THE QUEST OF THE WAX HAND
It was not to be supposed that the Agency, so catholic, so
philanthropic, so disinterested in its labours, and withal so
boundlessly endowed, would long escape the notice of those social
powers, which, through all changes of creed and government, work
steadily on in the cause of the human decencies. With these Gilead’s
name was soon to become an almost apostolic one, and gradually, as he
proceeded on his way, the executive, the police, the Home Office
itself became his informal allies. A latitude was permitted him in the
matter of technical infringements of the law, and he was made secure
against official and officious interference. In his clean and fearless
spirit of Knight-errantry, he probably realized little of the
indulgence granted him, and, in cases where his way was made
inexplicably smooth, accounted the fact to nothing more than the
inherent rightness of things. On more than one occasion, indeed,
Scotland Yard flagrantly abetted him in acts which, strictly speaking,
were illegal. But then, if it had withheld its support, a scoundrelism
or so would have prospered. It is true that Gilead was accustomed to
give practical expression to his admiration of the force in princely
gifts to its charities and awards to individual merit; but I for one
will not believe that such generosity would, if construed into
bribery, have induced it to condone for a moment a real offence in
him. The police favoured him because he contributed, and contributed
largely, to their power for good.
One morning the following advertisement, thumb-marked by the Secretary
for his consideration, engaged Gilead’s attention:--
“_In despair. A young man, in urgent need of £_50, _asks the help of
the rich and benevolent to save him from complete ruin. No repayment;
but will give services in any capacity required._”
The usual reference number followed. Gilead thought a moment, then
looked up.
“This, Nestle,” said he, “is hardly out of the common.”
“Hardly, sir,” replied the secretary. “Only the offer of services
guarantees it as genuine. But if you would rather it went through the
ordinary channels--”
“No,” said Gilead. “If you have nothing better to offer, I will take
it. Romance, after all, must walk sometimes on the highway, if we have
the eyes to distinguish her. I will undertake this, Nestle.”
He requested Miss Halifax to make an appointment with the advertiser
to call on the morning next but one, and there left the matter for the
time being.
At the hour specified the expected visitor arrived, and was shut in to
his interview with the head, Miss Halifax, as usual, being present.
Gilead’s ready sympathy was awakened on his first sight of the young
man, who, in addition to a nervous white complexion and troubled eyes,
was disfigured by the loss of his right hand, the place of which was
supplied by a stump and hook.
The calm eyes of the young plutocrat would yield at first, however, no
ground to sentiment. Enough experience had taught him to safeguard his
emotions.
“You advertised for help,” he said. “May I ask, in the first instance,
your name?”
“Dobell, sir,” answered the stranger, in a low voice--“Felix Dobell.”
He hung his head. He was patently in great mental suffering. His age
appeared to be about that of his questioner’s; but some illness of
life had lined his face prematurely. In appearance he might have
stood--on that line of social demarcation which divides the accepted
from the not quite acceptable--for a clerk on the lower grade. But his
speech was educated and his dress quiet.
“And your vocation?” asked Gilead.
“I was cashier, sir, to a firm of law stationers.”
“_Was?_”
He noticed and emphasised the past tense.
“I was forced to leave, sir,” said the visitor scarce audibly.
“_Forced?_”
Again he accentuated the word, quietly, but significantly.
“No, not in that way, sir,” answered the other--“not, indeed. It was
because I feared to be tempted to it that I left. I come to you with
clean hands so far; indeed I do, sir.”
He put out his arms with an instinctive movement, and withdrew them as
quickly. Miss Halifax, leaning over her table, shaded her eyes with
her palm. But Gilead sat, to all appearance, as cold as judgment.
“You will forgive me,” he said; “it is necessary. You proposed, if I
remember rightly, some indiscriminate form of service in return for
this loan?”
“I have trained my left hand, sir,” answered the visitor eagerly, “to
do the work of my right, and better. Anything in my power I will do
gladly.”
“Fifty pounds is a large sum. For what purpose do you require it?”
“To pay a debt.”
Again the answer was hardly audible.
“Very well,” said Gilead--“and if I accept your terms, and require
you, in exchange for the gift, to pick a man’s pocket for me?”
