CHAPTER XIITHE GIRL IN THE VICTORIA
When Jones found himself outside the office at last, and in the bustle of Fleet Street, he turned his steps west-wards.
He had almost forgotten the half formed determination to throw down his cards and get up from this strange game, which he had formed when Collins had asked him whether he would not have an interview with his wife. This coal mine business pushed everything else aside for the moment; the thought of that deal galvanized the whole business side of his nature, so that, as he would have said himself, bristles stood on it. A mine worth a million pounds, traded away for twenty five thousand dollars!
He was taking the thing to heart, as though he himself had been tricked by Mulhausen, and now as he walked, a block in the traffic brought him back from his thoughts, and suddenly, a most appalling sensation came upon him. For a moment he had lost his identity. For a moment he was neither Rochester nor Jones, but just a void between these two. For a moment he could not tell which he was. For a moment he was neither. That was the terrible part of the feeling. It was due to over taxation of the brain in his extraordinary position, and to the intensivemanner in which he had been playing the part of Rochester. It lasted perhaps, only a few seconds, for it is difficult to measure the duration of mental processes, and it passed as rapidly as it had come.
Seeing a bar he entered it, and a small glass of brandy closed the incident and made him forget it. He asked the way to Coutts’ Bank, which in 1692 was situated at the “Three Crowns” in the Strand, next door to the Globe Tavern, and which still holds the same position in the world of commerce, and nearly the same in the world of bricks and mortar.
He reached the door of the bank and was about to enter, when something checked him. It was the thought that he would have to endorse the cheque with Rochester’s signature.
He had copied it so often that he felt competent to make a fair imitation, but he had begun life in a bank and he knew the awful eye a bank has for a customer’s signature. His signature—at least Rochester’s—must be well known at Coutts’. It would never do to put himself under the microscope like that, besides, and this thought only came to him now, it might be just as well to have his money in some place unknown to others. Collins and all that terrible family knew that he was banking at Coutts’, events might arise when it would be very necessary too for him to be able to lay his hands on a secret store of money.
He had passed the National Provincial Bank in the Strand, the name sounded safe and he determined to go there.
He reached the bank, sent his name into the manager,and was at once admitted. The manager was a solid man, semi-bald, with side whiskers, and an air of old English business respectability delightful in these new and pushing days, he received the phantom of the Earl of Rochester with the respect due to their mutual positions.
Jones, between Coutts’ and the National Provincial, had done a lot of thinking. He foresaw that even if he were to give in a passable imitation of Rochester’s signature, all cheques signed in future would have to tally with that signature. Now a man’s handwriting, though varying, has a personality of its own, and he very much doubted as to whether he would be able to keep up that personality under the microscopic gaze of the bank people. He decided on a bold course. He would retain his own handwriting. It was improbable that the National Provincial had ever seen Rochester’s autograph; even if they had, it was not a criminal thing for a man to alter his style of writing. He endorsed the cheque Rochester, gave a sample of his signature, gave directions for a cheque book to be sent to him at Carlton House Terrace, and took his departure.
He had changed Rochester’s five pound note before going to Collins, and he had the change in his pocket, four pounds sixteen and sixpence. Five pounds, less the price of a cigar at the tobacconist’s where he had changed his note, the taxi to Sergeants’ Inn, and the glass of liqueur brandy. He remembered that he still owed for his luncheon yesterday at the Senior Conservative, and he determined to go and pay for it,and then lunch at some restaurant. Never again would he have luncheon at that Conservative Caravanserai, so he told himself.
With this purpose in mind, he was standing waiting to cross the road near Southampton Street, when a voice sounded in his ear and an arm took his.
“Hello, Rochy,” said the voice.
Jones turned, and found himself arm in arm with a youth of eighteen—so he seemed, a gilded youth, if there ever was a gilded youth, immaculately dressed, cheery, and with a frank face that was entirely pleasing.
“Hello,” said Jones.
“What became of you that night?” asked the cheery one, as they crossed the road still arm in arm.
“Which night?”
“Which night? Why the night they shot us out of the Rag Tag Club. Are you asleep, Rawjester—or what ails you?”
“Oh, I remember,” said Jones.
They had unlinked now, and walking along together they passed up Southampton Street and through Henrietta Street towards Leicester Square. The unknown doing all the talking, a task for which he seemed well qualified.
He talked of things, events, and people, absolutely unknown to his listener, of horses, and men, and women. He talked Jones into Bond Street, and Jones went shopping with him, assisting him in the choice of two dozen coloured socks at Beale and Inmans. Outside the hosier’s, the unknown was proposing luncheon,when a carriage, an open Victoria, going slowly on account of the traffic, drew Jones’ attention.
It was a very smart turn out, one horsed, but having two liveried servants on the box. A coachman, and a footman with powdered hair.
In the Victoria was seated one of the prettiest girls ever beheld by Jones. A lovely creature, dark, with deep, dreamy, vague blue-grey eyes—and a face! Ah, what pen could describe that face, so mobile, piquante, and filled with light and inexpressible charm.
She had caught Jones’ eye, she was gazing at him curiously, half mirthfully, half wrathfully, it seemed to him, and now to his amazement she made a little movement of the head, as if to say, “come here.” At the same moment she spoke to the coachman.
“Portman, stop please.”
Jones advanced, raising his hat.
“I just want to tell you,” said the Beauty, leaning a little forward, “that you are a silly old ass. Venetia has told me all—It’s nothing to me, but don’t do it—Portman, drive on.”
