The public came after those debentures very kindly, very willingly;
as kindly and willingly as cows galloping into a new pasture. The
Government Contracts were enough to make certain of that. The
House had left them alone as a matter of course, and the Service
Departments were thoroughly reassured; now that--as their controllers
knew--the two great names of the Rotor world were working together.
The critics were voluble, as they always are; diverse, as they always
are; variously ill-informed--and, in the issue, proved quite wrong.
Those who had said that there would be opposition in the House were
obviously wrong; they didn’t know what they were talking about; they
were thinking in terms of an imaginary House of Commons long ago:
old-fashioned academic fools like the editor (and owner) of _The
City_, who had run in their groove for forty years and still talked
of the “Constitution,” “the Watchdog at the Treasury,” “the great
spending departments,” “the power of the Purse.”
Those who said the new purchase would be voted down at the General
Meeting were ridiculously wrong. They hadn’t even analyzed the
nominal holdings, let alone the real ones. The Locals got one hundred
of the new fully-paid-up shilling shares for their old 4¾-⅞ sagging
pound shares (with a 2s. 6d. call on them), and the new stuff was
quoted at 112 within a fortnight. But after all, who were the Locals?
When you dug out realities from under such names as the Imperial
Adjustment Corporation, and Percival and Co., and Benezra Bros., who
were they? Trefusis. There were a few hundred investors with tufts of
fifty to five hundred, a few dozen larger insignificants, a handful
of real investors (every one of them come in through the Trefusis
crowd), a dust of little gamblers; all the rest were Trefusis--with
Cassleton for his little necessary tail.
The new ordinaries, five million of them, were half and half: Petre
(with Blake and Blake and certain appendages) stood for fifty
per cent. of the lot, and Trefusis and his crowd for more than
seven-eighths of the other half. And there you had it.
They could shake out the small fry and tie up the bundle to
themselves any day they chose. General meeting indeed! It was a
walk-over--and enthusiastic at that.
Those who said the Public wouldn’t take up the Debentures (and who
pitied such underwriters as Honest Tim Hulker of The Needle-Filers,
the working-man member for Parrett) were utterly wrong. They said
it was the wrong time of year, with so many out of town; that no
one would be such a fool as to make Trefusis a present of his own
property at their expense. That debenture sum for buying out the
Locals was too large altogether; that the eight per cent. offered was
of itself a danger signal and would warn off even the worst fools:
that for once Trefusis had overreached himself.
[Illustration: _The Public discovering no small appetite for the
Debentures at 8%._]
They didn’t know Trefusis; they didn’t know the dear old Public; they
didn’t even know the time of year.
Profits are always in season. The Public is quite fond of eight per
cent. Trefusis--to repeat the classic phrase--knew his way about.
But the people who were most hopelessly wrong were those who
prophesied after the event. When the obscure army of placers had
rushed to oversubscribe nearly three times over, these prophets shook
their heads knowingly and said, “Wait for the slump!” It never came.
It is too early to be certain yet, perhaps, and nothing lasts for
ever: but that debenture interest was paid at the end of the first
quarter as easily as a bus fare; and the next, and the next; and any
of the first-comers could sell if they liked, any time in the end of
the second year, for a very nice little premium indeed.
* * * * *
On a day of that late summer, with autumn already in the air, the
new Session and the Opening of the Courts not so distant, Trefusis
reviewed his position.
He had thought on that blazing July morning that he was cornered. He
had cursed inwardly and set out to save what could be saved. In the
two hours of wrestling with Terrard (the silent, impenetrable John
K. Petre looking on) he had envisaged some necessary loss. On the
contrary, he had gained.
His hours of lonely scheming had borne fruit. On a much larger
capitalization his holding was less in proportion but it was worth
more. So was his brother’s. And he was fond of his brother.
