The manager rose.
"You are not even an idle apprentice," he said good-humoredly. "You will see Mr. Rex Holland for me?"
"Certainly," said Frank, and went back to his desk deep in thought.
It was four o'clock to the minute when Jasper Cole passed through the one open door of the bank at which the porter stood ready to close. He was well, but neatly, dressed, and had hooked to his wrist a thin snakewood cane attached to a crook handle.
He saw Frank across the counter and smiled, displaying two rows of even, white teeth.
"Hello, Jasper!" said Frank easily, extending his hand. "How is uncle?"
"He is very well indeed," replied the other. "Of course he is very worried about things, but then I think he is always worried about something or other."
"Anything in particular?" asked Frank interestedly.
Jasper shrugged his shoulders.
"You know him much better than I; you were with him longer. He is getting so horribly suspicious of people, and sees a spy or an enemy in every strange face. That is usually a bad sign, but I think he has been a little overwrought lately."
He spoke easily; his voice was low and modulated with the faintest suggestion of a drawl, which was especially irritating to Frank, who secretly despised the Oxford product, though he admitted—since he was a very well-balanced and on the whole good-humored young man—his dislike was unreasonable.
"I hear you have come to audit the accounts," said Frank, leaning on the counter and opening his gold cigarette case.
"Hardly that," drawled Jasper.
He reached out his hand and selected a cigarette.
"I just want to sort out a few things. By the way, your uncle had a letter from a friend of yours."
"Mine?"
"A Rex Holland," said the other.
"He is hardly a friend of mine; in fact, he is rather an infernal nuisance," said Frank. "I went down to Knightsbridge to see him to-day, and he was out. What has Mr. Holland to say?"
"Oh, he is interested in some sort of charity, and he is starting a guinea collection. I forget what the charity was."
"Why do you call him a friend of mine?" asked Frank, eying the other keenly.
Jasper Cole was halfway to the manager's office and turned.
"A little joke," he said. "I had heard you mention the gentleman. I have no other reason for supposing he was a friend of yours."
"Oh, by the way, Cole," said Frank suddenly, "were you in town last night?"
Jasper Cole shot a swift glance at him.
"Why?"
"Were you near Victoria Docks?"
"What a question to ask!" said the other, with his inscrutable smile, and, turning abruptly, walked in to the waiting Mr. Brandon.
Frank finished work at five-thirty that night and left Jasper Cole and a junior clerk to the congenial task of checking the securities. At nine o'clock the clerk went home, leaving Jasper alone in the bank. Mr. Brandon, the manager, was a bachelor and occupied a flat above the bank premises. From time to time he strode in, his big pipe in the corner of his mouth. The last of these occasions was when Jasper Cole had replaced the last ledger in Mr. Minute's private safe.
"Half past eleven," said the manager disapprovingly, "and you have had no dinner."
"I can afford to miss a dinner," laughed the other.
"Lucky man," said the manager.
Jasper Cole passed out into the street and called a passing taxi to the curb.
"Charing Cross Station," he said.
He dismissed the cab in the station courtyard, and after a while walked back to the Strand and hailed another.
"Victoria Dock Road," he said in a low voice.
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 resentsdependence. 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 therecollection 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 shehad 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 attentionelsewhere. 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 withthe 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 aliving. 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 threenames? 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 hermodus operandiis to getelderly 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 SaulArthur 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 theonly 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, andwholly 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 theinterview? 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 thestanding 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 whomFrank 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. Himhe 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, tracinga 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. Ofcourse, 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 havemade 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.
Backwell Street, in the City of London, contains one palatial building which at one time was the headquarters of the South American Stock Exchange, a superior bucket shop which on its failure had claimed its fifty thousand victims. The ornate gold lettering on its great plate-glass window had long since been removed, and the big brass plate which announced to the passerby that here sat the spider weaving his golden web for the multitude of flies, had been replaced by a modest, oxidized scroll bearing the simple legend:
Saul Arthur Mann
What Mr. Mann's business was few people knew. He kept an army of clerks. He had the largest collection of file cabinets possessed by any three business houses in the City, hehad an enormous post bag, and both he and his clerks kept regulation business hours. His beginnings, however, were well known.