“Good Lord!” said Jones, as the vehicle passed on its way, bearing off its beautiful occupant, of whom nothing could now be seen but the lace covered back of a parasol.
He rejoined the unknown.
“Well,” said the latter, “what has your wife been saying to you?”
“Mywife!” said Jones.
“Well, your late wife, though you ain’t divorced yet, are you?”
“No,” said Jones.
He uttered the word mechanically, scarcely knowing what he was saying.
That lovely creature his wife! Rochester’s wife!
“Get in,” said the unknown. He had called a taxi.
Jones got in.
Rochester’s wife! The contrast between her and Lady Plinlimon suddenly arose before him, together with the folly of Rochester seen gigantically and in a new light.
The taxi drew up in a street off Piccadilly; they got out; the unknown paid and led the way into a house, whose front door presented a modest brass door plate inscribed with the words:
“Mr. Carr”
They passed along a passage, and then down stairs to a large room, where small card tables were set out. An extraordinary room, for, occupying nearly half of one side of it stood a kitchen range, over which a cook was engaged broiling chops and kidneys, and all the other elements of a mixed grill. Old fashioned pictures of sporting celebrities hung on the walls, and opposite the range stood a dresser, laden with priceless old fashioned crockery ware. Off this room lay the dining room, and the whole place had an atmosphere of comfort and the days gone by whendays were less laborious than our days, and comfort less allied to glitter and tinsel.
This was Carr’s Club.
The unknown sat down before the visitor’s book, and began to write his own name and the name of his guest.
Jones, looking over his shoulder, saw that his name was Spence, Patrick Spence. Sir Patrick Spence, for one of the attendants addressed him as Sir Patrick. A mixed grill, some cheese and draught beer in heavy pewter tankards, constituted the meal, during which the loquacious Spence kept up the conversation.
“I don’t want to poke my nose into your affairs,” said he, “but I can see there’s something worrying you; you’re not the same chap. Is it about the wife?”
“No,” said Jones, “it’s not that.”
“Well, I don’t want to dig into your confidences, and I don’t want to give you advice. If I did, I’d say make it up with her. You know very well, Rochy, you have led her the deuce of a dance. Your sister got me on about it the other night at the Vernons’. We had a long talk about you, Rochy, and we agreed you were the best of chaps, but too much given to gaiety and promiscuous larks. You should have heard me holding forth. But, joking apart, it’s time you and I settled down, old chap. You can’t put old heads on young shoulders, but our shoulders ain’t so young as they used to be, Rochy. And I want to tell you this, if you don’t hitch up again in harness, the other party will do a bolt. I’m dead serious. It’snot the thing to say to another man, but you and I haven’t any secrets between us, and we’ve always been pretty plain one to the other—well, this is what I want to say, and just take it as it’s meant. Maniloff is after her. You know that chap, theattachéat the Russian Embassy, chap like a billiard marker, always at the other end of a cigarette—other name’s Boris. Hasn’t a penny to bless himself with. I know he hasn’t, for I’ve made kind enquiries about him through Lewis, reason why—he wanted to buy one of my racers for export to Roosia. Seven hundred down and the balance in six months. Lewis served up his past to me on a charger. The chap’s rotten with debt, divorced from his wife, and a punter at Monte Carlo. That’s his real profession, and card playing. He’s a sleepy Slav, and if he was told his house was on fire he’d say, ”nichévo,“ meaning it don’t matter, it’s well insured—if he had a house to insure, which he hasn’t. But women like him, he’s that sort. But Heaven help the woman that marries him. He’d take her money and herself off to Monte, and when he’d broken her heart and spoiled her life and spent her coin, he’d leave her, and go off and be Russianattachéin Japan or somewhere. I know him. Don’t let her do it, Rochy.”
“But how am I to help it?” asked the perplexed Jones, who saw the meaning of the other. It did not matter in reality to him, whether a woman whom he had only seen once were to “bolt” with a Russian and find ruination at Monte Carlo, but this world is not entirely a world of reality, and he felt a surprisinglystrong resentment at the idea of the girl in the Victoria “bolting” with a Russian.
It will be remembered that in Collins’ office, the lawyer’s talk about his “wife” had almost decided him to throw down his cards and quit. This shadowy wife, first mentioned by the bird woman, had, in fact, been the one vaguely felt insuperable obstacle in the way of his grand determination to make good where Rochester had failed, to fight Rochester’s battles, to be the Earl of Rochester permanently maybe, or, failing that, to retire and vanish back to the States with honourable pickings.
The sight of the real thing had, however, altered the whole position. Romance had suddenly touched Victor Jones; the gorgeous but sordid veils through which he had been pushing had split to some mystic wand, and had become the foliage of fairy land.
“I want to tell you—you are an old ass.”
Those words were surely enough to shatter any dream, to turn to pathos any situation. In Jones’ case they had acted as a most potent spell. He could still hear the voice, wrathful, but with a tinge of mirth in it, golden, individual, entrancing.
“How are you to help it?” said Spence. “Why, go and make up with her again, kick old Nichévo. Women like chaps that kick other chaps; they pretend they don’t, but they do. Either do that or take a gun and shoot her, she’d be better shot than with that fellow.”
He lit a cigarette and they passed into the card room, where Spence, looking at his watch, declaredthat he must be off to keep an appointment. They said good-bye in the street, and Jones returned to Carlton House Terrace.
He had plenty to think about.
