Mr. Petre, settled in that country inn, felt for the first time in
those days a relief from tension. He began to realize how intolerable
that tension had been, and a plan vaguely formed itself in his mind
to bury himself altogether; perhaps even to go off abroad, take
another name, and be free of worries which were growing intolerable,
and of a problem that could not be solved. It was even a comfort
to him to believe, as he had come to believe, that he could never
recover himself, his name, or his past. Some deeply-rooted but no
longer conscious habit of mind made him take for granted that his
livelihood would necessarily be provided. It was well for him that he
had not to put that illusion to the test!
He enjoyed a deep night’s rest, and by the next morning had already
determined to look up a train for Southampton and the hours of the
boats, when the morning paper, which waited upon his table, turned
his mind suddenly into another channel. For on the last page, where
he had casually opened it, he saw a violent headline: “BLAZING
TOUAREGS,” and read the astonishing series of prices soaring up,
in the course of the day before, the morrow of his leaving town:
2⅝-⅞, 3, 3½, 3, 3⅛, 3, 3¼, 3¾, 3½. He read the comment of the City
Editor--the comment of a man ignorant, puzzled, and pretending in
his style omniscience. Some one had got early news of a new French
surrender; a new pocket of the deposits had been found--it was said.
It was better to await confirmation. The sudden rise seemed hardly
justified--and so on. The City Editor was groping. Yet what had
happened was simple enough. First had come a few little heaves. Every
one in that luncheon-room--except the banker--had given their orders.
Even the kind old Cabinet Minister, who, driving away with his niece,
the banker’s wife, had with difficulty grasped what was toward,
was dragged in. For that excellent woman had bawled at him as they
spun away from Mrs. Cyril’s door, “Uncle Tom, buy Touaregs!”--and
Uncle Tom, with his gentle, futile smile had said, “Eh, what?” The
lady had repeated in a scream, “Buy Touaregs!” and the word “buy”
had penetrated the passage of that senile ear. A younger gleam had
illumined the statesman’s eye; he had said almost briskly, “Eh,
what? Buy what?” His niece sinking back pettishly on the cushion
had muttered, “Silly old ass!” Then, remembering a common interest,
she had braced herself to a supreme effort and roared, “TOUAREGS!”
and seeing ineptitude spreading once more over her uncle’s finely
inherited features, had taken a little gold pencil and a diary from
her bag, had scribbled in shaky letters to the bumping of the
machine, “TOUAREGS”--torn off the page, and thrust it into his hand.
He nodded. At last he understood. And she dropped him at his door
just in time to get the order through.
Charlie Terrard had done better. Better than the banker’s wife,
better than the kindly old Cabinet Minister, better than the two
ex-Lord Chancellors, better than Mrs. Cyril herself; better even than
Marjorie Kayle; better, far better, than the solid banker himself,
who as he trudged manfully back to his office had turned the thing
over in his mind and had determined with sound business sense that
when a man like John K. Petre said publicly that he was buying it
meant quite certainly that he was unloading. Therefore had that
banker shrewdly refrained from touching the affair and thereby missed
a pile.
The stock, still sticking, had taken its first lift in that last hour
of Wednesday, and next morning the public came tumbling in. Touaregs
went soaring up at once like a happy soul released from the bonds of
flesh. They grew strong and winged, they stormed heaven. The week-end
passed in a fever. With the first bids of Monday they were shooting
out of sight. Four and one-eighth to one-fourth at the opening, four
and one-half, four and three-fourths--my word, _Five_! Five and a
_quarter_? Six ... could they have touched Six? Yes,--and passed it.
Charlie Terrard before that Monday’s business closed was alarmed.
They got quite out of hand; at any moment there might be trouble.