He had been a stockbroker's clerk, with a passion for collecting clippings mainly dealing with political, geographical, and meteorological conditions obtaining in those areas wherein the great Joint Stock Companies of the earth were engaged in operations. He had gradually built up a service of correspondence all over the world.
The first news of labor trouble on a gold field came to him, and his brokers indicated his view upon the situation in that particular area by "bearing" the stock of the affected company.
If his Liverpool agents suddenly descended upon the Cotton Exchange and began buying May cotton in enormous quantities, the initiated knew that Saul Arthur Mann had been awakened from his slumbers by a telegram describing storm havoc in the cotton belt of the United States of America. When a curiousblight fell upon the coffee plantations of Ceylon, a six-hundred-word cablegram describing the habits and characteristics of the minute insect which caused the blight reached Saul Arthur Mann at two o'clock in the afternoon, and by three o'clock the price of coffee had jumped.
When, on another occasion, Señor Almarez, the President of Cacura, had thrown a glass of wine in the face of his brother-in-law, Captain Vassalaro, Saul Arthur Mann had jumped into the market and beaten down all Cacura stocks, which were fairly high as a result of excellent crops and secure government. He "beared" them because he knew that Vassalaro was a dead shot, and that the inevitable duel would deprive Cacura of the best president it had had for twenty years, and that the way would be open for the election of Sebastian Romelez, who had behind him a certain group of German financiers who desired to exploit the country in their own peculiar fashion.
He probably built up a very considerable fortune, and it is certain that he extended the range of his inquiries until the making of money by means of his curious information bureau became only a secondary consideration. He had a marvelous memory, which was supplemented by his system of filing. He would go to work patiently for months, and spend sums of money out of all proportion to the value of the information, to discover, for example, the reason why a district officer in some far-away spot in India had been obliged to return to England before his tour of duty had ended.
His thirst for facts was insatiable; his grasp of the politics of every country in the world, and his extraordinarily accurate information concerning the personality of all those who directed those policies, was the basis upon which he was able to build up theories of amazing accuracy.
A man of simple tastes, who lived in a rambling old house in Streatham, his work, his hobby, and his very life was his bureau. Hehad assisted the police times without number, and had been so fascinated by the success of this branch of his investigations that he had started a new criminal record, which had been of the greatest help to the police and had piqued Scotland Yard to emulation.
John Minute, descending from his cab at the door, looked up at the imposing facia with a frown. Entering the broad vestibule, he handed his card to the waiting attendant and took a seat in a well-furnished waiting room. Five minutes later he was ushered into the presence of "The Man Who Knew." Mr. Mann, a comical little figure at a very large writing table, jumped up and went halfway across the big room to meet his visitor. He beamed through his big spectacles as he waved John Minute to a deep armchair.
"The chief commissioner sent you, didn't he?" he said, pointing an accusing finger at the visitor. "I know he did, because he called me up this morning and asked me about three people who, I happen to know, have beenbothering you. Now what can I do for you, Mr. Minute?"
John Minute stretched his legs and thrust his hands defiantly into his trousers' pockets.
"You can tell me all you know about me," he said.
Saul Arthur Mann trotted back to his big table and seated himself.
"I haven't time to tell you as much," he said breezily, "but I'll give you a few outlines."
He pressed a bell at his desk, opened a big index, and ran his finger down.
"Bring me 8874," he said impressively to the clerk who made his appearance.
To John Minute's surprise, it was not a bulky dossier with which the attendant returned, but a neat little book soberly bound in gray.
"Now," said Mr. Mann, wriggling himself comfortably back in his chair, "I will read a few things to you."
He held up the book.
"There are no names in this book, my friend;not a single, blessed name. Nobody knows who 8874 is except myself."
He patted the big index affectionately.
"The name is there. When I leave this office it will be behind three depths of steel; when I die it will be burned with me."
He opened the little book again and read. He read steadily for a quarter of an hour in a monotonous, singsong voice, and John Minute slowly sat himself erect and listened with tense face and narrow eyelids to the record. He did not interrupt until the other had finished.
"Half of your facts are lies," he said harshly. "Some of them are just common gossip; some are purely imaginary."
Saul Arthur Mann closed the book and shook his head.
