Читать книгу The Channay Syndicate - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 3

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Major Egerton Warling, D.S.O., Governor of one of His Majesty’s Prisons situated in the vicinity of London, was not altogether at his ease in this somewhat singular farewell interview to which he was committed. He was a youngish man who had not held the appointment very long, and he could still remember the days when the name of the departing visitor, who had just been brought in for his final benediction, had been one to conjure with in highly desirable circles. He stood with his hands thrust into the pockets of his dressing-gown and sought for words which might not offend.

“We have acceded to your request, as you see, Channay,” he began. “One o’clock in the morning is an extraordinary hour for us to dismiss—er—a prisoner who has served his time, but, from what I can hear, your request is not altogether unreasonable. You want to escape annoyance from your past associates I gather.”

Gilbert Channay smiled very faintly. He was a man of only slightly over medium height, inclined to be slim, but with the carriage and broad shoulders of an athlete. His features were good, but his complexion had suffered from several years of confinement and unnatural living. There were pleasant little lines about his eyes and the corners of his mouth, in spite of the hardening of the latter during the grim days of a routine driven life. He was well-dressed, in clothes cut obviously by a good tailor but now become too large for him. He was wearing gloves as though to conceal his hands and he carried a Homburg hat.

“That was rather the idea, sir,” he admitted.

“You can drop the ‘sir’ now, Channay,” the Governor remarked. “What I want to say to you is this. If you would care for police protection for the first stage of your journey it could be arranged.”

Channay shook his head meditatively.

“No one knows that I am leaving at this hour, I suppose?” he asked.

“Not a soul,” was the confident reply.

“In that case I’d rather be without it,” he decided. “When I reach my destination—well, I shall be ready for what may happen. Good of you to arrange this for me, Warling, and to get out of your bed at this hour of the morning to see me off. There’s nothing else, I suppose.”

“A word of advice wouldn’t be acceptable, eh?” the Governor enquired, a little diffidently.

“It is, I believe, usual under the circumstances,” Channay conceded, with a faint smile. “Are you going to suggest that I try to earn an honest living?”

Major Warling lit a cigarette. His slight movement in striking a match disclosed the fact that he was wearing his pyjamas.

“Sorry I can’t offer you one, yet, Channay,” he regretted, “but take a handful if you will to smoke in the car. What I should like to say to you is this. I have always looked upon you as a hardly treated man. You were certainly the brains of the syndicate which bore your name, but although you signed the balance sheets of the Siamese Corporation I have never felt satisfied that it was you who alone were responsible for the dishonest side of the affair—if it was dishonest.... That’s en passant,” he went on, blowing out his match. “Listen to me, now, for a moment. I’ve got it at the back of my head that your arrest was brought about by a kind of conspiracy amongst the others, who meant to profit by your absence, and that you’ve been laying it up against them all these years. Am I right?”

Gilbert Channay shrugged his shoulders slightly. He made no reply whatever. After a moment or two the other continued.

“Well, you’re not bound to commit yourself, of course. I’m going to give you a word of advice, because you must remember that the whole of a great prison like this is a kind of whispering gallery. One hears everything. There’s a sort of idea about that you’re going back into the world with the fixed intention of getting level with some of these fellows who were responsible for your—er—misfortune. Kind of vendetta, you know, only it’s one against a gang. I should drop that if I were you. This place ain’t much catch for a man brought up like you were, but believe me Dartmoor’s worse. And there are worse things than Dartmoor,” the Governor added meaningly.

Channay smiled again; a smile of a different order this time. Of the two men he seemed by far the more at his ease.

“There’s one of that pack of vermin,” he confided, “whom I shall certainly kill, if I have the opportunity, the first time I meet him. To risk my life against his, however, would be such a ridiculously one-sided bargain, that I think I can promise you I shall go about my business in such a fashion that no one will ever be able to fasten the guilt upon me.”

“They all think that,” was the grave rejoinder.

“That is because most crimes are committed without due forethought,” Channay pointed out. “The murderer is generally in a passion and loses his wits. It will not be like that with me. In any case, in return for your interest, I will promise you this. I shall never again see the inside of a criminal prison, nor shall I ever risk the other eventuality at which you delicately hinted.”

