Kept

by D. J. Taylor

  The company’s engine having arrived at Folkestone, the railway safe remains under constant guard until such time as the bullion boxes can be removed for checking and shipment. One key is held by the station superintendent; the other is kept under lock and key at the company’s office on the harbour pier. The weight of each chest is checked against its measure in London. Additionally, the station superintendent has been instructed to conduct a close inspection of the seal. Once placed in the care of the captain and crew of the steamer, the bullion is thenceforth conveyed to Boulogne. Here it passes into the custody of the Messageries Impériales and is once again checked with regard to its weight before proceeding to the Gare du Nord and the Bank of France, where the boxes can be collected by the Paris merchants.

  I should add that Messrs. Abell, Spielmann and Bult, with each of whom I had some private conversation, professed themselves thoroughly satisfied with these arrangements, Mr. Bult in particular being convinced of the impossibility of any larceny being perpetrated while the shipment was in the company’s hands. The merit of Mr. Chubb’s safe, I am assured, is that a cracksman has nothing to work upon save the keyhole. Further, a fully loaded bullion box requires two men to carry it. In the unlikely event of any theft being committed, the outrage would become apparent as soon as the safe was opened at Folkestone. To lay hands on the stamps of merchants such as Messrs. Abell, Spielmann and Bult would, as Mr. Bult asserts, demand nothing less than the burglary of their vaults.

  I trust that this information is of use, and would be glad to supplement it with any further details that may be required.

  Having the honour to remain your most obedient servant,

  I am, sir, yours most faithfully,

  JAMES HARKER

  Secretary to the Board

  Spring had come, finally and after much hesitation, to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and there were daffodils out upon the green grass and gillyflowers blooming in the window boxes of the ground-floor sets. This being Lincoln’s Inn, where an air of general severity prevails, they did so with an unconscionable meekness, as if they feared that some legal eminence—Mr. Crabbe perhaps—would descend in wrath from his chambers and present them with a writ for unlicensed blossoming or occupying too great a proportion of space. Mr. Pardew, hurrying through the great black gate on his way to see Mr. Crabbe, saw neither the daffodils nor the gillyflowers, saw nothing, in fact, other than the several phantoms that rose up and stalked through his imagination. Though he strode with his customary vigour, had walked all the way to High Holborn from his office in Carter Lane brandishing his stick as if all manner of unseen enemies were about to leap up at him, Mr. Pardew was not happy in his mind. There are some men who pride themselves on their autonomy, of having their progress through the world laid out in a manner that they themselves have arranged, and Mr. Pardew was such a one. He was the kind of man who, if he wished to have the pleasure of dining with a certain gentleman, would make sure that the invitation came from himself, or if he wished to pursue a certain course of commercial action would insist that the business was of his own devising. Such a resolve to follow his own inclinations had perhaps contributed, some years before, to his falling out with the late lamented Mr. Fardel.

  Just at this moment, on the other hand, Mr. Pardew was on his way to an engagement to which he had been summarily bidden not once but twice, and he did not like it. To be sure, he had begun by treating the affair with his customary insouciance. A letter had come from Mr. Crabbe suggesting that he might present himself at the former’s chambers at such and such a time, and Mr. Pardew had…ignored it. Then a second letter had come repeating the suggestion advanced in the first in such a way that it became a request. This too, after a certain amount of reflection and calculation, Mr. Pardew had ignored. Finally, a third letter had come, whose tone was so unambiguous that not even Mr. Pardew, however insouciant the remark he pronounced over it to his clerk, could deign to throw it in the wastepaper basket. This, consequently, was the chain of events that brought him to Lincoln’s Inn Fields on a bright March morning with the breeze springing this way and that through the newly risen grass, gnawing savagely at his finger ends and waving his stick at the shifting air in a manner quite worthy of Don Quixote with the windmills.

