Many a man and many a woman, as they passed up Park Lane on
motor-'buses, in cabs, or on foot, glanced at the white house of Samuel
Statham, and wondered.
The mystery concerning it and its owner always attracted them. Many
were the weird stories afloat concerning it, stories greatly akin to
those already told in a previous chapter. Men had watched, it was said,
and had seen queer goings and comings. But as the matter concerned
nobody in particular it merely excited public curiosity.
That Sam Statham was eccentric all the world knew. Society gossips in
the papers were fond of referring to the millionaire as "the recluse of
Park Lane" when recording some handsome donation to a charitable
institution, or expressing a surprise that he was never seen at public
functions such as the opening of hospitals or children's homes which he
had himself endowed.
But the word "eccentric" explained it all. As regards the mansion in
Park Lane they were always silent, for the elastic law of libel is ever
before the eyes of the journalist who deals in tittle-tattle.
Though the stories concerning the millionaire's residence were curious
and sometimes sensational--many of them of course invented--yet colour
was certainly lent to them by the fact that the old man saw nobody
except Levi and his secretary, and nobody had ever been known to pass
that closed door at the head of the staircase.
Anyone, however, catching a glimpse of the interior of the hall when
passing, saw old Levi in black, with his strip of spotless shirt-front,
and behind, a wide hall with thick Turkey carpet, huge blue antique
vases, carved furniture, and several fine pictures, the whole possessing
an air of solidity and wealth. Beyond, however, was the Unknown and the
Mysterious.
In the clubs and over dinner-tables the mystery of that Park Lane house
was often spoken of. Men usually shook their heads and said little, but
women expressed their opinion freely, and formed all sorts of wild
theories.
Among the men who had always been attracted by the stories afloat were
Charlie Rolfe, because of his close association with the old man, and
Max Barclay, because of his intimate friendship with Rolfe. The latter
had always been full of suspicion. Sam and Levi, master and man, were
the only two who knew the truth of what lay behind that locked door.
And the servant guarded his master's secret well. He was janitor there,
and no one passed the threshold into old Sam's library without a very
good cause, and without the permission of the master himself.
A thousand times, as Rolfe had gone in and out of the place, he had
glanced up the broad, well-carpeted stairs, at the foot of which stood
the fine marble Aphrodite, holding the great electrolier, and at the
head, to the corner out of sight, was the locked door upon which half
London had commented.
Had Samuel Statham thrown open his house only once, and given a
reception, all gossip would be allayed. Indeed, as Rolfe sat with his
master in the library the morning following Adam's meeting with Marion,
he, without telling Sam the reason, suggested an entertainment in
November. He said that Society were wondering he did not seek to make
their acquaintance. There were hundreds of people dying to know him.
"Yes," snapped the old man, glancing around the darkened room, for the
morning sun was full upon the house. "I know them. They'd come here,
crush and guzzle, eat my dinners, drink my wine, and go away without
even remembering my name. Oh! I know what the so-called aristocracy we
like, never fear. Most of them live upon people like myself who are
vain-glorious enough to be pleased to number the Earl of So-and-So and
the Countess of Slush among their personal friends.
"Men with wives can't help being drawn into it. The womenfolk like to
speak of `dear Lady Longneck,' slobber over some old titled hag at
parting, or find their names in the `Court and Society' column of the
_Daily Snivel_. It's their nature to be ambitious; but when a man's
single, like myself, Rolfe, he can please himself. That's why I shut my
door in their faces."
"Of course, you can afford to," the secretary replied, leaning both his
elbows on the table and looking straight into his master's face. "Few
men could do as you do. It would be against their interests."
"It may be even against my interests," the old man said thoughtfully,
leaning back in his chair, "for I might get a good deal of fun out of
watching them trying to squeeze a little money out of me, or worm from
me what men call `tips' regarding investments. Why, my dear Rolfe, once
my door is opened to them, my life would no longer be worth living.
Instead of one secretary I'd want a dozen, and Levi would be at the door
all day long answering callers. Other men who live in this street on
either side of me have done it to their cost."
"I've heard it said in the clubs that you, with your vast means and huge
interests, owe a duty to Society," Rolfe remarked.
"I owe no duty to Society," the old fellow declared angrily. "Society
owes nothing to me, and I owe nothing to it. You know, Rolfe, how--
well--how I hate women--and I won't have a pack of chatterboxes about my
place. If I was a man with five hundred a year they wouldn't want to
know me."
"That's very true," Rolfe remarked with a slight sigh. "Nowadays, when
a man has money he is at once called a gentleman. A lady is the wife of
a man with money, whatever may have been her past--or her present."
