‘My dear chap, what should I know about this man? All that I can tell you is that he came here and he was rather impertinent. I don’t mind confessing to you that he went as far as to say that he wanted to marry my sister – an altogether preposterous suggestion. So I kicked him out,’ he continued airily.
Leete sniffed.
‘The unfortunate thing is,’ he said, ‘that nobody saw you kick him out. That’s where all the trouble is going to be. I came round here expecting to find the police in possession of the place.’
His host was startled – alarmed. If the police came and he was taken to the station – and searched!
‘Just wait one moment,’ said Hermann. ‘Sit here!’
Without a word of explanation he went out through the door and closed it behind him. He went down the kitchen stairs, and turned into the dark, narrow passage which led to the wine cellar. The door was locked, but the key was in his pocket. He entered, switching on the electric light which dangled between the bins. The cellar was empty!
Hermann gasped.
There was the chair, the leather thongs, with which he had bound the drugged and helpless Gordon, lay around in confusion, as though they had been thrown hastily away; but there was no sign of Gordon Bray.
He made a careful examination of the cellar. The young man might have escaped and be in hiding; but he searched without result. The cellar was too small for a man to conceal himself, and the bins offered very little shadow to any man who might seek concealment.
He came back to the chair and looked at it, and something on the ground attracted his attention, and he stooped down and looked.
At first he thought the man had helped himself to his wine, and had spilt some on the ground. The electric light did not show him what he wanted to know, and he bent down and examined the stain at close range.
He sprang up again with a cry, for that which was splashed about the ground was blood!
He ascended the stairs slowly; he was mystified and badly frightened. Who had opened the cellar door and released the prisoner? Whose blood was it that lay upon the ground and sprinkled the chair?
‘What is the matter?’ asked Leete, as his host re-entered the dining room.
‘It was a joke,’ stammered the other. He was shaking, for twice today had the fear of death been upon him.
‘I took him into my study and gave him a drink, and he – he collapsed under it,’ he said incoherently.
‘Drugged?’ said Leete accusingly.
‘No, no, no! It was just a little too strong for him, that is all,’ protested Hermann. ‘For a joke I took him into the cellar and tied him up to a chair. I swear I meant him no harm, Leete,’ he said eagerly. ‘Come and look!’
The two men descended the stairs together, and Leete gazed in silence.
‘What is that on the floor?’ he asked.
‘Blood,’ said Hermann.
Leete shivered and drew back.
‘I don’t want to be mixed up in this,’ he said.
‘But I swear to you,’ stormed the other, ‘I know nothing about it. I left him here this morning.’
‘I don’t want to hear anything at all about it,’ said Leete, raising a protesting hand. ‘I am not in this, and know nothing of it. I most distinctly do not want to be drawn into a case of this description. Good morning!’ he said hurriedly, and made a hurried and undignified exit.
Hermann was left alone in the house.
‘My God!’ he muttered. ‘They will think I did it! The police will come here and search the place. I must wash it down.’
With feverish haste he descended to the cellar, and dragged up the chair to the daylight. He cleaned the priceless tapestry as well as he could with warm water, and set it in front of a gas stove to dry. He worked at top speed. At any moment the men of the law might call.
With great difficulty he found a pail and some water, and the paraphernalia of the charwoman, and not for the first time in his life he was engaged for ten minutes on his hands and knees in his own wine cellar removing all trace of whatever tragedy there had been.
Who could have come to the rescue? And who, having released him, would wound him? Suppose that anarchist man had come – the man he had employed to extract the secret of the combination safe from Elsie Marion? Suppose he had stolen in stealthily and discovered the prisoner? Suppose the police had already been; but no, they would not have left the house again?
In a fever of anxiety he paced the study floor, waiting for the inevitable. The evening came, but still no sign of the police. He was feeling desperately hungry; he had not eaten since breakfast, and he made a hurried toilet and went out, resolved not to return that night. He would dine at the Carlton grill. One need not dress for that, and he found himself at a little table in one of the recesses of that famous underground dining room, eating ravenously the meal which Gaston, the head waiter, put before his client.
