I
The fact that Denry Machin decided not to drive behind his mule to Sneyd
Hall showed in itself that the enterprise of interviewing the Countess
of Chell was not quite the simple daily trifling matter that he strove
to pretend it was.
The mule was a part of his more recent splendour. It was aged seven,
and it had cost Denry ten pounds. He had bought it off a farmer whose
wife "stood" St. Luke's Market. His excuse was that he needed help in
getting about the Five Towns in pursuit of cottage rents, for his
business of a rent collector had grown. But for this purpose a bicycle
would have served equally well, and would not have cost a shilling a day
to feed, as the mule did, nor have shied at policemen, as the mule
nearly always did. Denry had bought the mule simply because he had been
struck all of a sudden with the idea of buying the mule. Some time
previously Jos Curtenty (the Deputy Mayor, who became Mayor of Bursley
on the Earl of Chell being called away to govern an Australian Colony)
had made an enormous sensation by buying a flock of geese and driving
them home himself. Denry did not like this. He was, indeed, jealous,
if a large mind can be jealous. Jos Curtenty was old enough to be his
grandfather, and had been a recognised "card" and "character" since
before Denry's birth. But Denry, though so young, had made immense
progress as a card, and had, perhaps justifiably, come to consider
himself as the premier card, the very ace, of the town. He felt that
some reply was needed to Curtenty's geese, and the mule was his reply.
It served excellently. People were soon asking each other whether they
had heard that Denry Machin's "latest" was to buy a mule. He obtained a
little old victoria for another ten pounds, and a good set of harness
for three guineas. The carriage was low which enabled him, as he said,
to nip in and out much more easily than in and out of a trap. In his
business you did almost nothing but nip in and out. On the front seat
he caused to be fitted a narrow box of japanned tin with a formidable
lock and slits on the top. This box was understood to receive the
rents, as he collected them. It was always guarded on journeys by a
cross between a mastiff and something unknown, whose growl would have
terrorised a lion-tamer. Denry himself was afraid of Rajah, the dog,
but he would not admit it. Rajah slept in the stable behind Mrs.
Machin's cottage, for which Denry paid a shilling a week. In the stable
there was precisely room for Rajah, the mule, and the carriage, and when
Denry entered to groom or to harness, something had to go out.
The equipage quickly grew into a familiar sight of the streets of the
district. Denry said that it was funny without being vulgar. Certainly
it amounted to a continual advertisement for him; an infinitely more
effective advertisement than, for instance, a sandwich-man at
eighteen-pence a day, and costing no more, even with the license and the
shoeing. Moreover a sandwich-man has this inferiority to a turnout:
when you have done with him you cannot put him up to auction and sell
him. Further, there are no sandwich-men in the Five Towns; in that
democratic and independent neighbourhood nobody would deign to be a
sandwich-man.
The mulish vehicular display does not end the tale of Denry's splendour.
He had an office in St. Luke's Square, and in the office was an
office-boy, small but genuine, and a real copying-press, and outside it
was the little square signboard which in the day of his simplicity used
to be screwed on to his mother's door. His mother's steely firmness of
character had driven him into the extravagance of an office. Even after
he had made over a thousand pounds out of the Llandudno lifeboat in less
than three months, she would not listen to a proposal for going into a
slightly larger house, of which one room might serve as an office. Nor
would she abandon her own labours as a sempstress. She said that since
her marriage she had always lived in that cottage and had always worked,
and that she meant to die there, working; and that Denry could do what
he chose. He was a bold youth, but not bold enough to dream of quitting
his mother; besides, his share of household expenses in the cottage was
only ten shillings a week. So he rented the office; and he hired an
office-boy, partly to convey to his mother that he should do what he
chose, and partly for his own private amusement.
He was thus, at an age when fellows without imagination are fraying
their cuffs for the enrichment of their elders and glad if they can
afford a cigar once a month, in possession of a business, business
premises, a clerical staff, and a private carriage drawn by an animal
unique in the Five Towns. He was living on less than his income; and in
the course of about two years, to a very small extent by economies and
to a very large extent by injudicious but happy investments, he had
doubled the Llandudno thousand and won the deference of the manager of
the bank at the top of St. Luke's Square--one of the most unsentimental
men that ever wrote "refer to drawer" on a cheque.