Miss Halifax rose in soft amazement. The stranger rose too.
“I have come to the wrong place,” he said. “It is only a judgment, I
suppose; but--O, let me go, sir! let me go before I make a fool of
myself.”
“You won’t do it?”
“No.”
The amanuensis forestalled him at the door.
“Mr Balm!” she whispered, in a voice from which every expression but
wonder was gone.
Gilead rose, with a smile, and crossing the room swiftly, put a firm
detaining hand on the young man’s shoulder.
“Come,” he said, “tell us all about it from beginning to end.”
His tone was unmistakable. With one amazed look at him, the young
fellow dropped his face into his single palm, and bowed his shoulders
as if quite broken with grief.
“Come,” said Gilead a second time; “it was a test, no more. Don’t you
know us, man?”
It was evident that he did not. In a few sweet sympathetic words Miss
Halifax informed him of the nature of the harbour of refuge into which
he had drifted--in despair, it appeared; almost without a hope. Even
when he realized at last his happy fortune, it was minutes before they
could restore him to a frame of mind meet for explanations. But at
length, abashed, grateful, half stunned in the prospect of help, he
faltered out a desire to be questioned--and condemned, if need be.
“That is very well, then,” said Gilead. “You must tell us, if you
will, as much about your life and circumstances as is necessary to an
elucidation of the matter.”
“If you will only begin by questioning me, sir,” answered the visitor,
evidently greatly overcome, as he seated himself diffidently on the
chair to which he was motioned. “I think--I believe that I should find
it easier to answer than explain. There is so much that is
bewildering, as well as so much that is shameful in my story. But I
will speak the whole truth; I will leave out nothing. Only question
me.”
Gilead, seated opposite, nodded his assent reassuringly.
“I am sure you will,” he said. “Tell me, in the first place, who you
are.”
“My father,” answered the young man, “was a respectable print-seller
and frame-maker in Southampton Row. He gave me a good education. My
mother, who died young, I never knew.”
“And yourself?” asked Gilead.
“When I was twenty-one,” said the young man, a sudden pink suffusing
his wan features, “my father procured me a situation in the studio of
Mr Auguste Lerroux, who dealt with him.”
He appeared to have prepared himself for the slight start which his
words evoked. He looked up quickly, and dropped his eyes again, a
deadly pallor replacing the momentary flush on his cheeks.
“The well-known artist and sculptor?” asked Gilead, resolutely
commanding himself. “Well?”
“My father,” went on the visitor, in a low voice, “over-estimated some
small ability which I possessed, and persuaded Mr Lerroux to take me
on as his assistant, with a view to better things. I had not been with
Mr Lerroux a year when my father died.”
He paused, in painful embarrassment, and again Gilead encouraged him
to proceed.
“My father,” continued the young man, with evident difficulty, “was
always, I fear, improvident and unpractical. It was deemed necessary
after his death to sell the stock and goodwill of the business in
order to discharge the debts with which it was encumbered. They proved
greater than expected, and, for nett result, I found myself thrown
virtually penniless upon the world. It was then that I succumbed to
temptation.”
“Ah!” said Gilead, in a tone which he strove to make appear
unconcerned. “And now we come to it, Mr Dobell.”
“Yes, sir,” said the visitor. He looked up, his eyes shining; but
there was a piteous tremor about his lips. “I succumbed, sir,” he
said, “and to my everlasting shame. I want to put it before you quite
plainly, without extenuation or self-defence. It was this way. Mr
Lerroux had engaged to pay me a certain small salary, but, as a matter
of fact, he did not keep to his promise, or only so scantily and
fitfully that, at the time of my father’s death, I had been able to
put by no more than a pound or two, which represented my entire
savings. There was a reason for this, as I knew. My employer figured
large before the world of critics, but he was not a popular artist,
and his patrons were few. He was generally hard-pressed for cash, and
I knew, and know now most bitterly to my cost, that he had recourse to
the money-lenders. At the time of which I speak he was in a desperate
state, and I must believe that he had no choice but to discharge me.
Anyhow he did discharge me, I thought harshly and cruelly, and at
twenty-two I found myself cast adrift without means or prospects.”