  In truth Mr. Pardew was not greatly alarmed at the prospect of facing Mr. Crabbe in his den. He had taken up arms against Mr. Crabbe before and knew that he had had the better of him. The letter whose production had so enraged and cowed Mr. Crabbe lay still in the pocket of his coat. This repeated summons to the old lawyer’s presence was but a consequence of that victory. Moreover, he had an idea of what Mr. Crabbe might say to him and what he himself might say in reply. Yet there were other anxieties revolving in his mind, other schemes on which he hesitated to embark but which could not long be postponed, which agitated him to a much greater degree. The conflict that these precipitated in his mind became so great that at the door to Mr. Crabbe’s chambers he halted, made a great slash with his cane at some chimerical adversary and muttered to himself something to the effect that he could not be eaten by Mr. Crabbe, and that this gentleman might, if he did not take care, be eaten himself. Having taken himself in hand in this way, he rapped noisily on Mr. Crabbe’s brass knocker, was admitted with such alacrity that it appeared the old clerk had known of his coming and been expressly stationed behind the door, divested himself of his coat—the stick he retained in his hand—and whipped smartly up the stairs to Mr. Crabbe’s room.

  Mr. Crabbe was awaiting Mr. Pardew. In fact, having seen him coming across the grass from his window, he had been able to make certain preparations in advance of his visit. In particular, he had envisioned a ruse not uncommonly thought up by gentlemen who wish to interview other gentlemen and appear to some advantage: he had with his own hands taken the chair that stood in the centre of his room for the use of visitors and propelled it behind a screen that faced onto one of the bookcases. This meant, according to Mr. Crabbe’s reasoning, that Mr. Pardew would be compelled to stand in front of him and should, additionally, find it very difficult to avoid Mr. Crabbe’s gaze. In this assumption Mr. Crabbe was, as it turned out, altogether wrong. Mr. Pardew, coming into the room with the old clerk panting at his heels, saw immediately the nature of the ruse and decided that he would have nothing to do with it. Shaking hands with Mr. Crabbe and muttering some civility, informing the clerk that, yes, he would have a cup of tea if such were procurable, he took himself first to the fireplace, where he stood for a moment warming his hands, and then to the window, where he appeared to take a very keen interest in a cherry tree whose burgeoning upper branches could be seen perhaps twenty yards away. Mr. Crabbe, seating himself behind the desk from which he had risen to shake Mr. Pardew’s hand, was not quite put out by this cavalier treatment, but he was aware that his preliminary stratagem had failed and that an advantage could only be secured by the ingenuity of his tongue. Accordingly, he shuffled the papers on his desk—papers which related to his recent dealings with the firm of Pardew & Co.—and did his best to attract Mr. Pardew’s attention.

  “A very fine day,” Mr. Pardew observed from the window, where he was still engrossed in the cherry tree. “Upon my word, I think I never knew it so fine for March.”

  “I don’t doubt it is a fine day,” Mr. Crabbe deposed, with a blandness that he did not at all feel.

  “By the by, I saw His Grace the Duke of——the other night. He seemed to be in extraordinarily good spirits.”

  Mr. Crabbe, staring at his visitor’s back, the front half of him still being turned towards the window, felt that this allusion was too much to be borne. He laid the papers down on the desk in front of him with a little crash of his fingers and coughed.

  “Mr. Pardew. I have asked to see you because a very serious matter has arisen with regard to your affairs.”

  Mr. Pardew turned abruptly from his station by the window. “Indeed? Anything that concerns my business is serious to me. By all means say what you have to say, and you shal
l find me a willing listener.”

  Mr. Crabbe nodded at this courtesy, which was far more like the kind of thing to which he was accustomed, but at the same time he hesitated, for there was a difference between what he knew or suspected of Mr. Pardew’s affairs and what he could decently insinuate. A gentleman, after all, does not invite onto his premises another gentleman with whom he had business dealings and accuse him of being a thief. On the other hand, he may very easily introduce into his conversation a presumption of thievery which the presumed thief can either acknowledge or deny as he chooses, while being aware that this presumption exists. Mr. Crabbe, to be blunt, remembering the course of their last meeting, was wondering how far he could go and what might be the consequence if, in a manner of speaking, he went too far.