He blamed himself for not selling; but the fever had touched even
him, and he waited another night. With Tuesday the curve was still
slightly on the rise, though now and then wobbly. Rather late, on a
falling market, Charlie Terrard sold. What he himself made I have
never discovered; it was very pretty. But for Mr. John K. Petre’s
account there was a clear profit of £73,729, 16s. 3d. Then came the
very full reaction, with which these pages have nothing to do; and
in many a lonely parsonage, in many a quiet country cottage of the
purest Drury Lane, gentlemen and ladies who had bought at anything
between 5 and 6¼ were hastening to cut losses in time--and by their
eagerness and multitude hastening those losses--as Touaregs dropped
down again to something near their true, their original, their
humbler level.
Away down in Hampshire Mr. Petre watched those figures with a vague,
imperfect comprehension of their meaning; but he had at least a
general impression that he was safe. Of when settling day might be,
of what settling day might mean, he knew nothing; but he saw that
something had happened which--unless Terrard was hopeless--made him
secure. His first wild thought of flight left him altogether. He
determined to return; and only when he had made that determination
did it occur to him that if he had fled he would have come in a very
few weeks to the end of his tether.
He made no haste to get back to London, though the hotel was again
his goal. The freedom from haunting terrors of publicity and pursuit
was grateful. He stopped at one place and another, drinking in the
spring. And when he got back to the Splendide he was refreshed and
strengthened to meet whatever might be awaiting him, though his
nervousness returned as he got back into his room and looked for his
correspondence.
There was only one letter, in the business envelope of Blake and
Blake, upon his table; and within it a very few formal lines, and a
check for £73,729, 16s. 3d.
* * * * *
The importance of any sum of money differs with the habits of the
recipient. It is possible that Mr. Petre in the full knowledge of
what and who he was would have found that sum sufficient, but nothing
overwhelming. It is possible that it might have seemed to him an
incredible fortune. If he were what all indications made him out to
be, it was but one fairly successful minor transaction. If he were
what a very vague, very confused, but permanent profound sense warned
him that he was, it was a miracle, changing all his prospects.
But neither the one attitude nor the other was that of Mr. Petre as
he spread out the check before him and stared rather stupidly at the
figures. His preoccupation was not with the magnitude of the sum,
nor with its comparative insignificance. His preoccupation was with
a much simpler question--of what he should do with that little bit
of pink paper. He knew, just as he knew the Strand, and the map of
England, and Bradshaw and the rest of it--though he did not know
himself--that there were such things as banks and banking accounts,
and that pieces of paper of this kind went through that machine. But
he stood like a child in the matter of how to begin.
Here again the simplest course would have been to have looked up
Terrard in the book, met him and consulted him. But that would have
been to give himself away, and to open that series of questions the
starting of which he had come to dread as a man dreads an operation.
He did what all men do when they are quite at a loss. He plunged.
He put that check into an hotel envelope, put the envelope in his
pocket, walked aimlessly through half a dozen turnings, and entered
the doors of the first bank he saw. It was a branch, neither small
nor great, doing business briskly in a quarter of large shops; one of
a score of such branches in central London, nothing more.
The furniture was familiar to him, for banks are all upon a pattern;
and the brass railings and the mahogany desks and the glass
swing doors and the little army of clerks all scribbling in huge
leather-bound books, gave him, he knew not why, an odd association
of discomfort and dread: of irritation and humiliation: of worries.
But the feeling was slight, a long and far-off thing stirring in the
depths of his mind. He went straight up to a worthy young gentleman
in round spectacles adorning a face like the full moon, who was
rapidly counting slips with a dampened finger behind the railings. He
simply pushed over the check.
[Illustration: “_... Spectacles adorning a face like the full moon._”]
The worthy young gentleman in round spectacles, mild, moonlike, but
precise, turned it over, shot a glance at the back, pushed it back
to the newcomer and said:
“Isn’t endorsed.”
Mr. Petre looked at him with a vacant look of perplexed inquiry.
“Are you the payee?” said the humble associate of international
finance, with just as much impatience as he ever allowed himself. But
Mr. Petre boggled at the word “payee.”
“Are you the person to whom the check is made out?”
He understood that! “Yes,” said Mr. Petre.