He paused. “Come,” said Gilead, “we are no Pharisees here.”
“At first,” said the young man, lowering his eyes, “I hardly realised
my position. I was strong and hopeful, and foresaw no great difficulty
in procuring a situation. I did not understand that, without especial
attainments, my chance was almost nothing in the struggle for
existence. But I was quickly disillusioned. In a few weeks’ time I was
utterly destitute, and at my wits’ end to know what to do or where to
turn.”
“I was used to frequent a free library in the district where I lodged,
to read the advertisements in the papers and answer such of them as I
thought promising. One day the devil put it into my head that the
walls of this room offered a resource to a starved and desperate man.
There were hung on them a number of Japanese prints” (Gilead stirred
and drew in his breath), “the gift of an eccentric patron, some of
which my knowledge gained under Mr Lerroux told me were of
considerable market value. What loss, moral or material, would their
removal entail upon the frequenters of such a place? Christmas
cartoons, I thought, would prove infinitely more to their taste. I
dismissed the temptation, but it returned again and again, and each
time more formidable. Presently, half involuntarily, I satisfied
myself of the ease with which the room could be entered at night from
the back, which abutted upon an empty yard. And then--and, then, sir,
at last, I fell.”
Trembling all over, he took from his breast a pocket-book, and from
the book a number of papers, one of which he selected and, rising,
carried across to Gilead.
“Will you please to read it sir?” he said. “It is a damning witness,
but a reminder and a warning which I can never make up my mind to part
with.”
He stood with bowed head, while Gilead accepted and examined the slip
presented to him. It was merely a printed paragraph, a cutting of a
newspaper report, and it ran as follows. Gilead read it out in a low
voice, that Miss Halifax might hear:--
“_Late on Wednesday night the B... Free Library was broken into, and
an attempt made to steal a number of Japanese colour prints from the
walls of the reading-room. The thief procured an entrance through a
window easy of access from an unoccupied yard at the back of the
premises, and was in the act of removing the prints from their frames
for the purpose of making an inconspicuous parcel of them, when he was
alarmed, it is conjectured, by the movements of the caretaker above,
and decamped, leaving his spoil behind him. The prominence lately
given, through the Happer and other sales, to the commercial value of
these works of art, was no doubt accountable for the attempt, which
should prove instructive to the librarian. The police have a clue, it
is said, in some finger-marks, and in one thumb mark in particular,
left by the burglar upon the wet plaster of a wall in the window
embrasure, which that very day had undergone some repairs._”
Gilead looked up with a reassuring smile.
“Let him that is without sin among us cast the first stone,” he said.
The young fellow gave an irrepressible gasp.
“God bless you!” he said; “God bless you, sir, for that! But there is
worse to follow--something infinitely more horrible and distressing.”
His listener’s brow darkened a little.
“Some later crime?” he asked softly.
“I will not--I must not say another word,” answered the visitor in
agony, “until you have gone through this also. It is dated only three
days later.”
Half dreading what was to come, Gilead accepted a second newspaper
cutting from his hand, and, bending with compressed lips, read it out
as he had the former:--
“_It is our painful duty to record the death--whether by his own hand
or that of another it remains to prove--of the well-known artist and
sculptor Mr Auguste Lerroux. Mr Lerroux occupied a maisonette and
studio in Edwards Square off the Kensington Road, and, upon entering
the latter apartment at seven o’clock yesterday morning to light the
fire, the maid servant discovered to her horror her master lying dead
upon the floor with a bullet wound through his head. The weapon, an
air-pistol, with which the injury had been inflicted lay beside the
body, and the shot from it had apparently penetrated the brain through
the right eye. No adequate cause can be assigned for the unfortunate
gentleman’s suicide, and at present the affair remains a mystery. The
police, who were summoned at once, are very reticent in the matter;
but it is hinted that they are in possession of a certain clue which
in some mysterious way associates the crime, if crime it be, with an
attempted theft of Japanese prints from the B ... Free Library, as
reported in our columns some days ago._”
Gilead looked up from his perusal of the paper without a word.
“No, sir,” cried the young man--“before God I am guiltless. You must
believe it, or there is an end of all hope for me.”
“I believe it, Mr Dobell,” said the soft clear voice of Miss Halifax.