The pile of letters waiting to be answered on the table in the smoking room reminded him that he had forgotten a most pressing necessity—a typist. He could sign letters all right, with a very good imitation of Rochester’s signature, but a holograph letter in the same hand was beyond him. Then a bright idea came to him, why not answer these letters with sixpenny telegrams, which he could hand in himself?
He found a sheaf of telegraph forms in the bureau, and sat down before the letters, dealing with them one by one, and as relevantly as he could. It was a rather interesting and amusing game, and when he had finished he felt fairly satisfied. “Awfully sorry can’t come,” was the reply to the dinner invitations. The letter signed “Childersley” worried him, till he looked up the name in “Who’s Who” and found a Lord answering to it at the same address as that on the note paper.
He had struck by accident on one of the alleviations of a major misery of civilized life, replying to Letters, and he felt like patenting it.
He left the house with the sheaf of telegrams, found the nearest post office—which is situated directly opposite to Charing Cross Station—and returned. Then lighting a cigar, he took the friendly and indefatigable “Who’s Who” upon his knee, and began to turn the pages indolently. It is a most interestingvolume for an idle moment, full of scattered romance, tales of struggle and adventure, compressed into a few lines, peeps of history, and the epitaphs of still living men.
“I want to tell you—you are an old ass.”
The words still sounding in his ears made him turn again to the name Plinlimon. The contrast between Lady Plinlimon and the girl, whose vision dominated his mind, rose up again sharply at sight of the printed name.
Ass! That name did not apply to Rochester. To fit him with an appropriate pseudonym would be impossible. Fool, idiot, sumph—Jones tried them all on the image of the defunct, but they were too small.
“Plinlimon: 3rd Baron,” read Jones, “created 1831, Albert James, b. March 10th, 1862. O. S. of second Baron and Julia d. of J. H. Thompson of Clifton, m. Sapphira, d. of Marcus Mulhausen, educ. privately. Address The Roost, Tite Street, Chelsea.”
Mulhausen! He almost dropped the book. Mulhausen! Collins, his office, and that terrible family party all rose up before him. Here was the scamp who had diddled Rochester out of the coal mine, the father of the woman who had diddled him out of thousands. The paragraph in “Who’s Who” turned from printed matter to a nest of wriggling vipers. He threw the book on the table, rose up, and began to pace the floor.
The girl-wife in the Victoria, his own position—everything was forgotten, before the monstrous fact half guessed, half seen.
Rochester had been plucked right and left by these harpies. He had received five thousand pounds for land worth a million from the father, he had paid eight thousand, or a good part of eight thousand to the daughter. Fine business that!
I compared Jones, when he was fighting Voles, to a terrier. He had a good deal of the terrier in his composition, the honesty, the rooting out instinct, and the fury before vermin. Men run in animal groups, and if you study animals you will be surprised by nothing so much as the old race fury that breaks out in the most civilized animal before the old race quarry or enemy.
For a few seconds, as he paced the floor, Jones was in the mental condition of a dog in proximity to a hutched badger. Then he began to think clearly. The obvious fact before him was that Voles, the Plinlimons and Mulhausen were a gang; the presumptive fact was that the money paid in blackmail had gone back to Mulhausen, or at least a great part of it.
Was Mulhausen the spider of the web? Were all the rest his tools and implements?
Jones had a good deal of instinctive knowledge of women. He did not in his heart believe that a woman could be so utterly vile as to use love letters directed to her for the purpose of extracting money from the man who wrote them. Or rather that, whilst she might use them, it was improbable that she would invent the method. The whole business had the stamp of a mind masculine and utterly unscrupulous. Even at first he had glimpsed this vaguely, when heconsidered it probable that Lord Plinlimon had a hand in the affair.
“Now,” thought Jones, “if I could bring this home to Mulhausen, I could squeeze back that coal mine from him. I could sure.”
He sat down and lit another cigar to assist him in dealing with this problem.
It was very easy to say “squeeze Mulhausen,” it was a different thing to do it. He came to this conclusion after a few minutes’ earnest concentration of mind on that problematical person. Hitherto he had been dealing with small men and wasters. Voles was a plain scoundrel, quite easily overthrown by direct methods. But Marcus Mulhausen he guessed to be a big man. The first thing to be done was to verify this supposition. He rang the bell and sent for Mr. Church.
“Come in,” said he, when the latter appeared, “and shut the door. I want to ask you something.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
“It’s just this. I want you to tell me what you think of Lord Plinlimon, and what you have heard said about him. I have my own opinions—I want yours.”
“Well, my Lord,” began Church. “It’s not for me to say anything against his Lordship, but since you ask me I will say that it’s generally the opinion that his Lordship is a bit—soft.”
“Do you think he’s straight?”
“Yes, my Lord—that is to say—”
“Spit it out,” said Jones.
“Well, my Lord, he owes money, that’s well known; and I’ve heard it said a good deal of money has been lost at cards in his house, but not through his fault. Indeed, you yourself said something to me to that effect, my Lord.”
“Yes, so I did—But what I want to get at is this. Do you think he’s a man who would do a scoundrelly thing—that’s plain?”
“Oh, no, my Lord, he’s straight enough. It’s the other party.”
“Meaning his wife?”
“No, my Lord—her brother, Mr. Julian.”
“Ah!”
Church warmed a bit. “He’s always about there, lives with them mostly. You see, my Lord, he has no what you may call status of his own, but he manages to get known to people through her Ladyship.”
“Kind of sucker,” said Jones.
Mr. Church assented. The expression was new to him, but it seemed to apply.
Then Jones dismissed him.
