THE ATTACK
A. S. Voles, money lender and bill discounter, lived over his business.
That is to say his office was his dining room. He owned the house in
Jermyn Street. Jones, dismissing the taxi, rang the bell and was
admitted by a man servant, who, not sure whether Mr. Voles was in or
not, invited the visitor into a small room on the right of the entrance
hall and closed the door on him.
The room contained a desk table, three chairs, a big scale map of
London, a Phoenix Insurance Almanac, and a photogravure reproduction of
Mona Lisa. The floor was covered with linoleum, and the window gave upon
a blank wall.
This was the room where creditors and stray visitors had to wait. Jones
took a chair and looked about him.
Humanity may be divided into three classes: those who, having seen,
adore, those who tolerate, and those who detest Mona Lisa. Jones
detested her. That leery, sleery, slippery, poisonous face was hateful
to him as the mask of a serpent.
He was looking at the lady when the door opened and in came Voles.
Voles looked yellower and older this morning, but his face showed
nothing of resentment. The turning of the Earl of Rochester upon him had
been the one great surprise of his life. He had always fancied that he
knew character, and his fancy was not ill founded. His confidence in
himself had been shaken.
"Good morning," said Jones. "I have come to have a little talk with
you."
"Sit down," said Voles.
They seated themselves, Voles before the desk.
"I haven't come to fight," said Jones, "just to talk. You known that
Marcus Mulhausen has got that Welsh land from me for five thousand, and
that it is worth maybe a million now."
Voles nodded.
"Well, Mulhausen has to give that property back."
Voles laughed.
"You needn't laugh. You have seen my rough side. I'm holding the smooth
towards you now--but there is no occasion to laugh. I'm going to skin
Mulhausen."
"Well," said Voles. "What have I to do with that?"
"You are the knife."
"Oh!"
"Yes, indeed. Let's talk. When you got that eight thousand from me, you
were only the agent of the Plinlimon woman, and she was only the agent
of Marcus. She got something, you got something, but Marcus got the
most. Julian got something too, but it was Marcus got the joints. He
gave you three the head, and the hoofs, and the innards, and the tail.
I've had it out with the Plinlimon woman and I know. You were a gang."
Voles heaved up in his chair.
"What more have you to say?" asked he thickly.
"A lot. There is nothing more difficult to get at than a gang, because
they cover each other's traces. I pay you a certain sum in cash, you
deduct your commission and hand the remainder over to the Plinlimon
woman, she pays her Pa, and gets a few hundred to pay her milliner.
Who's to prove anything? No cheques have passed."
"Just so," said Voles.
"I'm glad you see my point," replied Jones. "Now if you can't untie a
knot, you can always cut it if you have a knife--can't you?"
Voles shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, I said you were a knife, didn't I, and I'm going to cut this knot
with you, see my point?"
"Not in the least."
"I'm sorry, because that makes me speak plain, and that's unpleasant.
This is my meaning. I have to get that property back, or else I will go
to the police and rope in the whole gang. Tell the whole story. I will
accuse Marcus. Do you understand that? Marcus, and Marcus' daughter, and
Marcus' son, and you. And I won't do that to-morrow, I'll do it to-day.
To-night the whole caboodle of you will be in jail."
"You said you hadn't come to fight," cried Voles. "What do you want?
Haven't you had enough from me? Yet you drive me like this. It's
dangerous."
"I have not come to fight. At least not you. On the contrary, when I get
this property back, if it turns out worth a million, I'll maybe pay you
your losses. You've been paying the piper for Marcus, it seems to me."
"I have," groaned Voles.
The two words proved to Jones that he was right all through.
"Well, it's Marcus I'm up against, and you have to help me."
Then Voles began to speak. The something Oriental in his nature, the
something that had driven him rushing with outspread arms at the
constable that evening, began now to talk.
Help against Marcus! What could he do against Marcus? Why Marcus
Mulhausen held him in the hollow of his hand. Marcus held everyone: his
daughter, her husband, his own son Julian, to say nothing of A. S. Voles
and others.
Jones listened with patient attention to all this, and when the other
had finished and wiped the palms of his hands on his handkerchief, said:
"But all the same, Marcus is held by the fact that he forms one of a
gang."
Voles made a movement with his hand.
"Don't interrupt me. The head of a shark is the cleverest part of it,
but it has to suffer with the body when the whole shark is caught;
that's the fix Marcus is in. When I close on the lot of you, Marcus
will be the first to go into the jug. Now, see here, you have got to
take my orders; they won't be hard."
"What are they?"
"You have got to write me a note, which I will take to Marcus, telling
him the game's up, the gang's burst, and to deliver."
"Why d--n it, what ails you?" said Voles.
"What ails me?"
"You aren't talking like yourself--you have never been like yourself
since you've taken this line."
Jones felt himself changing colour. In his excitement he had let his
voice run away with him.
"It doesn't matter a button whether I'm like myself or not," said he,
"you've got to write that note, and do it now while I dictate."
Voles drummed on the desk with his fingers, then he took a sheet of
paper and an envelope from a drawer.
"Well," said he, "what is it to be?"
"Nothing alarming," said the other. "Just three words. 'It's all
up'--how do you address him?"
Without reply Voles wrote.
"Dear M.
"It's all up."
"That'll do," said Jones, "now sign your name and address the envelope."
Voles did so.
Jones put the letter in his pocket.
"Well," said he, "that ends the business. I hope, with this, and what I
have to say to him, Marcus will part, and as I say, if things turn out
as I hope, maybe I'll right your losses--I have no quarrel with
you--only Marcus."
Suddenly Voles spoke.
"For God's sake," said he, "mind how you deal with that chap; he's never
been got the better of, curse him. Go cautiously."
"You never fear," said Jones.