Mr. Jesse Trasmere sat at the end of a long, and, except in his
immediate vicinity, bare table. At his end it was laid and Mr. Trasmere
was slowly and deliberately enjoying a lean cutlet.
The room gave no suggestion of immense wealth and paid no silent
tribute either to his artistic taste or his acquaintance with China.
The walls were innocent of pictures, the furniture old, European and
shabby. Mr. Trasmere had bought it second-hand and had never ceased to
boast of the bargain he had secured.
If there were no pictures, there were no books. Jesse Trasmere was not
a reader, even of newspapers.
It was one o’clock in the afternoon and through the folds of his
dressing-gown, the grey of his pyjama jacket showed open at his lean
throat, for Mr. Trasmere had only just got out of bed. Presently he
would dress in his rusty black suit and would be immensely wakeful
until the dawn of tomorrow. He never went to bed until the grey showed
in the sky, nor slept later than two o’clock in the afternoon.
At six-thirty, to the second, Walters, his valet, would assist him into
his overcoat, a light one if it was warm, a heavy, fur-lined garment
if it was cold, and Mr. Trasmere would go for his walk and transact
whatever business he found to his hand. But before he left the house
there was a certain ceremonial, the locking of doors, the banishment of
the valet to his own quarters, and the disappearance of Mr. Trasmere
through the door which led from his study-dining-room to the basement
of the house. This done he would go out. Walters had watched him from
one of the upper windows scores of times, walking slowly down the
street, an unfurled umbrella in one hand, a black bag in another. At
eight-thirty to the minute he was back in the house. He invariably
dined out. Walters would bring him a cup of black coffee and at ten
o’clock would retire to his own room, which was separated from the main
building by a heavy door which Mr. Trasmere invariably locked.
Once in the early days of his service, Walters had expostulated.
“Suppose there is a fire, sir,” he complained.
“You can get through your bath-room window on to the kitchen and if you
can’t drop to the ground from there, you deserve to be burnt to death,”
snarled the old man. “If you don’t like the job you needn’t stay. Those
are the rules of my establishment and there are no others.”
So, night after night, Walters had gone to his room and Mr. Trasmere
had shuffled after him in his slippered feet, had banged and locked the
door upon him and had left Walters to solitude.
This procedure was only altered when the old man was taken ill one
night and was unable to reach the door. Thereafter a key was hung in
a small, glass-fronted case, in very much the same way as fire-keys
are hung. In the event of his illness, or of any other unexpected
happening, Walters could secure the key and answer the bell above his
bed-head. That necessity had not arisen.
Every morning the valet found the door unlocked. At what hour old Jesse
came he could not discover, but he guessed that his employer stopped
on his way to bed in the morning to perform this service.
Walters was never allowed an evening off. Two days a week he was given
twenty-four hours’ leave of absence, but he had to be in the house by
ten.
“And if you are a minute later, don’t come back,” said Jesse Trasmere.
As the old man’s valet, Walters had exceptional opportunities for
discovering something more about his master than Mr. Trasmere would
care to have known. He was for a very particular reason anxious to
know what the basement contained. Once he had met a man who had been
engaged in the building of the house, and learnt that there was a room
below, built of concrete, but though he had, with the greatest care and
discretion, searched for keys which might, during the daily absence of
his employer, reveal the secret of this underground room he had never
succeeded in laying his hand upon them. Mr. Trasmere had apparently
only one key, a master key, which he wore round his neck at night, and
in the same inaccessible position in his clothing during the daytime,
and Walters’ search had been in vain, until one morning, when taking
Mr. Trasmere his shaving-water, the servant found him suffering from
one of those fainting fits which periodically overcame him. There was a
cake of soap handy and Walters was a resourceful man.
Mr. Trasmere looked up from his plate and fixed his servant with his
grey-blue eyes.
“Has anybody called this morning?”
“No, sir.”
“Have any letters come?”
“Only a few. They are on your desk, sir.”
Mr. Trasmere grunted.
“Did you put the notice in the paper that I was leaving town for two or
three days?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” said Walters.
Jesse Trasmere grunted again.
“A man is coming from China, and I don’t want to see him,” he
explained. He was oddly communicative at moments to his servant, but
Walters, who knew his master extremely well, did not make the mistake
of asking questions. “No, I don’t want to see him,” the old man
chewed a tooth-pick reflectively and his unattractive face bore an
expression of distaste. “He was a partner of mine, twenty, thirty years
ago, a card-playing, gambling, drinking man, who gave himself airs
because--well, never mind what he gave himself airs about,” he said
impatiently, as though he anticipated a question which he should have
known never would have been put to him. “He was that kind of man.”
He stared at the fireless grate with its red brick walls and its
microscopic radiator and clicked his lips.