The light was becoming clearer and clearer. Here was another member of the gang, another instrument of Marcus Mulhausen.
“To-morrow,” said Jones to himself, “I will go for these chaps. Voles is the key to the lot of them, and I have Voles completely under my thumb.”
Then he put the matter from his mind for a while, and fell to thinking of the girl—his wife—Rochester’s wife.
The strange thought came to him that she was a widow and did not know it.
He dined out that night, going to a little restaurant in Soho, and he returned to bed early, so as to be fresh for the business of the morrow.
He had looked himself up again in “Who’s Who,” and found that his wife’s name was Teresa. Teresa. The name pleased him vaguely, and now that he had captured it, it stuck like a burr in his mind. If he could only make good over the Mulhausen proposition, re-capture that mine, prove himself—would she, if he told her all—would she—?
He fell asleep murmuring the word Teresa.
CHAPTER XIIITERESA
He woke up next morning, to find the vision of Teresa, Countess of Rochester—so he called her—standing by his bedside.
Have you ever for a moment considered the influence of women? Go to a public meeting composed entirely of men and see what a heavy affair it can be, especially if you are a speaker; sprinkle a few women through the audience, and behold the livening effect. At a party or a public meeting in the Wheat Pit or the battlefield, women, or the recollection of a woman, form or forms one of the greatest liveners to conversation, speech, or action. Most men fight the battle of life for a woman. Jones, as he sat up and drank his morning tea, gazing the while at the vision of Teresa, Countess of Rochester, had found, almost unknown to himself, a new incentive to action.
The position yesterday had begun to sag, very little would have made him “quit,” take a hundred pounds from the eight thousand and a passage by the next boat to the States; but that girl in the Victoria, those eyes, that voice, those words—they had altered everything.
Was he in love? Perhaps not, but he was fascinated, held, dazzled.
More than that, the world seemed strange—brighter; he felt younger, filled with an energy of a new brand. He whistled as he crossed the floor to look out of the window, and as he tubbed he splashed the water about like a boy.
It was easy to see that the unfortunate man had tumbled into a position more fantastic and infinitely more dangerous than any position he had hitherto occupied since setting foot in the house of Rochester.
That vanished and fantastic humourist would have found plenty to feed his thoughts could he have returned.
The cheque book from the National Provincial Bank arrived by the first post, and after breakfast he put it aside in a drawer of the bureau in the smoking room. He glanced through the usual sheaf of letters from unknown people, tradesmen, whose accounts were marked “account rendered” and gentlemen who signed themselves with the names of counties. One of the latter seemed indignant.
“I take this d—d bad of you, Rochester,” said he. “I’ve found it out at last, you are the man responsible for that telegram. I lost three days and a night’s sleep rushing up to Cumberland on a wild goose chase, and I’m telling people all about it. Some day you’ll land yourself in a mess. Jokes that may be funny amongst board school boys are out of place amongst men.“Langwathby.”
“I take this d—d bad of you, Rochester,” said he. “I’ve found it out at last, you are the man responsible for that telegram. I lost three days and a night’s sleep rushing up to Cumberland on a wild goose chase, and I’m telling people all about it. Some day you’ll land yourself in a mess. Jokes that may be funny amongst board school boys are out of place amongst men.
“Langwathby.”
Jones determined to send Langwathby a telegram of apology when he had time to look his name up in “Who’s Who”; then he put the letters aside, called for his hat and cane and left the house.
He was going to Voles first.
Voles was his big artillery. He guessed that the fight with Marcus Mulhausen would be a battle to the death. He reckoned a lot on Voles. In Trafalgar Square he called a taxi and told the driver to take him to Jermyn Street.
CHAPTER XIVTHE ATTACK
A. S. Voles, money lender and bill discounter, lived over his business. That is to say his office was his dining room. He owned the house in Jermyn Street. Jones, dismissing the taxi, rang the bell and was admitted by a man servant, who, not sure whether Mr. Voles was in or not, invited the visitor into a small room on the right of the entrance hall and closed the door on him.
The room contained a desk table, three chairs, a big scale map of London, a Phoenix Insurance Almanac, and a photogravure reproduction of Mona Lisa. The floor was covered with linoleum, and the window gave upon a blank wall.
This was the room where creditors and stray visitors had to wait. Jones took a chair and looked about him.
Humanity may be divided into three classes: those who, having seen, adore, those who tolerate, and those who detest Mona Lisa. Jones detested her. That leery, sleery, slippery, poisonous face was hateful to him as the mask of a serpent.
He was looking at the lady when the door opened and in came Voles.
Voles looked yellower and older this morning, but his face showed nothing of resentment. The turning of the Earl of Rochester upon him had been the one great surprise of his life. He had always fancied that he knew character, and his fancy was not ill founded. His confidence in himself had been shaken.
“Good morning,” said Jones. “I have come to have a little talk with you.”
“Sit down,” said Voles.
They seated themselves, Voles before the desk.
“I haven’t come to fight,” said Jones, “just to talk. You known that Marcus Mulhausen has got that Welsh land from me for five thousand, and that it is worth maybe a million now.”
Voles nodded.
“Well, Mulhausen has to give that property back.”
Voles laughed.
“You needn’t laugh. You have seen my rough side. I’m holding the smooth towards you now—but there is no occasion to laugh. I’m going to skin Mulhausen.”
“Well,” said Voles. “What have I to do with that?”
“You are the knife.”
“Oh!”