And yet Denry was not satisfied. He had a secret woe, due to the facts
that he was gradually ceasing to be a card and that he was not
multiplying his capital by two every six months. He did not understand
the money market, nor the stock market, nor even the financial article
in the _Signal_; but he regarded himself as a financial genius and
deemed that as a financial genius he was vegetating. And as for setting
the town on fire, or painting it scarlet, he seemed to have lost the
trick of that.
II
And then one day the populace saw on his office-door, beneath his
name-board, another sign: "Five Towns Universal Thrift Club. Secretary
and Manager, E. H. Machin."
An idea had visited him.
Many tradesmen formed slate-clubs--goose-clubs, turkey-clubs,
whisky-clubs--in the autumn, for Christmas. Their humble customers paid
so much a week to the tradesmen, who charged them nothing for keeping
it, and at the end of the agreed period they took out the total sum in
goods--dead or alive; eatable, drinkable, or wearable. Denry conceived
a universal slate-club. He meant it to embrace each of the Five Towns.
He saw forty thousand industrial families paying weekly instalments into
his slate-club. He saw his slate-club entering into contracts with all
the principal tradesmen of the entire district, so that the members of
the slate-club could shop with slate-club tickets practically where they
chose. He saw his slate-club so powerful that no tradesman could afford
not to be in relations with it. He had induced all Llandudno to perform
the same act daily for nearly a whole season, and he now wished to
induce all the vast Five Towns to perform the same act to his profit for
all eternity.
And he would be a philanthropist into the bargain. He would encourage
thrift in the working-man and the working-man's wife. He would guard
the working-man's money for him; and to save trouble to the working-man
he would call at the working-man's door for the working-man's money.
Further, as a special inducement and to prove superior advantages to
ordinary slate-clubs, he would allow the working-man to spend his full
nominal subscription to the club as soon as he had actually paid only
half of it. Thus, after paying ten shillings to Denry the working-man
could spend a pound in Denry's chosen shops, and Denry would settle with
the shops at once, while collecting the balance weekly at the
working-man's door. But this privilege of anticipation was to be
forfeited or postponed if the working-man's earlier payments were
irregular.
And Denry would bestow all these wondrous benefits on the working-man
without any charge whatever. Every penny that members paid in, members
would draw out. The affair was enormously philanthropic.
Denry's modest remuneration was to come from the shopkeepers upon whom
his scheme would shower new custom. They were to allow him at least
twopence in the shilling discount on all transactions, which would be
more than sixteen per cent. on his capital; and he would turn over his
capital three times a year. He calculated that out of fifty per cent.
per annum he would be able to cover working expenses and a little over.
Of course, he had to persuade the shopkeepers. He drove his mule to
Hanbridge and began with Bostocks, the largest but not the most
distinguished drapery house in the Five Towns. He succeeded in
convincing them on every point except that of his own financial
stability. Bostocks indicated their opinion that he looked far too much
like a boy to be financially stable. His reply was to offer to deposit
fifty pounds with them before starting business and to renew the sum in
advance as quickly as the members of his club should exhaust it.
Cheques talk. He departed with Bostocks' name at the head of his list,
and he used them as a clinching argument with other shops. But the
prejudice against his youth was strong and general. "Yes," tradesmen
would answer, "what you say is all right, but you are so young." As if
to insinuate that a man must be either a rascal or a fool until he is
thirty, just as he must be either a fool or a physician after he is
forty. Nevertheless, he had soon compiled a list of several score shops.
His mother said:
"Why don't you grow a beard? Here you spend money on razors, strops,
soaps, and brushes, besides a quarter of an hour of your time every day,
and cutting yourself--all to keep yourself from having something that
would be the greatest help to you in business! With a beard you 'd look
at least thirty-one. Your father had a splendid beard, and so could you
if you chose."
This was high wisdom. But he would not listen to it. The truth is, he
was getting somewhat dandiacal.
At length his scheme lacked naught but what Denry called a "right-down
good starting shove." In a word a fine advertisement to fire it off.
Now, he could have had the whole of the first page of the _Signal_ (at
that period) for five-and-twenty pounds. But he had been so accustomed
to free advertisements of one sort or another that the notion of paying
for one was loathsome to him. Then it was that he thought of the
Countess of Chell, who happened to be staying at Knype. If he could
obtain that great aristocrat, that ex-Mayoress, that lovely witch, that
benefactor of the district, to honour his Thrift Club as patroness,
success was certain. Everybody in the Five Towns sneered at the Countess
and called her a busybody; she was even dubbed "interfering Iris" (Iris
being one of her eleven Christian names); the Five Towns was fiercely
democratic--in theory. In practice the Countess was worshipped; her
smile was worth at least five pounds, and her invitation to tea was
priceless. She could not have been more sincerely adulated in the
United States, the home of social equality.