The old man laughed.
"And there is the `perfect lady,'" he said. "A genus usually associated
with the police-court. But you are quite right, Rolfe, nowadays,
according to our modern code, a poor man cannot be a gentleman. No, as
long as I live, the needy aristocracy which calls itself Society shall
never my threshold. I will remain independent of them, for I have no
womankind, and no fish to fry. I don't want a baronetcy, or a peerage.
I don't want shooting, or deer-stalking, or yachting, or hunting, or any
of those pastimes. I merely want to be left alone here in peace--if it
is possible." And he drew a long breath as the ugly recollection of the
shabby stranger crossed his mind.
Rolfe knew well that the old man's objections were because he dare not
throw open the mansion. Some secret was hidden there which he could not
reveal. What was it? Why were those brilliant lights sometimes at
night in the upper windows? He had seen them himself sometimes as he
passed along near midnight on his way to his chambers in Jermyn Street,
and had been sorely puzzled. More than once he had been convinced that
somebody lived in the upper floors--somebody who was never seen. Yet if
that were so, why should there be such secrecy regarding it. The
occupant, whoever it was, could easily vacate the place while a
reception was held.
As he sat there listening to the old man's tirade against the West-End
and its ways he felt that there must be some far greater mystery than an
unseen tenant.
That old Sam knew quite well the rumour concerning the house, was
evident. Keeping secret agents in every capital as he was forced to
do--agents, male and female, who knew everything and reported exactly
what he wished to know--it was certain that public opinion concerning
him was well-known to him. Yet, as in a scandal, the man most concerned
is always the last to get wind of it. Perhaps after all he might be in
ignorance of what people were saying, although it was hardly credible
that Ben, his brother, would not tell him.
For craft and cunning few men in London could compare with Sam Statham,
yet at the same time he was just in his judgment and honest in his
transactions. The weak and needy he befriended, but woe betide any who
endeavoured to mislead him or impose upon his generosity.
More than one man had, by receiving a word of good advice from Sam
Statham and the temporary loan of a few thousand as capital, awakened in
a week's time to find himself wealthy. One man in particular, now a
well-known baronet, had risen in ten years from being a small draper in
Launceston to his present position with an estate in Suffolk and a town
house in Green Street, merely by taking Sam Statham's advice as to
certain investments.
It was owing to this fact, and others, that old Sam, as he rose from the
table and crossed the room to the window, where he pulled aside the
blind to look out upon the sunny roadway, said--
"I myself, Rolfe, have made one or two so-called gentlemen. But," he
added, drawing a deep breath, "let's put all that aside and get on with
the letters. I'm expecting that Scotch friend of yours, the locomotive
designer of Glasgow."
"Oh, Macgregor!" remarked the secretary. "He was most pertinacious the
other day."
"All Scots are," replied the old man simply. "Let's get on." And
returning to the table he took up letter after letter and dictated
replies in his sharp, snappy way which, to those who did not know him,
would have appeared priggish and uncouth.
The reason of Macgregor's visit to Old Broad Street had caused Rolfe a
good deal of curiosity. He recollected how, on the instant his master
had read the old engineer's scribbled lines, his face fell. The visitor
was at all events not a welcome one. Yet, on the other hand, he had
seen him without delay, and they had been closeted together for quite a
long time.
When the bearded Scot left, and he had re-entered the millionaire's
room, two facts struck him as peculiar. One was that a strong smell of
burnt paper and a quantity of black tinder in the empty grate showed
that some papers had been burned there, while the other was that old Sam
was in the act of lighting a cigar, in itself showing a buoyancy of
mind.
He never smoked when down at the bank, and very seldom when at home.
His cigars, too, were of a cheap quality which even his clerks would be
ashamed to offer their friends. Indeed, while all connected with the
house in Old Broad Street possessed an air of solid prosperity, the head
of the firm was usually of a penurious and hard-up aspect, as though he
had a difficulty in making both ends meet. His smart electric brougham
he used only once a week to take him to the City and back again. At
other times he strolled about the streets so shabby as to pass unnoticed
by those desirous of making his acquaintance and worming themselves into
his good graces; or else he would idle in the park where he passed for a
lounger who, crowded out by reason of his age, was down on his luck.
Samuel Statham loved the Park. Often and often he would get into
conversation with the flotsam and jetsam of London life--the unemployed,
and the men who, in these days of hustle, alas! find themselves too old
at forty. The ne'er-do-wells he knew quite well, and they believed him
to be one of themselves. But he was ever on the look-out for a
deserving case--the starving, despondent man with wife and children
hungry at home. He would draw the man's story from him, hear his
complaint against unfair treatment, listen attentively to his wrongs,
and pretending all the time to have suffered in a similar way himself.