“Yes, indeed. Let’s talk. When you got that eight thousand from me, you were only the agent of the Plinlimon woman, and she was only the agent of Marcus. She got something, you got something, but Marcus got the most. Julian got something too, but it was Marcus got the joints. He gave you three thehead, and the hoofs, and the innards, and the tail. I’ve had it out with the Plinlimon woman and I know. You were a gang.”
Voles heaved up in his chair.
“What more have you to say?” asked he thickly.
“A lot. There is nothing more difficult to get at than a gang, because they cover each other’s traces. I pay you a certain sum in cash, you deduct your commission and hand the remainder over to the Plinlimon woman, she pays her Pa, and gets a few hundred to pay her milliner. Who’s to prove anything? No cheques have passed.”
“Just so,” said Voles.
“I’m glad you see my point,” replied Jones. “Now if you can’t untie a knot, you can always cut it if you have a knife—can’t you?”
Voles shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, I said you were a knife, didn’t I, and I’m going to cut this knot with you, see my point?”
“Not in the least.”
“I’m sorry, because that makes me speak plain, and that’s unpleasant. This is my meaning. I have to get that property back, or else I will go to the police and rope in the whole gang. Tell the whole story. I will accuse Marcus. Do you understand that? Marcus, and Marcus’ daughter, and Marcus’ son, and you. And I won’t do that to-morrow, I’ll do it to-day. To-night the whole caboodle of you will be in jail.”
“You said you hadn’t come to fight,” cried Voles. “What do you want? Haven’t you had enough fromme? Yet you drive me like this. It’s dangerous.”
“I have not come to fight. At least not you. On the contrary, when I get this property back, if it turns out worth a million, I’ll maybe pay you your losses. You’ve been paying the piper for Marcus, it seems to me.”
“I have,” groaned Voles.
The two words proved to Jones that he was right all through.
“Well, it’s Marcus I’m up against, and you have to help me.”
Then Voles began to speak. The something Oriental in his nature, the something that had driven him rushing with outspread arms at the constable that evening, began now to talk.
Help against Marcus! What could he do against Marcus? Why Marcus Mulhausen held him in the hollow of his hand. Marcus held everyone: his daughter, her husband, his own son Julian, to say nothing of A. S. Voles and others.
Jones listened with patient attention to all this, and when the other had finished and wiped the palms of his hands on his handkerchief, said:
“But all the same, Marcus is held by the fact that he forms one of a gang.”
Voles made a movement with his hand.
“Don’t interrupt me. The head of a shark is the cleverest part of it, but it has to suffer with the body when the whole shark is caught; that’s the fix Marcus is in. When I close on the lot of you, Marcus willbe the first to go into the jug. Now, see here, you have got to take my orders; they won’t be hard.”
“What are they?”
“You have got to write me a note, which I will take to Marcus, telling him the game’s up, the gang’s burst, and to deliver.”
“Why d—n it, what ails you?” said Voles.
“What ails me?”
“You aren’t talking like yourself—you have never been like yourself since you’ve taken this line.”
Jones felt himself changing colour. In his excitement he had let his voice run away with him.
“It doesn’t matter a button whether I’m like myself or not,” said he, “you’ve got to write that note, and do it now while I dictate.”
Voles drummed on the desk with his fingers, then he took a sheet of paper and an envelope from a drawer.
“Well,” said he, “what is it to be?”
“Nothing alarming,” said the other. “Just three words. ‘It’s all up’—how do you address him?”
Without reply Voles wrote.
“Dear M.
”It’s all up.“
“That’ll do,” said Jones, “now sign your name and address the envelope.”
Voles did so.
Jones put the letter in his pocket.
“Well,” said he, “that ends the business. I hope, with this, and what I have to say to him, Marcus will part, and as I say, if things turn out as I hope, maybe I’ll right your losses—I have no quarrel with you—only Marcus.”
Suddenly Voles spoke.
“For God’s sake,” said he, “mind how you deal with that chap; he’s never been got the better of, curse him. Go cautiously.”
“You never fear,” said Jones.
CHAPTER XVTHE ATTACK (Continued)
Jones had already obtained Marcus Mulhausen’s address from the invaluable Kelly.
Mulhausen was a financier. A financier is a man who makes money without a trade or profession, and Mulhausen had made a great deal of money, despite this limitation, during his twenty years of business life, which had started humbly enough behind the counter of a pawnbroker’s in the Minories.
His offices were situated in Chancery Lane. They consisted of three rooms: an outer waiting room, a room inhabited by three clerks, that is to say a senior clerk, Mr. Aaronson, and two subordinates, and an inner room where Mulhausen dwelt.
Jones, on giving his name, was shown at once into the inner room where Mulhausen was seated at his desk.
Mulhausen was a man of sixty or so, small, fragile looking, with grey side whiskers and drowsy heavy-lidded eyes.
He nodded to Jones and indicated a chair. Then he finished his work, the reading of a letter, placed it under an agate paper weight, and turned to the newcomer.
“What can I do for you this morning?” asked Mulhausen.
“You can just read this letter,” said Jones.
He handed over Voles’ letter.
Mulhausen put on his glasses, opened the letter, and read it. Then he placed the open letter on top of the one beneath the agate paper weight, tore up the envelope, and threw the two fragments into the waste paper basket behind him.
“Anything more?” asked he.
“Yes,” replied the other, “a lot more. Let us begin at the beginning. You have obtained from me a piece of real estate worth anything up to a million pounds; you paid five thousand for it.”
“Yes!”