“Of course,” Major Warling continued, “I am young at this prison job yet, but I do know that in here men brood and brood and brood until everything seems out of proportion. Give yourself a chance, Channay. You’re a youngish man. Enjoy yourself. Even if you find England difficult there are plenty of other countries. Give yourself a chance before you chuck up the whole thing just for an idea. You did devilish well at philosophy, I remember, when you were at Magdalen. Get back to the old aphorisms, and cultivate ’em. There are no weeds worse than the wrong ideas, and I am afraid this is a foul place for developing them. What about it, eh?”

“Is this my little lecture?” the departing prisoner asked pleasantly.

“It’s about all I have to say, except to wish you good luck.”

“It’s good of you, at any rate, to get up out of your bed to see the last of me, and not to altogether forget old times,” Channay declared. “As for your advice—well, I will bear it in mind.”

“The taxicab is waiting outside as you asked,” the Governor announced. “The chauffeur has orders to take you to the garage where you will change into the car. If you would like to have a plain clothes man on the box with you, for the first stage of your journey, at any rate, you can have him.”

“I will be alone, thanks,” was the firm reply.

“Before you leave,” Warling concluded, “I have given permission for a fellow downstairs to have a word with you—used to be in the Force, but quitted when he came into a little money. He’s got something to say to you and he’s a harmless fellow, anyway.... Good-bye, old chap! Good luck to you!”

Major Warling held out his hand. His departing guest hesitated.

“Don’t be an ass!” the former begged. “It’s a quaint sort of position, ours, but after all you don’t think I’m going to forget that it was you who gave me my cap when we were youngsters and my colours later on. You’ve come a cropper for a bit, but there was nothing mean about your show, anyway, and you’ve paid for it. Shake hands, Channay, and start again. Don’t you remember that famous occasion when you made a duck in your first innings for the Gentlemen and a hundred and thirty-three and won the match in the second?”

Gilbert Channay held out his hand. His voice and whole manner had softened. The years seemed to have fallen away.

“You have a good memory and you’re a good fellow, Warling,” he said. “Good-bye!”

For the last time, Gilbert Channay passed along those empty corridors and down the stairs towards the entrance hall. The warder who was escorting him pushed open the door of a waiting-room.

“Someone in here to see you,” he announced. “I’ll stay outside.”

Channay, inclined to be impatient, glanced almost irritably at the visitor who was standing ready to receive him. He was certainly not an impressive-looking person. He was plainly dressed in ready-made clothes, and such errors in taste as it was possible for a man to commit in the details of his toilette, he seemed to have embraced gladly. His hair was ginger coloured, his eyebrows sandy. His smile of welcome, which was meant to be ingratiating, disclosed rows of ill-formed teeth.

“You want to speak to me,” Gilbert Channay said shortly. “As you may imagine, I am in rather a hurry.”

“My name is Fogg,” the other confided—“Martin Fogg. I was in the Force for some years—junior detective officer. I took an interest in your case. Have you heard from any of those friends of yours lately—you know who I mean? The men who sold you, and then found themselves in the wrong boat.”

“One hears nothing in here,” was the brusque rejoinder. “You seem to have studied my affairs.”

“I have,” the little man admitted eagerly. “They are interesting. Isham is in England—he is a Lord now—and Sinclair Coles. They are pretty desperate—not a bob between them, and debts—up to their necks! They’re counting the seconds until they can get at you.”

“They are not the men in whom I am most interested,” Channay said calmly.

“They are the men who are on the spot,” the other reminded him, taking out a blue silk handkerchief and dabbing his forehead with it. “They expected to divide about a hundred thousand pounds when you were sentenced, and, so far, I don’t believe they have touched a bob. The others may be more dangerous, but there’s vice enough in those two and they’re bang up against it.”

Channay nodded.

“I expect they’ll do what they can,” he agreed. “It wasn’t for nothing, you know, that I asked to be let out at one o’clock in the morning. I’m a few days before my time, you see, too. Somewhere about next Thursday. I imagine there’ll be a reception committee outside.”

“I’m not so sure about the present moment,” Martin Fogg declared bluntly. “I don’t want to ask where you’re going, but I’d like a front seat on your car. I’m armed and I’m semi-official, you know. You might find me useful. They ain’t easy men to deal with, those two, and they’re desperate.”

“Is that all?” Channay enquired.

Martin Fogg who had seated himself upon a deal table in the centre of the room, swung his leg backwards and forwards and watched the tip of his shoe meditatively.