Denry said to himself.
"And why _should n't_ I get her name as patroness? I will have her name
as patroness."
Hence the expedition to Sneyd Hall, one of the various ancestral homes
of the Earls of Chell.
III
He had been to Sneyd Hall before many times--like the majority of the
inhabitants of the Five Towns--for, by the generosity of its owner,
Sneyd Park was always open to the public. To picnic in Sneyd Park was
one of the chief distractions of the Five Towns on Thursday and Saturday
afternoons. But he had never entered the private gardens. In the midst
of the private gardens stood the Hall, shut off by immense iron
palisades, like a lion in a cage at the Zoo. On the autumn afternoon of
his historic visit, Denry passed with qualms through the double gates of
the palisade, and began to crunch the gravel of the broad drive that led
in a straight line to the overwhelming Palladian facade of the Hall.
Yes, he was decidedly glad that he had not brought his mule. As he
approached nearer and nearer to the Countess's front door his arguments
in favour of the visit grew more and more ridiculous. Useless to remind
himself that he had once danced with the Countess at the municipal ball,
and amused her to the giggling point, and restored her lost fan to her.
Useless to remind himself that he was a quite exceptional young man,
with a quite exceptional renown, and the equal of any man or woman on
earth. Useless to remind himself that the Countess was notorious for her
affability and also for her efforts to encourage the true welfare of the
Five Towns. The visit was grotesque.
He ought to have written. He ought, at any rate, to have announced his
visit by a note. Yet only an hour earlier he had been arguing that he
could most easily capture the Countess by storm, with no warning or
preparations of any kind.
Then, from a lateral path, a closed carriage and pair drove rapidly up
to the Hall, and a footman bounced off the hammer-cloth. Denry could
not see through the carriage, but under it he could distinguish the
skirts of some one who got out of it. Evidently the Countess was just
returning from a drive.
He quickened his pace, for at heart he was an audacious boy.
"She can't eat me!" he said.
This assertion was absolutely irrefutable, and yet there remained in his
bold heart an irrational fear that after all she _could_ eat him. Such
is the extraordinary influence of a Palladian facade!
After what seemed several hours of torture entirely novel in his
experience, he skirted the back of the carriage and mounted the steps to
the portal. And, although the coachman was innocuous, being apparently
carved in stone, Denry would have given a ten-pound note to find himself
suddenly in his club or even in church. The masonry of the Hall rose up
above him like a precipice. He was searching for the bell-knob in the
face of the precipice when a lady suddenly appeared at the doors. At
first he thought it was the Countess, and that heart of his began to
slip down the inside of his legs. But it was not the Countess.
"Well!" demanded the lady. She was dressed in black.
"Can I see the Countess?" he inquired.
The lady stared at him. He handed her his professional card which lay
waiting all ready in his waistcoat pocket.
"I will ask my lady," said the lady in black.
Denry perceived from her accent that she was not English.
She disappeared through a swinging door; and then Denry most clearly
heard the Countess's own authentic voice, saying in a pettish, disgusted
tone:
"Oh! Bother!"
And he was chilled. He seriously wished that he had never thought of
starting his confounded Universal Thrift Club.
After some time the carriage suddenly drove off, presumably to the
stables. As he was now within the hollow of the porch, a sort of cave
at the foot of the precipice, he could not see along the length of the
facade. Nobody came to him. The lady who had promised to ask my lady
whether the latter could see him did not return. He reflected that she
had not promised to return; she had merely promised to ask a question.
As the minutes passed he grew careless, or grew bolder, gradually
dropping his correct attitude of a man-about-town paying an afternoon
call, and peered through the glass of the doors that divided him from
the Countess. He could distinguish nothing that had life. One of his
preliminary tremors had been caused by a fanciful vision of
multitudinous footmen, through a double line of whom he would be
compelled to walk in order to reach the Countess. But there was not
even one footman. This complete absence of indoor footmen seemed to him
remiss, not in accordance with centuries of tradition concerning life at
Sneyd.