“Do you want to pay it in?”
“I--I suppose so,” said Mr. Petre.
How great is England! The young man went off with no more concern
than if he were carrying a postage stamp. He was absent about five
minutes, during which time Mr. Petre stood gently drumming his
fingers upon the counter and wondering what would happen next.
No one had overheard the conversation except a porter in gorgeous
uniform, and he saw nothing extraordinary in it. He was used to
eccentrics of all kinds, to millionaires in tatters and to frauds and
to plain fools; they passed before him in an unceasing stream.
The moonlike youth returned.
“Do you wish to open an account?” he said.
“Open?” said Mr. Petre.
“Do you wish this check,” said the selenian patiently, “to be put
to your credit? Do you wish to draw against it ... when it has been
cleared?”
“Credit” was clear enough. “Draw” was ambiguous. “Cleared” was quite
meaningless.
“I want it to go in here,” said Mr. Petre simply.
His friend (or opponent) on the other side of the counter sighed
and once more disappeared. He was not absent so long this time, and
when he returned there was clearly apparent, in spite of his immense
reserve, something of awe in his manner, and a great deal of new
courtesy.
“Mr. Petre,” he said, in a respectful, very low voice, “the manager
would like to see you.”
A wild dread pierced like a lance through Mr. Petre’s inmost soul.
He had an impulse to dash through the doors--but he was no longer
young, and he feared pursuit; so he said “Yes,” in a voice which he
prevented from trembling by an assumption of boldness, and just at
that moment a very charming, quietly dressed, ironical, smiling man
in the thirties, spare, and with a high voice, came up welcoming him
and saying:
“Oh, Mr. Petre? Mr. Petre, I presume? I wonder whether you could be
so kind--whether you could spare a moment! The manager would really
be very much honored....”
Mr. Petre followed him mechanically through a door, down a deeply
carpeted passage on the walls of which were three engravings of the
Mother Bank in the City of London; one dated 1815, one 1852, and the
last 1930; they displayed a progressive decay in the architectural
sense of bankers. The charming man pushed open a further door with
grace, with decision, with reverence, and Mr. Petre found himself in
the presence of a very fine old English gentleman, solid, rubicund,
who stood up solemnly at his entry and welcomed him with a sensible
apology for taking up his time. His high forehead witnessed to a
lifetime of profound thought, his white beard to careful grooming.
[Illustration: “_His forehead witnessed to a lifetime of profound
thought, his white beard to careful grooming._”]
“It is very good of you indeed, Mr. Petre; very good of you, I am
sure. Pray take this chair.” And he put a piece of sacred furniture,
preserved from the beginnings of the Mother House, in front of the
excellent coal fire which burned in an Adams fireplace, preserved
from the beginnings of the Mother Bank. It was of marble; a
sacrificial frieze supported upon Doric columns. Above it stood a
clock, preserved from the beginnings of the Mother Bank, gilt, and
supported by a figure of Time with a scythe and an hour-glass, signed
“Letellier, de Paris; au Palais Royal,” in thin, careful script; the
whole under a glass case.
The two men sat down, and the manager opened genially.
“Well, Mr. Petre, we had no idea you were in London.”
“No,” answered Mr. Petre, after a pause; then quite idiotically. “I
mean yes.” He was on the point of adding the day of his arrival, when
the terror of inquisition leaped up before him, and he was silent.
“We are greatly honored, Mr. Petre,” said the manager, thrusting
the tips of his fingers together and separating them once or twice
in habitual fashion. “Ah, by the way....” he rang a bell. “Have you
given your signature, Mr. Petre?”
What responsibility was this? But Mr. Petre did as he was bid;
he rose, wrote on a slip of paper which the attendant put before
him, “John K. Petre” in a bold hand. It was the second time he had
inscribed that fatal name. It was his now and on record. He was in
for it. But anyhow, what did it matter? There was no harm done. He
was sure of the Petre, and John K. was what they had recognized
at the hotel. It was as John K. that he was known there. An odd
combination “John K.” He must remember to avoid the mere initials, J.