His interest was worth more to-day than his holding in its original
form--a good tenth more; even allowing for that stiff present to
Charlie--which gratitude for tolerable terms had rendered necessary,
and on which, indeed, Charlie had insisted. Not only was he richer:
he was in a rapidly growing thing--and the Public had paid. Nor were
the Public wrong. For apart from the big Service uses and Tidal and
Lighting and all the new Colonial and Indian contracts, the private
use of the Rotor was suddenly expanding. The dealings in ordinaries
didn’t cover a fiftieth of the bulk, yet the price already stood
close on one hundred and twenty shillings. And now--the inexplicable
Petre left him wholly free! Never interfered, hardly appeared. Yes.
He had done well, had Trefusis. It was worth being thrashed at such
a price. He would be delighted to take a second thrashing on such
terms. There was little of the _Pun-d’Onor_ about Trefusis, in spite
of the stage-villain face.
* * * * *
Mr. Petre had grown more sealed up than ever. There were days when
he never showed his face out of doors. He would spend whole weeks in
the country, buried, lost, unattainable. Charlie Terrard began to
wonder whether that stupendous brain were sound, and whether so large
and such sudden operations had not begun to undermine the Imperial
Intelligence which had fascinated him during all those months.
He had looked up Mr. Petre once or twice as the summer dragged
on, first before he had gone away to Switzerland--and then he had
thought him somewhat changed; again on his return, when the change
was notable, and for the worse. He had tried gently to suggest a
little going out into the world, a little relief from such strange
isolation; but he had met with so fierce and unaccustomed a refusal
to discuss the thing at all, that he had shrunk back--and he let some
weeks go by without troubling that inhuman loneliness.
Mr. Petre was suffering after a fashion which Terrard could not
understand. The original gnawing tooth of self-ignorance, the now
maddening, now despairing and numbing presence of an impotent self
that was not a self, had been reënforced as an agent of decay by a
new and surely morbid mood; active, intense, destructive. Mr. Petre
had grown frenzied against that base, bewildering world of money.
His own comet-like path through it had no effect upon him as a
good fortune, or even as a mere adventure. It had the effect of an
increasing evil at the very core of his being.
Of old friends, of the ties which alone make human life endurable
after forty--let alone at his age--he had none. He was wrecked and
spiritually ruined; imprisoned, starved, exiled, damned. In the place
of such good, human, necessary things as support a man with the savor
of his youth and manhood--his old books and friends, and loves and
worship, and air and powers of home--he was associating with what
every nerve in him, every nerve inherited from the lost youth and
middle-age of a better world, was exasperated against, and rejected
as vile.
He called in a routine way at the office--as briefly as he could.
He signed. He excused himself. The air of the place, the face of
Trefusis, the talk of lesser men ruined and of the innocent caught
unaware, of guttersnipes suddenly enriched, poisoned him out of all
measure. It was, perhaps, the heat. We all remember that summer of
’53.
The man fell ill. He had long ago cut off his telephone. His bouts of
country air failed to cure him. He would return restlessly to town,
and yet walked the few steps from the gate of the Temple to the Row
(by night if he could) in terror of being accosted. The few notes
sent to him remained unanswered. He refused to go near the office. He
saw Trefusis only twice. A third suggested meeting he escaped by a
pretended absence. The new shares lay in the Bank. He tried to forget
them. Later, the face of Trefusis began to haunt him unpleasantly,
and a thirst which was becoming a wild longing for freedom and a
clean riddance of all that abominable circumstance.
Then came dreams to torture him. Every night some new terror of sly
inhuman creeping acquaintance poisoned his soul in dreadful sleep and
the savor of it during the day, a savor of what was vampire-like and
snake-like in the vices of the modern market fastened on him within.
His soul was in hell.
He refused all service save that of a woman who came in late of a
morning and left at night. What we have read of misers became true of
this man, for whom the curse of gold was active in a very different
way from what any miser has ever felt.
There came a point where the servant grew alarmed. She had heard
Terrard’s name and knew his direction. She told him, and he had
written asking to call again, fearing to come without warning. He had
received a shaky line in reply, saying that the millionaire would
rather be alone.
The message troubled Charlie Terrard.
But it troubled him less than it might have done. The biggest and the
best was over. The Master would hardly stay in Europe much longer.