“You have got to hand me that property back.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Mulhausen. “Do you refer to the Glanafwyn lands?”
“Yes.”
“I see. And I have to hand those back to you—anything more?”
“No, that’s all. I received your daughter’s letters back from Voles yesterday—Let’s be plain with one another. Voles has confessed everything. I have his confession under his own handwriting, you are all in a net, the whole gang of you—you, your daughter, your son and Voles. You plucked me like a turkey. You know the whole affair as well as I do, and if I do not receive that property back before five o’clock to-day, I shall go to the nearest police office and swear an information against you.”
“I see,” said Mulhausen, without turning a hair, “you will put us all in prison, will you not? That would be very unpleasant. Very unpleasant indeed.”
He rose, went to some tin boxes situated on a ledge behind him, took out his keys and opened one.
Jones, fancying that he was going to produce the title deeds, felt a little jump at his thyroid cartilage. This was victory without a battle. But Mr. Marcus Mulhausen took no title deeds from the box. He produced a letter case, came back with it to the table, and sat down.
Then holding the letter case before him he looked at Jones over his glasses.
“You rogue,” said Mulhausen.
That was the most terrific moment in Jones’ life. Mulhausen from a criminal had suddenly become a judge. He spoke with such absolute conviction, ease, sense of power and scorn, that there could be no manner of doubt he held the winning cards. He opened the letter case and produced a paper.
“Here is the bill of exchange for two hundred and fifty pounds, to which you forged Sir Pleydell Tuffnell’s name,” said Marcus Mulhausen, spreading the paper before him. “That was two years ago. We all know Sir Pleydell and his easy going ways. He is so careless you thought he would never find out; so good, he would never prosecute. But it came into my hands, it is my property, and I have no hesitation in dealing with rogues. Now do you suppose for a moment that if I were moving against you in any unlawful way—which I deny—I would have done sowithout a protector? Could you find a better protection than this? The punishment for forgery let me remind you, is five years penal servitude at the least.” He looked down at the document with a cold smile, and then he glanced up again at his victim. Jones saw that he was done; done not by Marcus Mulhausen, but by Rochester. He had tripped over a kink in Rochester’s character, just as a man trips over a kink in a carpet. Then rage came to him. The sight of the horrible scoundrel with whiskers, triumphant and gloating, roused the dog in his nature, and all the craft that lay hidden in him.
He heaved a sigh, rose brokenly, and approached the desk, and the creature behind it.
“You are a cleverer man than I am,” said he, “shake hands and call it quits.”
Next moment he had snatched the paper from the fingers that held it, crumpled it, crammed it into his mouth. He rushed to the door and locked it, whilst Mulhausen, screaming like a woman, reached him and clutched him by the shoulders.
Then, swiftly turning, Jones gripped the financier by both arms and held him so, chewing, chewing, chewing, mute and facing the shouting other one.
They were hammering at the door outside. Mr. Aaronson and the clerks, useless people for breaking-down-door purposes, were assisting their employer with their voices—mainly, the whole block of offices was raised, and boys and telephones were summoning the police.
Meanwhile, Jones was chewing, and the bill wasslowly being converted into what the physiologist terms a bolus. It took three minutes before the bolus, properly salivated and raised by the tongue, passed the anterior pillars of the fauces, then the epiglottis shut down, and the bolus slipping over it and seized by the muscles of the esophagus passed to its destined abode.
Jones had swallowed Rochester’s past, or at least a most important part of it. The act accomplished, he sat down as a boa constrictor recoils itself, still gulping. Marcus Mulhausen rushed to the door and opened it. A vast policeman stood before him, behind the policeman crowded Mr. Aaronson and the clerks, and behind these a dozen or two of the block dwellers, eager for gory sights at a distance.
Marcus looked round.
“What’s all this?” said he. “There is nothing wrong, just a little dispute with a gentleman. It is all over—Mr. Aaronson, clear the office. Constable, here is two shillings for your trouble. Good day.”
He shut the door on the disappointed crowd and turned to Jones.
The battle was over.
CHAPTER XVIA WILD SURPRISE
At five o’clock that day the transference of the property was made out and signed by Marcus Mulhausen in Mortimer Collins’ office, and the Glanafwyn lands became again the property of the Earl of Rochester—“for the sum of five thousand pounds received and herewith acknowledged,” said the document.
Needless to say no five thousand pounds passed hands. Collins, mystified, asked no questions in the presence of Mulhausen. When the latter had taken his departure, however, he turned to Jones.
“Did you pay him five thousand?” asked the lawyer.
“Not a cent,” replied the other.
“Well, how have you worked the miracle, then?”
Jones told.
“You see how I had them coopered,” finished he. “Well, just as I was going to grab the kitty he played the ace of spades, produced an old document he held against me.”
“Yes?”
“I pondered for a moment—then I came to a swift conclusion—took the doc from him and ate it.”
“You ate the document?”
“Sure.”
Jones rubbed his stomach and laughed.
“Well, well,” said the solicitor with curious acquiescence and want of astonishment after the first momentary start caused by this surprising statement, “we have the property back, that’s the main thing.”
“You remember,” said Jones, “I talked to you about letting that place.”
“Carlton House Terrace?”
“Yes—well, that’s off. I’ve made good. Do you see?”
“M—yes,” replied Collins.
“I’ll have enough money now to pay off the mortgages and things.”
“Undoubtedly,” said Collins, “but, now, don’t you think it would be a good thing if you were to tie this property up, so that mischance can’t touch it. You have no children, it is true, but one never knows. Honestly, I think you would be well advised if you were to take precautions.”
