THE SHAREHOLDERS AND AN INTERRUPTION
Colonel Westhanger looked at his watch.
“She’s twenty minutes late already,” he said.
Gregori rolled another cigarette and looked enquiringly at Dr. Philip
Garon who was fingering his trim beard and talking with some animation
to the middle-aged pallid man, who was known to the world as Mr.
Cunningham and to the police as an expert safe breaker.
All Crime Street, with the exception of the admirable Mr. Millet, was
present. The Bishop with his large placid face was playing bezique
with Francis Stockmar. Colling Jacques, who had the appearance of a
prosperous butler who had settled down to the management of his own
private hotel, was reading the newspaper. Mr. Mulberry, that
respectable man with his grey side-whiskers and his sad dog-like eyes,
was discussing Renaissance architecture with the other Stockmar and
the Colonel, pacing the room impatiently, stopped now and again to
fling a word to one or the other.
Presently there was a slight sound in the hall below and the Colonel
went to the door of the room.
“She is here,” he said and passed out to the landing to meet Kate.
She was wearing a dark coat-dress and a big black fox wrap which she
loosened and flung off as she came into the room. It was notable that
the Colonel, who had every right to complain of her unpunctuality, did
not attempt to criticize her for her late arrival, other than to make
mild reference to the fact that he had expected her earlier.
She looked around the room.
“Where is Millet?” she asked.
“Millet is working on the telegrams,” he said and she nodded,
satisfied.
“Everything is ready now,” she said. “Did you see Boltover, Mr.
Mulberry?”
He rose and came toward her with that noiseless step of his.
“A most amiable young man,” he said in his unctuous sing-song voice,
“such a pleasant young man! We had a very long talk together.”
“And?”
“We arranged everything.”
He took a long envelope from his pocket, pulled out a stiff parchment
and handed it to her with the gravity and deference of an ambassador
delivering a treaty to his sovereign lady. She ran her eyes quickly
over the document, turned its crinkling page and read rapidly to the
last flourishing signatures.
“That’s all right,” she said and returned the document.
The long table had been placed in the middle of the room and to this,
without instructions, the whole of the company had drawn. Colonel
Westhanger sat at one end and Kate at the other. From her bag she took
a thick roll of manuscript, cut the strings that fastened it and
smoothed the sheets out before her. One by one she called their names
at the same time handing them, in some cases one, in other cases two
or three sheets covered with writing.
“You have a week to master all this,” she said, “and in a week’s time
we will meet again and I will see that everybody understands.”
She caught Jacques’ eye.
“About men?” she said. “How many have you arranged for?”
“Sixty,” he said; “I have been bringing them into England for the past
month.”
“Will sixty be enough?” she asked dubiously. “How many did we use for
the Bank of Edinburgh?”
“That was a different job,” said Jacques; “we had to cut through
thirty feet of concrete. I used two hundred and twenty in relays of
thirty.”
“Sixty will be quite enough,” she said after a moment’s thought. “You
will see that I have allowed only for fifty, but if they are the right
kind of people--”
“They are all good men, most of them from Italy, a few of them from
France and one Portuguese. They are the pick of my men and represent
years of organisation.”
“You have full details there, Cunningham,” she said, turning to that
dour man. “I took a shorthand note about the gold train, the driver
and the officials who will be on the train and I have all their
addresses except one. You will find a cross against that; I think the
address is Berne Street, Seahampton, but I had no time to verify it.”
“This will be easy,” said Cunningham, reading his instructions; “these
times won’t be altered, I suppose?”
“If they are, I shall know all about it,” said the girl. “Everyone
must make a note of those instructions in your own code and you must
do it pretty quickly.”
“What’s the hurry?” asked Westhanger, who, alone of the men about the
table, had received no paper.
“I want to see every sheet burnt before we leave the room,” she said.
The Colonel frowned.
“But--” he began.
“I want all the papers burnt before we leave the room,” she said again
emphatically.