Then he caught sight, through the doors, of the back of Jock, the
Countess's carriage footman and the son of his mother's old friend.
Jock was standing motionless at a half-open door to the right of the
space between Denry's double doors and the next pair of double doors.
Denry tried to attract his attention by singular movements and strange
noises of the mouth. But Jock, like his partner the coachman, appeared
to be carven in stone. Denry decided that he would go in and have
speech with Jock. They were on Christian-name terms, or had been a few
years ago. He unobtrusively pushed at the doors, and at the very same
moment Jock, with a start--as though released from some spell--vanished
away from the door to the right.
Denry was now within.
"Jock!" He gave a whispering cry, rather conspiratorial in tone. And
as Jock offered no response, he hurried after Jock through the door to
the right. This door led to a large apartment which struck Denry as
being an idealisation of a first-class waiting-room at a highly
important terminal station. In a wall to the left was a small door,
half open. Jock must have gone through that door. Denry hesitated--he
had not properly been invited into the Hall. But in hesitating he was
wrong; he ought to have followed his prey without qualms. When he had
conquered qualms and reached the further door, his eyes were met, to
their amazement, by an immense perspective of great chambers. Denry had
once seen a Pullman car, which had halted at Knype Station with a French
actress on board. What he saw now presented itself to him as a train of
Pullman cars, one opening into the other, constructed for giants. Each
car was about as large as the large hall in Bursley Town Hall, and, like
that auditorium, had a ceiling painted to represent blue sky, milk-white
clouds, and birds. But in the corners were groups of naked cupids,
swimming joyously on the ceiling; in Bursley Town Hall there were no
naked cupids. He understood now that he had been quite wrong in his
estimate of the room by which he had come into this Versailles. Instead
of being large it was tiny, and instead of being luxurious it was merely
furnished with miscellaneous odds and ends left over from far more
important furnishings. It was, indeed, naught but a nondescript box of
a hole insignificantly wedged between the state apartments and the outer
lobby.
For an instant he forgot that he was in pursuit of Jock. Jock was
perfectly invisible and inaudible. He must, however, have gone down the
vista of the great chambers, and therefore Denry went down the vista of
the great chambers after him, curiously expecting to have a glimpse of
his long salmon-tinted coat or his cockaded hat popping up out of some
corner. He reached the other end of the vista, having traversed three
enormous chambers, of which the middle one was the most enormous and the
most gorgeous. There were high windows everywhere to his right, and to
his left, in every chamber, double doors with gilt handles of a peculiar
shape. Windows and doors, with equal splendour, were draped in hangings
of brocade. Through the windows he had glimpses of the gardens in their
autumnal colours, but no glimpse of a gardener. Then a carriage flew
past the windows at the end of the suite, and he had a very clear though
a transient view of two menials on the box-seat; one of those menials he
knew must be Jock. Hence Jock must have escaped from the state suite by
one of the numerous doors.
Denry tried one door after another, and they were all fastened firmly on
the outside. The gilded handles would turn, but the lofty and ornate
portals would not yield to pressure. Mystified and startled, he went
back to the place from which he had begun his explorations, and was even
more seriously startled and more deeply mystified to find nothing but a
blank wall where he had entered. Obviously he could not have penetrated
through a solid wall. A careful perusal of the wall showed him that
there was indeed a door in it, but that the door was artfully disguised
by painting and other devices so as to look like part of the wall. He
had never seen such a phenomenon before. A very small glass knob was
the door's sole fitting. Denry turned this crystal, but with no useful
result. In the brief space of time since his entrance that door, and
the door by which Jock had gone, had been secured by unseen hands.
Denry imagined sinister persons bolting all the multitudinous doors, and
inimical eyes staring at him through many keyholes. He imagined himself
to be the victim of some fearful and incomprehensible conspiracy.
Why in the sacred name of common sense should he have been imprisoned in
the state suite? The only answer to the conundrum was that nobody was
aware of his quite unauthorised presence in the state suite. But then
why should the state suite be so suddenly locked up, since the Countess
had just come in from a drive? It then occurred to him that, instead of
just coming in, the Countess had been just leaving. The carriage must
have driven round from some humble part of the Hall, with the lady in
black in it, and the lady in black--perhaps a lady's maid--alone had
stepped out from it. The Countess had been waiting for the carriage in
the porch, and had fled to avoid being forced to meet the unfortunate
Denry! (Humiliating thought!) The carriage had then taken her up at a
side door. And now she was gone. Possibly she had left Sneyd Hall not
to return for months, and that was why the doors had been locked!