Gilead smiled.
“You have your advocate, you see, sir,” he said. “And now, if you
please, you will give us your true version of this affair, the main
particulars of which are of course known to me. It will spare you
pain, perhaps, if I recall them. My Lerroux was known to have
possessed a pistol of this description, he was known to be in
embarrassed, even in desperate circumstances, and he had been heard to
threaten self-destruction. At the same time, the mere fact of his
possessing the pistol was held to be no necessary proof of his having
used it against himself, and the hint of a second party in the studio
gave an ugly complexion to the affair. The evidence as to Mr Lerroux’s
habits was inconclusive, the medical testimony was inconclusive, and
in the end, if I remember rightly, the Coroner’s Jury brought in a
open verdict.”
“They did, sir,” said the young man in great emotion; “but, for
detective purposes, all reference to the clue which the police
possessed had been withheld from them. But I knew what it was--_I
knew. I knew that I had touched blood, and printed with it upon the
doorpost the very damning sign that had already once marked me down._”
“Sign!” exclaimed Gilead.
“I had,” said the other, hardly able to articulate, “a cross-cut, an
old wound, upon the thumb of my right hand which, once detected, could
not fail to betray me.”
“Your right hand!” Miss Halifax, standing a little apart, breathed out
the words between pity and amazement.
The young man fought to command himself, and presently continued in a
stronger voice: “Listen to me, sir--only listen to me, and, God
helping, I will win your belief and pity. I tried to rob the
library--it is all true--and at the last moment my courage failed me.
I got home, got to bed, the most abased cowering reptile on God’s
earth. Rising the next day to the full horror of my fall, I read in
the evening paper of my own mad attempt and of the clue I had left
behind me--a thumb-mark on the wall. From that moment hell seemed to
have opened. I pretended to have cut myself, and enclosed my thumb in
a stall. While in the very act a thought like a stab struck into my
heart. I might take what precautions I might: there was another
witness to that tell-tale scar in the studio of Mr Lerroux. If the
police were to secure it before I could, my doom was sealed. I threw
away the useless stall--I was mad by then with shame and apprehension,
incapable of judging the extreme improbability of their alighting on
this remote piece of evidence. At first I thought I would call on Mr
Lerroux and implore him to give me the thing I needed; but the terror
of exciting suspicion thereby, and so defeating my own ends, was a
sufficient deterrent. Then in a moment my acquaintance with his house
and way of life rushed upon me. He lived alone, somewhat freely, and
was careless of precautions. I knew that after dinner he never went
near his studio, and that to enter it from the back, where a door gave
upon a strip of garden, should be a very easy matter. I ask you to
believe, sir, that I was by then in a state of mind beyond the reach
of reason. Moreover I only intended to appropriate what was already in
a manner my own. About ten o’clock I crept round the studio side,
treading upon flower-beds, and found, as I had expected, the door
unlocked. I listened a moment, and then opened it with infinite
caution. All was silent and dark within, save for a red gleam from the
stove which stood to one side a little away from the wall. I knew
where the thing I had come to seek was deposited; but, fearful of
stumbling over some obstruction, I decided to kindle momentarily a
spill of paper in order to take my bearings. Stealing to the stove on
tiptoe, I saw an envelope or wrapper lying handy, and stooped to
secure it. My fingers came up wet and sticky, and, as I kindled the
paper, and turned with it in my hand, I saw--O, my God!--my old master
lying dead on the floor in a pool of blood.”
Grey as ashes, the narrator, unable longer to support himself, sank
back into the chair from which he had risen. His listeners hurried to
sustain and reassure him.
“Say no more, my poor fellow,” said Gilead. “It is all plain, and you
shall spare yourself. It was like this, was it not? In the midst of
your horror, the awful responsibility, the awful peril you had
incurred smote you out of stupefaction, and, without giving another
thought to your purpose, you turned and fled, leaving that tragic
thumb-mark for a clue to your pursuers?”
The young man thanked him with a look full of pathos and gratitude.
