THE CONSPIRATORS OF ST. JOHN'S WOOD
At precisely the same hour on the Sunday evening when Joseph ascended
the pulpit of St. Elwyn's Church a large red Napier motor-car stopped
before the gate of a smart little villa in St. John's Wood.
The villa stood in its own grounds, and was surrounded by a high wall.
It had a general air of seclusion and retirement, though it was
obviously the property or in the tenancy of people of wealth.
The wall was clean and newly pointed, the gate was painted a dark green,
the short drive which led to the front door was made of the finest white
marl.
The motor-car stopped, and two men descended from it, clearly defined in
the radiance from two electric globes that were mounted on each pillar
of the villa gate. Both wore opera hats, white scarves round their
throats and black overcoats.
One was tall, slim, and clean-shaven. His age was about twenty-six, his
hair was a pale golden color, and his face, too young as yet to be
permanently spoilt and damaged, nevertheless bore the unmistakable
imprint of a fast life.
The young man, evil though his countenance was, conveyed a certain
impression of birth and breeding.
His companion, on the other hand, was just as unmistakably destitute of
both. He was short and fat in figure. His face boasted a modicum of
impudent good looks, and was of a strongly Hebraic cast. The fine dark
eyes, the hooked nose, the large lips--red like a ripe plum--all shouted
the prosperous Jew.
The younger man gave an order to the chauffeur. The automobile swung
away towards Hampstead, and the companions walked up the approach to the
villa, the door of which was opened to them by a servant.
They entered a small hall, luxuriously furnished in the Eastern style,
and lit with shaded electric lamps. As they did so, a manservant hurried
up to them from behind some heavy Moorish curtains.
"Where is your mistress?" said the younger of the two men.
"My mistress is in the drawing-room, my lord," the servant answered.
"Oh, all right! Take our coats. We will go and find her at once."
The servant took the coats and hats, and the two men walked down a
wide-carpeted passage, brilliantly lit by globes in the roof, which made
their stiff white shirt-fronts glitter like talc, and opened a heavy
door of oak.
The villa was the home of Miss Mimi Addington, the leading musical
comedy actress of London--the star of the Frivolity.
The young man with the light hair and the dissipated expression was Lord
Bellina, an Irish viscount.
He had succeeded to the title some three years before, and to a very
large fortune, which had come into the impoverished Irish family owing
to a marriage with the daughter of a wealthy Liverpool manufacturer.
The short Jewish-looking man who accompanied him was Mr. Andrew Levison,
the theatrical _entrepreneur_ and leesee of the Frivolity Theatre, in
which Lord Bellina had invested several thousand pounds.
Lord Bellina opened the door of the room and entered, followed by Mr.
Levison.
Upon one of the divans, wearing a long tea-gown of Indian red, Mimi
Addington was lounging. Her face was very pale, and on this occasion
quite destitute of the little artistic touches with which she was wont
to embellish it. The expression was strained and angry, and the
beautiful eyes shone with a hard, fierce glitter.
There had been no performance at the Frivolity Theatre on the night
after Joseph's sudden appearance there.
Mimi Addington had been taken away in a state of wild and terrified
hysteria. It was impossible for her to play upon the Saturday night, and
her understudy, who should have sustained the part in the illness of her
principal, had disappeared, and could not be found. Moreover, several
other members of the cast had sent in their resignations, and many of
the ticket offices of the West End of town had reported that the gilded
gang of young men who were accustomed to take stalls for considerable
portions of the run of a popular piece had withdrawn their
applications.
"Well, Mimi, my dear," said Mr. Levison, with anxious geniality, "and
how are you to-day?"
"Bad," the girl answered in one single bitter word.
Mr. Levison made a commiserating noise.
"Tut, tut!" he said; "you must try and bear up, Mimi, though I must own
this abominable and unprecedented occurrence has been enough to try any
one--this Joseph."