K. He must keep to the “John.” Mentally he performed the operation
half a dozen times, and the signature “John K. Petre” rose before his
inward eye, certain and fixed.
So did it rise, you may well believe, before the inward eye of that
happy manager. It rose before his inward eye surrounded by an aureole
of heavenly light: letters to be counted among the stars. There was a
pause.
“They are preparing your book, Mr. Petre,” said his host, at length.
“K ... is?”
By a happy providence Mr. Petre, on the point of answering, pulled
up. He might--such is the particularity of men when they begin to use
their imagination--have made a conversation by surmise. He might have
guessed Kenneth or Kaspar, and Lord knows what would have happened
then! for there was no John Kenneth or John Kaspar in the empyrean
of high finance. But the playful Dæmon who had been given his
destinies for a pastime shielded him from such a blunder. He remained
obstinately dumb. The manager respected his reticence. He sent out
a brief note, and in the depths of that vast mansion of gold a serf
engrossed in fine black letters upon a parchment cover, bold and
triumphant, “JOHN K. PETRE.” Nothing more. And what bank, let alone
what obscure branch bank, could want more?
“And what kind of check book shall I send for, Mr. Petre?” said the
manager kindly, as though he were offering a choice of viands.
Once more the playful immortal shielded his favorite son.
For Mr. Petre had not the least idea what he should reply, nor
whether he was being asked to make a choice between various colors,
or various shapes, or sundry magic names. And he would have stumbled
and blundered in his reply, had not the other immediately continued:
“Shall we say fifty crossed to order? It is much the more convenient
form for us, is it not?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Petre, with dignity and emphasis. “Fifty crossed to
order.” Then he fell silent again.
“Of course, Mr. Petre,” continued the great man, with a touch of
nervousness strange in such a voice and so well poised a mouth, “we
shall be happy to do anything you may require during your stay in
London. Any transaction or--ah--I won’t say _advice_,”--and here he
smiled with dignity--“but any--well--anything you may require.”
“Yes, certainly,” said Mr. Petre. “Certainly. By all means.” He could
hardly say less.
The pause lengthened. Mr. Petre rose. His host rose with him. “A
thousand thanks,” he said, “Mr. Petre. We shall only be too pleased.
Too pleased.” He nodded, made the slightest possible inclination of
his head, and Mr. Petre bowed and was gone. He was conducted back
with great ceremony through the deeply-carpeted corridor, past the
three engravings of the Mother Bank in 1815, 1852 and Present Day;
and as he would have gone hurriedly out past the counter, was gently
detained while his courteous, his even obsequious, guardian handed
him an oblong check book, which he thrust hurriedly into his pocket
as he disappeared.
So ended the first episode in a great career.
* * * * *
When Mr. Petre got back to his room in the hotel he first of all
bolted the door--he could hardly have told you why; it was through
an odd feeling that he was about to do something that would make him
ridiculous if he were caught at it. Then he pulled out the check
book from his pocket and looked at it closely and curiously inside
and out. He sat down at the table and opened the check book, holding
it down flat with either hand and gazing at the first form and its
counterfoil.
As he did so a perfect familiarity returned, though no personal
memory whatsoever: only that same odd feeling of ill ease which had
suddenly struck him when he came into the bank, and which was renewed
in him at the aspect of this banking thing. Whatever he had been,
banks or banking had in some way bothered him. He sighed, and then
more cheerfully considered that after all even this dim sensation was
a kind of clew. He mused. Perhaps he had been--perhaps he was--a
very great banker somewhere or other, but a banker who had got into
trouble: what kind of trouble? The question cast him down again. Then
his spirits rose as he recalled the way he had been treated. Whoever
he was, the trouble either was not very great or had not yet come
out. It suddenly struck him as he thus pondered over the simplicity
of the affair that he had been a fool not to cast out feelers. A
few very discreet allusions, a few apparently innocent questions
cautiously framed, might have led him to know more. He would rather,
far rather, have died (such was the odd effect of his misfortune)
than let a human being guess it even in the most distant fashion. But
if he led them on...? He would think about it.... He would frame a
few phrases and be ready to bring them out at the right moment. Then
he turned to the open check book again.