"Everything here," he said, touching the book, "is true. It may not be the truth as you want it known, but it is the truth. If I thought there was a single fact in there which was not true myraison d'êtrewould be lost.That is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, Mr. Minute," he went on, and the good-natured little face was pink with annoyance.
"Suppose it were the truth," interrupted John Minute, "what price would you ask for that record and such documents as you say you have to prove its truth?"
The other leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands meditatively.
"How much do you think you are worth, Mr. Minute?"
"You ought to know," said the other with a sneer.
Saul Arthur Mann inclined his head.
"At the present price of securities, I should say about one million two hundred and seventy thousand pounds," he said, and John Minute opened his eyes in astonishment.
"Near enough," he reluctantly admitted.
"Well," the little man continued, "if you multiply that by fifty and you bring all that money into my office and place it on that tablein ten-thousand-pound notes, you could not buy that little book or the records which support it."
He jumped up.
"I am afraid I am keeping you, Mr. Minute."
"You are not keeping me," said the other roughly. "Before I go I want to know what use you are going to make of your knowledge."
The little man spread out his hands in deprecation.
"What use? You have seen the use to which I have put it. I have told you what no other living soul will know."
"How do you know I am John Minute?" asked the visitor quickly.
"Some twenty-seven photographs of you are included in the folder which contains your record, Mr. Minute," said the little investigator calmly. "You see, you are quite a prominent personage—one of the two hundred and four really rich men in England. I am not likely to mistake you for anybody else, and, more than this, your history is so interesting a onethat naturally I know much more about you than I should if you had lived the dull and placid life of a city merchant."
"Tell me one thing before I go," asked Minute. "Where is the person you refer to as 'X'?"
Saul Arthur Mann smiled and inclined his head never so slightly.
"That is a question which you have no right to ask," he said. "It is information which is available to the police or to any authorized person who wishes to get into touch with 'X.' I might add," he went on, "that there is much more I could tell you, if it were not that it would involve persons with whom you are acquainted."
John Minute left the bureau looking a little older, a little paler than when he had entered. He drove to his club with one thought in his mind, and that thought revolved about the identity and the whereabouts of the person referred to in the little man's record as "X."
Mr. Rex Holland stepped out of his new car, and, standing back a pace, surveyed his recent acquisition with a dispassionate eye.
"I think she will do, Feltham," he said.
The chauffeur touched his cap and grinned broadly.
"She did it in thirty-eight minutes, sir; not bad for a twenty-mile run—half of it through London."
"Not bad," agreed Mr. Holland, slowly stripping his gloves.
The car was drawn up at the entrance to the country cottage which a lavish expenditure of money had converted into a bijou palace.
He still lingered, and the chauffeur, feeling that some encouragement to conversation wascalled for, ventured the view that a car ought to be a good one if one spent eight hundred pounds on it.
"Everything that is good costs money," said Mr. Rex Holland sententiously, and then continued: "Correct me if I am mistaken, but as we came through Putney did I not see you nod to the driver of another car?"
"Yes, sir."
"When I engaged you," Mr. Holland went on in his even voice, "you told me that you had just arrived from Australia and knew nobody in England; I think my advertisement made it clear that I wanted a man who fulfilled these conditions?"
"Quite right, sir. I was as much surprised as you; the driver of that car was a fellow who traveled over to the old country on the same boat as me. It's rather rum that he should have got the same kind of job."
Mr. Holland smiled quietly.
"I hope his employer is not as eccentric as I and that he pays his servant on my scale."
With this shot he unlocked and passed through the door of the cottage.
Feltham drove his car to the garage which had been built at the back of the house, and, once free from observation, lit his pipe, and, seating himself on a box, drew from his pocket a little card which he perused with unusual care.
He read:
One: To act as chauffeur and valet. Two: To receive ten pounds a week and expenses. Three: To make no friends or acquaintances. Four: Never under any circumstances to discuss my employer, his habits, or his business. Five: Never under any circumstances to go farther eastward into London than is represented by a line drawn from the Marble Arch to Victoria Station. Six: Never to recognize my employer if I see him in the street in company with any other person.