At the word the woman sprang from her couch with a swift feline movement
of rage.
"Him!" she screamed, in a voice from which all the usual melody and
sweetness had entirely departed. "If I had him here I'd murder him! No,
that would be too good for him! I've thought of worse things than that
to do!"
Lord Bellina went up to her and put his arm round her shoulder.
"And serve him right," he said; "but try and be quiet, Mimi, you'll only
make yourself worse."
She pushed the young man roughly away, in a blaze of passion so lurid
and terrible that it frightened the two men.
Lord Bellina looked helplessly at Levison for a moment. The elder man
rose to the occasion.
"Let's get to business," he said; "something must be done."
The woman nodded eagerly and quickly, and with the same unnatural
glitter in her eyes.
"Have you seen any of the papers?" Levison said.
She shook her head.
"Well, Bally and I have been going through them, and, what's more, we
have been seeing a whole lot of people, and getting various extra
opinions. You know that I can say without boasting in the least that
there are very few men in London who know the popular taste as I do.
I've made my success by realizing exactly what London will do and think
just a day or two before it has made up its own mind. I have never made
a mistake. I won't bother you now with an account of how I have arrived
at my present conclusion. It is enough to say that I am certain of it,
and that it is this:
"There is not the slightest doubt that if this man Joseph continues in
his pleasant little games--you see, I speak without heat--theatrical
business in London will be ruined for months. There is going to be a
great wave of religious enthusiasm all over the place. This man--Joseph
he calls himself--is going to lead it. The man is an extraordinary one.
He has a personality and a force greater, probably, than any living
person in Europe to-day. There is no doubt about it. You, my dear Mimi,
will have to forego your nightly triumphs. Public opinion will hound you
off the stage and shut up my theatre, or compel me to let it as a
mission-hall for ten pounds a night! As for you, Bellina, you will have
to retire to your estates in Galway, and superintend the potato crop,
and take an intelligent interest in the brood of the Irish national
animal--the pig in short, Bally!"
Although he spoke jauntily enough, there was a deep vein of bitterness
and sincerity underlying the Jew's words. He watched the faces of his
two listeners with a quick and cunning scrutiny.
Mimi Addington spoke.
"You've hit the mark, Andrew," she said, in a low voice, in which there
was a curious hissing quality--"you've hit the mark, as you always do.
What you've said is perfectly true. I know it and feel it."
Her eyes blazed, and she put one white and shapely hand up to the ivory
column of her throat, wrestling with the agony of hysteria and hate,
which once more threatened to master her. With a great effort of will,
she calmed herself, and went on speaking.
"But all this, Andrew, depends upon one little word, 'if.'"
Lord Bellina looked quickly at Levison, with a glance which seemed to
say that they had already arrived at precisely the same conclusion.
"That's it," he said; "there is always that little word, 'if.'"
There was a dead silence in the little room, and three faces, pale and
full of sinister purpose, sought each other in a horrid trio of hate.
The girl's face was as it had been from the first, unredeemed evil. The
countenance of the young peer had changed from its usual vacuous and
dissipated weakness into something which, bad as it was, had still a
quality of strength. He had sat cowering in the theatre while the
terrible denunciation of the evangelist had laid bare the secrets of his
life. And although he did not outwardly show how hard he had been hit,
his resentment was no less furious though less vulgarly expressed, than
that of Mimi.
The Israelite gave no indication of his inward feelings. In truth, they
were of a quite different nature from those of the other two. He lived
for two purposes. One was to make money, the other was to enjoy himself;
he saw now that his money-making was menaced, and that his enjoyment
would be spoiled--unless--
Mimi Addington became suddenly quite calm and business-like. She
realized that she was in perfect accord with the other two.
"Now let's get to work," she said. "This Joseph must be got rid of at
once. It can be done, I suppose, if we pay enough."
"Quite so," said Mr. Levison. "It now only remains to form ourselves
into a committee of ways and means."