“You don’t want my help, then?” he asked.

Channay shook his head.

“I’ll look after myself, thanks,” he decided.

“Look here, do you mean to divvy up with them?” the ex-detective persisted.

“A little inquisitive, aren’t you?” Channay remarked coldly. “Still, since you ask me—no. I applied for the shares in my own name, they were allotted to me in my own name, and, under the circumstances, I mean to stick to them.”

“Then let me tell you this,” Martin Fogg continued earnestly. “If you really mean that you don’t intend to part, they’ll have you. You can’t tackle that gang alone. Take my advice. Either make terms with them or leave the country. There are one or two of them might not have the pluck to get on the wrong side of the law, but neither Sayers nor Drood would stick at anything.”

Channay shook his head.

“These men,” he said, “have been my associates. They have behaved like curs. They deserve punishment, and some of them are going to get it.”

“You’re making a great mistake in trying to tackle this job alone,” the ex-detective urged. “Look here, sir. I’m not a poor man. I don’t want money——”

“Nor do I want help,” Channay interrupted. “I listened to advice once, took a risk, and you see what happened to me! I’ll take the sequel on alone.”

“Let me travel with you to-night,” Martin Fogg begged—“just to-night.”

Channay’s refusal was curt and decided.

“There was never a time when I needed more to be alone,” he declared.

“I shouldn’t intrude,” the other persisted. “I’d sit with the chauffeur and as soon as you’d reached your destination I’d slip away. But just to-night—I’ll swear——”

Mr. Martin Fogg broke off in his speech. Once more he mopped his forehead with his bright blue silk handkerchief, and looked disconsolately towards the door through which Gilbert Channay had passed, slamming it behind him.

Another short walk through echoing corridors, the rolling back of the heavy doors, a breath of semi-fresh air in the square courtyard, a moment’s delay in the porter’s lodge, and then the portentous opening of the massive gates. Gilbert Channay stood for a moment upon the pavement, and, though outwardly his self-possession had never faltered, he was conscious of feeling a little dazed. Before him stretched a wide thoroughfare, leading east and west to open worlds. There were other branching streets in the distance, a vista of roofs, an unbroken outline of sky, an indubitable though darkened earth beneath his feet, across which people might wander strangely at will. He pulled himself together with an effort. The emotion of freedom had been stronger than he had imagined. A few feet away a taxicab was standing with lamps burning and engine throbbing. The man who had been polishing the glasses moved aside, and threw open the door.

“To Adams’s Garage,” Channay directed, stepping in.

From each window, as the driver mounted to his seat, Channay looked up and down the broad thoroughfare. The night was cloudy but the lamps hanging from the electric standards were brilliant, their lights reflected in patches upon the pavements, moist with rain. There was apparently not a soul in sight. The byways through which they presently passed were also deserted. In less than ten minutes they drew up outside a large garage whose great front stretched black and empty. There was a single light burning from somewhere in the rear, and at the sound of the throbbing of the taxicab the head-lights flashed out from a powerful car already half-way across the portals. Channay paid his fare and advanced to meet the chauffeur who had appeared from the gloom behind.

“You know where to go?” he enquired.

For answer the man opened the door.

“Quite well, sir.”

“And you know the road?”

“Every inch of it.”

“At what time shall we reach Norwich?”

The man considered.

“At about seven o’clock, sir.”

“We will stop there for breakfast,” Channay directed.

They were off once more; this time with a smooth, gliding motion, very different from the jolting of the taxicab. With fingers which shook a little, Gilbert Channay took one of the cigarettes which the Governor had thrust upon him, sniffed at the tobacco, and paused for fully a minute before lighting it. Then, with momentous deliberation, he struck a match from the well-filled stand in the fittings of the car, lit it and began slowly to inhale. Almost for the first time his face wholly relaxed. He held the cigarette away and looked at it, then smoked on; rapturously at first, afterwards with a slight feeling of distaste, almost of disappointment, revelling every now and then in the fragrance of the tobacco, but enjoying his actual inhalations fitfully. Presently he let down both windows and looked out from side to side curiously. They were in better lighted and more familiar thoroughfares now. With a little catch of his breath he recognised St. James’s Street, and a moment later he was craning his neck to look down Piccadilly. He smiled as he passed his hosier’s in Bond Street, but felt, perhaps, the complete thrill of coming back after they had crossed Oxford Street and the Marylebone Road and swung to the right, skirting Lord’s. His sense of proportion tottered. The drama of his immediate past had lost its significance. The supreme moment of his life seemed after all to have been spent in the centre of that sweep of sun-baked turf, when he had paused, breathless for a moment, to lean upon his bat, and listened to the acclaiming roars from that mistily-seen circle of thickly packed humanity. It was all so silent now in the darkness, and the wall which he was passing seemed somehow menacing. He leaned back in his corner and closed his eyes. When he opened them again there was a fresh experience in which to revel. He had escaped at last from the wide-flung wilderness of brick and stone. There were hedges on each side, a perfume of dried grass, once a wonderful waft of odour from a beflowered cottage garden. The air was different now. The twinkling lights receded and diminished. The speed of the car increased. Once more he closed his eyes, and this time he slept.