One: To act as chauffeur and valet. Two: To receive ten pounds a week and expenses. Three: To make no friends or acquaintances. Four: Never under any circumstances to discuss my employer, his habits, or his business. Five: Never under any circumstances to go farther eastward into London than is represented by a line drawn from the Marble Arch to Victoria Station. Six: Never to recognize my employer if I see him in the street in company with any other person.
The chauffeur folded the card and scratched his chin reflectively.
"Eccentricity," he said.
It was a nice five-syllable word, and its employment was a comfort to this perturbed Australian. He cleaned his face and hands,and went into the tiny kitchen to prepare his master's dinner.
Mr. Holland's house was a remarkable one. It was filled with every form of labor-saving device which the ingenuity of man could devise. The furniture, if luxurious, was not in any great quantity. Vacuum tubes were to be found in every room, and by the attachment of hose and nozzle and the pressure of a switch each room could be dusted in a few minutes. From the kitchen, at the back of the cottage, to the dining room ran two endless belts electrically controlled, which presently carried to the table the very simple meal which his cook-chauffeur had prepared.
The remnants of dinner were cleared away, the chauffeur dismissed to his quarters, a little one-roomed building separated from the cottage, and the switch was turned over which heated the automatic coffee percolator which stood on the sideboard.
Mr. Holland sat reading, his feet resting on a chair.
He only interrupted his study long enough to draw off the coffee into a little white cup and to switch off the current.
He sat until the little silver clock on the mantelshelf struck twelve, and then he placed a card in the book to mark the place, closed it, and rose leisurely.
He slid back a panel in the wall, disclosing the steel door of a safe. This he opened with a key which he selected from a bunch. From the interior of the safe he removed a cedarwood box, also locked. He threw back the lid and removed one by one three check books and a pair of gloves of some thin, transparent fabric. These were obviously to guard against tell-tale finger prints.
He carefully pulled them on and buttoned them. Next he detached three checks, one from each book, and, taking a fountain pen from his pocket, he began filling in the blank spaces. He wrote slowly, almost laboriously, and he wrote without a copy. There are very few forgers in the criminal records who haveever accomplished the feat of imitating a man's signature from memory. Mr. Rex Holland was singularly exceptional to all precedent, for from the date to the flourishing signature these checks might have been written and signed by John Minute.
There were the same fantastic "E's," the same stiff-tailed "Y's." Even John Minute might have been in doubt whether he wrote the "Eight hundred and fifty" which appeared on one slip.
Mr. Holland surveyed his handiwork without emotion.
He waited for the ink to dry before he folded the checks and put them in his pocket. This was John Minute's way, for the millionaire never used blotting paper for some reason, probably not unconnected with an event in his earlier career. When the checks were in his pocket, Mr. Holland removed his gloves, replaced them with the check books in the box and in the safe, locked the steel door, drew the sliding panel, and went to bed.
Early the next morning he summoned his servant.
"Take the car back to town," he said. "I am going back by train. Meet me at the Holland Park tube at two o'clock; I have a little job for you which will earn you five hundred."
"That's my job, sir," said the dazed man when he recovered from the shock.
Frank sometimes accompanied May to the East End, and on the day Mr. Rex Holland returned to London he called for the girl at her flat to drive her to Canning Town.
"You can come in and have some tea," she invited.
"You're a luxurious beggar, May," he said, glancing round approvingly at the prettily furnished sitting room. "Contrast this with my humble abode in Bayswater."
"I don't know your humble abode in Bayswater," she laughed. "But why on earth you should elect to live at Bayswater I can't imagine."
He sipped his tea with a twinkle in his eye.
"Guess what income the heir of the Minute millions enjoys?" he asked ironically. "No, I'll save you the agony of guessing. I earn seven pounds a week at the bank, and that is the whole of my income."
"But doesn't uncle—" she began in surprise.
"Not a bob," replied Frank vulgarly; "not half a bob."
"But—"
"I know what you're going to say; he treats you generously, I know. He treats me justly. Between generosity and justice, give me generosity all the time. I will tell you something else. He pays Jasper Cole a thousand a year! It's very curious, isn't it?"
She leaned over and patted his arm.
"Poor boy," she said sympathetically, "that doesn't make it any easier—Jasper, I mean."
Frank indulged in a little grimace, and said:
"By the way, I saw the mysterious Jasper this morning—coming out of the WaterlooStation looking more mysterious than ever. What particular business has he in the country?"