In the next recess a merry party was dining, if he could judge from the laughter. He was too hungry to take much notice; but when the first cravings of his appetite had been assuaged he found himself with an interest in life and his surroundings. The laughter was insistent, and it grated a little on him in his present mood. Then he thought he heard his name mentioned, and half rose, straining his ears to catch what was said. He heard a voice he did not recognize.
‘Of course, it was a hateful thing to do, but I just had to do it, Miss Zeberlieff.’
Hermann knitted his brows. Who was this?
‘It was the artistic finish which circumstances demanded. Red ink wouldn’t deceive a baby; but I’ll bet it deceived him. So after I released Mr Bray …’
Hermann rose and stepped out so that he could see the diners. His sister was one, a stranger whose face he dimly remembered was another, and Gordon Bray was a notable third. They looked up and saw him staring down at them, and his sister, with a smile, caught his eye.
‘You seem to have had quite an exciting day, Hermann,’ she said with her sweetest smile.
CHAPTER XXII
Hermann found Leete at his club, and explained the joke. It required some explaining, and it was a long time before Leete put down the arm-length’s barrier which he had erected in that moment of fancied peril.
‘You shouldn’t mix yourself up with that sort of thing at all, Zeberlieff,’ he said disapprovingly. ‘Whatever you do, keep away from the police. You can’t afford to be mixed up with them – particularly if you’ve friends, as I have. There’s my friend the Duke –’
‘Oh, cut out your ducal friend for this evening!’ said Hermann wearily; ‘I’m sick to death of everything, and I do not think that I can stand your gospel according to Burke.’
‘Have you had dinner?’ asked Leete, anxious to mollify him.
Hermann laughed mirthlessly. ‘I have indeed,’ he said.
‘Then come along and smoke; there’s a lot of men up there who will be glad to talk to you. Hubbard’s there, by the way,’ he said.
Hermann nodded. Hubbard! Here was another proposition.
‘Everybody is talking about that fellow Kerry; there’s a man here from Bolt and Waudry – young Harry Bolt. Their people are in an awful funk. They say that the whole of their takings for the past two days have amounted to twenty pounds. I tell you, unless we can put a stopper to King Kerry, it is ruin for us.’
‘For you individually?’
Leete hesitated.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I am not such a fool as that. My liability is limited by shares, but I’ve a much bigger holding in Goulding’s than is pleasant to think about at this particular moment. The only thing to do,’ he went on, ‘is to get at King Kerry.’
‘How is his trade?’
‘Bigger than ever!’ said the other promptly. ‘All London is flocking to his store.’
There were many gloomy faces at the Merchants’ Club that night; all the great emporium proprietors were gathered together to exchange lugubrious notes.
‘There’s old Modelson!’ said Leete,
leading the way into the smoke-room. ‘They say he’ll file his petition next week.’
‘So soon?’ asked the other.
Leete nodded. ‘You hardly know how hand to mouth some of these businesses are. There ain’t half a dozen of us who can lay our hands upon any capital whatever, and even we should hesitate to use it just now.’
‘He offered me a hundred and twenty thousand pounds for the business,’ a man was saying, the centre of a little group of compassionate souls. ‘I asked him a hundred and eighty. He told me I’d be glad to take a hundred before I was through, and upon my word I think he’s right.’
The senior partner of Frail and Brackenbury, a tall, good-looking man, with a sharp, short, grey beard, walked over to Leete.
‘I suppose he is hitting you pretty bad?’ he asked.
Leete nodded.
There was no need to explain who ‘he’ was.
‘As bad as it can be,’ he said; ‘but we’re all in the swim. I suppose it doesn’t affect you?’
‘He bought me out,’ said the other quietly, ‘and if he hadn’t I don’t know that the sale would have affected our business. You see we do a line which is rather superior to that which –’ He hesitated, desiring to offend none.
