MR. LAMBERT STONE
“No, I’m not drunk, if that is what you mean,” said Bill without
resentment. “I’m talking about a real policeman, though I admit that
there is something very unreal about him. I’ve seen Lowther of the
_Dispatch-Herald_, and he’s agreed to give me the job.”
Mr. Pawter leant back with an air of patient resignation.
“There are such things as contracts,” he said gently, “such words as
obligations, which probably do not appear in your bright lexicon. You
are perfectly serious?”
Bill nodded.
“Then there is nothing more to be said. It is such a novel experience
to find you serious about anything that I am enjoying an unusual
sensation. I shall miss you, in the same sense that a flagellant
misses a whip that is mislaid. You’re a queer, unscrupulous lad, and I
like you for it. You keep me from being respectable.”
“Let us skip the badinage and come to cases,” said Bill. “You owe me
a month’s salary.”
Mr. Pawter sighed, took a cheque-book from his drawer, and wrote
laboriously.
“Your job is open when you like to come back to it,” he said
casually, “though the thought of the way you handle this business
keeps me awake at night. What is the game, William--seriously?”
“I’ll tell you,” said Bill, and sat down.
For a quarter of an hour Mr. Pawter listened to a series of
suspicions, and, when his assistant had finished:
“Very sensational,” he said, disparagingly. “It’s queer how the
merest hint of crime arouses your imagination, which, in the
operations of this business is so conspicuously dormant. By the way,
did you see Mr. Stone?”
“Yes, I’ve got another interview with him to-day. I like his majesty
rather much. He’s a good, straight, honest citizen, deficient in only
one respect--he seemed to think there was something in your
advertising proposition.”
“Naturally,” murmured Mr. Pawter. “Fix that before you leave us,
William, and, for the first time since you have been working with me,
I shall feel that your salary hasn’t been wrung from the firm by a
confidence trick.”
Mr. Stone was not living at an hotel; he had taken a furnished flat in
Albemarle Street for the season, and it was there that Bill had found
him on the Monday morning. He was a tall, slight man, with the face of
one who lived in the open. His hair was almost white; the thin face
heavily lined; but there was a sparkle of humour which Bill had
noticed was almost inseparable from the eyes of those giants of
industry, who are sometimes labelled “captains,” and more often
“kings.”
His English valet admitted the visitor, and took him straight into the
drawing-room, which had been converted into something which was half
office and half lounge.
“Come along in, Mr. Holbrook,” said Stone. “You’re staying to
lunch?”
“Yes.”
“I have invited my brother, but I very much doubt if he’ll come.” He
laughed softly. “You’re a newspaper man, aren’t you? Or you were
before you took up advertising?” and, when Bill nodded: “I was
certain of that. One can’t mistake men of your profession; there is
something about them that is characteristic. English or American,
they’re all the same. But you’re an American?”
“I have that distinction,” said Bill. “Yes, Mr. Stone, I was a
newspaper man, and, what is more, I am a newspaper man again. In fact,
you’re the last client of Pawter’s I shall see for a very long time.”
“Going back, eh?” The keen-eyed man nodded. “You fellows can never
keep away from ink. I suppose you’re just aching for somebody to
discover a body in the river?”
He went on abruptly to the business in hand.
“This proposition of Pawter’s appeals to me. There has never been a
selling campaign for lumber in this country, and yet you’re using it
all the time. Most of it comes from Norway and Scandinavia. I don’t
see why we shouldn’t have a bigger share of the market.”
He talked wood for the best part of an hour, kept his listener working
on his amendment to Pawter’s scheme, and as suddenly as he began, he
stopped and looked at his watch.
“That fellow won’t be here,” he said. “It is ten minutes after one,
and though he has many drawbacks, he has one virtue--punctuality.”
“Does your brother live here?”
“Yes, he lives here,” he said shortly. “I haven’t seen him in ten
years, though I hear from him occasionally.”
“You have been in London before, Mr. Stone?” asked Bill, as he
unfolded his serviette.
