JOHN MINUTE'S LEGACY
La Rochefoucauld has said that prudence and love are inconsistent. May
Nuttall, who had never explored the philosophies of La Rochefoucauld,
had nevertheless seen that quotation in the birthday book of an
acquaintance, and the saying had made a great impression upon her. She
was twenty-one years of age, at which age girls are most impressionable
and are little influenced by the workings of pure reason. They are
prepared to take their philosophies ready-made, and not disinclined to
accept from others certain rigid standards by which they measure their
own elastic temperaments.
Frank Merrill was at once a comfort and the cause of a certain
half-ashamed resentment, since she was of the age which resents
dependence. The woman who spends any appreciable time in the discussion
with herself as to whether she does or does not love a man can only have
her doubts set at rest by the discovery of somebody whom she loves
better. She liked Frank, and liked him well enough to accept the little
ring which marked the beginning of a new relationship which was not
exactly an engagement, yet brought to her friendship a glamour which it
had never before possessed.
She liked him well enough to want his love. She loved him little enough
to find the prospect of an early marriage alarming. That she did not
understand herself was not remarkable. Twenty-one has not the experience
by which the complexities of twenty-one may be straightened out and made
visible.
She sat at breakfast, puzzling the matter out, and was a little
disturbed and even distressed to find, in contrasting the men, that of
the two she had a warmer and a deeper feeling for Jasper Cole. Her alarm
was due to the recollection of one of Frank's warnings, almost
prophetic, it seemed to her now:
"That man has a fascination which I would be the last to deny. I find
myself liking him, though my instinct tells me he is the worst enemy I
have in the world."
If her attitude toward Frank was difficult to define, more remarkable
was her attitude of mind toward Jasper Cole. There was something
sinister--no, that was not the word--something "frightening" about him.
He had a magnetism, an aura of personal power, which seemed to paralyze
the will of any who came into conflict with him.
She remembered how often she had gone to the big library at Weald Lodge
with the firm intention of "having it out with Jasper." Sometimes it was
a question of domestic economy into which he had obtruded his
views--when she was sixteen she was practically housekeeper to her
adopted uncle--perhaps it was a matter of carriage arrangement. Once it
had been much more serious, for after she had fixed up to go with a
merry picnic party to the downs, Jasper, in her uncle's absence and on
his authority, had firmly but gently forbidden her attendance. Was it an
accident that Frank Merrill was one of the party, and that he was coming
down from London for an afternoon's fun?
In this case, as in every other, Jasper had his way. He even convinced
her that his view was right and hers was wrong. He had pooh-poohed on
this occasion all suggestion that it was the presence of Frank Merrill
which had induced him to exercise the veto which his extraordinary
position gave to him. According to his version, it had been the
inclusion in the party of two ladies whose names were famous in the
theatrical world which had raised his delicate gorge.
May thought of this particular incident as she sat at breakfast, and
with a feeling of exasperation she realized that whenever Jasper had set
his foot down he had never been short of a plausible reason for opposing
her.
For one thing, however, she gave him credit. Never once had he spoken
depreciatingly of Frank.
She wondered what business brought Jasper to such an unsavory
neighborhood as that in which she had seen him. She had all a woman's
curiosity without a woman's suspicions, and, strangely enough, she did
not associate his presence in this terrible neighborhood or his
mysterious comings and goings with anything discreditable to himself.
She thought it was a little eccentric in him, and wondered whether he,
too, was running a "little mission" of his own, but dismissed that idea
since she had received no confirmation of the theory from the people
with whom she came into contact in that neighborhood.
She was halfway through her breakfast when the telephone bell rang, and
she rose from the table and crossed to the wall. At the first word from
the caller she recognized him.
"Why, uncle!" she said. "Whatever are you doing in town?"
The voice of John Minute bellowed through the receiver:
"I've an important engagement. Will you lunch with me at one-thirty at
the Savoy?"