The climate of home would soon call him, as it called so many of his
compatriots, back to the hale New England winter.
Doubtless he had reserved his berth already on a late October boat:
his suite rather.... No.... Seeing his queer ways, rather a berth.
But a single cabin. Oh, yes. Charlie was sure of that!
Meanwhile he, Charlie, had done extremely well, and that was the main
thing. So had the other half of Blake and Blake.
He did not disturb the great man. He thought it would be time to call
on him later in the holidays: he looked forward to a long respite
from these awkward puzzling interviews, each of which had opened a
new mine of gold, but each of which had increasingly strained poor
Charlie. He was well rid of that strain.
In such a mood he got a sudden summons. Not over the ’phone; it was a
brief note brought by hand to his office just as he was going off for
the day. It was headed from the rooms in the Temple, and it ran:
“DEAR MR. TERRARD,
“Will you not come round to me here _as soon as you can_.
I am sorry to disturb you so late in office hours, but I
shall think myself fortunate if this finds you. For your
presence is, believe me, most urgent to my peace of mind.
“JOHN K. PETRE.”
Terrard was on the point of telephoning to the Temple to assure
Mr. Petre that he was hastening westward to such a summons, when
he remembered that this miserable hermit had cut off his wire. He
would not lose a moment, even to see his partner. He left a scrawl
for Charlbury telling him to be in that evening _without fail_: that
Petre had suddenly woken up and was moving. Then he went off eastward
at a trot to the Mansion House, rotored to Blackfriars, crossed on
foot, rotored again to the Temple. No man could have done it in
less, since the new regulations. From the Temple Gate, off Carmelite
Street, he ran across to the Row, ran up the stairs, and stood
puffing in front of Mr. Petre’s oak.
What was it? Heart? Rotor slump? Blackmail? He decided for blackmail,
and was making a rapid calculation on the best business lines when
the door opened--its own master opened it--and there stood Mr. Petre
before him, haggard, tired out, stooping.
“Come in,” he said, in a voice so changed that Terrard was shocked.
“Come in! It’s good of you to have come so quickly! I needed you!
You’re a good friend,” and he pressed the young man’s hand. “Sit down
... Terrard.... I--I’ve been sleeping badly. I hardly slept all the
night before last. Last night I couldn’t sleep at all. I’m done!” He
looked it.
Terrard began to murmur something. Mr. Petre put up his hand. “No,
Terrard. Hear me a little. It won’t take long. But I can’t wait. I
couldn’t trust any one else, but you ... I ... I ... didn’t really
know any one else ... and all this filthy chopping and watching and
overreaching ... oh!”
Terrard, used as he was to marvels from that mouth, felt, even after
all these months of incalculability, an appreciable astonishment.
“Hear me!” Mr. Petre went on. “You can help me.... No one else can.”
Then he halted.
“What is it, Mr. Petre?” said Terrard in his best bedside manner.
“It’s the shares!” said Mr. Petre hoarsely. “I can’t bear them ...
and Trefusis ... and all that.... It’s intolerable!” and he sank back.
“You’re ill!” said the other, still more sympathetically. “Give
yourself time, Mr. Petre.”
Mr. Petre shook his head with some remaining energy.
“No,” he answered. “No! I shall be right when I am rid of this
burden.... You can do it.... But do it at once!”
“Do what?” said Terrard.
“Get rid of those shares,” said Petre.
“What shares?” came the startled answer.
“Those. I don’t know what you call them. Those damned Amalgamated, I
mean Rotor, no British----Oh, curse it, Terrard,” the voice sinking
again, “it’s beyond me! Get rid of them for me, I can’t bear it!”
Terrard could not believe his ears.
“I get rid of ... Mr. Petre, what do you mean?”
“What I say,” with a burst of new energy. “Turn them into money.
I must go free.... Ever since----” He checked himself. “Well, no
matter, but ever since a certain moment in a certain day it’s been
cozening and evil beyond a harassed man’s enduring; and nightmares,
Terrard. I’ve come to the end of my tether.... Terrard, what’s my
holding worth? Now? To-night?”
