The Man Who Bought London
Page 16
He took from a large portfolio a series of drawings, and laid them on the table before the crowding pressmen.
‘You will see,’ he said, ‘that in point of design we have copied the elevation of some of the most beautiful hotels in London. Indeed, I think we may say that we have gone beyond that. These buildings will be absolutely complete in themselves. Tenants will only be admitted who agree to the co-operative system. Stores providing every commodity will be found in the building itself. There will be baths, gymnasia, playgrounds, a hospital, a crèche, and a free library. Each building,’ he said briefly, ‘will be self-governed, will contain its doctor, its dentist, and its trained nurses, all of whom will be at the disposal of the citizens of this little community free of all charge.
‘A system of elevators will make the highest floor as accessible as the lowest – indeed, the highest rents will be for the top floors. All the employees in the community will be subject to the discipline of a committee which will be elected by the tenants themselves. Although we shall provide fireplaces, the whole of the building will be run on a system of central heating; hot water and electric light will be included in the rent, and we hope to give every family six thousand cubic feet of space. Each building,’ he concluded, ‘will have accommodation for a thousand families.’
‘What is your object, Mr Kerry,’ asked a curious reporter, ‘in buying so much valuable property in the centre of the West End and then destroying it? Isn’t it so much money thrown away?’
Kerry shook his head.
‘What happens,’ he asked, ‘when a policeman rides his horse into the centre of a crowd? Is it not a fact that the crowd swells out and covers almost a third as much space as before? At any rate, this is a fact: that a thousand square feet stolen from the heart of London means that ten thousand feet more are occupied on its outskirts. Briefly,’ he went on, ‘in the heart of London you are restricted as to space. There are many businesses which would willingly and gladly extend their present premises to twice the size they at present occupy but for the prohibitive cost, and very often the absolute impossibility of securing adjacent premises renders this impossible. We have said “You have got to get out of this anyway,” and now we have given the firms which have been disturbed – and which generally are now mine,’ he said with a smile, ‘an opportunity of taking space adequate to their needs. People are coming to the centre to shop – do not doubt that – this is the rule of all towns. We merely extend the boundaries of the exclusive shopping district and give an incentive to private enterprises to assist us in our work of beautifying London.
‘I am satisfied as to this,’ he said. ‘That we shall have the satisfaction of knowing that we shall enrich thousands and impoverish none by what we have done. You may now understand my action in regard to my sales. It was necessary. Tack and Brighten, Modelson and Goulding, they abutted into the square of my dreams; they are now my exclusive property. I bought Goulding’s this morning,’ he said with a little twitch of his mouth at the recollection of an agitated and almost tearful Mr Leete, making his unconditional surrender.
‘My sale will continue until the end of the year, until, in fact, I am ready to pull down and start rebuilding. And in the meantime,’ he added, ‘I have guaranteed the dividends of all the firms which I have not purchased, but which are directly affected as a result of my action.’
Here was enough for London to discuss; sufficient to set heads shaking and nodding and tongues wagging from one end of London to the other. Here began, too, the London land boom which was the feature of the memorable year. It was found that King Kerry had acquired great blocks of property here and there. Sometimes they comprised whole streets, but he had left enough for the land speculator to build his fortunes upon. Automatically, the value of land rose in certain districts by one hundred and two hundred per cent, and it is said, though there is little evidence to support the fact, that in one week King Kerry himself, on behalf of his syndicate, made a profit of over a million pounds from the sale of land which he had recently included in his purchases, but for which he himself had no immediate use.
It is a fact that when his plan became generally known he received the heartiest co-operation from the Government, and, though he might not touch Crown freehold, every facility was given to him to further his scheme.
He had planned a garden city to extend in an unbroken line from Southwark to Rotherhithe and on to Deptford – a new City Beautiful, rising out of the dust of squalid, insanitary cottages and jerry-built dwellings. His plan was given in detail in an issue of the Evening Herald, which attained a circulation limited only by the capacity of its output.
It was obvious now that money had flowed like water into London, and that it was not alone the six men who had set out to accomplish so much who had assisted in the fulfilment of King Kerry’s plans, but all the great insurance companies of America, all the big railways, all the great industrial concerns had contributed largely.
It was computed by a financial authority that the big ‘L Trust’ had incurred liabilities (and presumably they were in a position to meet those liabilities) amounting to eighty million pounds. Somebody asked King Kerry if this were so.
‘I will tell you,’ he answered good-humouredly, ‘after I have counted the change in my pocket.’
King Kerry rented a little house in Cadogan Square. It is characteristic of the man that he lived on the property of others. It is also remarkable that he – the owner of millions – should have hired the house furnished, but his action may be explained by his favourite dictum, ‘Never buy what you don’t want, and never hire what you need.’
He did not want either the house or furniture. The house was situated in a region beyond the scope of his speculations.
Here, with an elderly housekeeper to attend to him during the few hours he was at home, he secured the quiet that was necessary to him. The house was not taken in his name, and none of the people who dwelt in the Square had the slightest idea of the identity of the tenant who usually returned in the middle of the night and afforded them no greater opportunity for recognition than the few seconds it took him to step from his front door into his closed car.