He scarcely waited for her to accept the invitation before he hung up
his receiver.
The commissioner of police replaced the book which he had taken from the
shelf at the side of his desk, swung round in his chair, and smiled
quizzically at the perturbed and irascible visitor.
The man who sat at the other side of the desk might have been
fifty-five. He was of middle height, and was dressed in a somewhat
violent check suit, the fit of which advertised the skill of the great
tailor who had ably fashioned so fine a creation from so unlovely a
pattern.
He wore a low collar which would have displayed a massive neck but for
the fact that a glaring purple cravat and a diamond as big as a hazelnut
directed the observer's attention elsewhere. The face was an unusual
one. Strong to a point of coarseness, the bulbous nose, the thick,
irregular lips, the massive chin all spoke of the hard life which John
Minute had spent. His eyes were blue and cold, his hair a thick and
unruly mop of gray. At a distance he conveyed a curious illusion of
refinement. Nearer at hand, his pink face repelled one by its crudities.
He reminded the commissioner of a piece of scene painting that pleased
from the gallery and disappointed from the boxes.
"You see, Mr. Minute," said Sir George suavely, "we are rather limited
in our opportunities and in our powers. Personally, I should be most
happy to help you, not only because it is my business to help everybody,
but because you were so kind to my boy in South Africa; the letters of
introduction you gave to him were most helpful."
The commissioner's son had been on a hunting trip through Rhodesia and
Barotseland, and a chance meeting at a dinner party with the Rhodesian
millionaire had produced these letters.
"But," continued the official, with a little gesture of despair,
"Scotland Yard has its limitations. We cannot investigate the cause of
intangible fears. If you are threatened we can help you, but the mere
fact that you fancy there is come sort of vague danger would not justify
our taking any action."
John Minute hitched about in his chair.
"What are the police for?" he asked impatiently. "I have enemies, Sir
George. I took a quiet little place in the country, just outside
Eastbourne, to get away from London, and all sorts of new people are
prying round us. There was a new parson called the other day for a
subscription to some boy scouts' movement or other. He has been hanging
round my place for a month, and lives at a cottage near Polegate. Why
should he have come to Eastbourne?"
"On a holiday trip?" suggested the commissioner.
"Bah!" said John Minute contemptuously. "There's some other reason.
I've had him watched. He goes every day to visit a woman at a hotel--a
confederate. They're never seen in public together. Then there's a
peddler, one of those fellows who sell glass and repair windows; nobody
knows anything about him. He doesn't do enough business to keep a fly
alive. He's always hanging round Weald Lodge. Then there's a Miss
Paines, who says she's a landscape gardener, and wants to lay out the
grounds in some newfangled way. I sent her packing about her business,
but she hasn't left the neighborhood."
"Have you reported the matter to the local police?" asked the
commissioner.
Minute nodded.
"And they know nothing suspicious about them?"
"Nothing!" said Mr. Minute briefly.
"Then," said the other, smiling, "there is probably nothing known
against them, and they are quite innocent people trying to get a
living. After all, Mr. Minute, a man who is as rich as you are must
expect to attract a number of people, each trying to secure some of your
wealth in a more or less legitimate way. I suspect nothing more
remarkable than this has happened."
He leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped, a sudden frown on his
face.
"I hate to suggest that anybody knows any more than we, but as you are
so worried I will put you in touch with a man who will probably relieve
your anxiety."
Minute looked up.
"A police officer?" he asked.
Sir George shook his head.
"No, this is a private detective. He can do things for you which we
cannot. Have you ever heard of Saul Arthur Mann? I see you haven't. Saul
Arthur Mann," said the commissioner, "has been a good friend of ours,
and possibly in recommending him to you I may be a good friend to both
of you. He is 'The Man Who Knows.'"
"'The Man Who Knows,'" repeated Mr. Minute dubiously. "What does he
know?"