There were contrary elements, confusing to the impressions, in the long room of the old-fashioned house near Newmarket, where two men and a woman waited for Gilbert Channay. The ceiling was heavily-beamed. There was a magnificent old fire-place at one end, in which, notwithstanding the season, a log fire was burning, rows of sporting prints upon the walls, a medley of guns, riding crops and fishing rods in every available corner, but indications, also, in plenty, of less desirable pursuits. On a long table in the centre of the room were many packs of cards thrown together, and a discarded chemin de fer shoe. On the sideboard was an inordinate array of bottles, full and empty, a multitude of glasses, and many dishes—some empty, some still heaped with sandwiches. The atmosphere of the room with its low ceiling and unopened windows was over-heavy with tobacco smoke. There was cigar ash upon the floor and table, an overturned chair, and everywhere an unpleasing sense of disorder and lack of restraint. The two men lounged opposite one another in easy-chairs; the woman, seated at the table, still toyed with the cards. As the clock struck four she threw them away from her with a little gesture of impatience. Her whole expression was one of querulousness and discontent. Otherwise she was beautiful.

“I hate this waiting,” she declared. “You needn’t have packed everyone away so early, Sinclair.”

One of the men—known more or less favourably to a somewhat critical world as Sir Sinclair Coles—tall, with grizzled grey hair, sallow complexion and unpleasant mouth—turned his head slightly towards her.

“It was better to be on the safe side,” he said. “Bomford had had too much drink and was getting excited about his losses.”

“Losses!” the woman repeated impatiently. “Five or six hundred at the most. I didn’t get a penny of it either! Heaven knows I need it!”

“Nor I,” muttered Lord Isham, from the depths of his easy-chair.

The woman struck the polished table in front of her with the palm of her hand.

“I don’t know what’s come to us,” she exclaimed. “Luck! We haven’t a vestige of it. Everything we touch goes wrong. Did you go round to the stables before dinner, Sinclair?”

“No,” was the curt reply.

“I did,” the woman went on. “Harding’s quite right. We’ve had all our trouble with ‘Lady Ann’ for nothing. Her fetlock’s as big as my head. She couldn’t hobble to the post.”

Isham rose to his feet. He was clumsily built, carried too much flesh, his complexion was pasty and his eyes bloodshot. There were wine stains upon his shirt front and his tie was disordered. Even his companion regarded him with distaste.

“It’s foul luck,” he muttered. “I’d got enough laid against her to give me a fresh start. Got it all done on the Q.T. too. Even the clever ones thought the mare was meant to win, and she was always good enough to make a show.”

The woman gathered up the cards again and let them fall idly through her fingers.

“Gilbert seems to be our last chance,” she said, “and I am terrified.”

Lord Isham picked up his tumbler and was on his way to the sideboard. His vis-à-vis checked him.

“No more, George,” he insisted. “You’ve drunk enough already, and you’ll need all your nerve.”

Isham scowled.

“I don’t see why,” he grumbled. “Your prize-fighting gamekeeper’s enough for the rough and tumble work, if it comes to that. I’ll have some soda-water, at any rate.”

He helped himself, surreptitiously adding whiskey. Once more the woman raised her head and listened.

“He won’t be here yet,” her host assured her. “You’re quite right. I packed the others off too soon.”

“Supposing all goes well and we get Gilbert here,” she asked quietly, “what are you going to do? How far do you mean to go?”

Sinclair Coles rose to his feet and rang the bell. He waited until it was answered by a sleepy manservant.