Even Elsie Marion, who knew the whereabouts of the house, had never been there, nor addressed him there. So that when he sat at his frugal dinner, and his elderly servitor brought a message that a gentleman wished to see Mr Kerry, he was pardonably annoyed.
‘I told him there wasn’t any such person living here, sir,’ said the housekeeper, who was as ignorant of her master’s identity as the rest of the Square.
Possibly a reporter who had hunted him down, thought Kerry. ‘Show him into the drawing room,’ he said, and finished his dinner at leisure. The irritation quickly passed – after all, there was no longer any necessity for concealment. In a week’s time he would be on his way to the Continent to take the rest which he felt was so necessary. All things were shaping well.
The magnates of Oxford Street had fallen, the plan for the rebuilding of London was public property; now was the time, if ever, to take things easy.
He put down his serviette, walked upstairs to the first landing and entered the little drawing room.
A man was standing by the mantelpiece with his back to Kerry, and as the ‘man who bought London’ closed the door he turned.
It was Hermann Zeberlieff. For the space of a minute the two faced each other, neither speaking.
‘To what am I indebted?’ began Kerry.
Hermann interrupted him, almost roughly. ‘Let us cut all that out,’ he said, ‘and come right down to business.’
‘I do not know that I have any business that I wish to discuss with you,’ said King Kerry, quietly.
‘Oh, yes, you have, Mr Kerry,’ drawled Hermann, mockingly, ‘you probably know that I am in a very bad place. What opportunity I had you most ruthlessly destroyed. I was in your infernal syndicate.’
‘Not by my wish,’ said the other. ‘I did not know of it until you were in.’
‘That is no business of mine.’ King Kerry was brief; he wasted no words with his visitor.
‘But it is very much a business of mine,’ said Hermann quickly. ‘Now, you have to assist me – you’ve put me into an awful mess, and you must please lend a helping hand to pull me out. You are, as I happen to know, a particularly soft-hearted man, and you would not desire to see a fellow-creature reduced to living within his income.’
There was little softness in King Kerry’s face. The humour of the other, such as it was, made no appeal to him. His lips were set hard, his eyes cold and forbidding.
‘I will do nothing for you,’ he said. ‘Nothing – nothing!’
Hermann shrugged his shoulders.
‘Then I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘that I shall have to force you.’
‘Force me?’ A contemptuous smile played about the grim face of the grey-haired man.
‘Force you,’ repeated the other. ‘You see, Mr King Kerry, you have a wife –’
‘We will not discuss her,’ said King Kerry harshly.
‘Unfortunately, I must discuss her,’ insisted Hermann. His tone was soft and gentle, almost caressing. ‘You see, she has some claim on me. I feel a certain responsibility towards her, remembering the honoured name she bore before she married you, and,’ he added carefully, ‘before you deserted her.’
The other made no reply.
‘Before you deserted her,’ repeated Hermann. ‘It was a peculiarly unhappy business, was it not? And I fear you did not behave with that genial courtesy, that largeness of heart, which the Press today tell me are your chief characteristics.’
‘I behaved fairly to her,’ said Kerry steadily. ‘She tried to ruin me, even went into competition against me behind my back and used the knowledge she had secured as my wife to that end. She was an infamous woman.’
‘Is,’ murmured the other.
‘She is, then,’ said King Kerry. ‘If you come to appeal in her name, you may as well appeal to this wall.’
Hermann nodded.
‘But suppose I produce your wife to the admiring gaze of London; suppose I say “This person is Mrs King Kerry, the unbeloved wife of Mr King Kerry,” and so-and-so and so forth?’
‘That would not shake my determination,’ said Kerry. ‘You cannot use that lever to force me into giving you money.’
‘We shall see!’ said the other. He picked up his hat and favoured Kerry with a little bow and walked from the room.
King Kerry stood as if rooted to the ground long after the door had slammed upon his visitor, and the face of the millionaire was blanched and old.
CHAPTER XXVI
Hember Street, Commercial Road, has long since been given over to the stranger within the gate. Great gaunt ‘models’, which are models in ugliness, models in cheerless drabness, but never models of what domestic comfort should be, raised their unshapely, lopsided heads to the grey skies, and between model and model are untidy doorways through which, all the time, pass in and out never-ending strings of ugly men and stodgy, vacant-faced children.
Here you may catch the sound of a dozen tongues; every language that is spoken from the Baltic to the Caspian, and from the Ural Mountains to the Finnish shore is repeated in the jibber-jabber of these uncleanly men and frowsy girl-women. The neighbourhood is for the most part populated by respectable and honest (if unsavoury) people, hard-working and industrious in a sense which the average working-class man of London would not understand, for it is an industry which rises at five and ends its work when smarting eyes and reeling brain make further effort impossible.
Yet there is a fair sprinkling of the Continental criminal classes to be found here, and Hermann Zeberlieff went armed to his interview. It was of his seeking. For some time past he had been under the impression that the house in Park Lane was being watched. He could not afford to bring Micheloff, that little pseudo-Frenchman with the blotchy face and the little eyes, to the notice of the watchers.