“I thought I should die, mercifully die,” he whispered, “when I heard
what I had done. It must have been on the door-post, which I clutched
to save myself from falling. Somehow I got home unobserved, and washed
my hands; and then--O, my God, the cruel irony of Fate!--I found a
letter awaiting me, offering me a post in a big law-printers and
stationers to whom I had applied. If it had only come a week earlier!”
Miss Halifax, with a motion of infinite pity, touched his mutilated
arm. Her intuition had already guessed the truth. He looked up at her
with a faint smile.
“Yes, Miss,” he said--“the day that I began work, I was standing by a
printing machine, when I heard one of my companions read out that very
description of the suicide I showed you, and learnt for the first time
of the clue I had left. I was again wearing my thumb-stall, and, not
out of courage, but in a simple impulsive frenzy, I thrust my hand
among the moving machinery, and the next moment fainted. When I came
definitely to my senses, it was to find myself--with joy and
relief--secure for ever from the witness I most feared. But, heaven
help me, it was only a respite.
“The firm were very good to me, and kept me on, as having been
injured, accidentally as it was supposed, in their service. And I
tried to repay them by devotion to my work. In time the capacities of
my two hands seemed all concentrated in the one left, and I became
expert with it as I had never been with my right. Months past, and
nothing happening to alarm me further, I grew by degrees to a certain
confidence, and to a hope that the police had ceased to interest
themselves in the matter of the thumb-marks. And then one day, all in
an instant, my silly self-delusion was scattered to the winds. I
received a visit in my lodgings from an enemy I had never conceived or
dreamed of.”
He passed a hand across his damp forehead. Gilead patted his shoulder
reassuringly.
“You remember, sir,” continued the young man, “my reference to
money-lenders? There was one of these, a Mr Raphael Colfox, of Great
Queen Street, who was often with my employer Mr Lerroux. I think he
not only bled him pretty freely, but, with an eye to future
possibilities, was in the habit of acquiring from him at nominal
prices works of his. Among those that had passed into his possession
was, it appeared, that very piece which I had risked my soul to
obtain. He had come to tell me so, with the intimation that his late
appearance in the matter was due to nothing more than the difficulty
he had found hitherto in running me to earth. He had seen, he said,
the thumb-mark on the post, and had at once identified it with another
in his possession; and he offered me his silence at a price. All my
explanations and protests were in vain, and he ended by convincing me
that he held my life in his hands.”
The narrator, whose voice had sunk lower and lower, gave a little
choke here, and stopped.
“I see,” said Gilead, “I am beginning to see very clearly. Tell me
only, if you can, what was this article you desired so much to get
into your own possession.”
“It was a cast of my right hand, palm uppermost, sir, that Mr Lerroux
had taken most beautifully in wax. _And my name was on it._”
There followed a short silence; and then Gilead spoke in the soft
ominous voice that it always thrilled Miss Halifax to hear.
“This is all quite plain, Mr Dobell, and I thank you for coming to us
in your difficulty. I should like to ask you a final question or so.
This first visit of Mr Colfox’s--when did it occur?”
“About six months ago, sir.”
“And he has been--we won’t mince matters--_blackmailing_ you ever
since?”
“He forced me to accept a promissory note, sir, for an imaginary
accommodation, and he has been--yes, he has been bleeding me on it
ever since. I owe him fifty pounds at this moment, and he is pressing
for its payment under threat of exposure. I had to leave my situation
a month ago, or I don’t know what would have happened. I am not
strong, and this constant misfortune and persecution seem to unbalance
my reason. It was his own suggestion that I should advertise as I did
in the _Daily Post_.”
“Exactly. You are convinced, of course, that he actually possesses the
wax cast?”
“I have seen it, sir.”
“Where?”
“He keeps it in a safe in his office.”
“Does he, do you know, sleep on the premises?”
“No, I am sure he does not, sir. I know his private address.”
“Very well, Mr Dobell. And now I am going to place you in the hands of
my secretary, Mr Nestle, who will make himself responsible for your
present custody and well-being. Be assured that you have nothing to
fear and everything to hope; that this nightmare shall not be
permitted to demoralise you much longer. Come.”
The young man tried to articulate his thanks, but, utterly failing,
Gilead took him gently by the arm and led him from the room.
Half an hour later Mr Balm presented himself at Scotland Yard, and,
requesting an interview with the Chief Superintendent of the Criminal
Investigation Department, was immediately shown in to that weighty
official.