Her uncle growled but the others knew her well enough to realize that
she had an excellent reason. Each man in his own way, some in
note-books, some on the back of loose sheets of paper faithfully
transcribed the instructions, using their own pet abbreviations, their
own particular symbols and one by one, as fast as they completed their
copies, the girl collected the papers, heard the instructions read
over, corrected one, amended another and finally gathering all the
sheets in her hand, she walked to the fireplace, deposited them in the
grate and set a lighted match to them.
She watched them burn until they were black ash and put her foot upon
them crushing the embers to dust.
“Are you nervous?” asked the Colonel sarcastically.
“Are you?” she asked coolly.
“Well it does seem a little--”
From the corner of the room came a soft but insistent purr.
The men jumped to their feet.
“Put away the tables quickly,” said the girl under her breath.
They separated the table into three parts. With an agility remarkable
in one of his years the Colonel flung a cloth over each, lifted a pot
of flowers on to one, arranged a photograph on another and left the
third to the bezique players. The girl seated herself at the piano,
opened it and began a soft movement from “Rigoletto.”
“Sing,” she said under her breath.
The obedient Mr. Mulberry shuffled up to her side. He had a pleasing
voice and the girl picked up the strain.…
“I am sorry to disturb the harmony,” said Michael Pretherston from the
doorway.
“May I ask what is the meaning of this intrusion?” demanded Colonel
Westhanger haughtily as half-a-dozen Scotland Yard men crowded into
the room behind their chief.
“It is what is vulgarly known as a raid,” said Michael. “Everybody
will remain where he is while I run a foot rule over him. Parsons, you
will take these gentlemen one by one into an adjoining room and search
him most thoroughly. Mrs. Gray,” he called to the door and a stout
middle-aged woman with a pleasant face appeared, “you will perform the
same kind office for Miss Westhanger.”
“Why not ‘Kate’?” asked the girl scornfully. “You are getting polite
in your old age, Mike.”
“Miss Westhanger,” he repeated suavely.
“Suppose I refuse to be searched?”
“Then I shall convey you to a vulgar police station,” said Michael,
“and the process of search will be carried out in uncongenial
surroundings.”
“I take it that you have a warrant?” demanded Colonel Westhanger.
“My dear Colonel!” said Michael. “Do you imagine I should come without
having gone through that little formality?”
He produced the document.
“Signed by two stipendary magistrates to be absolutely sure,” he said
flippantly; “impound all documents you find, Parsons.”
“Yes, sir,” said the man and led away the first of his victims which
happened to be the docile Mr. Mulberry.
“It is an unpleasant business,” sighed Michael as he watched the girl
pass from the room followed by her searcher, “but then, you will
understand, Colonel, that our profession is full of heartrending
moments. You are still on ticket of leave, I understand?”
“Expired,” growled Colonel Westhanger.
“Pardon me,” said Michael. “I have been misinformed. I would like a
word with you.”
He led the other to the corner of the room out of earshot and the good
humor died out of his voice as he confronted the older man.
“Westhanger,” he said, “who was the tutor of this girl?”
“I don’t quite get you?” said the other insolently.
“Who taught Kate to be a thief--is that plain enough for you?”
“If she is a thief it is a matter of aptitude. I deny that she is a
thief or that she is a party to any illegal act of which my
unfortunate friends may have been guilty--nobody taught her.”
“You are a queer fellow,” said Michael. “I suppose you are just
unmoral.”
“My personal character--” began the other.
“By unmoral, I mean you have no sense of _meum_ and _teum_. In other
words, you are a born thief. You forgive me, but subtlety seems to be
wasted on you. I ask you again, who educated Kate?”
The Colonel smiled.
“Kate has much to thank me for,” he said smugly. “I have been a father
and more than a father to that child and I assure you, Mr.
Pretherston, that you are altogether wrong when you think that she is
a thief. Why do you ask?” he demanded, suddenly breaking off.
“Because,” said Michael looking him steadily in the eye, “I believe
that you have deliberately set yourself to exploit the genius of a
clever child for your own profit. I believe that you, and you only,
have so distorted her viewpoint that you have destroyed her soul. I am
not sure yet,” he admitted, “but when I am--”
“When you are,” sneered the Colonel.