She shook her head and rose.
"I know as little about Jasper as you," she answered.
She turned and looked at him thoughtfully.
"Frank," she said, "I am rather worried about you and Jasper. I am worried because your uncle does not seem to take the same view of Jasper as you take. It is not a very heroic position for either of you, and it is rather hateful for me."
Frank looked at her with a quizzical smile.
"Why hateful for you?"
She shook her head.
"I would like to tell you everything, but that would not be fair."
"To whom?" Frank asked quickly.
"To you, your uncle, or to Jasper."
He came nearer to her.
"Have you so warm a feeling for Jasper?" he asked.
"I have no warm feeling for anybody," she said candidly. "Oh, don't look so glum, Frank! I suppose I am slow to develop, but you cannot expect me to have any very decided views yet a while."
Frank smiled ruefully.
"That is my one big trouble, dear," he said quietly; "bigger than anything else in the world."
She stood with her hand on the door, hesitating, a look of perplexity upon her beautiful face. She was of the tall, slender type, a girl slowly ripening into womanhood. She might have been described as cold and a little repressive, but the truth was that she was as yet untouched by the fires of passion, and for all her twenty-one years she was still something of the healthy schoolgirl, with a schoolgirl's impatience of sentiment.
"I am the last to spin a hard-luck yarn," Frank went on, "but I have not had the best of everything, dear. I started wrong with uncle. He never liked my father nor any ofmy father's family. His treatment of his wife was infamous. My poor governor was one of those easy-going fellows who was always in trouble, and it was always John Minute's job to get him out. I don't like talking about him—" He hesitated.
She nodded.
"I know," she said sympathetically.
"Father was not the rotter that Uncle John thinks he was. He had his good points. He was careless, and he drank much more than was good for him, but all the scrapes he fell into were due to this latter failing."
The girl knew the story of Doctor Merrill. It had been sketched briefly but vividly by John Minute. She knew also some of those scrapes which had involved Doctor Merrill's ruin, material and moral.
"Frank," she said, "if I can help you in any way I would do it."
"You can help me absolutely," said the young man quietly, "by marrying me."
She gasped.
"When?" she asked, startled.
"Now, next week; at any rate, soon." He smiled, and, crossing to her, caught her hand in his.
"May, dear, you know I love you. You know there is nothing in the world I would not do for you, no sacrifice that I would not make."
She shook her head.
"You must give me some time to think about this, Frank," she said.
"Don't go," he begged. "You cannot know how urgent is my need of you. Uncle John has told you a great deal about me, but has he told you this—that my only hope of independence—independence of his millions and his influence—you cannot know how widespread or pernicious that influence is," he said, with an unaccustomed passion in his voice, "lies in my marriage before my twenty-fourth birthday?"
"Frank!"
"It is true. I cannot tell you any more, but John Minute knows. If I am married within the next ten days"—he snapped his fingers—"that for his millions. I am independent of his legacies, independent of his patronage."
She stared at him, open-eyed.
"You never told me this before."
He shook his head a little despairingly.
"There are some things I can never tell you, May, and some things which you can never know till we are married. I only ask you to trust me."
"But suppose," she faltered, "you are not married within ten days, what will happen?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"'I am John's liege man of life and limb and of earthly regard,'" he quoted flippantly. "I shall wait hopefully for the only release that can come, the release which his death will bring. I hate saying that, for there is something about him that I like enormously, but that is the truth, and, May," he said, still holding her hand and looking earnestly into her face, "I don't want to feel like that about John Minute. I don't want to look forward to his end. I want to meet him without any senseof dependence. I don't want to be looking all the time for signs of decay and decrepitude, and hail each illness he may have with a feeling of pleasant anticipation. It is beastly of me to talk like this, I know, but if you were in my position—if you knew all that I know—you would understand."
The girl's mind was in a ferment. An ordinary meeting had developed so tumultuously that she had lost her command of the situation. A hundred thoughts ran riot through her mind. She felt as though she were an arbitrator deciding between two men, of both of whom she was fond, and, even at that moment, there intruded into her mental vision a picture of Jasper Cole, with his pale, intellectual face and his grave, dark eyes.