  The facts of the case were these. In the course of the past two months, relying solely on information provided by Mr. Pardew, Mr. Crabbe, or rather Mr. Crabbe’s clerks, had written letters to perhaps half a dozen persons at addresses in the north of England requesting payments of debts owed to the firm of Pardew & Co. Somewhat to Mr. Crabbe’s surprise, these debts had all been paid, either by cash, cheque or a combination of the two, the payment being made either by post (the letter generally lamenting Mr. Pardew’s exigent attitude towards his debtors) or by emissary to Mr. Crabbe’s office. In each case the money or moneys having been received by Mr. Crabbe and transferred into Crabbe & Enderby’s bank account, where all the firm’s receipts were customarily deposited, Mr. Crabbe, having first deducted his commission, had written a further cheque in favour of Pardew & Co. How Mr. Crabbe now regretted having written those cheques! For in the fullness of time word had come back from Mr. Crabbe’s bank that one of the cheques had been inscribed on a form that, it was alleged, had been stolen from the person on whose account it was drawn, and that two of the banknotes were forgeries. All this was necessarily a source of horror to Mr. Crabbe, for he knew that he had been the party to a fraud. The loss to the bank had been instantly made good out of his own pocket. The circumstances—the promptness of the payments, a certain consistency in the tone of the letters lamenting Mr. Pardew’s harshness—made him deeply suspicious. But still he had accepted Mr. Pardew’s instructions in respect of his debtors—something that he now greatly deplored—and there was, he thought, a limit to the crimes of which Mr. Pardew might legitimately be accused.

  Divining something of the thoughts that were oppressing the old lawyer’s mind, Mr. Pardew, prowling now in the region of the fire, determined to make them work to his advantage. Smiling in the friendliest manner imaginable, he remarked, “I suppose it is something to do with those debtors of mine. I presume one of the cheques has not been honoured, or something of the sort?”

  “It is worse than that,” Mr. Crabbe told him grimly, wishing for all the world that the interview was over and he could go back to his copy of the Times and the devising of errands on which to send his clerk. “One of the cheques was written on a stolen form, and two of the notes were false.”

  At this Mr. Pardew opened his eyes very wide. “Indeed? How very provoking. But then I suppose a man to whom a debt is owed can scarcely be held responsible for the honesty of his debtors.”

  “Perhaps not.” To allow even this concession was a source of pain to such a one as Mr. Crabbe. “Naturally the police have become involved.”

  “Oh indeed?” said Mr. Pardew again, with perhaps rather too studied a nonchalance. “And what have they managed to discover?”

  “Only that the address from which the forged notes were despatched was a poste restante.”

  Despite his nonchalance, Mr. Pardew, standing on Mr. Crabbe’s Turkey carpet with his legs opened against the warmth of the fire, was engaged in a rapid calculation. He knew, of course, that the banknotes were forgeries and the cheque was written on a stolen form because, in an assumed hand and using anonymous messengers, he had sent them to Mr. Crabbe himself. But that such transactions could be traced back to the office in Carter Lane he thought unlikely. Should anybody—the famous Captain McTurk, say, or any representative of Mr. Crabbe—take it upon himself to investigate any of the addresses to which Mr. Crabbe had been directed to write, Mr. Pardew was confident that he would find nothing in the least incriminating. Having assured himself of this, but reminding himself that there was still one favour he required of Mr. Crabbe, he drew himself up to his full height, made a little feint with his stick at the fire and said in a meditative tone, “Indeed? This is very shocking. I can only apologise, Mr. Crabbe, for the inconvenience to which you have been subject.”

  This was too much for Mr. Crabbe. “Inconvenience, sir? It is more than inconvenience! Why I have had a man from the bank absolutely asking me—asking me, sir!—if I knew of the money’s provenance.”

  “And how did you reply, I wonder?”

  “I said what I believe to be the truth. That I had been requested to write a letter in connection with a debt, quite in the usual way, and this had been the result. I tell you what, sir”—and Mr. Pardew observed that Mr. Crabbe was genuinely angry, much angrier than he had been at the start of their interview—“this had better be the end of any dealings between us, indeed it had. If you have any further debts to be collected, you had better take them to some other firm and see what they say.”

  Hearing this opinion, which would have had many a legal colleague with whom Mr. Crabbe dealt positively abasing himself on the carpet, Mr. Pardew hesitated. He did not believe, in the last resort, that Mr. Crabbe would altogether throw him over, for he knew—and he knew that Mr. Crabbe knew—that if questions could be asked of himself regarding the stolen cheque and the forged notes, then they could also be asked of Mr. Crabbe. Behind their conversation, as ever, lurked both the stupendous figure of His Grace the Duke of——, and the letter that Mr. Pardew had waved in front of Mr. Crabbe’s face on their previous encounter, but Mr. Pardew acknowledged that there was a limit to both the power of His Grace’s ducal strawberry leaves and the power of the letter. He might threaten to drag Mr. Crabbe down, but he fancied that Mr. Crabbe might wish to drag him down also. He needed to appease Mr. Crabbe, but he could not afford to leave him conscious of any triumph.