‘That’s his scheme,’ said one of the club-men. ‘Can’t you see it? Every business he has bought spells “quality” – Q-U-A-L-I-T-Y – throughout. Wherever a firm was associated with quality, he bought it, paying a heavy price for it. It is only we poor devils who live by cutting one another’s throats that he can afford to fight. You see, we’re not quality, dear old chap!’
He turned to the sad-looking Mr Bolt, of Bolt and Waudry. ‘We’re just big quantity and average quality. What I buy at your shop I can buy at any shop in the street. We are the people he is hitting at. We cannot say at our stores as old Frail can say,’ he nodded to the grey-bearded man, ‘that we have something here which you cannot buy elsewhere. If we had, why, the Yankee would have bought us up at our own price. He has gone out for quality, and he is paying money for it. And, were it just a question of common truck –’
‘I’ll have you to know, my dear sir,’ said the sad Mr Bolt very firmly and impressively, ‘that we supply nothing but the best.’
‘Yes, yes, I know,’ said the other with a grin; ‘but it is just the ordinary best, the same best as you can get everywhere else. He can buy it too, by the ton. He is selling your best at half your prices. You’ve been making sixty per cent profit: he is probably making a five per cent loss at some hour of the day, and selling square on an average. I’ve got one piece of advice to offer to everybody in this room’ – he spoke with considerable emphasis, and with the evidence of self-consciousness which comes to a man who knows that all ears are turned in his direction – ‘if King Kerry has offered you money for your businesses, you go right along tomorrow morning and take what he will give you, because if this goes on much longer we’re going to wear a channel in the pavement between Oxford Street and Bankruptcy Chambers.’
‘I say fight!’ said Leete. ‘We can hold on as long as he! Don’t you agree?’
He turned to Hermann Zeberlieff.
‘I certainly do not,’ said Zeberlieff briefly. ‘You know my views; he can sell all of you out. There may be twenty ways of smashing the big “L Trust”, but that is not one of them. My suggestion is that you should beat him at his own game.’
‘What is that?’ asked a dozen voices.
‘Under-selling,’ was the calm reply.
A chorus of derisive laughter met him.
‘Under-selling,’ said Hermann Zeberlieff. ‘I assure you I am quite sane. Make a pool and under-sell him. You can do it with greater ease than you think.’
‘But what about the shareholders?’ asked a voice. ‘What about dividends? How are we going to explain at the end of the half year that instead of a surplus we show a considerable deficit, and that we may have to issue debenture stock? Do you think shareholders are going to stand that?’
‘No, no, no!’ – agreement with this view came from various corners of the room.
‘They’ve got to stand something,’ said Hermann with a smile. ‘Looking at it from a purely outsider’s point of view, I can’t see how they’ll get dividends anyway. The suggestion that I was going to offer when you interrupted me was –?’
A sudden silence fell upon the room, and Hermann turned to seek an explanation.
King Kerry stood in the doorway, his eyes searching the room for a face. He found it at last. It was the white-bearded Modelson who stood alone near the fireplace, his head bent upon his arm, dejected and sorrowful to see. With scarcely a glance at the others, King Kerry crossed the room and came to the old man’s side.
‘I want you, Mr Modelson,’ he said gently.
The old man looked at him with a pathetic attempt at a smile.
‘I am afraid you do!’ he said apologetically.
Everybody knew that old Modelson had been the first to raise the flag of rebellion against the encroachment of the big ‘L Trust’ upon the sacred dominion of Oxford Street. His store stood on the next corner to that occupied by Goulding’s, but long before the arrival of Kerry his had been a decaying property. Yet so long had he been established and so straight was his business record that it was natural he should have been chosen as chairman of the Federated Board.
Leete had seen the wisdom of electing him chairman. His concern was the shakiest of all and his failure which, as all men knew, was only deferred, must shake the credit of the Federation to a very damaging extent. And fail he must, and not one of the men to whom he had applied for assistance could help him. He had demanded what even his friends agreed was an exorbitant price for the business, and had been offered half. Now it seemed to the onlookers watching the two men talking earnestly by the fireplace, that the old man would surrender and take whatever he could to save his good name.