"I'll show you," said the commissioner. He went to the telephone, gave a
number, and while he was waiting for the call to be put through he
asked: "What is the name of your boy-scout parson?"
"The Reverend Vincent Lock," replied Mr. Minute.
"I suppose you don't know the name of your glass peddler?"
Minute shook his head.
"They call him 'Waxy' in the village," he said.
"And the lady's name is Miss Paines, I think?" asked the commissioner,
jotting down the names as he repeated them. "Well, we shall--Hello! Is
that Saul Arthur Mann? This is Sir George Fuller. Connect me with Mr.
Mann, will you?"
He waited a second, and then continued:
"Is that you, Mr. Mann? I want to ask you something. Will you note these
three names? The Reverend Vincent Lock, a peddling glazier who is known
as 'Waxy,' and a Miss Paines. Have you got them? I wish you would let me
know something about them."
Mr. Minute rose.
"Perhaps you'll let me know, Sir George--" he began, holding out his
hand.
"Don't go yet," replied the commissioner, waving him to his chair again.
"You will obtain all the information you want in a few minutes."
"But surely he must make inquiries," said the other, surprised.
Sir George shook his head.
"The curious thing about Saul Arthur Mann is that he never has to make
inquiries. That is why he is called 'The Man Who Knows.' He is one of
the most remarkable people in the world of criminal investigation," he
went on. "We tried to induce him to come to Scotland Yard. I am not so
sure that the government would have paid him his price. At any rate, he
saved me any embarrassment by refusing point-blank."
The telephone bell rang at that moment, and Sir George lifted the
receiver. He took a pencil and wrote rapidly on his pad, and when he had
finished he said, "Thank you," and hung up the receiver.
"Here is your information, Mr. Minute," he said. "The Reverend Vincent
Lock, curate in a very poor neighborhood near Manchester, interested in
the boy scouts' movement. His brother, George Henry Locke, has had some
domestic trouble, his wife running away from him. She is now staying at
the Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, and is visited every day by her
brother-in-law, who is endeavoring to induce her to return to her home.
That disposes of the reverend gentleman and his confederate. Miss Paines
is a genuine landscape gardener, has been the plaintiff in two
breach-of-promise cases, one of which came to the court. There is no
doubt," the commissioner went on reading the paper, "that her _modus
operandi_ is to get elderly gentlemen to propose marriage and then to
commence her action. That disposes of Miss Paines, and you now know why
she is worrying you. Our friend 'Waxy' has another name--Thomas
Cobbler--and he has been three times convicted of larceny."
The commissioner looked up with a grim little smile.
"I shall have something to say to our own record department for failing
to trace 'Waxy,'" he said, and then resumed his reading.
"And that is everything! It disposes of our three," he said. "I will see
that 'Waxy' does not annoy you any more."
"But how the dickens--" began Mr. Minute. "How the dickens does this
fellow find out in so short a time?"
The commissioner shrugged his shoulders.
"He just knows," he said.
He took leave of his visitor at the door.
"If you are bothered any more," he said, "I should strongly advise you
to go to Saul Arthur Mann. I don't know what your real trouble is, and
you haven't told me exactly why you should fear an attack of any kind.
You won't have to tell Mr. Mann," he said with a little twinkle in his
eye.
"Why not?" asked the other suspiciously.
"Because he will know," said the commissioner.
"The devil he will!" growled John Minute, and stumped down the broad
stairs on to the Embankment, a greatly mystified man. He would have gone
off to seek an interview with this strange individual there and then,
for his curiosity was piqued and he had also a little apprehension, one
which, in his impatient way, he desired should be allayed, but he
remembered that he had asked May to lunch with him, and he was already
five minutes late.
He found the girl in the broad vestibule, waiting for him, and greeted
her affectionately.
Whatever may be said of John Minute that is not wholly to his credit, it
cannot be said that he lacked sincerity.