Terrard had seen the last tape--luckily: 121. He remembered the
original allotment--the balance after the frills (especially his own
substantial frill), and he took for granted that none had been sold.
He made a rapid calculation. Then--as though in a religious awe of
such a man--instead of speaking, he pulled out his pencil, and jotted
figures down on a half sheet from the table and handed it to Mr.
Petre.... There was written, “roughly £2,634,300.”
Mr. Petre looked at the row of digits with a dull, unhappy eye.
“Turn ’em into money,” he said, “clean money--and put it in the Bank
for me--to-night: no ... what am I saying.... I’m ill, as you say,
Terrard; I haven’t slept for three days hardly ... I’m in for another
night of it,” and he groaned.
“My dear sir,” gasped Charlie, “you can’t go into the market and
sell a lump of that sort like ... like eggs. It wants any amount of
handling--and even then what a crash!”
“Oh?” said the suffering man sullenly. “I didn’t know. I don’t
understand these things. What’s to be done? I can’t wait. I won’t.”
Terrard grasped at the only way out.
“If you really mean it, Mr. Petre,” he said, solemnly and slowly,
separating every word, “there is one rapid way, and only one.” Mr.
Petre made no sign: he only waited. “Trefusis might take over--but at
a sacrifice--Mr. Petre--a very heavy sacrifice, I’m afraid.”
“He would, would he?” caught up Mr. Petre with a gleam of eagerness.
“Would he pay over--now, any time, at once?”
“Well,” said the other, “it’s not a matter of a moment, a great
operation like that ... it would want financing, he’d have to work it
delicately.”
It was odd to find himself telling such a man such things--as though
to a child. But he dared not question. He humored and followed the
lead given him.
Mr. Petre menaced disaster, and Terrard rapidly added, “But _if_
he’ll meet you--and at a price, Mr. Petre, he would, I suppose--you
could have a line that would bind him: and you could have it soon;
_if_ he’ll meet you,” and he looked at the strange Thing before him,
wondering.
“Any price,” said Mr. Petre, groaning, “any price. _That_ doesn’t
touch me.”
“He’d try to get all the difference of the rise, I’m afraid,” said
Charlie.
“What’s the difference of the rise?”
“Why, the rise since ... since the deal. He’d want the twenty per
cent. premium back, Mr. Petre.”
“It’s all Greek to me,” said Mr. Petre, with a wearied bow of the
head. “As he likes, what he likes.... Look here--give me the paper
again. No--what’s the twenty per cent. premium, what’s it all about?
Let him have it! What does it bring this down to?” and he tapped the
paper with its penciled millions.
Terrard jotted, amazed. “It doesn’t leave more than two and a
quarter,” he answered.
“Two and a quarter what?”
“Millions,” said Terrard in an awed voice.
“Tell him I’ll take two.”
“Mr. Petre, Mr. Petre!” Terrard cried aloud in genuine concern. “Oh,
Mr. Petre! it’s impossible.... Do for heaven’s sake....”
“Do as I tell you,” said the elderly marvel in sudden and astonishing
rage. “If he’ll do it now, to-night--he can have it.... If he won’t,
I’m done with him.”
“Mr. Petre,” began the now terror-stricken Terrard--but Mr. Petre was
silent. His effort had exhausted him.
Terrard cursed the absence of a telephone. He must see Charlbury. He
didn’t trust himself. He looked at his watch. It wasn’t yet six.
“If you’ll give me an hour,” he said, “I’ll come back.”
“If it must be, it must,” said Mr. Petre, in the low tense tone of
a man who bears the pangs of his tumor until the morphia comes.
“But--as quick as you can ... as quick as you can,” and he closed his
eyes.
Terrard was watching him. Was it madness or acting? And if it was
affected (a miracle!), what object in it all?