  “Well, if it is any consolation to you, Mr. Crabbe, that money from my former business associates is pretty much in. There is no need for me to trouble you with any further labour in that line. But there is a chance that in a month or so I shall require you to write me another letter.”

  “There is, is there?”

  “It may not be necessary. Indeed I trust it will not. It is a client of mine who has been sadly neglectful in the restitution of his obligations. Perhaps you have heard of him. It is the Earl of——.”

  Mr. Crabbe, brooding savagely in his chair, looked up at this. He had indeed heard of the Earl of——, and from what he had heard imagined him exactly the kind of gentleman likely to fall into the hands of Mr. Pardew. Instinct told him to request Mr. Pardew to leave his chambers immediately, and yet something stayed him from issuing this demand. Mr. Crabbe could not exactly locate the source of this unease, but he told himself that he did not quite like the look in Mr. Pardew’s eye, which seemed to him both mocking and complicit, as if Mr. Pardew knew other things about him, things quite beyond those contained in that awful letter, while being altogether indifferent to any revelations that Mr. Crabbe might make with regard to his own dealings. Therefore Mr. Crabbe did not summon his clerk and have Mr. Pardew ushered away. He merely sat and stared at the fire and at the papers on his desk and at Mr. Pardew (who was now swaying luxuriously from one foot to the other like a cat that is getting ready to pounce), finding solace in none of them and feeling older than he had felt for many a year.

  “As I say,” Mr. Pardew continued, with an unmistakable note of deference in his voice, “such a course may not be necessary. It may not indeed. And even if it were not, I should of course be delighted to return that piece of property of yours of which we spoke…”

  Mr. Crabbe made some feeble mot
ion of assent with his hands and muttered something. It was not intelligible to Mr. Pardew, but its meaning was clear. Mr. Crabbe, if absolutely entreated and compelled to, would write the letter. For the moment, however, he would do nothing other than to have Mr. Pardew take his leave at the earliest possible juncture, would be glad, in fact, if he never had to set eyes on Mr. Pardew again. Mr. Pardew understood this as well as he understood the rates of interest in that morning’s Financial Gazette, and was quick to depart, shaking the single finger that the lawyer extended to him from behind his desk and stalking down the staircase into the vestibule at such a rate of knots that he altogether forgot his overcoat and had to be followed out of the door by one of the clerks with that garment gathered up in his arms. Mr. Crabbe, watching him go, felt so wretched that he flung a pen wiper into the fire and sent his clerk out to a law stationer’s in Carey Street to fetch a copy of the Legal Review that he did not in the least want to read. Such was the wretchedness of Mr. Crabbe.

  Mr. Pardew, now striding away across the green grass towards the gate, congratulated himself on the result of his dealings with Mr. Crabbe, but he did not linger on this congratulation. Having gained his immediate object, his mind was bent on the greater purpose which he had been considering half an hour before and on which, it is fair to say, his mind had been bent for many months. Mr. Pardew was not a timid man, and yet the boldness of the scheme greatly alarmed him. It was an enterprise, he was aware, that might crash without warning over his head, one that would involve extraordinary risks and dangers, the principal danger being to Mr. Pardew and his liberty. Half a dozen times, as he sped over the grass, past the daffodils, through the great gate and into the street beyond, Mr. Pardew declared to his inner self that he would not do it, that the risk was too great. Half a dozen times, too, he corrected himself, slashed at the thin air with his stick, settled his hat more advantageously upon his head and plunged on again. In this way, arguing furiously with himself, at one point calm, confident and assured of his abilities, at another cast down, unhappy and sure that all would fall instantly into ruins, he walked back down the long expanse of the Farringdon Road and bent his steps in the direction of Carter Lane. It was midmorning now, and the streets, especially those side streets through which Mr. Pardew walked, were not unduly crowded. Turning into the lane, he saw on the other side of the pavement from his office door, smoking a pipe and staring up and down the street, an exceedingly ill-favoured man in threadbare clothes with a cotton handkerchief tied round his neck. When this gentleman saw Mr. Pardew, he gave the faintest perceptible sign—no more than a movement of his eye—that he recognised him. Mr. Pardew, even less perceptibly, acknowledged this and then turned into his office.