There were men in that room who hoped fervently that he would agree to the terms which Kerry imposed. Failure would break the old man’s heart.
Their talk ended, and after a while Kerry shook hands and departed, leaving the old man with his head in the air and his shoulders thrown back and something like a smile on his face. They longed to ask him what had resulted from the conference, but he was the doyen of them all, a man of rigid ideas as to the proprieties.
He saved them any trouble, however, for presently – ‘Gentlemen!’ he said in his rich old voice, and there was silence.
‘Gentlemen, I think you are entitled to know that Mr Kerry has purchased my business.’
There was a little murmur of congratulation, not unmixed with relief. But what was the price? It was too much to expect that this old man who had been so close and uncommunicative all his life would be loquacious now; and yet, to their surprise he was.
‘Mr Kerry has very handsomely paid me my full price,’ he said.
‘It’s a climb down!’ whispered Leete excitedly. ‘He’s going to pay –’
Hermann laughed savagely.
‘Climb down, you fool!’ he smiled. ‘Why, he’s going to make you pay for his generosity – all of you will contribute to the extra money he’s giving Modelson. Don’t you understand? Suppose old Modelson had failed – there would have been an outcry; an old-established firm ruined by unfair competition; a pathetic old man, white-haired and white-bearded, driven to the workhouse after a life spent in honourable toil. It would have made him unpopular, set the tide of public opinion against him, and possibly upset all his plans. You don’t know King Kerry!’
‘Anyway, I’m going to him tomorrow with my old offer,’ said Leete stubbornly.
‘What did he agree to pay before?’ asked Zeberlieff.
‘Three-quarters of a million,’ replied the other.
Hermann nodded.
‘He’ll offer you exactly a hundred thousand less than that,’ he said.
Well might he boast that he knew Kerry, for when, on the following morning, supremely confident, Leete elbowed his w
ay through the gaping crowd that was staring through the window of the Jewel House and came to Kerry’s presence, the offer ‘The King’ made him was exactly the sum that Hermann had prophesied.
Nor was Leete the only man who mistook the generosity of the other, nor the only one to be painfully undeceived.
CHAPTER XXIII
Elsie Marion was a busy girl and a happy one. The green on the map was spreading. She called them the ‘marks of conquest’, and took a pride in their extension. Then came the day of days when the papers were filled with the colossal deal which King Kerry had carried through – the purchase of Lord George Fallington’s enormous estate. Lord Fallington was a millionaire peer, who derived an enormous income from ground rents in the very heart of the West End of London. He may have been urged to the action he took by the fear of new punitive legislation against landowners, and there certainly was justification for his fear, for at the time the government in power was the famous Jagger-Shubert Coalition which, with its huge democratic measures to be provided for out of revenue and its extraordinary demands in the matter of the navy (a rare combination in any government), was framing its estimate with an avaricious eye upon the land.
Whatever was the cause, Lord Fallington sold out, and when, following that event Bilsbury’s fell into the hands of the Trust, the battle was half won.
One day Kerry came into the office hurriedly, and there was a look on his face which the girl had never seen before. He closed the door behind him without a word, and crossed the room to the steel door which opened into the front office, that bemirrored apartment in which stood the great safe of the Trust.
She looked up astonished as the steel door clanged behind him.
Only once since she had entered his employ had he passed that door, and she had accompanied him, standing with her back to the safe at his request whilst he manipulated the combination lock.
He was gone ten minutes, and when he returned he carried in his hand a small envelope. He stood in the centre of the room, lit a match, and applied it to one corner of the letter. He put his foot on the ashes as they fell upon the square of linoleum and crushed them to powder. This done he uttered a sigh of infinite relief, and smiled at the girl’s evident concern.
The Man Who Bought London Page 13