Usually the man would, in the end, invite him to the home or the
lodging-house where his wife and children were, and then, on
ascertaining that the case was genuine, he would suddenly reveal himself
as the good Samaritan.
To such men he gave himself out as Mr Jones, agent of a benevolent
society which was nameless, and which did its work without
advertisement, and extracted a pledge of secrecy. By such means many a
dozen honest, hard-working men, who through no fault of their own had
been thrown out of employment, had been "put upon their legs" again and
gained work, and yet not one of them ever suspected that the shabby,
down-at-heel man Jones was actually the millionaire Samuel Statham, who
lived in the white house in fall view of the seat whereon they had first
met.
Even from Rolfe he sought to conceal this secret philanthropy, yet the
young man had guessed something of it. He had more than once caught him
talking to strange men whose pinched faces and trim appearance told the
truth.
The man whose vast wealth had brought him nothing but isolation and
loneliness, delighted in performing these good works, and in rescuing
the unfortunate wives and families of the deserving ones who were
luckless. He loved to see the brightness overspread those dark,
despairing faces, and to hear the heartfelt thanks which he was told to
convey to the mythical "society."
Never but once did he allow a man to suspect that the money he gave came
from his own pocket. That single occasion was when, after giving a man
whom he believed to be deserving a sovereign, he next evening found him
in the park the worse for liquor.
He said nothing that night, but a few days later, when he met him, he
gave him a piece of his mind which the plausible good-for-nothing would
not quickly forget.
"Such frauds as you," he had said, "prevent people from assisting the
deserving poor. I've made inquiry into your story, and found it false
from beginning to end. You have no wife, and the four children starving
and ill that you described to me do not exist. You live for the most
part in the bar of the `Star,' off the Edgware Road, and on the night
after I gave you the money you were so drunk that they wouldn't serve
you. Such men like you," he went on with withering sarcasm, his grey
beard bristling as he spoke, and his fist clenched fiercely, "are a
disgrace to the human race, for you are a liar, a drunkard, and a
blackguard--a man who deserves the death that will, I hope, overtake
you--death in the gutter."
And he turned upon his heel, leaving the accused man standing staring at
him open-mouthed, utterly unable to offer a single word in self-defence.
This secret charity was Sam Statham's only recreation. By it he made
many friends whom he had taken out of the slums--friends who were
perhaps more devoted and true to him than those to whom he had given
financial "tips," and who had made many thousands thereby. In many a
modest home was Mr Jones a welcome guest whenever he called to see how
"his friends" were progressing, and many a time had he drunk a humble
glass of bitter "sent out" for by his thankful and devoted host who was
all unconscious of who his guest really was. The world would have
laughed at the idea of a working man standing Samuel Statham a glass of
ale.
One case was old Sam's particular pride. About eighteen months before,
in the park one day, he came across a despairing but well-educated,
middle-aged man, who at first was not at all communicative, but whose
bearing and manner was that of refinement and culture. Three times they
met, and it was very evident that the sad-faced man was starving.
At last Sam offered to "stand him" a meal, and over it the man told a
pathetic story, how that he was a fully-qualified medical man in
practice in York, but owing to his unfortunate habit of drinking he had
lost everything, sold his practice, and had been compelled to leave the
city. The proceeds of his practice had soon gone in drink, and now,
with all the bitter remorse upon him, he and his wife and two small
children were faced with starvation. Friends and relations would not
assist him because of his intemperance. There was only one way out of
it all, he declared--suicide.
Sam had taken him in hand. He had seen the wife and children, and then
explained, as usual, that he was Mr Jones. Small sums he first gave
them, and finding that his charity was never abused, and that the doctor
withstood the temptation to drink, he had gone to an agency, the address
of which he had found in the _Lancet_, and bought a comfortable little
practice with a furnished house in West Norwood, where the doctor and
his family were now installed and doing well.
In West Norwood to-day that doctor is the most popular and the most
sought after. His practice is ever increasing, and already he has
nearly repaid the whole of the sum which Mr Jones lent him, and has
been compelled to take an assistant.
The doctor is still in ignorance, however, for he has never identified
Mr Jones with Statham the millionaire. But was it surprising that at
his house no guest was more welcome than the man who had rescued him
from ruin and from death?
Truly money, if properly applied, can do much to alleviate the
sufferings of the world, and as it is the "root of all evil," so it is
also the root of all good.