“Is anyone up besides yourself, Johnson?” he enquired.

“No one, sir.”

“You can go to bed. I will see to the lights and lock up. We may have a visitor for a few minutes. You can leave the hall door undone.”

“Very good, sir.”

The man withdrew. His master waited until the door was closed. Then he turned to the woman. He spoke unpleasantly. His upper lip was a trifle too short, and he showed his teeth over-much.

“We’re going to have an explanation with Gilbert Channay,” he said. “It is through him we’ve led this dog’s life for the last three years. Somewhere or other he must have nearly half a million tucked away, and not a penny of our share have we touched. He has to disgorge.”

“If he refuses how shall you make him?” the woman asked. “The law doesn’t come in, does it?”

The man’s expression was for a moment almost ferocious. Though his hair was grey, his eyes were black and as bright as a boy’s.

“Short of killing him—” he began slowly.

“Why short of killing him?” Isham interrupted. “He deserves it, the brute! If we could get to know from him where the stuff is, and there was a quarrel, an accident, he’d be a damned sight better out of the way.”

The woman looked up from the table.

“Do we ever forget, I wonder,” she observed, “that it was we who really made the great mistake. Gilbert was the only honest man amongst us all. He’d have kept faith with us if we’d kept faith with him.”

Sinclair Coles was angry. He showed it in a strange, intensive fashion. He drew a long breath between his teeth. The pupils of his eyes seemed to dilate. He glanced across the room towards the other man.

“I can see that we shall have to look after her ladyship, George,” he scoffed. “I believe she’s in love with him still.”

The woman rose to her feet. She looked from one to the other of her two companions; looked at one with contempt, at the other with hatred.

“If I still allowed myself the luxury of feeling,” she said, “don’t you imagine that I should be stark staring mad not to prefer a man like Gilbert Channay to either of you?”

“Miriam!” her husband bawled.

She waved him back into silence.

“I have no feeling,” she continued. “Those days have passed for me. What I want is money to pay some of my bills, a measure of security, to get rid of the eternal insolence of these tradespeople, not to be all the time worrying from whom and with what manner of persuasions I can borrow. I hate it! There was a time when I thought that a life of adventure appealed to me. Well, it doesn’t any longer. I want a bank balance, a home, and rest. That’s why I want this money.”

“Leanings towards domesticity, I see,” her husband sneered. “Perhaps, if we get it, you’d like me to pay off the mortgages at Undercombe and settle down into the small county magnate. We couldn’t afford to race—not even sure that I could afford the hounds—but we could lead a very pleasant life. Bridge at a shilling a hundred, rough shooting with all my pheasants wandering off to someone’s land where they rear—”

“Oh, be quiet!” she interrupted scornfully. “You haven’t enough nerve to hunt the hounds even if they gave them to you. Listen!”

This time there was no mistake. The sound they heard was the sound of the opening of the front door, of heavy footsteps in the hall. They all three held their breaths. A moment before the woman had declared that she had no feeling, but a flush of colour had suddenly crept into her cheeks. She shrank a little away, as though she dreaded what might be coming. The door was abruptly thrown open. The man who had made his re-entry into the world some hour or so before entered, and by his side a most unpleasant-looking companion, dressed like a gamekeeper.

“No trouble at all, sir,” the latter announced with a grin. “When he saw me there waiting for him on the doorstep, he come along like a lamb.”

There was a somewhat curious silence. Gilbert Channay from the moment of his entrance had looked at no one but the woman. Her first little gesture was almost pathetic. She had the air of waiting for some word from him. He, like the others, remained speechless. Suddenly the woman called out to him—called him by his Christian name, with swift, staccato expression. The spell seemed to be broken. Channay looked around him with a smile.

“Trouble!” he repeated. “The invitation of my friend here in brown velveteen was far too irresistible. Who am I to risk the happiness of my first day of liberty in unseemly brawling with a man of his stature? ... Well, well, only you three! I might have expected a larger gathering. George, you haven’t changed a bit. By-the-by, you have succeeded, haven’t you? ‘Your lordship,’ I should say. Capital! Worth a hundred a year more on the board of any company. And Sinclair there—I beg his pardon. I forgot my unfortunate lapse from social equality—Sir Sinclair Coles. And the lady, whom I was once privileged to call ‘Miriam,’—by what name does she pass nowadays?”