Perhaps everybody had departed from the Hall save one aged and deaf
retainer--he knew, from historical novels which he had glanced at in his
youth, that in every Hall that respected itself an aged and deaf
retainer was invariably left solitary during the absences of the noble
owner. He knocked on the small disguised door. His unique purpose in
knocking was naturally to make a noise, but something prevented him from
making a noise. He felt that he must knock decently, discreetly; he
felt that he must not outrage the conventions.
No result to this polite summoning.
He attacked other doors; he attacked every door he could put his hands
on; and gradually he lost his respect for decency and the conventions
proper to Halls, knocking loudly and more loudly. He banged. Nothing
but sheer solidity stopped his sturdy hands from going through the
panels. He so far forgot himself as to shake the doors with all his
strength furiously.
And finally he shouted, "Hi, there! Hi! Can't you hear?"
Apparently the aged and deaf retainer could not hear. Apparently he was
the deafest retainer that a peeress of the realm ever left in charge of
a princely pile.
"Well, that's a nice thing!" Denry exclaimed. And he noticed that he
was hot and angry. He took a certain pleasure in being angry. He
considered that he had a right to be angry.
At this point he began to work himself up into the state of "not
caring," into the state of despising Sneyd Hall and everything for which
it stood. As for permitting himself to be impressed or intimidated by
the lonely magnificence of his environment, he laughed at the idea; or,
more accurately, he snorted at it. Scornfully he tramped up and down
those immense interiors, doing the caged lion, and cogitating in quest
of the right, dramatic, effective act to perform in the singular crisis.
Unhappily, the carpets were very thick, so that though he could tramp,
he could not stamp, and he desired to stamp. But in the connecting
doorways there were expanses of bare, highly polished oak floor, and
here he did stamp.
The rooms were not furnished after the manner of ordinary rooms. There
was no round or square table in the midst of each with a checked cloth
on it and a plant in the centre. Nor in front of each window was there a
small table with a large Bible thereupon. The middle parts of the rooms
were empty, save for a group of statuary in the largest room. Great
armchairs and double-ended sofas were ranged about in straight lines,
and among these, here and there, were smaller chairs gilded from head to
foot. Round the walls were placed long, narrow tables with tops like
glass-cases, and in the cases were all sorts of strange matters--such as
coins, fans, daggers, snuff-boxes. In various corners white statues
stood awaiting the day of doom without a rag to protect them from the
winds of destiny. The walls were panelled in tremendous panels, and in
each panel was a formidable dark oil-painting. The mantlepieces were so
preposterously high that not even a giant could have sat at the
fireplace and put his feet on them. And if they had held clocks, as
mantlepieces do, a telescope would have been necessary to discern the
hour. Above each mantelpiece, instead of a looking-glass, was a vast
picture. The chandeliers were overpowering in glitter and in
dimensions.
Near to a sofa Denry saw a pile of yellow linen things. He picked up
the topmost article, and it assumed the form of a chair. Yes, these
articles were furniture-covers. The Hall, then, was to be shut up. He
argued from the furniture-covers that somebody must enter sooner or
later to put the covers on the furniture.
Then he did a few more furlongs up and down the vista, and sat down at
the far end, under a window. Anyhow, there were always the windows.
High though they were from the floor, he could easily open one, spring
out, and slip unostentatiously away. But he thought he would wait until
dusk fell. Prudence is seldom misplaced. The windows, however, held a
disappointment for him. A simple bar, pad-locked, prevented each one of
them from being opened; it was a simple device. He would be under the
necessity of breaking a plate-glass pane. For this enterprise he
thought he would wait until black night. He sat down again. Then he
made a fresh and noisy assault on all the doors. No result! He sat
down a third time and gazed into the gardens where the shadows were
creeping darkly. Not a soul in the gardens! Then he felt a draught on
the crown of his head, and looking aloft he saw that the summit of the
window had a transverse glazed flap, for ventilation, and that this flap
had been left open. If he could have climbed up, he might have fallen
out on the other side into the gardens and liberty. But the summit of
the window was at least sixteen feet from the floor.
Night descended.