“Mr Ingram,” said the visitor, “I want you to introduce to me an
extremely expert burglar.”
The Superintendent laughed, and, leaning his elbows on his desk and
propping his chin on his clasped hands, regarded the other humorously.
“Come, Mr Balm,” he said; “what’s your latest little game?”
Their interview was a long one, and its termination left the
Superintendent immensely interested and surprised. He whistled
reflectively to himself more than once.
“So,” said he, “this is the explanation of the thumb-marks--as odd a
coincidence as I’ve known, sir.”
“How about my burglar?” asked Gilead.
The Superintendent slapped his hand softly on the desk.
“Mr Balm,” he said, “you’re an odd one--upon my word you’re an odd
one, sir. But I like your idea. What’s the harm, now? Nothing
interfered with and nothing taken. I think I may say you may look to
us in the matter. Of course, if the thing remained, and the man chose
to produce it, your prodigy might have a devil of a business to clear
himself. And we should be forced to take action, with what result the
Lord only knows. But this alternative, if you can carry it through,
ends the matter, and without loss to anyone but the skunk that
deserves the worst. Go and see him, sir, and make sure, if you can;
and then come back and report to me. In the meantime there’s a
man--Jerry Trimmer’s his name--well, it’s my opinion that if you were
to lock up that man nekked in a safe, he’d find means to bore his way
out somehow. I’ll make enquiries about him.”
Mr Raphael Colfox had his offices in a dull stuccoed block of building
that neighboured on the north-east corner of Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
Here, high up, he laid his web for the hard-pressed flies that always
came buzzing in plenty about that legal honey-pot. Gilead, being
brought in to him by way of a dismal little ante-den, smelling of damp
ledgers and having a shrewd anæmic child in it for clerk, found his
gentleman a genial strong-voiced figure of sixty or so, with stubby
white eyebrows, stubby white moustache, and white hair brushed forward
of his ears at the temples. He wore a full grass-green bow at his
neck, his frock coat bulged a little in the waist, and the only spot
of colour in his face was supplied by his nose, which was somewhat
shapeless and inflamed and sown with short white hairs.
“And now, sir,” said he, after some brief preliminaries, “what can we
do for _you_?”
Gilead’s natural repugnance for the fellow made him a little short in
his answers. His own clear candour never took such offence as it did
at those who, experience told him, would be ready to flout him
unknown, and to lick his plutocratic boots were he to reveal himself.
He had no mercy on such toadeaters, and found any dissimulation, even
for the best ends, difficult in their presence.
“That remains to see, sir,” he said. “Nothing, I may premise, in the
way of loans or accommodations.”
“Not?”
Mr Colfox, sitting back at his ease, raised his eyebrows and nothing
else.
“I will come to the point at once,” said Gilead. “I am something of a
collector, a virtuoso, and I am told that you possess works, which you
may not be unwilling to sell, by the late Auguste Lerroux.”
The moneylender pricked up his ears. Here, for the first time, was
shadowing itself out a justification of his foresight. His nerve of
cupidity thrilled. He must make the best of this chance.
He nodded his head agreeably.
“You are told,” he said. “May I ask by whom?”
“I employ an Art agent and adviser,” said Gilead, frowning over even
that harmless prevarication. “I asked you a question, sir. It is
immaterial who or what prompted it.”
The moneylender recognized an imperious client; he recognized also a
patently affluent one. His manner became propitiatory.
“Well, it is true,” he said. “I speculate a trifle sometimes in this
form of property; but it is hardly worth my while--the profits are so
small. However, as it happens, I have a little bust by the master in
that safe now, if you would care to look at it. I acquired it only a
short time before his death, and it represents, I may say, his
finished style. A few other, more important works, are in my
possession, if--”
“I will look at the bust,” said Gilead, rising. His veins were pulsing
with excitement, but he allowed no sign of it to appear on his face.