But he could not delay. He left the eccentric--or genius--with his
eyes still closed and dashed out. He ran to the nearest telephone, in
a pub, and caught Charlbury, who was fuming at the other end of the
wire: “No, don’t argue. Meet me half-way--at the New Tavern; that’s
half-way; it’s urgent.” And at the New Tavern, to the sound of an
intolerable band, and steadying his nerves with old brandy, Terrard
told his quite incredible tale.
“Does he mean it?” said Charlbury when he had done.
Terrard arched his eyebrows. “Looks like it!” he said. “Anyhow, it’s
orders. And you know what he is. It’s mortal to cross him.”
Charlbury nodded. “What’s his game?” he half mused, screwing his
little eyes together in a downward investigation of the floor.
“Beyond me!”
“There must be something,” said Charlbury. Then a light broke on him,
he slapped his thigh. “By God! The old weasel! He’s going to freeze
Trefusis out!”
Terrard shook his head. “It can’t be that. He’s offering them to
Trefusis,” he said.
Mr. Charlbury smiled pitifully. “That’s the bait,” he remarked.
“He’ll buy in later, after the slump.”
Terrard respected his partner’s judgment in High Finance now, as he
had for so long in lesser things of the sort. But he had seen Petre’s
face with his own eyes that evening; Petre’s bewildering appeal was
still in his ears. He was confident there was something much deeper
than so obvious a maneuver. Perhaps a man like Petre, one of the
masters of the world, had heard of coming war; of plague. After all,
it wasn’t the motive that counted, it was the incredible proposal
itself. Mr. Petre was certainly determined to get rid of those shares.
His thoughts were interrupted by Charlbury’s strong, short phrase:
“What’s the Commission?”
“There isn’t any,” answered Charlie as shortly.
Charlbury watched him narrowly. Then he spoke.
“Go to Trefusis,” he said. “Get him as soon as ever he can be
got. Tell him it goes through now or never. Get his name to it
to-night--and make him understand it’ll cost him £40,000 to Blake
and Blake--eight per cent. is moderate, damn it, for throwing half a
million at a man’s head without his having to move a finger for it.
He’ll be 400,000 up ... till it leaks out,” and at that thought he
grinned. “He knows you’ve got John K. in your pocket.” (Charlie had
his doubts of that now.) “If you tell him it’s now or never he’ll
believe you--but by God, he’s a fool if he bites!”
“And what about our shares?” said the other half of Blake and Blake.
“As you say--when it leaks out--when any one ... knows that John
K.’s crawled out, the mercury’ll go down. It’ll be a cold day for
B.A.R.--Bars.”
“If the fool bites, we sell to-morrow morning. He’ll have his men out
to buy. You may go to sleep on that. Ring me up at Walton Heath the
moment you know.”
And the New Tavern Conference broke up.
* * * * *
Charlie Terrard had the Dæmon’s luck that evening. By half-past
seven he had got to Trefusis, just back in his flat to dress. He had
managed by something in his tone over the instrument to arrest him,
and to make him put off the people he was going to. Before eight
the two men were together, both standing; Charlie dreadfully moved
and hoping that his face quite covered the throbbing of his blood;
Trefusis looking him full and rather hardly in the face, with his
brilliant dark eyes and raven beak, in the half light of the falling
summer evening.
Charlie Terrard approached the enormous obstacle with a fevered
determination; it rendered him quite unnaturally abrupt.
“As I told you, I’ve come from John K. It’s a big thing. Too big. No
matter. It’s simple, anyhow. You heard me say that; too simple. But
you know what he is?”
“Yes.” Nor did Trefusis move a finger as he said it.
“He wants writing, to-night, now. I’m dead sure of it, Trefusis.
Don’t disbelieve me. You’ll see what hangs on it. If he doesn’t get
your name to it to-night--there’s nothing doing in the morning.”
“What is it?” said the other in tones as fixed as his face.
Then Terrard delivered the mighty thing.
“Sit down,” said Trefusis immovably, in a tone and with a gesture
which were an invitation, but with an indefinable air of command
which sat him ill. Terrard pulled a chair to the table and sat there
with his head in his hands. The Dark Spirit of B.A.R.’s sank into his
arm-chair, sitting in profile to Terrard, his arms slightly moving,
gazing through the wall before him as he had gazed when first he
awaited Petre weeks before.
