Margaret Maddison had spent a torturing two hours before the shabby
messenger had brought her the note which told her at least that Luke
was alive. At the bottom of the letter there was scrawled in a
different hand--Connor’s own--“Come round about eight.” The postscript
he had not communicated to the Gunner.
The letter confirmed all she had feared. She sat motionless at her
desk for half an hour with the copper-plate communication before her,
trying to formulate a working theory. Luke was in trouble--had
trouble. She had accepted this fact as a starting point. In her mind
she did not reproach him for the monstrous eccentricity which had
brought him to his present position--rather she hated herself that in
a moment of crisis she had deserted him and urged him into deeper
folly.
A servant came into the room and spoke to her, but she was so absorbed
that she did not notice his presence, and he spoke again.
“Mr. Morell?” She came to reality with a start. She had not seen Danty
for days, and her first inclination was to send a message that she was
not well enough to be seen. And then a thought occurred to her, and
she nodded.
“Ask him to come up, please.”
Danty came in, a sprucely dressed man about town, and bore in his
smiling face no evidence of his embarrassment.
“Any news of Luke?” he asked, almost jovially. “I was on my way to the
City and I thought I’d call in.”
She was regarding him curiously. Danton the friend, and Danton the
gang leader, were indistinguishable. It came almost as a shock to her
to realize that her confidence in him had already evaporated before
Gorton had told her the truth about this adventurer. In that moment
she realized how complete had been his duplicity, yet in her desk was
that fatal message from Rex. That at least must have been true. It was
Danty who had arranged to send her the message from Paris which bore
Luke’s signature.
Yet she felt no indignation, no resentment--Danton was an ugly fact,
no less or more a fact because of its ugliness.
“I heard from a friend of mine that Luke’s flat was burgled last
night. Did they get anything?”
“Nothing of any great consequence,” she said.
He saw her fold in some haste a letter that was in front of her, and
put it in a little handbag that lay on the table, and he wondered what
there was in that epistle which brought the colour into her cheeks.
“I expect Luke’s having the time of his life. Have you heard from
him?”
She shook her head.
“No, I haven’t heard from him.” And then, a little awkwardly: “Did you
see that curious case in the paper this morning?”
He thought she was trying to turn the conversation into other
channels. It seemed a little gauche, but he did not suspect her object
in asking the question--her embarrassment saved her from suspicion.
“There are hundreds of cases in the paper: which is the one?”
“About the man who was living a double life: a respectable merchant by
day and a--a burglar by night.”
Danty smiled. He lived too near the criminal world to harbour any
illusions about its romantical character.
“That’s the sort of stuff you read in stories,” he said, “but I have
known such cases. I’ve read about them, of course,” he added hastily.
“There was a man in Liverpool who preached in a local chapel on
Sundays and ran a forgery plant the rest of the week. I know another
man--by hearsay, of course--who was the head of a prosperous shoe
company in the Midlands, and one of the cleverest jewel thieves the
police have ever had through their hands.”
She was looking out of the window, apparently uninterested.
“Why do men do that sort of thing?”
Danty shrugged.
“I don’t know. It’s a sort of field of adventure--there are precious
few fields left. I wanted to talk to you about my South American
company, Margaret. I’m in rather serious trouble. I want seventy
thousand pounds to finish the deal, to be exact seventy-six thousand
pounds, and I’ve raised sixty-nine. I was thinking this morning that
if Luke was here I could get all I wanted. He didn’t like me, but he
was a very good business man.”
She was neither amused nor indignant at the cool request. For a moment
she had a wild idea of supplying him with the money he required. He
might prove a useful ally, if all Gorton had said was true. Then the
danger of making a confidant of this unscrupulous creature became
apparent. Danty was a parasite living on society: he would not fail to
exact the fullest advantage from his knowledge.
She was confronted with the alternatives of seeking the aid of the
society in which Luke had found a discreditable place, or of going to
the police, who, she knew, were no respecters of persons, and would as
lief send Luke to penal servitude as they would the jailbirds with
whom he was in association.