"I must think about this," she said again. "I don't think you had better come down to the mission with me."
He nodded.
"Perhaps you're right," he said.
Gently she released her hand and left him.
For her that day was one of supreme mental perturbation. What was the extraordinary reason which compelled his marriage by his twenty-fourth birthday? She remembered how John Minute had insisted that her thoughts about marriage should be at least postponed for the next fortnight. Why had John Minute suddenly sprung this story of her legacy upon her? For the first time in her life she began to regard her uncle with suspicion.
For Frank the day did not develop without its sensations. The Piccadilly branch of the London and Western Counties Bank occupies commodious premises, but Frank had never been granted the use of a private office. His big desk was in a corner remote from the counter, surrounded on three sides by a screen which was half glass and half teak paneling. From where he sat he could secure a view of the counter, a necessary provision, since he was occasionally called upon to identify the bearers of checks.
He returned a little before three o'clock inthe afternoon, and Mr. Brandon, the manager, came hurriedly from his little sanctum at the rear of the premises and beckoned Frank into his office.
"You've taken an awful long time for lunch," he complained.
"I'm sorry," said Frank. "I met Miss Nuttall, and the time flew."
"Did you see Holland the other day?" the manager interrupted.
"I didn't see him on the day you sent me," replied Frank, "but I saw him on the following day."
"Is he a friend of your uncle's?"
"I don't think so. Why do you ask?"
The manager took up three checks which lay on the table, and Frank examined them. One was for eight hundred and fifty pounds six shillings, and was drawn upon the Liverpool Cotton Bank, one was for forty-one thousand one hundred and forty pounds, and was drawn upon the Bank of England, and the other was for seven thousand nine hundred andninety-nine pounds fourteen shillings. They were all signed "John Minute," and they were all made payable to "Rex Holland, esquire," and were crossed.
Now John Minute had a very curious practice of splitting up payments so that they covered the three banking houses at which his money was deposited. The check for seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine pounds fourteen shillings was drawn upon the London and Western Counties Bank, and that would have afforded the manager some clew even if he had not been well acquainted with John Minute's eccentricity.
"Seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine pounds fourteen shillings from Mr. Minute's balance," said the manager, "leaves exactly fifty thousand pounds."
Mr. Brandon shook his head in despair at the unbusinesslike methods of his patron.
"Does he know your uncle?"
"Who?"
"Rex Holland."
Frank frowned in an effort of memory.
"I don't remember my uncle ever speaking of him, and yet, now I come to think of it, one of the first checks he put into the bank was on my uncle's account. Yes, now I remember," he exclaimed. "He opened the account on a letter of introduction which was signed by Mr. Minute. I thought at the time that they had probably had business dealings together, and as uncle never encourages the discussion of bank affairs outside of the bank, I have never mentioned it to him."
Again Mr. Brandon shook his head in doubt.
"I must say, Mr. Merrill," he said, "I don't like these mysterious depositors. What is he like in appearance?"
"Rather a tall, youngish man, exquisitely dressed."
"Clean shaven?"
"No, he has a closely trimmed black beard, though he cannot be much more than twenty-eight. In fact, when I saw him for the first time the face was familiar to me and I had animpression of having seen him before. I think he was wearing a gold-rimmed eyeglass when he came on the first occasion, but I have never met him in the street, and he hardly moves in my humble social circle." Frank smiled.
"I suppose it is all right," said the manager dubiously; "but, anyway, I'll see him to-morrow. As a precautionary measure we might get in touch with your uncle, though I know he'll raise Cain if we bother him about his account."
"He will certainly raise Cain if you get in touch with him to-day," smiled Frank, "for he is due to leave by the two-twenty this afternoon for Paris."
It wanted five minutes to the hour at which the bank closed when a clerk came through the swing door and laid a letter upon the counter which was taken in to Mr. Brandon, who came into the office immediately and crossed to where Frank sat.
"Look at this," he said.
Frank took the letter and read it. It was addressed to the manager, and ran:
Dear Sir:I am leaving for Paris to-night to join my partner, Mr. Minute. I shall be very glad, therefore, if you will arrange to cash the inclosed check.Yours faithfully,Rex A. Holland.
Dear Sir:I am leaving for Paris to-night to join my partner, Mr. Minute. I shall be very glad, therefore, if you will arrange to cash the inclosed check.