Yes, it was perfectly familiar. That was where you signed, and
those little blank spaces beyond the perforations on the left were
the counterfoils where you marked how much you had signed for, and
there was the place for a date; but he was worried for a moment as
to whether the figures came above the writing or below it; then the
image of the check he had just paid in came to his mind. Of course,
that was what had brought it all back to him. He felt confident. He
could go ahead, so far as that little detail of his new life was
concerned, and there was an ample balance. He wrote down the main
sum, £73,729 16s. 3d. on the inside of the cover. Then he turned to
his desk and considered the questions he should frame, the leading
questions which might gradually get men without their knowing it to
tell him who he was.
He put down a little list of what he already knew. He had been in
the States, he had been there some little time at least, and perhaps
for a lifetime. If he was an American citizen, at any rate he knew
London well. Perhaps if he went back to the States he would discover
there what he was; it might all return to him in the familiar sounds
and sights and smells. But it was a big effort to make for finding
out something that might be discovered much more easily or that
might return to him at any moment. He had in the States befriended a
certain Mr. Cyril, now dead. A Mr. Leonard Cyril. Plenty of people
must have known this Mr. Cyril, for by his widow the man was rich
and her acquaintance nobby. If he went about it quite carefully, in
some company where his name was not known, he might hear what kind
of man this Mr. Petre was who had thus befriended Mr. Leonard Cyril,
a man so wealthy that his very widow rolled in it--to judge by her
house and guests. Then there was the other main clew, he had been in
a train arriving at a certain hour at Paddington. Now that he had
collected his wits it would be a simple matter to find out where that
train had started from. Yes, there were quite a number of clews. It
ought not to take long. He turned to the Bradshaw. A train from
Cardiff came into Paddington at one. He did not know that his own
train, the boat train from Plymouth, had been half an hour late. He
noted that Cardiff train and its stops. He had come from Cardiff or
beyond, or joined at Swindon. It wasn’t much of a help but it limited
the field.
Then his mind passed again to those questions he had to frame. But it
must be done with tact. He saw himself again in Mrs. Cyril’s house
trying to shepherd her words into his fold. He might begin in a tone
of gentle and respectful condolence: “When I met Mr. Cyril....” and
then hope that she would interrupt with, “Ah, yes! How good you were
to him in New York”--or Topeka, or wherever the damned place was. But
then again, she might meet him with a counter question, and say, “Oh,
do tell me, please, how Miriam is?” Then he would get it between wind
and water, and if he had shuddered a moment ago, now he trembled. It
was not so easy as it looked.
A brilliant thought leaped into his brain. And as it leaped his
guardian Dæmon laughed.
He rang the bell, he unbolted the door. He asked if they had in the
hotel any American books of reference. They had a New York telephone
book, and a very strange, short, fat volume in which were the names
of the American great who still survived in this sad world to the end
of November, 1952. For there was a brutal note on the title-page,
“The Editor cannot guarantee that none of the names mentioned in
this annual, which went through the press at the end of November
last, may not since have died.” There was no John K. Petre. He was
ashamed to ask for more books of this library. He went down to the
ground floor and consulted the London Directory. There was no John
K. Petre. He made a note that he would look, as a last and desperate
chance, at the New York Directory, and would guarantee it to say if
he had ever lived in New York. They had one--of two years before.
There was no John K. Petre.
Then another ruse suggested itself to him. He would with infinite
pains secure the services of a man--perhaps there were those who did
it for a living--of some man who would find out for him all about Mr.
John K. Petre.
He went down by the great stairs turning over in his mind the strange
dearth of John K. Petres in the printed lists. Clearly an enormous
John K. Petre did, somewhere, dominate the world; but where? He
formed the plan of consulting his one friend at the Registration
counter.