IV
At a vague hour in the evening a stout woman dressed in black, with a
black apron, a neat violet cap on her head, and a small lamp in her
podgy hand, unlocked one of the doors giving entry to the state rooms.
She was on her nightly round of inspection. The autumn moon, nearly at
full, had risen and was shining into the great windows. And in front of
the furthest window she perceived in the radiance of the moonshine a
pyramidal group somewhat in the style of a family of acrobats
dangerously arranged on the stage of a music-hall. The base of the
pyramid comprised two settees; upon these were several arm-chairs laid
flat, and on the armchairs two tables covered with cushions and rugs;
lastly, in the way of inanimate nature, two gilt chairs. On the gilt
chairs was something that unmistakably moved and was fumbling with the
top of the window. Being a stout woman with a tranquil and sagacious
mind, her first act was not to drop the lamp. She courageously clung to
the lamp.
"Who 's there?" said a voice from the apex of the pyramid.
Then a subsidence began, followed by a crash and a multitudinous
splintering of glass. The living form dropped on to one of the settees,
rebounding like a football from its powerful springs. There was a hole
as big as a coffin in the window. The living form collected itself, and
then jumped wildly through that hole into the gardens.
Denry ran. The moment had not struck him as a moment propitious for
explanation. In a flash he had seen the ridiculousness of endeavouring
to convince a stout lady in black that he was a gentleman paying a call
on the Countess. He simply scrambled to his legs and ran. He ran
aimlessly in the darkness and sprawled over a hedge, after crossing
various flower-beds. Then he saw the sheen of the moon on Sneyd Lake,
and he could take his bearings. In winter all the Five Towns skate on
Sneyd Lake if the ice will bear, and the geography of it was quite
familiar to Denry. He skirted its east bank, plunged into Great Shendon
wood, and emerged near Great Shendon Station, on the line from Stafford
to Knype. He inquired for the next train in the tones of innocency, and
in half an hour was passing through Sneyd Station itself. In another
fifty minutes he was at home. The clock showed ten-fifteen. His
mother's cottage seemed amazingly small. He said that he had been
detained in Hanbridge on business, that he had had neither tea nor
supper, and that he was hungry. Next morning he could scarcely be sure
that his visit to Sneyd Hall was not a dream. In any event, it had been
a complete and foolish failure.
V
It was on this untriumphant morning that one of the tenants under his
control, calling at the cottage to pay some rent overdue, asked him when
the Universal Thrift Club was going to commence its operations. He had
talked of the enterprise to all his tenants, for it was precisely with
his tenants that he hoped to make a beginning. He had there a
_clientele_ ready to his hand, and as he was intimately acquainted with
the circumstances of each, he could judge between those who would be
reliable and those to whom he would be obliged to refuse membership.
The tenants, conclaving together of an evening on doorsteps, had come to
the conclusion that the Universal Thrift Club was the very contrivance
which they had lacked for years. They saw in it a cure for all their
economic ills and the gate to paradise. The dame who put the question
to him on the morning after his defeat wanted to be the possessor of
carpets, a new teapot, a silver brooch, and a cookery book; and she was
evidently depending upon Denry. On consideration he saw no reason why
the Universal Thrift Club should not be allowed to start itself by the
impetus of its own intrinsic excellence. The dame was inscribed for
three shares, paid eighteen pence entrance fee, undertook to pay three
shillings a week, and received a document entitling her to spend L3 18s.
in sixty-five shops as soon as she had paid L1 19s. to Denry. It was a
marvellous scheme. The rumour of it spread; before dinner Denry had
visits from other aspirants to membership, and he had posted a cheque to
Bostocks', but more from ostentation than necessity; for no member could
possibly go into Bostocks' with his coupons until at least two months
had elapsed.
But immediately after dinner, when the posters of the early edition of
the _Signal_ waved in the streets, he had material for other thought. He
saw a poster as he was walking across to his office. The awful legend
ran: "Astounding attempted burglary at Sneyd Hall." In buying the paper
he was afflicted with a kind of ague. And the description of events at
Sneyd Hall was enough to give ague to a negro. The account had been
taken from the lips of Mrs. Gater, housekeeper at Sneyd Hall. She had
related to a reporter how, upon going into the state suite before
retiring for the night, she had surprised a burglar of Herculean
physique and Titanic proportions. Fortunately she knew her duty and did
not blench. The burglar had threatened her with a revolver and then,
finding such bluff futile, had deliberately jumped through a large
plate-glass window and vanished. Mrs. Gater could not conceive how the
fellow had "effected an entrance." (According to the reporter, Mrs.