“On one charge or another, I shall put you into prison,” said Michael
simply, “and I shall keep you in prison until you are dead. I will set
myself the agreeable task of ensuring your end in a prison
infirmary--which, I understand, is not a very cheerful place.”
The Colonel shuddered. There was something fateful, there was
something malignant, a scarcely suppressed expression of hate in the
police officer’s tone. For a second the older man wilted and shrunk
back beneath the fierce intensity in Michael’s voice and then, like
the weakling that he was, he burst into a torrent of abuse which was
founded in fear and energised by rage.
“Damn you,” he hissed; “threaten me!… I will have your coat off your
back, you damned policeman!… You sneaking slop!… Kate’s what she is.
She will beat you and all your flat-footed pals! If she’s bad, you
can’t make her anything else. I made her, yes, I made her! She is
going to beat you, do you hear, and you will never catch her or me. I
made her! You can’t scare me…!”
His shrill voice trembled with anger, he was shaking from head to foot
and the bony fist which shivered in Michael’s face was so tightly
clenched that the knuckles stood out whitely.
“She is not the kind you can cure with psalms, Mr. Policeman! You
can’t pray over her because she has nothing to pray to, do you hear
that? You caught me. You sent me to that hell at Wandsworth and I am
going to get back on you, you and all people like you. Kate’s the
biggest thing you have handled and she is going to break you, break
you!”
“Uncle!”
He turned round to meet the white face of the girl.
“Are you mad?” she asked quietly.
He dropped his eyes before hers.
“He got me rattled,” he muttered.
Michael looked at the searcher and the woman shook her head.
With a nod he dismissed her.
“Not guilty!” he said flippantly.
He looked at the trembling man in front of him with a calm intensity.
“I shall remember a lot of what you said, Westhanger, and you will
hear from me one of these days.”
He walked over to the fireplace, for out of the tail of his eye he had
seen the burnt paper. He thrust a finger gently through the ash.
“Still warm,” he said. “I gather we were a little late.”
He scooped out a handful of the ash and carried it to the light. A
word or two of the burnt instructions was still faintly visible but
there was nothing to assist him. Nevertheless he had the whole of the
ashes carefully deposited in a box and carried away--he himself being
the last of the police to leave.
He stood in the centre of the room carefully smoothing the nap of his
felt hat and Crime Street waited for the inevitable warning. In this
they were disappointed, for Michael addressed himself solely to Kate.
“I will give you a chance, Miss Westhanger,” he said and they wondered
why he did not employ the more familiar style of address. “You are
about to commit a crime which will render every one of you liable to
long terms of penal servitude. What that crime is, I don’t know, but I
am certain it is what Stockmar would call ‘kolossal.’ It would not
matter to me if everyone of you rotted in prison for the rest of your
lives.”
“Tank you,” said Mr. Stockmar, “dat is fery goot of you!”
“When I say everyone of you,” said Michael, “I exclude Kate. She is a
young girl and if there is one of you who has any pretensions to
manhood, you will get her out of this gang before you go any farther.
If there is one of you who has a mother or a sister or any woman in
the world for whom he has the slightest respect, he will try to save
that child from herself. That is all.”
The meek Mr. Mulberry stood by the piano, his plump fingers ranged
across the keys producing a melancholy symphony.
“We will now sing Hymn 847,” he said, in his melancholy oily voice and
it was in the burst of laughter that this sally provoked, that Michael
Pretherston took his leave, followed at a respectful distance down the
stairs by Colonel Westhanger, who did not breathe freely until the
front door had clanged behind his unwelcome visitor and until the
oiled bolts shot home in their sockets.
“Where’s Kate?” he asked on his return.
“Such nonsense,” growled the elder Stockmar, “she has to the high-room
gone to make scare mit Predderston.”
Michael, at the far end of Crime Street, was taking leave of his
assistants when there cut into the quiet night a sound almost
terrifying in its unexpectedness.
It could only be described as a hollow shriek which rose and fell from
a wailing scream to a throaty sob. It lasted no more than ten seconds
and stopped as unexpectedly as it began.
“What’s that?” asked the startled sergeant.
Michael scratched his chin.
“The Colonel in hysterics,” he suggested callously. Nevertheless, the
noise puzzled him.