A twenty minutes passed. There was no sound except the tiny ticking
of a traveling clock upon the bracket below the Degas. The light
failed. It was almost dusk.
At last Trefusis rose. Terrard rose with him and Trefusis spoke, in
the gloaming. “Very well,” he said.
His voice sounded a little weary. It was from the effort of such a
survey of every peril, every trap, every consequence as not many men
could have flashed through in such a space without a breakdown of
attention. He had decided. Let ’em slump. He’d buy himself--and hold.
Let ’em attack. He had it all now--his own thing--and no one could
undo it.
He, Henry Trefusis, would take on that offer, trap or no trap, and
become sole Master again of the thing he had made.
He did not turn to switch on the light. He wrote rapidly in the half
darkness ten lines on a sheet of his paper, signed it, and held it
out to Terrard. Something which corresponds to honor in that world
forbade Terrard even to glance at it. He folded it rapidly and thrust
it into his wallet.
[Illustration: “_He had decided._”]
“And what’s _your_ price?” the deep voice sneered in the dark.
Terrard gave him Charlbury’s figures.
“I suppose you want that in writing too?” said the voice again.
“No,” said Charlie, “I trust you.” With better light he would have
seen the very slight mounting smile upon the other’s face.
“Good-night.”
“Good-night.”
* * * * *
It was nine by the time Terrard was in the Temple doorway again
and ringing at Mr. Petre’s door. Quiet outside, and only a little
radiance shining up from a bulb in the well of the stone staircase
below. There was no reply. He rang again, and still no reply. He
began to be afraid. He knew Mr. Petre’s mania for isolation. He
would be alone. Terrard had been away three hours--more. He had
said one hour. He rang again; still no reply. He knocked loudly and
repeatedly, in dread; then came a step, slow but not uncertain, and
Mr. Petre, refreshed, himself stood in the doorway.
“I was asleep,” he said. “Lord, what a blessing! I thought I’d never
sleep again.... I’m....” Then he remembered the cause of the young
man’s visit. “Come in,” he said. “Have you done it? Have you seen
them?”
“I’ve got it here,” said Terrard, and he handed it over. Mr., Petre
read the brief document and breathed a deep breath of content. He
heard Terrard repeat the original, the obvious words, that it would
take a few days.
“That’s all right,” said Mr. Petre, in a new, sane voice. “I shall
sleep now--only, as soon as it can be done, get it done.”
Then Terrard for the first time found that he was ravenous. He
hastened to be gone; but before he tasted a crumb he had rung up
“Marengo.” “It’s through,” he said, and all the answer he got was,
“Ah! See you to-morrow morning.”
* * * * *
At the opening of the morrow’s market Blake and Blake began their
careful selling; it had to be delicately handled; and the next day,
either some one knew or guessed things about the B.A.R.S. and 119 was
marked down, 118, 117, 118 again--116 at the close. But the operation
was piloted through, and what was skimmed off was nothing to that
lump coming in from Trefusis. They thought themselves well out of it.
Before a week was out Bars were steady at 112. Then a very slow rise
began--and it hasn’t stopped to this day.[A]
[A] Nominally 135--but you’re lucky to get them.
* * * * *
The instruments had been delivered in due form. Mr. Petre didn’t
understand instruments--he said. He had signed, as he always did,
where he was told to sign. He did not regard himself as well into
port till he had verified the figures in the book at his own
bank--cash--only cash, clean cash, and the shares forgotten and done
for.
And there it lay piled on its original foundation--the most original
Current Account that ever stood in any man’s name since the first
Banker, before the beginning of years, had it revealed to him by an
angel that you can always borrow from a thrifty fool at 4 per cent.
to lend to a wise one at 6.
* * * * *
Mr. Petre--well over three million in cash--went down to Hampshire
already half restored. He took a long and complete repose. He
returned to London reluctantly, lest there should be some message
waiting for him there, found none, and determined once and for all
that he must get loose and free.