There are people in Rhodesia who speak of him without love. They
describe him as the greatest land thief that ever rode a Zeedersburg
coach from Port Charter to Salisbury to register land that he had
obtained by trickery. They tell stories of those wonderful coach drives
of his with relays of twelve mules waiting every ten miles. They speak
of his gambling propensities, of ten-thousand-acre farms that changed
hands at the turn of a card, and there are stories that are less
printable. When M'Lupi, a little Mashona chief, found gold in '92, and
refused to locate the reef, it was John Minute who staked him out and
lit a grass fire on his chest until he spoke.
Many of the stories are probably exaggerated, but all Rhodesia agrees
that John Minute robbed impartially friend and foe. The confidant of
Lo'Ben and the Company alike, he betrayed both, and on that terrible day
when it was a toss of a coin whether the concession seekers would be
butchered in Lo'Ben's kraal, John Minute escaped with the only
available span of mules and left his comrades to their fate.
Yet he had big, generous traits, and could on occasions be a tender and
a kindly friend. He had married when a young man, and had taken his wife
into the wilds.
There was a story that she had met a handsome young trader and had
eloped with him, that John Minute had chased them over three hundred
miles of hostile country from Victoria Falls to Charter, from Charter to
Marandalas, from Marandalas to Massikassi, and had arrived in Biera so
close upon their trail that he had seen the ship which carried them to
the Cape steaming down the river.
He had never married again. Report said that the woman had died of
malaria. A more popular version of the story was that John Minute had
relentlessly followed his erring wife to Pieter Maritzburg and had shot
her and had thereupon served seven years on the breakwater for his sin.
About a man who is rich, powerful, and wholly unpopular, hated by the
majority, and feared by all, legends grow as quickly as toadstools on a
marshy moor. Some were half true, some wholly apocryphal, deliberate,
and malicious inventions. True or false, John Minute ignored them all,
denying nothing, explaining nothing, and even refusing to take action
against a Cape Town weekly which dealt with his career in a spirit of
unpardonable frankness.
There was only one person in the world whom he loved more than the girl
whose hand he held as they went down to the cheeriest restaurant in
London.
"I have had a queer interview," he said in his gruff, quick way, "I have
been to see the police."
"Oh, uncle!" she said reproachfully.
He jerked his shoulder impatiently.
"My dear, you don't know," he said. "I have got all sorts of people
who--"
He stopped short.
"What was there remarkable in the interview? she asked, after he had
ordered the lunch.
"Have you ever heard," he asked, "of Saul Arthur Mann?"
"Saul Arthur Mann?" she repeated, "I seem to know that name. Mann, Mann!
Where have I heard it?"
"Well," said he, with that fierce and fleeting little smile which rarely
lit his face for a second, "if you don't know him he knows you; he knows
everybody."
"Oh, I remember! He is 'The Man Who Knows!'"
It was his turn to be astonished.
"Where in the world have you heard of him?"
Briefly she retailed her experience, and when she came to describe the
omniscient Mr. Mann--"A crank," growled Mr. Minute. "I was hoping there
was something in it."
"Surely, uncle, there must be something in it," said the girl seriously.
"A man of the standing of the chief commissioner would not speak about
him as Sir George did unless he had very excellent reason."
"Tell me some more about what you saw," he said. "I seem to remember the
report of the inquest. The dead man was unknown and has not been
identified."
She described, as well as she could remember, her meeting with the
knowledgable Mr. Mann. She had to be tactful because she wished to tell
the story without betraying the fact that she had been with Frank. But
she might have saved herself the trouble, because when she was halfway
through the narrative he interrupted her.
"I gather you were not by yourself," he grumbled. "Master Frank was
somewhere handy, I suppose?"
She laughed.
"I met him quite by accident," she said demurely.
"Naturally," said John Minute.
"Oh, uncle, and there was a man whom Frank knew! You probably know
him--Constable Wiseman."
John Minute unfolded his napkin, stirred his soup, and grunted.