He made his effort. He went to the clerk standing at the great book
of registry, and asked him in a low voice (after looking about to
make sure that no one could hear) whether he might be told the name
of some agency or person who could look up a small obscure private
point for him while he was in London. It was confidential. The clerk,
who made an honest penny, among many dozen other honest pennies, by
recommending the right people, wrote out at once upon his own card a
name and an address: “Jos. Daniels, 27 Birkham Street, Soho.”
“Mr. Petre,” he said, with his usual respect, which seemed so
exaggerated to the unfortunate man to whom it was addressed, “if you
will just go and give that personally, I think you will get all you
want. There is no proper office, and no name put up. Mr. Daniels is
too careful for that. He has worked wonders, to my knowledge. Never
mind the look of the house. Don’t write. He has no telephone, either.
Just go there; and when you find him in, give him this card of mine.”
And thus was the clerk assured of his commission.
Mr. Petre was not quite sure that he had done right. Even one human
being knowing but one step of his research was a peril; but he had
no other choice, or rather, it was safer than addressing himself to
some public firm. He set off at once for Birkham Street. He found the
house, or rather, the door; a grimy door next to a little foreign
restaurant. He rang. He was let in by a slatternly woman who seemed
to have caught something of her master’s air, for she certainly
looked as if she knew too much.
He asked for Mr. Daniels, and was overjoyed to find that Mr. Daniels
was in.
He found a little, dark-haired man, with keen eyes and a full mouth,
and an expression as though the world amused him--which indeed it
did; but as if also he were sparing in his words, which indeed he
was.
There were, as Mr. Petre had been warned, no marks of an office,
nothing to betray Mr. Daniels’ trade. It was a dingy room, stuffily
furnished with a few old horsehair chairs, and Mr. Daniels as his
visitor came in laid down a paper which he had been reading, rose and
asked him, when he had looked at the card, and offered one of the
horsehair chairs, of what service he might be.
“My dear sir,” said Mr. Petre earnestly, feeling that unless he began
the matter at once he would never have the courage to begin it at
all, “it is very simple. I am desired--I have been asked--at any rate
I have occasion to find out ... what I can about a Mr. John K. Petre.
You know the name?”
Mr. Daniels smiled sweetly.
“Oddly enough,” he said, “I _do_ know the name. If you had asked me
to find a man who did not know the name, you might have given me more
difficulty.” His smile remained upon his full lips, and he held his
head back somewhat, examining Mr. Petre in the fashion a humorous
diplomat might use if he were asked by a casual stranger to talk upon
secrets of State.
“You have never seen him?” said Mr. Petre.
It was a foolish question; for after all, if Mr. Daniels had already
recognized his guest, Mr. Daniels would have greeted him, and perhaps
he might even have remembered Mr. Daniels. But perhaps Mr. Daniels
_had_ seen him; perhaps Mr. Daniels _did_ know him. Mr. Daniels had a
mysterious smile upon him. The whole thing was very perplexing.
“No,” said Mr. Daniels slowly. “No. I have never seen Mr. Petre.
Nor has any one that I know of,” he added, gazing up blankly at the
ceiling. “Nor,” he continued emphatically, after a pause, and looking
Mr. Petre full in the eyes, “nor are you likely to come across any
one who has; not easily!”
“Exactly,” said Mr. Petre. “Precisely.... Could you ... my dear Mr.
Daniels”--and here he leaned forward--“I am prepared to pay well; to
pay largely. You have but to name your figure. Now, do we understand
each other? Can you not discover for me any of the leading facts with
regard to....”
But Mr. Daniels interrupted him, putting his hand firmly down upon
the table and still looking Mr. Petre in the face, only rather more
sternly.
“I do not know who you are, sir,” he said. “You have not given me
your name, and no doubt you have your own good reasons for not doing
so. But I can tell you this--and it will save you a good deal of
trouble. It is not worth _my_ while--it is not worth _anybody’s_
while--to hunt that particular game. Do you understand?”