The one good thing about his amazing adventure was that he could go
whither he willed and had full command of his own life.
But before he would get him away--somewhere far away--to end his life
in his own peace--he would make one last effort to recover what he
had lost, and to raise again within himself a living soul.
He knew not whom to trust. It quaintly occurred to him (and quite
rightly) that he would trust the good and humble woman who served
him, and who cooked for over three million pounds after the most
atrocious fashion known to man.
“Mrs. Malton,” he said, “I want you to do something for me.” He
eccentrically pulled out a five-pound note, and Mrs. Malton grew
faint at the sight thereof. It gave her a turn.
“Mrs. Malton, I trust you.”
“I’m sure,” said Mrs. Malton, with an old-fashioned bob.
“I do,” said Mr. Petre, interrupting her. “But remember that I do.
Mrs. Malton, what is my name?”
“Mr. Patten, sir,” said Mrs. Malton.
“Well,” said Mr. Petre, “I’ve got a secret to confide to you. My
name’s not Patten. It’s Jasper.”
“Indeed, sir,” said Mrs. Malton dutifully. She had no doubt at all
what was the matter with her employer, but her loyalty stood firm.
“Now, Mrs. Malton, I depend upon you not to tell a soul of what I am
going to ask you to do.”
“Oh, you may depend and depend, sir,” said Mrs. Malton, “always
allowing that it’s right and proper.”
“Mrs. Malton, I want you to go to the Public Library, and ask them
for a book, any book, on Loss of Memory.” Mrs. Malton bobbed again.
She thought it was an extraordinary fuss to make about nothing,
and five pounds left her under some strain of conscience. The good
gentleman would never mean it if he were in his right mind. “Now,
Mrs. Malton, go out and ask for the latest, and bring it back to me.
I mean, find out where it’s sold, and buy a copy, and bring it back
to me. Take a cab, be quick, and keep the change.”
Mrs. Malton was disappointed. She was looking forward to taking home
that piece of paper unbroken; but her virtue was proof, and her
loyalty. She brought back Wittrington--a book not twelve months old,
and apparently, to judge by the Publishers’ Press Notices at the end,
the last edition of the final authority upon such things. Mr. Petre
turned to a telephone book remaining from the old days when he had
possessed that instrument. He looked up Wittrington, and found an
untitled person of that name with the right initials.
“Mrs. Malton, can you use the telephone?” he said.
“Yes, sir,” said Mrs. Malton with another bob, “in my last place I
did it frequent.”
“Mrs. Malton, I want you to go to the nearest telephone, and say that
you are speaking for a man who will give any fee that may be asked
to visit the greatest specialist upon this,” and he wrote down upon
a piece of paper--“‘severe nervous trouble involving confusion and
loss of continuity of thought.’ Say that the conditions are,” here he
wrote down again--“‘The name will not be given. Any appointment will
be kept.’ Use those very words, Mrs. Malton, and use no other. And as
you value your salvation, breathe not a word of this to any one.”
Mrs. Malton was away longer than he liked; but when she got back she
was clear enough, and very sensible.
Dr. Wittrington was dead. A name had been given her. It was the name
of Sir Henry Brail, with an address in Harley Street. She had written
it down in her large, irregular, childish letters, and off she was
sent again to give that exact message to Sir Henry Brail. She came
back more quickly this time, and with a very business-like message to
convey. Four o’clock the next day. A hundred guineas. And of course
complete privacy. No question of asking a name.
So far so good. Mr. Petre had what he wanted, and he would try it as
a last poor chance before cutting himself off and getting clean away.
What he had learned of the name he bore--if it were his name--was no
more than the bare facts which recalled in him nothing. Maybe his
soul would be healed. He might return (would it be to the States?
More than one had seemed to recognize him, and John K. Petre he
certainly was for all the world) to a home that knew him and that he
knew; but if the worst came to the worst, and that brazen wall proved
impassable, why, then there was nothing for it but to get him clean
away.