There was a safe in the room set upon a stand in one corner; but it
was not to that, sleek in green and brass, that the moneylender had
referred. He went to a panel in the wall which he unbuttoned, and
revealed a second safe--plain black iron and of a much older and
smaller pattern--which was sunk into the brickwork. Gilead, looking
over his shoulder as he unlocked this, was aware of a little throng of
bijoutry within, of the bust in question, and, quite unmistakably, of
a cast of a hand in wax. His fingers itched to pluck out the witness
and cast it into the fire.
Mr Colfox, unsuspecting as an infant, withdrew the bust and held it to
the light for the visitor’s inspection.
“Not much wrong with that, sir, I think,” said he.
Gilead gave a diplomatic interval to its examination.
“And your price?” he enquired, looking up.
“It is an exquisite thing,” said the moneylender--“Lerroux quite at
his best. It wouldn’t be worth my while to part with it under a
hundred.”
Gilead handed back the treasure.
“Nor mine to give it,” he said. “I will call again; and in the
meantime think of fifty. Good morning.”
He was out and clattering down the stairs before the other could
interpose. As he dropped, he heard the voice of the moneylender fading
above him in plaintive remonstrance. His heart was stern with anger
and resolve and a heat of triumph. It would be glorious to catch this
scoundrel in his own springe.
A few hours later saw him closeted at the Agency with Superintendent
Ingram, and an extremely small man of a somewhat aggrieved and fretful
cast. This latter sat upon the edge of his chair, his knees together,
his hands fingering his cap on them, and his little legs tucked under.
He was a mere shred of a creature, with a thin shaved face, a cross
mouth and eyes, and a dyspeptic cough. He wore a suit of
ginger-coloured dittos, and a scarf round his neck of a chess-board
pattern.
“Well, Trimmer?” said the Superintendent.
The little man jumped.
“There!” he said, “I wish you wouldn’t take me so sudden, Mr Ingram.
I’m bilious, that’s what I am. These late hours play old Harry with a
man of my constitution. You make me nervous.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” said the Superintendent. “It was thoughtless of me.
You were at a party last night, no doubt. You should take more care of
yourself at your age, you know. One of these days you’ll be laid up
for good and all, Trimmer.”
A ghost of a smile twitched Mr Trimmer’s lips.
“It’s a question with me between a sanatorium and a monastery, Mr
Ingram,” he said; “but I must finish my little bit of a fling first.”
“Well,” said the Superintendent; “this is without prejudice to your
choice, you know. Do you think you can do it?”
“_Think_ I can _do_ it!” The little man winked at Gilead. “Ask a
card-sharper if he thinks he could play ‘Old maid’.”
“You know what you’ve got to do, and leave no sign?”
“You,” said Mr Trimmer, “play your part, and I’ll play mine. The
gentleman, I understand, guarantees the blunt?”
“Fifty for the attempt, and fifty more if you succeed,” said Gilead,
smiling. He vastly preferred this sort of rascal to the Colfox.
Mr Trimmer would condescend to no further discussion of his ways and
means.
“I was cracking nuts,” he said to the Superintendent, “before you’d
got your milk teeth.”
Bribes, says a French proverb, can get in without knocking. That very
night a little monkey-like figure of a man, balancing on a window sill
which he had reached from an empty suite of chambers next door, forced
a latch and dropped softly into that section of the Queen Street
building which contained Mr Colfox’s office. By a very curious
coincidence, the caretaker was engaged at the moment, at the hall door
down below, in a close discussion with a policeman, who had knocked
him up to enquire as to his knowledge or observation of some
suspicious characters who had been seen lately hanging about the
neighbourhood. While they talked, Mr Trimmer had entered, by means
known to himself, the private sanctum of the money-lender, and was
proceeding, with swift sure touches, about his business.
[image: images/img_159.jpg
caption: “A LITTLE MONKEY-LIKE FIGURE OF A MAN, BALANCING ON A
WINDOW-SILL.”]