Yours faithfully,
Rex A. Holland.
The "inclosed check" was for fifty-five thousand pounds and was within five thousand pounds of the amount standing to Mr. Holland's account in the bank. There was a postscript to the letter:
You will accept this, my receipt, for the sum, and hand it to my messenger, Sergeant George Graylin, of the corps of commissionaires, and this form of receipt will serve to indemnify you against loss in the event of mishap.
You will accept this, my receipt, for the sum, and hand it to my messenger, Sergeant George Graylin, of the corps of commissionaires, and this form of receipt will serve to indemnify you against loss in the event of mishap.
The manager walked to the counter.
"Who gave you this letter?" he asked.
"Mr. Holland, sir," said the man.
"Where is Mr. Holland?" asked Frank.
The sergeant shook his head.
"At his flat. My instructions were to take this letter to the bank and bring back the money."
The manager was in a quandary. It was a regular transaction, and it was by no means unusual to pay out money in this way. It was only the largeness of the sum which made him hesitate. He disappeared into his office and came back with two bundles of notes which he had taken from the safe. He counted them over, placed them in a sealed envelope, and received from the sergeant his receipt.
When the man had gone Brandon wiped his forehead.
"Phew!" he said. "I don't like this way of doing business very much, and I should be very glad indeed to be transferred back to the head office."
The words were hardly out of his mouth when a bell rang violently. The front doors of the bank had been closed with the departure of the commissioner, and one of the junior clerks, balancing up his day book, dropped his pen, and, at a sign from his chief, walking to the door, pulled back the bolts and admitted—John Minute.
Frank stared at him in astonishment.
"Hello, uncle," he said. "I wish you had come a few minutes before. I thought you were in Paris."
"The wire calling me to Paris was a fake," growled John Minute. "I wired for confirmation, and discovered my Paris people had not sent me any message. I only got the wire just before the train started. I have been spending all the afternoon getting on to the phone to Paris to untangle the muddle. Why did you wish I was here five minutes before?"
"Because," said Frank, "we have just paid out fifty-five thousand pounds to your friend, Mr. Holland."
"My friend?" John Minute stared from the manager to Frank and from Frank to the manager, who suddenly experienced a sinking feeling which accompanies disaster.
"What do you mean by 'my friend'?" asked John Minute. "I have never heard of the man before."
"Didn't you give Mr. Holland checksamounting to fifty-five thousand pounds this morning?" gasped the manager, turning suddenly pale.
"Certainly not!" roared John Minute. "Why the devil should I give him checks? I have never heard of the man."
The manager grasped the counter for support.
He explained the situation in a few halting words, and led the way to his office, Frank accompanying him.
John Minute examined the checks.
"That is my writing," he said. "I could swear to it myself, and yet I never wrote those checks or signed them. Did you note the commissionaire's number?"
"As it happens I jotted it down," said Frank.
By this time the manager was on the phone to the police. At seven o'clock that night the commissionaire was discovered. He had been employed, he said, by a Mr. Holland, whom he described as a slimmish man, clean shaven,and by no means answering to the description which Frank had given.
"I have lived for a long time in Australia," said the commissionaire, "and he spoke like an Australian. In fact, when I mentioned certain places I had been to he told me he knew them."
The police further discovered that the Knightsbridge flat had been taken, furnished, three months before by Mr. Rex Holland, the negotiations having been by letter. Mr. Holland's agent had assumed responsibility for the flat, and Mr. Holland's agent was easily discoverable in a clerk in the employment of a well-known firm of surveyors and auctioneers, who had also received his commission by letter.
When the police searched the flat they found only one thing which helped them in their investigations. The hall porter said that, as often as not, the flat was untenanted, and only occasionally, when he was off duty, had Mr. Holland put in an appearance, and he onlyknew this from statements which had been made by other tenants.
"It comes to this," said John Minute grimly; "that nobody has seen Mr. Holland but you, Frank."
Frank stiffened.
"I am not suggesting that you are in the swindle," said Minute gruffly. "As likely as not, the man you saw was not Mr. Holland, and it is probably the work of a gang, but I am going to find out who this man is, if I have to spend twice as much as I have lost."