he might hear my proposal and what I hope will be your acceptation of it.”
Williams bowed slightly, but the grievous anxiety of his expression remained, beneath the surface of his large good-fellow face.
“Mr. Halterton and I were talking over these matters just before I had the pleasure of seeing you at the Home Office. I will speak for him—he has empowered me to do so. He thinks after what has passed that it would be better that I should speak for him—eh, Halterton?”
“Yes,” said Halterton. “Yes, certainly.”
“My proposition is a simple one. I already hold Mr. McAuley’s kind promise in the matter of the allotment. I trust he will not think it a detriment to have the name of Schwarz and Co. behind him, and my own name, for that matter. What I shall do with that property need not now concern us. I calculate that it will provide, after the new Television scheme shall be in full working order, a permanent income, allowing for taxation, equivalent to or greater than that which Mr. Halterton was to have received as your General Manager. It will be a more permanent possession than a salary, and will happily not involve Mr. Halterton in work that might not suit his age. Leisure is an invaluable thing.”
“However, as there has been a distinct promise that Mr. Halterton should have the General Managership, which I shall take it you now prefer to fill in another manner …”
“I never said,” broke in Williams, “I mean, McAuley never said …”
“In another manner,” repeated Lawson, frowning severely, “compensation in cash must of course be forthcoming. But I know I am speaking Mr. Halterton’s own kind intentions when I tell you that no more than two years’ purchase will be demanded. That is, the sum of twenty thousand pounds. When Mr. Halterton shall have received a letter from Durrants Company advising him of the change of intention and of the Directors paying such compensation, and when I shall have received the shares to be allotted to me— for which, you will understand” (he spoke these blunt words
staccato) “I do not intend to offer any consideration save Dow’s — I will exchange for them my property in Dow’s Patent. Until that time I retain everything in my possession, and will not listen to any further negotiation.”
He rose, and Halterton rose with him.
John Williams hesitated a moment, rose at last, and did not make for the door. He looked appealingly at the tall, dark, erect figure before him. Lawson could have sworn that he was going to hear those pathetic words again: “You won’t be hard on us?” He heard them in another form.
“Where do I come in?” said Honest John Williams.
“Mr. Williams,” said Arthur Lawson, as he opened the door for him, “that is between you and Mr. James McAuley. I have no doubt your conversations will be rendered easier by the legal acumen of the Attorney-General, who is a colleague of the one and a brother of the other. There is still a very large majority of the ordinary shares, and the world is all before you—or them.”
And at dusk of that day it was the Sabbath.
1 There is a common error here which I take this opportunity to correct. The “Scandal,” as fools call it, should not be “The crude Oil-Affair” but “The Crude-Oil affair.” Carltonhurst, who got out of them at 118, asks me to put in this note.
TO
ORIANA HAYNES
This electronic edition published in July 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
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