“If he comes, he is not to be admitted. If he asks questions, you’re
not to answer. You know nothing ... about anybody. Why he’s coming at
all ... well, that doesn’t matter. He’s just trash, a soakin’ dope. He
had his chance, got under it and went to sleep. Phew! That fellow! He
might have been rich, but he sold ... and sold. A soak! Rather drink
than sit in the Empress of China’s council ... she’s dead. White trash
... nothing ... h’m.”
He glared up of a sudden and asked harshly:
“Why the hell are you listening?”
“Sorry, sir, I thought....”
“Get out!”
“Yes, sir,” said Walters with alacrity.
For half-an-hour old Jesse Trasmere sat where the valet had left him,
the red end of his tooth-pick leaping up and down eccentrically. Then
he got up, and, going to an old-fashioned bureau, opened the glass
front.
He brought to the table a shallow bowl of white porcelain, half-filled
with Indian ink. His second visit to the secretaire produced a thick
pad of paper. It was unusually large and its texture of a peculiar
character. From an open-work iron box he took a long-handled brush and
sitting down again dipped the fine point into the ink.
Another long interval of inaction and he commenced to write, beginning
at the top right-hand corner and working down the page. The grotesque
and intricate Chinese characters appeared with magic rapidity. He
finished one column and commenced another and so until the page was
covered except for two spaces beneath the last and the penultimate line.
Laying down the brush, he felt with the slow deliberation of age, in
his right-hand waistcoat pocket and pulled out an ivory cylinder as
big round as a large pencil. He slipped one end out and pressed it on
the paper. When he took the stamp away there appeared within a red
circle two Chinese characters. This was Jesse Trasmere’s “hong”, his
sign manual; a thousand merchants from Shanghai to Fi Chen would honour
cheques which bore that queer mark, and those for startling sums.
When the paper was dry he folded it into a small compass and
getting up, went to the empty fireplace. Outside on the stairs a
deeply-interested Walters craned his neck to see what happened. From
his position and through the fanlight above the door, he commanded a
view of at least a third of the room. But now Jesse had passed out of
sight and although he stretched himself perilously he could not see
what was happening. Only, when the old man reappeared the paper was no
longer in his hand.
He touched a bell and Walters came at once.
“Remember,” he rasped, “I am not at home--to anybody!”
“Very good, sir,” said Walters a little impatiently.
Mr. Trasmere had gone out that afternoon when the visitor called.
It was unfortunate for the old man’s scheme that the China mail had
made a record voyage and had arrived thirty-six hours ahead of her
scheduled time. Mr. Trasmere was not a reader of newspapers, or he
would have learnt the fact in that morning’s paper.
Walters answered the bell after some delay, for he was busily engaged
in his own room on a matter that was entirely private to himself, and
when he did answer the tinkling summons it was to find a brown-faced
stranger standing on the broad step. He was dressed in an old suit
which did not fit him, his linen was stained and his boots were
patched, but his manner would not have been out of place in Lorenzo the
Magnificent.
With his hands thrust into his trousers pockets, his soiled soft hat
on the back of his head, he met the enquiring and deferential gaze of
Walters with a calm and insolent stare, for Mr. Brown was rather drunk.
“Well, well, my man,” he said impatiently, “why the devil do you keep
me waiting on the doorstep of my friend Jesse’s house, eh?” He removed
one of his hands from his pocket, possibly not the cleanest one, and
tugged at his short grey beard.
“Mr.--er--Mr. Trasmere is out,” said Walters, “I will tell him you have
called. What name, sir?”
“Wellington Brown is my name, good fellow,” said the stranger.
“Wellington Brown from Chei-feu. I will come in and wait.”
But Walters barred the way.
“Mr. Trasmere has given me strict orders not to admit anybody unless he
is in the house,” he said.
A wave of anger turned Wellington Brown’s face to a deeper red.
“He has given orders!” he spluttered. “That I am not to be admitted--I,
Wellington Brown, who made his fortune, the swindling old thief! He
knows I am coming!”
“Are you from China, sir?” blurted Walters.
“I have told you, menial and boot-licking yellow-plush, that I am from
Chei-feu. If you are illiterate, as you appear to be, I will explain to
you that Chei-feu is in China.”
“I don’t care whether Chei-feu is in China or in the moon,” said
Walters obstinately. “You can’t come in, Mr. Brown! Mr. Trasmere is
away--he’ll be away for a fortnight.”
“Oh, won’t I come in!”
The struggle was a brief one, for Walters was a man of powerful
physique, and Wellington Brown was a man nearer to sixty than fifty.
He was flung against the stone wall of the porch and might, in his
bemused condition, have fallen had not Walters’ quick hand grabbed him
back.
The stranger breathed noisily.
“I’ve killed men for that,” he said, jerkily, “shot ’em down like dogs!
I’ll remember this, flunkey!”
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” said Walters, aggrieved that any onus for
the unpleasantness should rest on him.
The stranger raised his hand haughtily.
“I will settle accounts with your master--remember that, lackey! He
shall pay, by God!”
With drunken dignity, he walked unsteadily through the patch of garden
that separated the house from the road, leaving Walters a puzzled man.