The burglar wore a loose overcoat (or wraprascal, shall we call it?)
with surprise pockets. From these he produced a dark-lantern, whose
light he exposed and concentrated on a certain spot, and a couple of
electric coils, with a quantity of wire and fixings attached. An
electric lamp stuck from the wall (as he had ascertained from
observant Gilead) within close reach of the embedded safe. Removing
the bulb, he applied the long end of his wire, already fitted with an
attachment, to the place, rested one of the coils on the floor, and,
placing the other handy for the safe, which he had exposed, rapidly
switched on the current, and, picking up the second coil with a pair
of insulated tongs, applied it to the front of the safe. In a few
moments a smell of warming iron pervaded the spot; the coil grew from
pink to red, and the heat became excessive. The safe was of a crude
discarded pattern, and unpainted, or the essay would have been
fruitless. As it was the door became soon too hot to touch with the
hand, and Mr Trimmer was satisfied. Secure of his confederate,
however, he gave the experiment plenty of time, and only desisted when
its success was beyond question. Then, removing his apparatus, and
readjusting everything to its former state, he pocketed his belongings
and returned as he had come, making all secure behind him. It is true
that he did linger, in some doubt and chagrin, while his coil was
cooling.
“To leave it at that!” he thought, disconsolately regarding the safe.
“Why it would be easier than picking periwinkles with a pin.”
However, he remembered the hundred pounds and forbore. Honour among
thieves.
Passing the hall-door presently, he saw a policeman in discussion with
the porter.
“Well, goodnight,” said that officer to his gossip; “and keep your
eyeballs skinned.”
The next day Mr Colfox was both surprised and gratified to receive a
second visit from his virtuoso client.
“I thought you’d think better of it, sir,” he said. “These Lerroux’s
are not to be picked up for the asking.”
“Let me see the bust again, if you please,” said Gilead. His heart was
beating a little as the moneylender approached and exposed the safe.
He was concerned and relieved in one to observe that it showed no
signs of its baking. Mr Colfox opened the door, uttered a sharp
exclamation, and fell back a step. But he was too astute a rascal to
betray the cause of his agitation. The next moment he had produced the
bust, and swung to the door upon his secret.
But not quickly enough for the observant eyes that had followed him.
In that moment Gilead had seen the hand, or rather what remained of
it--_and it was sunk into just a shapeless pancake of wax upon the
floor of the safe_.
Colfox’s face was a little white, and his lips a little shaky, as he
placed the bust on the table.
“There it is, sir,” he said, “and the offer stands.”
Gilead, a stern triumphant light in his eyes, faced him.
“I have changed my mind, sir,” he said. “I desire a deal, but in
paper, not in marble. Where is the promissory note you hold in the
name of Felix Dobell?”
The moneylender turned momentarily as white as the bust itself, but
recovered his nerve, and stood staring, between astonishment and
anger.
“What’s this?” he exclaimed. “Who the devil are you?”
“My name, sir,” answered the client, “is Gilead Balm.”
“Gilead--!” the man started back; then fawned in the most fulsome
spirit of sycophancy. “Mr Balm!--you--you surprise me, sir.”
“I wish for that paper.”
“You shall have it, sir.” He slunk to the other safe, extracted a
note, and returned with it. “You shall have it, sir--I’m sure, sir, to
oblige Mr Balm--at the price of the accommodation.”
Gilead accepted the draft and tore it into fifty pieces.
“There is your accommodation, sir,” he said. “I give you what you gave
for it--nothing.”
He strode to the door and turned. The other, cowering white and
speechless, made no attempt to follow him.
“Your villainy, sir,” said Gilead, “is known and recorded against you.
Any further attempt on your part to blackmail the unhappy young man,
the victim of this your most cowardly method of persecution, will be
made very effectively to recoil upon your own head. All my wealth,
sir, all the influence I possess should be devoted to the destruction
of a reptile so noisome. You can produce your proofs if you will; they
will avail nothing against the truth which has been very clearly
exposed in their despite. Think it enough if they serve to defend you
in the charge of felony which will most certainly follow your least
endeavour to re-set the toils which have been broken. The law, sir,
the law is already acquainted with your practices.”
He flung out of the room so violently that he literally floored the
anæmic boy, who had been listening at the keyhole. For some minutes
after he had gone, the moneylender stood, in a state of
semi-stupefaction, looking from one safe to the other. Then, with an
explosive sigh, he tottered to the smaller.
“Everything intact,” he whispered; “not a sign of its having been
tampered with. It was certainly very warm yesterday, but--damme!” he
screamed, “it must have been the ghost of that hot-tempered devil
Lerroux himself!”