"Wiseman is a stupid ass," he said briefly. "The mere fact that he was
mixed up in the affair is sufficient explanation as to why the dead man
remains unknown. I know Constable Wiseman very well," he said. "He has
summoned me twice--once for doing a little pistol-shooting in the garden
just as an object lesson to all tramps, and once--confound him!--for a
smoking chimney. Oh, yes, I know Constable Wiseman."
Apparently the thought of Constable Wiseman filled his mind through two
courses, for he did not speak until he set his fish knife and fork
together and muttered something about a "silly, meddling jackass!"
He was very silent throughout the meal, his mind being divided between
two subjects. Uppermost, though of least importance, was the personality
of Saul Arthur Mann. Him he mentally viewed with suspicion and
apprehension. It was an irritation even to suggest that there might be
secret places in his own life which could be flooded with the light of
this man's knowledge, and he resolved to beard "The Man Who Knows" in
his den that afternoon and challenge him by inference to produce all the
information he had concerning his past.
There was much which was public property. It was John Minute's boast
that his life was a book which might be read, but in his inmost heart he
knew of one dark place which baffled the outside world. He brought
himself from the mental rehearsal of his interview to what was, after
all, the first and more important business.
"May," he said suddenly, "have you thought any more about what I asked
you?"
She made no attempt to fence with the question.
"You mean Jasper Cole?"
He nodded, and for the moment she made no reply, and sat with eyes
downcast, tracing a little figure upon the tablecloth with her finger
tip.
"The truth is, uncle," she said at last, "I am not keen on marriage at
all just yet, and you are sufficiently acquainted with human nature to
know that anything which savors of coercion will not make me predisposed
toward Mr. Cole."
"I suppose the real truth is," he said gruffly, "that you are in love
with Frank?"
She laughed.
"That is just what the real truth is not," she said. "I like Frank very
much. He is a dear, bright, sunny boy."
Mr. Minute grunted.
"Oh, yes, he is!" the girl went on. "But I am not in love with
him--really."
"I suppose you are not influenced by the fact that he is my--heir," he
said, and eyed her keenly.
She met his glance steadily.
"If you were not the nicest man I know," she smiled, "I should be very
offended. Of course, I don't care whether Frank is rich or poor. You
have provided too well for me for mercenary considerations to weigh at
all with me."
John Minute grunted again.
"I am quite serious about Jasper."
"Why are you so keen on Jasper?" she asked.
He hesitated.
"I know him," he said shortly. "He has proved to me in a hundred ways
that he is a reliable, decent lad. He has become almost indispensable to
me," he continued with his quick little laugh, "and that Frank has never
been. Oh, yes, Frank's all right in his way, but he's crazy on things
which cut no ice with me. Too fond of sports, too fond of loafing," he
growled.
The girl laughed again.
"I can give you a little information on one point," John Minute went on,
"and it was to tell you this that I brought you here to-day. I am a very
rich man. You know that. I have made millions and lost them, but I have
still enough to satisfy my heirs. I am leaving you two hundred thousand
pounds in my will."
She looked at him with a startled exclamation.
"Uncle!" she said.
He nodded.
"It is not a quarter of my fortune," he went on quickly, "but it will
make you comfortable after I am gone."
He rested his elbows on the table and looked at her searchingly.
"You are an heiress," he said, "for, whatever you did, I should never
change my mind. Oh, I know you will do nothing of which I should
disapprove, but there is the fact. If you marry Frank you would still
get your two hundred thousand, though I should bitterly regret your
marriage. No, my girl," he said more kindly than was his wont, "I only
ask you this--that whatever else you do, you will not make your choice
until the next fortnight has expired."
With a jerk of his head, John Minute summoned a waiter and paid his
bill.
No more was said until he handed her into her cab in the courtyard.
"I shall be in town next week," he said.
He watched the cab disappear in the stream of traffic which flowed along
the Strand, and, calling another taxi, he drove to the address with
which the chief commissioner had furnished him.