Lord Isham frowned angrily.

“Miriam is my wife,” he replied. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know all about it. I don’t think she’s particularly grateful. I ain’t a good husband, you know, Channay—never pretended I’d make a good husband.”

“If I had been a woman,” was the calm retort, “I should have found you an intolerable lover.”

The woman who had declared that she possessed no feeling sprang to her feet, quivering. There was a look of torture in her eyes.

“Your tongue is as cruel as ever!” she cried.

Channay shrugged his shoulders.

“I am not in a good temper,” he confessed.

“I am here against my will, and it always annoys me to do things against my will. Can we get to business? These first few hours of freedom, notwithstanding their charm, are a little exhausting. I have been used to making my own bed and retiring at half-past eight.”

Sinclair Coles turned to the gamekeeper—a burly fellow with enormous shoulders and the face and physique of a prize-fighter.

“Have you felt his pockets?” he demanded.

“In a clumsy fashion, he has,” Channay intervened. “Let me spare you any anxiety. I am unarmed.”

“Couldn’t feel anything, sir,” the man agreed.

“Take a chair then, and sit with your back to the door,” Sinclair Coles directed. “Keep your ears shut and be prepared to act if you’re wanted.... That’s all right. Now, Channay, we can get to business. I’m speaking at this moment for Isham and myself. You can settle with the others afterwards. We want a matter of a hundred thousand pounds to be going on with.”

Channay, apparently more at his ease than any one of the little company, glanced around the room towards the sideboard.

“Aren’t you a little inhospitable?” he protested. “I am warned by the prison doctor to go very slowly with alcohol at first, but I must confess that a small whiskey and soda—the first, by-the-by—— You wish me to help myself? Good!”

He crossed the room in obedience to a sullen gesture from Sinclair Coles, and with almost meticulous care searched for a clean tumbler, mixed a whiskey and soda, sipped it and helped himself to a cigarette. Afterwards he selected a comfortable easy-chair and, with a little sigh of relief, relapsed into its depths. All the time they watched him, uneasy and discomposed.

“One hundred thousand pounds was the sum you mentioned, I think,” he remarked.

“Well?” Sinclair Coles exclaimed, with a flash in his beady eyes.

“Do we get it?” Isham demanded.

“Not a single penny,” was the distinctly spoken reply.

There was a brief, ugly silence. Even the woman, who had raised her head, seemed to have grown colder. The two men were more unpleasant to look upon than ever. Sinclair Coles’s thin lips were parted a little, his eyes were full of menace, Isham was scowling fiercely. The custodian of the door, who was hoping for a scrap, was mildly interested. The note of defiance in Channay’s tone seemed to him full of promise.

“A hundred thousand pounds,” Isham said, “represents considerably less than a quarter of the funds which should belong to the syndicate. Do you deny our claim?”

“Not altogether,” Channay admitted. “Under normal circumstances I imagine that your share might have come to more than that. But you see—without entering into details which are known to all of us—you chose, instead of being content with your share, to try and do me out of mine. You chose to play upon me the foulest, most dishonourable trick a little company of men engaged in any enterprise for purposes of mutual profit could possibly conceive. You forced me to assume a clerical and technical responsibility which happened to be slightly on the wrong side of the law, after which you turned informers, with the sole idea of helping yourselves to the whole of the plunder during my forced absence from society, knowing very well that my claim to recover my share of the same would—er—scarcely be upheld in a Court of Law.... Forgive me! I find this rather exhausting. Conversation amongst my late surroundings was not encouraged.”

He stretched out a languid arm and helped himself to more whiskey and soda. Not one of his auditors had opened their lips. All three remained listeners.

“I happened, if I may say so,” Channay continued, “to be a little too clever for you. The shares in the Nyasa Mine, for which I applied on behalf of the syndicate, were allotted to me in my own name, and in my own name they have remained. You got rid of me all right, but you found yourselves no nearer the booty. You failed, indeed, to get what might have been your own share. Now you will never have it. You forgot the homely adage—‘Honour Amongst Thieves.’ You will probably regret this superlative meanness for the rest of your lives, as you undoubtedly have regretted it during the last few years.... Of my deeper and more personal wrong I have nothing to say. It is one principle of my life,” he added, with a little bow to Miriam—“never to criticise your sex. You are above the ordinary laws. You do what seems fit to you. But, whilst we are upon this subject, since I have gone so far, let me finish all that I have to say to you now, or at any future time. You knew very well that when I came out of prison, if the Nyasa shares had been allotted to the treasurer of the Channay Syndicate, I should never have been able to claim my own share. Quite right! The converse, however, unluckily for you, is also true. I make no pretence about the matter. The extraordinary premium to which the shares immediately rose enabled my brokers to take up the whole of them on such capital as I myself possessed. A sum of something like half a million is in my possession—a very pleasant sum, Isham, eh? Worth having, Coles! Well, for what you have done to me, not one penny of that do I part with to any one of you. Now, I have finished. It is your turn.”