“Don’t worry,” said Jones brightly. “I’ll give the whole lot to—my wife—when I can come to terms with her.”
“That’s good hearing,” replied the other. Then Jones took his departure, leaving the precious documents in the hands of the lawyer.
He was elated. He had proved the facts which he had only guessed by instinct up to this, that a rogue is the weakest person in the world before a plain dealer, if the plain dealer has a weapon in his hand. The almost instantaneous collapse of Voles and Mulhausenwas due to the fact that they stood on rotten foundations. He told himself now as he walked along homeward that he need not have eaten that document. Mulhausen would never have used it. If he had just gone out and called in a policeman, Mulhausen, seeing him in earnest, would have collapsed.
However the thing was eaten and done with and there was no use in troubling any more on the matter. He had other things to think of. He had made good. He had saved the Rochester name and estates, he had recaptured one million, eight thousand pounds, reckoning that the coal bearing lands were worth a million, and, more than that; he was a sane man, able to look after what he had recaptured.
The Rochester family, if they knew, would have no cause to grumble at the interloper and the substitution of new brains and push in the place of decadence, craziness and sloth. The day when he had changed places with Rochester was the best day that had ever dawned for them.
He was thinking this when all of a sudden that horrible, unreal feeling he had suffered from once before, came upon him again. This time it was not a question of losing his identity, it was a shuffle of his own taxed brain between two identities. Rochester—Jones—Jones—Rochester. It seemed to him for the space of a couple of seconds that he could not tell which of those two individuals he was, then the feeling passed and he resumed his way, reaching Carlton House Terrace shortly after six.
He gave his hat and cane and gloves to the flunkey who opened the door for him—He had obtained a latch-key from Church that morning but forgot to use it—and was crossing the hall when a strain of music brought him to a halt. The tones of a piano came from a door on the right. Someone was playing Chaminade’sValse Tendreand playing it to perfection.
Jones turned to the man-servant.
“Who is that?” he asked.
“It is her ladyship, my Lord, she arrived half an hour ago. Her luggage has gone upstairs.”
Her ladyship!
Jones thrown off his balance hesitated for a moment,whatladyship could it be. Not, surely, that awful mother!
He crossed to the door, opened it, found a music-room, and there, seated at a piano, the girl of the Victoria.
She was in out-door dress and had not removed her hat.
She looked over her shoulder at him as he came in, her face wore a half smile, but she did not stop playing. Anything more fascinating, more lovely, more distracting than that picture it would be hard to imagine.
As he crossed the room she suddenly ceased playing and twirled round on the music-stool.
“I’ve come back,” said she. “Ju-ju, I couldn’t stand it. You are bad but you are a lot, lot betterthan your mother—and Venetia. I’m going to try and put up with you a bit longer—Ju-Ju, what makes you look so stiff and funny?”
“I don’t know,” said Jones, passing his hand across his forehead. “I’ve had a hard day.” She looked at him curiously for a moment, then pityingly, then kindly.
Then she jumped up, made him sit down on a big couch by the wall, and took her seat beside him.
Then she took his hand.
“Ju-Ju—why will you be such a fool?”
“I don’t know,” said Jones.
The caress of the little jewelled hand destroyed his mental powers. He dared not look at her, just sat staring before him.
“They told me all about the coal mine,” she went on, “at least Venetia did, and how they all bully-ragged you—Venetia was great on that. Venetia waggled that awful gobbly-Jick head of hers while she was telling me—they’remadover the loss of that coal thing—oh, Ju-Ju, I’m so glad you lost it. It’s wicked, I suppose, but I’m glad. That’s what made me come back, the way they went on about you. I listened and listened and then I broke out. I said all I’ve wanted to say for the last six months to Venetia. You know she told me how you came home the other night. I said nothing then, just listened and stored it up. Then, last night, when they all got together about the coal mine I went on listening and storing it up. Blunders was there as well as your mother and Venetia. Blunders said hehad called you an ass and that you were. Then I broke out. I said a whole lot of things—well, there it is. So I came back—there were other reasons as well. I don’t want to be alone. I want to be cared for—I want to be cared for—when I saw you in Bond Street, yesterday—I—I—I—Ju-Ju, do you care for me?”
“Yes,” said Jones.
“I want to confess—I want to tell you something.”
“Yes.”
“If you didn’t care for me—if I felt you didn’t, I’d—”
“Yes.”
“Kick right over the traces. I would. I couldn’t go on as I have been going, lonely, like a lost dog.”
She raised his fingers and rubbed them along her lips.
“You will not be lonely,” said the unfortunate man in a muted voice. “You need not be afraid of that.” The utter inadequacy of the remark came to him like one of those nightmare recognitions encountered as a rule only in Dreamland. Yet she seemed to find it sufficient, her mind perhaps being engaged elsewhere.
“What would you have said if I had run away from you for good?” asked she. “Would you have been sorry?”
“Yes—dreadfully.”
“Are you glad I’ve come back?”
“I am.”
“Honestly glad?”
“Yes.”
“Really glad?”
“Yes.”
“Truthfully, really, honestly glad?”
“Yes.”
“Well, so am I,” said she. She released his hand.
“Now go and play me something. I want something soothing after Venetia—play me Chopin’s Spianato—we used to be fond of that.”
Now the only thing that Jones had ever played in his life was the Star Spangled Banner and that with one finger—Chopin’s Spianato!
“No,” he said. “I’d rather talk.”