“I’m afraid that is impossible, Danton,” she said quietly. “Why don’t
you see Mr. Stiles? He is a business man.”
Danton shrugged his shoulders.
“Stiles! A servant--the man is without any initiative, and a word from
you----”
She shook her head.
“That I can’t give,” she said.
There was a silence after this; then Danton Morell began to speak
easily about trivialities, and in a short time took his leave. At
least, he thought, as he went down the stairs, he had satisfied
himself that she was not definitely antagonistic to him.
That he was on his way to the City was true. There was a little City
office where he occasionally met his humble associates. Since Lewing’s
death the gang which bore his name had lain very quiet. It comprised a
not inconsiderable number of men, old and young, who lived on the
river and its cargoes. Though Danty took no part in their operations,
he had organized their work and reduced their methods to a system. His
corner was a small one, for receivers paid badly. The work was
dangerous and difficult, and sometimes weeks would pass before the
gang could make a good clean-up. Bales of silk, chests of tea, pockets
of rubber--nothing came amiss to the thieves; but the commodities they
stole were hard to dispose of, and Danty’s share hardly paid the rent
of his flat.
A proposal put up to him that morning that he should take a more
active part in the work was negatived by him.
“It is not my graft,” he said. “I’m not a Connor. You don’t imagine
that I’ll come and live in Bermondsey, do you?”
The active leader of the gang--a short, thick-set man who bore the
name of Dick and apparently nothing else, did not receive the refusal
without protest.
“The boys say that Connor’s crowd are making big money, and that they
ought to be making the same. Even if you didn’t stay in Bermondsey,
and only came down occasionally, you might help.”
“You’re having all the help you’ll get from me,” said Danty
impatiently. “What’s the sense of comparing Connor’s crowd with ours?
Connor does land work, and that’s different. If your people hadn’t had
my advice they’d spend their time in stir. Who was it made you buy an
electric boat--it was I! Who arranged to supply you with lists of
cargoes and the lightering contracts? You’re doing a small business
because it’s the only kind of business you know. Do you think Connor
would take any one of your crowd and use him?”
“We could go into Connor’s trade and make good pickings,” insisted
Dick doggedly. “Lewing would have been more use to us than you are.”
Danty was not easily cowed. He showed his teeth in a mirthless smile.
“And Lewing’s dead! Do you know why? It wasn’t because he put up a
squeal, but because he poached on Connor’s territory.”
He sent the man away dissatisfied, folded the notes which Dick had
brought as his share of a recent haul, and went to a respectable City
club to lunch.
Every thief has his failings, and Danty was a gambler. He loved that
part of the City which immediately surrounds the Stock Exchange; he
would spend hours poring over the rise and fall of prices; he
speculated heavily in every kind of share, and had seen the
considerable fortune he had achieved by the crooked practice of his
profession melt like snow in the sun. Rex Leferre had been a useful
lieutenant--he had been the money getter at a period when money was
tight. He had served other purposes--paid with real money for blocks
of unsalable shares with which Danty was saddled. The time had come
when Danton Morell must find a new source of revenue, or vanish
forever from his usual haunts.
It was his boast that he was the best confidence man in England; yet
he was made to look a child in that place that has been the ruin of so
many confidence men--the London Stock Exchange.
He stopped long enough in the City to discover many unpleasant truths.
Shares which he held in considerable quantities were sliding steadily
down the list. He met his broker, a cold-blooded man, who laid before
him a statement of account which made Danton Morell go cold.
Danty left the City in a state of desperation, and arrived at his flat
at the same time as the lawyer’s clerk who served him with a writ for
£140 from his tailor--the tenth writ Danty had received in the past
month. Pi Coles, his so-called valet, took his coat and hat.
“Any luck?” asked the little man with the ease and familiarity of one
who was addressing a friend.
“No luck, Pi,” said Danty with a twisted smile. “But every cloud has
its silver lining.”
He did not realize that the silver lining in this case radiated from
one called Connor. To do him justice, Mr. Connor was unaware of the
fact that he was destined to assist the head of a rival gang.