“Yes, I know the country rather well, though I haven’t been here
since--well, since the last time I met my brother, and then I was only
in England from Wednesday to Saturday.”
“Do you like London?”
“No,” was the immediate answer. “That is hardly a fair thing to say,
because as a capital I like it immensely. It is a city of comfort and
kindness; although the English people are a little thick-headed and a
little priggish, behind all the disagreeable facets of their nature
there is a large charity and a courtesy beyond the understanding of
most folks who have only a superficial acquaintance with them. Leiff
would be an Englishman--I am talking about my brother--if he were
anything!” He smiled faintly. “There you have an instance of a genius
on the wrong track. As a newspaper man you must have met them a score
of times in the criminal courts--oh no, Leiff isn’t a criminal! He has
great gifts, but he uses them queerly. His life is rather like one of
those rivers that run into the desert and are swallowed up in the
unproductive sand. He would have made a good churchman; equally he
would have been a great historian. He has just that touch of romantic
mediævalism, which produces fascinating and inaccurate histories!”
He stared out of the window absently, and bit his lip.
“Yes, I know England,” he said, speaking half to himself. “I
sometimes wish I’d never seen the country, never put my foot upon its
shores, and sometimes I’m on my knees in gratitude that fate led me to
this land.”
He caught Bill’s fascinated eyes and laughed.
“You would like Leiff--he is one of those charming idealists that
newspaper men find so refreshing and so rare. If he has any mean
qualities, it is that touch of the theatrical, which you see in the
Sons of Ragousa----”
“The Sons of Ragousa!” gasped Bill. “What has your brother to do with
that?”
“He founded the order,” said Mr. Stone, his eyes twinkling at the
effect he had produced upon his guest. “Fifteen to twenty years ago
Leiff had his great uplift scheme, and laid down the plans for his
society. I tell you, that man is a natural born organiser. In a
business man’s office he wouldn’t be worth two cents a month. But give
him something bizarre, something fantastical, something that gives him
an opportunity of introducing the atmosphere of the middle ages, and
Leiff will work twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four, and spend
the other hour thinking. He tried to start a branch of the society on
the other side, but it didn’t work. Maybe our people aren’t gamblers,
for a gamble is at the bottom of the Ragousans’ popularity. That
annual, or semi-annual, bonus of his was the inspiration of a genius.
It got people interested in his society who never would have dreamt of
joining. He brought in every class from the highest to the lowest,
and, incidentally, got round the anti-gambling laws of England so
effectively that your Government----”
“Not my Government,” protested Bill.
“Well, the Government of England have never been able to take action
against him. Nobody knows how the fortunate recipients of the argosies
are chosen. If there is a lottery, nobody has seen the lottery drawn,
and no announcement has ever been made that it has been drawn. Twice a
year some lucky people receive a bald intimation that their number has
received a huge prize. The process of selection is not known, and by
the rules of the Proud Sons of Ragousa (I’m not so sure it isn’t part
of their oath) the method of choice is not even discussed. There is no
doubt about the _bona fides_ of the members who have benefited. But
how or why the luck should come to them is not explained.”
Again he was looking out of the window, deep in thought.
“A membership of four hundred thousand,” he said, and his lips
clicked impatiently. “What a selling organisation!”
After that the talk turned to home politics, to the depredations of
the cotton boll, and to other matters of peculiar interest to a
Southerner.
Bill Holbrook went back to his office, delivered the fruits of his
discussion (with a great deal of self-commendation, coldly received)
and hurried back to his lodgings to square up some work that he had
taken home to finish. He had forgotten his key, and when he knocked
the door was opened by Inspector Bullott, and on the police officer’s
face was an expression which Bill had never seen before.
“Hullo!” he said in surprise. “You’re home early?”
“I’ve left the office for good, I hope,” said Bullott solemnly. “The
chief has given me a roving commission, and I’m not going back to that
darned bureau until I can wear a police uniform without blushing.”
Bill held out his hand.
“Brother,” he said, “a new life has dawned for both of us. Bring up a
bottle of beer, and let’s talk murder!”