The woman, suddenly and unexpectedly, chose to be spokesman.

“Gilbert,” she said, “think of us as you will. You couldn’t think badly enough of us. We are the scum of the earth, and we deserve to be treated as such, but you can’t get away from facts. Supposing my dear husband and Sinclair Coles here accepted your point of view, there are others—different types of men, as you well know, one or two of them. If you talk to them as you are talking to us, Sayers, for one, will kill you on the spot.”

“You and I were once engaged to be married,” Channay remarked. “Have you ever, during the whole time of our association, dreamed for a moment that it was possible to gain anything from me by threats?”

“I know that you are brave,” she admitted, “but the situation is hopeless. You want to live.”

“You want to live as a sound man,” Sinclair Coles interrupted harshly, “not as a poor, maimed creature with every bone in your body broken. Look here, Channay, we’ll make a bargain with you. You shall keep your share—your full share—so long as you hand over the rest. You will be a wealthy man. What more do you want?”

“To keep you paupers, which I mean to do,” was the quiet reply.

Even the woman’s face hardened. Sinclair Coles, who some time before had risen to his feet, came a little forward.

“You were never a fool, Channay,” he said. “What do you think of my gamekeeper there? ‘Fighting Charlie’ they call him. He was in the ring for four years and never beaten.”

Channay glanced across at the man in brown velveteen, unmoved.

“Frankly,” he replied, “and since you ask me, I think that he is the most unpleasant-looking person I ever saw in my life.”

The gamekeeper rose to his feet, rubbing his hands together. He glanced at his master as though waiting for a sign. The latter shrugged his shoulders.

“Miriam,” he advised, “I think you had better leave us.”

She hesitated for a moment, then she turned to Channay.

“Gilbert,” she said, “the only difficult part was to get you here. Don’t you realise that now they have succeeded in that it isn’t any use holding out? They can half kill you here between them, and it will only be an ordinary row. They might even go further.”

Channay stretched out his hand and helped himself to another cigarette.

“Honestly,” he confided, “I don’t think they’ll go quite so far as that. It’s a little risky, you know, isn’t it? Terrible scandal in high life, anyway—especially for Isham, now he’s a Peer! And, besides, they won’t come any nearer to the money.”

“They will hurt you horribly,” she protested.

“It would hurt me more,” he assured her, “to contribute a single penny to your absurd ménage.”

The gamekeeper crept stealthily nearer. He was swinging his right arm a little; his left fist was clenched. Already he was developing a slight crouch. The greed of battle was in his eyes.

“Too much talk,” he muttered. “Won’t you say the word, sir? Am I to send him straight to sleep or shall we have a little fun with him first?”

Channay watched his approach coldly.

“You’ll get the fun, my lad,” he warned him, “when you’re picking oakum for this. I——-”

He broke off suddenly in his speech. A most unexpected sound rang through the house. Someone had pulled the old-fashioned bell of the front door and in the silence of the early morning there was a menacing, even an uncanny note in its hoarse clanging. The gamekeeper’s arm fell to his side. He looked around.

“What the hell’s that?” he demanded.

The two men exchanged startled glances. The woman listened with a gleam of something which was almost like relief in her face.

“Someone who has seen the lights, I suppose,” Sinclair Coles muttered angrily. “Get close to him, you others. Keep him quiet while I open the door.... My God!” he went on. “They’re in the hall!”

Almost immediately the door of the room was opened. Sinclair Coles in his progress towards it, stood transfixed. An inspector of police had entered. He saluted hastily and glanced around.

“Sorry to intrude, gentlemen,” he apologised curtly. “Inspector Peacock is my name. My business is with your visitor there—Mr. Gilbert Channay.”