Mr. Petre understood about as much as if it had been Choctaw, but he
looked wise, nodded, and said:
“Yes! yes! I understand.”
“It’s mere waste of time,” said Mr. Daniels, a little more kindly,
and getting up as he spoke to show that there was nothing more
doing. “If I cannot talk to you about it nobody can--and you may be
certain that nobody will.”
There was a long silence between the two men. Mr. Petre broke it with
a lie.
“Yes--I understand,” he said.
His guardian angel wept and his guardian Dæmon shook with laughter.
Then Mr. Petre went out in a mist of moral fog so thick that his
moral hands were groping all round. He had feared something like
madness in himself when his misfortune fell upon him. Now it looked
as if the rest of the world were mad as well.
* * * * *
Meanwhile in the parlor of the bank the manager was speaking to the
spare and courteous man who had introduced the great client.
“He’s an extraordinary fellow, Tommy; we’ve all heard of him. Now
we’ve seen him at it--in the flesh.”
Tommy nodded and was amused. “It’s much stranger than a book,” he
said.
“Yes,” answered the manager ponderously enough; and added the
original words, “Life is stranger than fiction.”
“What astonishes me,” said Tommy, “is the way he comes up to sample.
He went on exactly like a film; it was better than that, it was the
exact echo of himself, wasn’t it? Or like a photograph?”
“He’s always done it,” said the manager, with the pompous assumption
of knowledge drawn at fourth hand, and accurate enough. “I don’t know
whether it is that he likes the mystery of it, or that he has got
some mania for keeping everything to himself; but he did exactly the
same thing in Paris, two years ago. He blew into Rogers’s, started
an account, behaved like a lunatic--but quite gently--asked the most
ridiculous questions, made a sudden haul in what nobody was thinking
about, the Bordeaux Loan--he had heard something--left the whole
pile on current account for three months, and then transferred it by
cable. Without a word of writing or anything. They had had the use
of the money all that time, and they’ve been living ever since with
their mouths open praying he’ll blow in again.”
Tommy nodded, holding his chin in his hand.
“We shall not keep him,” he said; “but it will be useful while it
lasts,” and the manager nodded in agreement. Then they both smiled
and returned each to his task.
It has been said by a Great Victorian Bore that if you could take
samples of the conversation going on in our great cities at any
one moment you would think you were listening to parrots repeating
themselves. He was right.
Not indeed at that exact moment, but less than three hours later, the
clerk of the register of the Splendide, having gone off duty, met
Mr. Daniels (as was his custom) in the bar of the “Beaver.” And Mr.
Daniels’ first question was:
“Who was that old fellow you sent me to-day?”
The clerk drew a little closer, put his mouth close to Mr. Daniels’
ear, and murmured the name.
For once in his life Mr. Daniels showed real, honest, innocent
surprise. His eyes opened widely, and then his expression changed to
a mixture of vast amusement and vast admiration combined.
“By God!” he said, “he’s a genius!”
“We all know that,” answered Harrison drily.
“A genius!” shouted Mr. Daniels, ordering a second round on the
strength of it. “A genius! He comes into my room like a lamb and asks
me to find out about himself!”
“Testing you, he was,” said the clerk Harrison with profound
psychology.
“That’s it,” answered Mr. Daniels wisely, wagging his head from side
to side. “Testing me! And didn’t find me wanting! Ah! He knows Jos.
Daniels by now! He’ll know who he came to.” And the clerk ordered a
third round on the strength of that little triumph, which both of
them had won. The mighty man now knew the accuracy of Harrison’s
choice in private detectives, and would trust him now for ever: there
ought to be something in it. The mighty man knew the fidelity of
Daniels: and surely something would come Daniels’ way also. He would
know that his privacy was safe in such hands.
That same evening, innocent of so much power, the original author
of these movements slept, and forgot his troubles till the morning
light.