“Well, talk then—mercy! There’s the first gong.”
A faint and far away sound invaded the room, throbbed and ceased. She rose, picked up her gloves, which she had cast on a chair, and then peeped at herself in a mirror by the piano.
“You have never kissed me,” said she, speaking as it were half to herself and half to him, seeming to be more engaged in a momentary piercing criticism of the hat she was wearing than in thoughts of kisses. He came towards her like a schoolboy, then, as she held up her face he imprinted a chaste kiss upon her right cheek bone.
Then the most delightful thing that ever happened to mortal man happened to him. Two warm palms suddenly took his face between them and two moist lips met his own.
Then she was gone.
He took his seat on the music stool, dazed, dazzled, delighted, shocked, frightened, triumphant.
The position was terrific.
Jones was no Lothario. He was a straight, plain, common-sensical man with a high respect for women, and the position of leading character in a bad French comedy was not for him. Jones would just as soon have thought of kissing another man’s wife as of standing on his head in the middle of Broadway.
To personate another man and to kiss the other man’s wife under that disguise would have seemed to him the meanest act any two-legged creature could perform.
And he had just done it. And the other man’s wife had—heu! his face still burned.
She had done it because of his deception.
He found himself suddenly face to face with the barrier that Fate had been cunningly constructing and had now placed straight before him.
There was no getting over it or under it, he would have to declare his positionat once—and what a position to declare!
She loved Rochester.
All at once that terrific fact appeared before him in its true proportions and its true meaning.
She loved Rochester.
He had to tell her the truth. Yet to tell her the truth he would have to tell her that the man she loved was dead.
Then she would want proofs.
He would have to bring up the Savoy Hotel people, fetch folk from America—disinter Rochester. Horror! He had never thought of that. What had becomeof Rochester? Up to this he had never thought once of what had become of the mortal remains of the defunct jester, nor had he cared a button—why should he?
But the woman who loved Rochester would care. And he, Jones, would become in her eyes a ghoul, a monstrosity, a horror.
He felt a tinge of that feeling towards himself now. Up to this Rochester had been for him a mechanical figure, an abstraction, but the fact of this woman’s love had suddenly converted the abstraction into a human being.
He could not possibly tell her that he had left the remains of this human being, this man she loved, in the hands of unknown strangers, callously, as though it were the remains of an animal.
He could tell her nothing.
The game was up, he would have to quit. Either that, or to continue the masquerade which was impossible; or to tell her all, which was equally impossible.
Yet to quit would be to hit her cruelly. She loved Rochester.
Rochester, despite all his wickedness, frivolity, shiftlessness and general unworthiness—or perhaps because of these things—had been able to make this woman love him, take his part against his family and return to him.
To go away and leave her now would be the cruelest act. Cruel to her and just as cruel to himself, fascinated and held by her as he was. Yet there wasno other course open to him. So he told himself—so he tried to tell himself, knowing full well that the only course open to him as a man of honour was a full confession of the facts of the case.
To sneak away would be the act of a coward; to impose himself on her as Rochester, the act of a villain; to tell her the truth, the act of a man.
The result would be terrific, yet only by facing that result could he come clear out of this business. For half an hour he sat, scarcely moving. He was up against that most insuperable obstacle, his own character. Had he been a crook, everything would have been easy; being a fairly straight man, everything was impossible.
He had got to this bed-rock fact when the door opened and a servant made his appearance.
“Dinner is served, my Lord.”
Dinner!
He rose up and came into the hall. Standing there for a moment, undecided, he heard a laugh and looked up. She was standing in evening dress looking over the balustrade of the first landing.
“Why, you are not dressed!” she said.
“I—I forgot,” he answered.
Something fell at his feet, it was a rose. She had cast it to him and now she was coming down the stairway towards him, where he stood, the rose in his hand and distraction at his heart.
“It is perfectly disgraceful of you,” said she, looking him up and down and taking the rose from him, “and there is no time to dress now; you usen’tto be as careless as that,” she put the rose in his coat. “I suppose it’s from living alone for a fortnight with Venetia—what would a month have done!” She pressed the rose flat with her little palm.
Then she slipped her fingers through the crook of his elbow and led him to the breakfast-room door.
She entered and he followed her.
The breakfast table had been reduced in size and they dined facing one another across a bowl of blush roses.
That dinner was not a conversational success on the part of Jones, a fact which she scarcely perceived, being in high spirits and full of information she was eager to impart.
It did not seem to matter to her in the least whether the flunkeys in waiting were listening or not, she talked of the family, of “your mater” and “Blunders” and “V” and other people, touching, it seemed on the most intimate matters and all with a lightness of tone and spirit that would have been delightful, no doubt, had he known the discussed ones more intimately, and had his mind been open to receive pleasurable impressions.
He would have to tell her directly after dinner the whole of his terrible story. It was as though Fate were saying to him, “You will have to kill her directly after dinner.”
All that light-hearted chatter and new found contentment, all that brightness would die. Grief for the man she loved, hatred of the man who had supplantedhim, anguish, perplexity, terror, would take their places.
When the terrible meal was over, she ordered coffee to be served in the music-room. He lingered behind for a moment, fiddling with a cigarette. Then, when he came into the hall with the sweat standing in beads upon his forehead, he heard the notes of the piano.
It was a Mazurka of Chopin’s, played with gaiety and brilliancy, yet no funeral march ever sounded more fatefully in the ears of mortal.
He could not do it. Then—he turned the handle of the music-room door and entered.