Gater said "effected an entrance," not "got in." And here it may be
mentioned that in the columns of the _Signal_ burglars never get into a
residence; without exception they invariably effect an entrance.) Mrs.
Gater explained further how the plans of the burglar must have been laid
with the most diabolic skill; how he must have studied the daily life of
the Hall patiently for weeks, if not months; how he must have known the
habits and plans of every soul in the place, and the exact instant at
which the Countess had arranged to drive to Stafford to catch the London
express.
It appeared that save for four maidservants, a page, two dogs, three
gardeners, and the kitchen-clerk, Mrs. Gater was alone in the Hall.
During the late afternoon and early evening they had all been to assist
at a rat-catching in the stables, and the burglar must have been aware
of this. It passed Mrs. Gater's comprehension how the criminal had got
clear away out of the gardens and park, for to set up a hue and cry had
been with her the work of a moment. She could not be sure whether he had
taken any valuable property, but the inventory was being checked.
Though surely for her an inventory was scarcely necessary, as she had
been housekeeper at Sneyd Hall for six-and-twenty years, and might be
said to know the entire contents of the mansion by heart. The police
were at work. They had studied footprints and _debris_. There was talk
of obtaining detectives from London. Up to the time of going to press
no clue had been discovered, but Mrs. Gater was confident that a clue
would be discovered, and of her ability to recognise the burglar when he
should be caught. His features, as seen in the moonlight, were
imprinted on her mind for ever. He was a young man, well dressed. The
Earl had telegraphed offering a reward of L20 for the fellow's capture.
A warrant was out.
So it ran on.
Denry saw clearly all the errors of tact which he had committed on the
previous day. He ought not to have entered uninvited. But having
entered, he ought to have held firm in quiet dignity until the
housekeeper came, and then he ought to have gone into full details with
the housekeeper, producing his credentials and showing her unmistakably
that he was offended by the experience which somebody's gross
carelessness had forced upon him.
Instead of all that, he had behaved with simple stupidity, and the
result was that a price was upon his head. Far from acquiring moral
impressiveness and influential aid by his journey to Sneyd Hall, he had
utterly ruined himself as a founder of a Universal Thrift Club. You
cannot conduct a thrift club from prison, and a sentence of ten years
does not inspire confidence in the ignorant mob. He trembled at the
thought of what would happen when the police learned from the Countess
that a man with a card on which was the name of Machin had called at
Sneyd just before her departure.
However, the police never did learn this from the Countess (who had gone
to Rome for the autumn). It appeared that her maid had merely said to
the Countess that "a man" had called, and also that the maid had lost
the card. Careful research showed that the burglar had been disturbed
before he had had opportunity to burgle. And the affair, after raising
a terrific pother in the district, died down.
Then it was that an article appeared in the _Signal_, signed by Denry,
and giving a full picturesque description of the state apartments at
Sneyd Hall. He had formed a habit of occasional contributions to the
_Signal_. This article began:
"The recent sensational burglary at Sneyd Hall has drawn
attention to the magnificent state apartments of that unique
mansion. As very few but the personal friends of the family are
allowed a glimpse of these historic rooms, they being of course
quite closed to the public, we have thought that some account of
them might interest the readers of the _Signal_. On the occasion
of our last visit..." etc.
He left out nothing of their splendour.
The article was quoted as far as Birmingham in the _Midland Press_.
People recalled Denry's famous waltz with the Countess at the memorable
dance in Bursley Town Hall. And they were bound to assume that the
relations thus begun had been more or less maintained. They were struck
by Denry's amazing discreet self-denial in never boasting of them.
Denry rose in the market of popular esteem. Talking of Denry, people
talked of the Universal Thrift Club, which went quietly ahead, and they
admitted that Denry was of the stuff which succeeds and deserves to
succeed.
But only Denry himself could appreciate fully how great Denry was, to
have snatched such a wondrous victory out of such a humiliating defeat!
His chin slowly disappeared from view under a quite presentable beard.
But whether the beard was encouraged out of respect for his mother's
sage advice or with the object of putting the housekeeper of Sneyd Hall
off the scent if she should chance to meet Denry, who shall say?