Channay rose to his feet. The others seemed curiously tongue-tied.

“Without wishing for one moment to deny, Inspector,” he observed, “that your arrival is in its way opportune, I am still quite at a loss to know what the devil you want with me. I was duly discharged from Brixton Prison soon after midnight. I can assure you that since then I have not committed any breach of the law.”

“Sorry, sir,” the Inspector replied civilly. “Maybe you didn’t get adequate information. You’re out three weeks before your time, and the first provision of your licence is that you don’t travel fifty miles beyond London. I was told off to follow you and see that you kept within the radius. You’ve exceeded it already by something like twenty miles. I’m sorry to break up this little reunion with your friends, but you’ll have to return with me to London.”

Channay shrugged his shoulders, with an air of resignation.

“To tell you the truth, Inspector,” he confided, “I’m not quite so disappointed as I might have been under other circumstances. Believe me I am quite at your disposal.”

“I must apologise for my unceremonious entrance, gentlemen,” the Inspector observed, as he let his hand rest lightly upon Channay’s elbow. “As I said before I’m sorry to interrupt. Mr. Channay, however, should have known the regulations. This may mean another fortnight for him. You will be able to entertain him all right then.”

“We shall look forward to the opportunity,” Sinclair Coles muttered.

Channay looked back from the doorway and smiled. The Inspector’s hand still rested upon his arm.

“Forewarned is forearmed,” he announced with a faint note of mockery in his tone. “Next time I leave London I think I shall get my friend here to escort me to the railway station. Your idea of hospitality does not appeal to me, Coles. I don’t think that either you or Isham have improved during my regrettable absence. I don’t like your methods of entertainment. I’m afraid that for the future I shall have to deny myself the privilege of your acquaintance. ... I am quite at your service, Inspector. Forgive my reminding you that your grip upon my arm is getting a little painful. Good-night!”

The Inspector had indeed shown signs of impatience. He hastened his captive across the hall, withdrew the key from the inside of the front door and, after they had passed through, locked it on the outside. He hurried his companion to a small two-seater car which was standing drawn up against the steps, pressed the starting lever, and drove rapidly down the avenue.

“Sorry to interrupt any farewell speeches, Mr. Channay,” he observed, as he pressed down the accelerator, “but I could see that Sir Sinclair Coles was beginning to get suspicious. The peak of my cap is all wrong and my tunic isn’t at all what it should be. They wouldn’t help me out at the Prison, and I had to get these things from a pal.”

Channay, who had been leaning out of the window looking backwards, resumed his seat. There was a pleasantly amused smile upon his lips.

“Martin Fogg,” he declared, “you are a genius. What can you do on the road?”

“Fifty,” was the confident reply.

“Better let her have it then. The turn to the left is the Norwich road. There are lights flashing out in the garage and someone’s in the avenue already. Your story was ingenious enough but a bit thin when they come to think it over.”

They swung into the main road. Far ahead was a rift in the sky; a faint lightening further eastwards. The heath on each side drifted away from them like a frozen sea, and before them the road unwound itself into the semblance of a thin strip of ribbon. The light was scanty enough, but Fogg turned out the lamps.

“We’ll breakfast in Norwich all right,” he promised. “I punctured the back tyre of the car you came down in. They won’t be on the road until after we’ve passed Thetford. I’ll have to stop and change my kit before we go through a town.”

“Wake me when you do,” Channay enjoined, leaning back in his corner with a yawn....

There was no pursuit or if there were it was ineffectual. When Channay awoke he was being driven joltily through the cobbled streets of Norwich, and his companion had resumed his civilian attire.

“What about it now, Mr. Channay?” the latter asked him anxiously. “A defensive partnership, mind, nothing more! You see I’ve ways of my own of discovering things. I knew that chauffeur at Adams’s Garage had been got at.”

Gilbert Channay looked out upon the sunlit streets, thronged with their early morning crowd of loiterers. There was something wistful, almost eager, in his expression as he watched the passers-by.

“Fogg,” he said, “you’re a good fellow and I’m immensely obliged to you, but as regards the future, if this is the prelude, it is too good to share.... First turn to the left, and you’ll see the hotel opposite. Bacon and eggs and coffee, Fogg! Jove, I’m hungry!”

Martin Fogg pursed out his lips.

“You’ll change your mind before long,” he declared confidently.