Without knocking Zeberlieff passed through an open door, along an uncarpeted hall, and mounted the stairs to the third floor of one of the houses.
He tapped on a door and a cheerful voice said: ‘Entrez!’
Micheloff, in his shirt sleeves, smoking a long, thin cigar, was neither heroic nor domestic. He was just commonplace.
‘Come in!’ he roared – his joviality was expressed in measure of sound. ‘Come in, mon vieux!’
He dusted a rickety chair with great ostentation, but Hermann ignored the civility.
The room was large and simply furnished – a bed, a table, a couple of chairs, a couple of trunks well labelled, a picture of President Carnot and a little glass ikon over the mantelpiece seemed to make this place ‘home’ for Micheloff.
‘Lock the door,’ said Hermann. ‘I have very important business, and I do not desire intrusion.’
Obediently the smaller man turned the key.
‘My friend,’ said Hermann, ‘I have big work for you – the best work in the world so far as payment is concerned. There is a thousand pounds for you and another thousand for distribution amongst your friends – it is the last piece of work I shall ask you to do. If it succeeds I shall be beyond the necessity for your help; if I fail I shall be beyond its scope.’
‘You shall succeed, my ancient,’ said the short man, enthusiastically. ‘I will work for you with greater fervour since now I know that you are one with me in spirit. Ah! pupil of Le Cinq!’ he shook his finger in heavy jocularity. ‘What shall we teach you that you cannot teach us?’
Hermann smiled. He was never indifferent to praise – even the praise of a confessed cut-throat. ‘There must be no killing,’ he said. ‘I am through with that – even now the infernal police are continuing their inquiries into the death of the girl Gritter.’
‘So much the better,’ said the other heartily. ‘I am a babe – these things distress me. I have a soft heart. I could weep.’ There were tears in his eyes.
‘Don’t weep, you fool!’
Hermann hated weeping. It was another of his pet abominations. The sight of tears lashed him to frantic desperation.
Micheloff spread out his fat hands.
‘Excellency!’ he said with great impression, ‘I do not weep.’
‘Listen to me,’ said Hermann, lowering his voice. ‘Do you know King Kerry?’
The other nodded.
‘You know his office?’
Micheloff shrugged his shoulders.
‘Who does not know the office of the great King Kerry – the window, the mirrors, and the safe full of millions, ma foi?’
‘You will find precious few millions there,’ he said dryly. ‘But you will find much that will be valuable to me.’
Micheloff looked dubious.
‘It is a great undertaking,’ he said – the conversation was in the staccato French of Marseilles – ‘the guard – all the circumstances are against success. And the safe – it is combination – yes?’
Hermann nodded.
‘Before it was combination,’ said the other man regretfully, ‘and there was a death regrettable.’
‘I have reason to think that he changes the combination every week – it was probably changed yesterday. I will give you two. You may try –’ A light came to his eyes. ‘I wonder,’ he said to himself, then slowly, ‘try “Elsie”.’
Micheloff nodded.
‘That is but one,’ he said.
‘That is all I can give you now,’ said Hermann, rising. ‘If that fails you must use your blowpipe. I leave the details to you. Only this – I want a pa
cket you will find marked “Private”. Leave everything relating to the business, but bring all that is marked “Private”.’
He left behind him two hundred pounds and Micheloff would have embraced him at the sight of the money, but the other pushed him back roughly.
‘I do not like your Continental customs,’ he said, and added, to appease the humiliated Russian, ‘I have lost things like that.’
He went downstairs to the accompaniment of a roar of laughter. It was an excellent joke on Micheloff – he repeated it with discreet modification at his club that night.
The faithful man-servant, Martin, was waiting up when Hermann arrived home.
‘Get me a strong cup of coffee, and go to bed,’ he said.
He went up to his study and switched on the light and folded his coat over the back of a chair. It was one of his eccentricities that he valeted himself.
He drew a chair up to the desk and sat, his chin on his palm, looking vacantly before him until Martin came up with the coffee. ‘Leave it and go to bed,’ he said.
‘What time in the morning, sir?’ asked the man.
Hermann jerked his head impatiently. ‘I will write the hour on the slate,’ he said. He had a small porcelain slate affixed to his bedroom door to convey his belated instructions. He stirred his coffee mechanically, and drank it steaming hot. Then he addressed himself to the correspondence that awaited him. It was characteristic of him that, face to face with ruin as he was, he sent generous cheques to the appeals which came to him from hospitals and charitable institutions. The few letters he wrote in his big, sprawling handwriting were brief. Presently he had finished all that was necessary and he resumed his old attitude.
He remained thus till the church clock struck four, and then he passed into his bedroom, locking the door behind him.
CHAPTER XXVII
‘Oh, Mr Kerry, You can make me merry; Buy me Trafalgar Square, I want to keep my chicken there! Oh, Mr Kerry, Just jot my wishes down; I can comb my moustache with the Marble Arch If you’ll lend me London Town.’