Читать книгу Advice Limited: A Series of Stories - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 4

Table of Contents

The Right Honourable John Spencer St. Alban, Prime Minister of England, drew his chair a little farther back into the shadows of the room. His terrible visitor, who sat in the full flood of the unexpected spring sunshine, only smiled. Hulings, the perfect secretary, a dark silent figure, moved from the background to the window and adjusted the blind.

“I must take a few minutes for reflection,” St. Alban said quietly. “Your attitude, Lord Reisborough, if you will pardon my saying so, is a trifle incomprehensible.”

The visitor made no remark. St. Alban, notwithstanding his expressed desire for concrete reflection, found his thoughts wandering. He found himself visualising the drama of this unequal conflict. In his youth he had been a great reader of fiction. The idea of a mortal conflict between two men hating one another to the limit, each seeking for the other’s extinction, had always fascinated him. He imagined himself with some instrument of death in his hand facing this man whose removal from existence seemed to be the thing most to be desired upon earth. He hated the sneering face, the coarse lips, the insolent though suppressed air of triumph about his visitor. He hated his ungainly form, his ill-chosen clothes, the purple tie, the over-creased, loud-patterned trousers. He felt a little twitch in the forefinger of his right hand. Supposing the instrument of death had been there, he pondered. It would be so easy to give the world a new shock! No Prime Minister of a great country, that he could remember, had ever stood in the dock of a court of justice charged with murder.

Hulings stepped lightly across the room and whispered in the ear of his august chief. The latter shook his head slightly. Nevertheless he turned towards his visitor.

“I presume,” he said, “that there is nothing within my power to offer which would influence your attitude?”

The thick mocking lips were slowly parted.

“What have you to offer beyond what I already possess?” was the harsh response. “I am many times a millionaire. I am a peer of your country. I already wear such decorations as are within my reach. I gave you to understand upon our first interview that I was not to be bribed.”

“I find the word offensive,” the Prime Minister pronounced. “We seem to have said all that there is to be said. I see no reason for prolonging this interview.”

The visitor rose to his feet—a puny, malicious-looking man, morally and physically unattractive.

“I shall not change my mind,” he declared, “however long I stay here, whatever stale arguments you may trot out.”

St. Alban waved him towards the door—a firm, contemptuous gesture.

“Men of your type are usually obstinate,” he observed.

“No more fireworks of eloquence for me,” the departing visitor sneered, as he waited for Hulings to open the door.

“I will spare you the full text of the ancient simile,” was the icy rejoinder. “I will keep my pearls and the swine may go.”

Hulings was back again in a very few minutes. For a young man who had only been down from Oxford for two years he was a singularly sympathetic and human person. He crossed the room towards his chief with leaden footsteps. There was a look of almost spaniel-like devotion in his brown eyes.

“Could I have done more, Charles?” the former asked him thoughtfully. “Was there any argument I failed to use, any other possible means of dealing with that venomous person?”

“None, sir,” the young man assured him. “You and he do not speak the same language. He has always been our enemy—politically and personally.”

“Give me the reports from the Home Secretary and the Chief Commissioner,” St. Alban enjoined.

The young man withdrew some papers from a clip upon the desk and brought them over. St. Alban glanced them through carefully and passed them back. They were concise, terse and final. In other words they were useless.

“There is only one thing to be done, sir,” Hulings said slowly. “I wish to God I could have had the courage to do it as he passed out into the street!”

St. Alban smiled curiously. He smiled, though, with dead lips and there was no answering light in his eyes.

“I thought of that, Hulings,” he admitted. “Those were simple days when one killed the lepers.”

The young man summoned up all his courage.

“We have tried the Secret Service, sir,” he pointed out, “the home and the foreign branches. They can do nothing. The Chief Commissioner has to admit himself baffled. If you would not think me a howling lunatic I should like to make one more suggestion.”

“Well?”

“I should like to be allowed to ask the advice of a lady who conducts an international secret service agency here in London.”

St. Alban’s amazement was blended with incredulity. He could scarcely believe his ears.

“Are you in earnest, Charles?” he demanded. “Employ a secret service agency upon such a matter!”

“It sounds like madness, I know, sir,” the young man confessed deprecatingly. “Still, wonderful stories have been told about the one I have in mind. They work in secret. With the exception of one woman no one knows who the principals are. They are as silent as the grave in their methods.”

“How did you get to know so much about them, Charles?”

The young man flushed.

“I would not mention it to anyone except to you, sir,” he said, “but I happen to know from my cousin Guy Leighton—he is second now at Rome—that the private letter on various Irish questions addressed to the Pope, which was lost, was recovered by them. A very fine piece of work they thought it over there.”

The Prime Minister nodded somewhat wearily. He had no wish to damp the young man’s enthusiasm, but the idea of an international enquiry agency was like a bad taste in his mouth.

“You can go and see them if you think it worth while,” he conceded. “Make sure that they are thoroughly responsible, though, and keep Downing Street out of it as much as you can.”

“I will be careful, sir,” Hulings promised. “It is better than sitting here waiting for the thunderbolts, anyhow.”

“I do not like your friend, Lord Henry,” Clara, Baroness Linz, remarked to a youthful scion of the house of Dunworthy. “He is not a nice man. Why did you present him?”

“Nasty bit of work, isn’t he?” the young man acquiesced cheerfully. “Had to introduce him, though. He came up and asked me point-blank.”

“But such an appearance!” the baroness complained. “Why should one know such a person?”

Her companion chuckled.

“I’ll tell you why everyone knows him who can, my dear Clara,” he replied. “Reisborough is a multimillionaire. He owns the Daily Sun, three theatres, the favourite for the Derby, and Reisborough House. My old lady mother puts the case in a nutshell. She said quite firmly the other day to my father: ‘You cannot afford to live in London and not know Reisborough.’ ”

The baroness shrugged her shoulders, knocked out the remains of a cigarette from her holder and with delicate and shapely fingers fitted in a fresh one.

“We Austrians,” she murmured, “were never like that.”

“Seems to me when I was in Vienna,” Lord Henry reflected, “that I remember a few Hebrew bankers who kept open house.”

“One was not forced to go there.”

“Of course it is all a rotten shame, but since the war what can you do? We are all up a tree. The Reisboroughs of the world have got us in the palms of their hands. I admit, though, this man does give me the shivers.”

“I really do not see why I should be made to suffer,” Clara Linz sighed. “You have imposed upon me the necessity of refusing to continue an acquaintance. It is not a thing which I often do but I certainly shall not remember Lord Reisborough the next time we meet.”

“You may change your mind,” Lord Henry grinned. “A man who gives sapphire bracelets for dinner favours keeps his friends.”

It came about that Clara Linz did change her mind but it was not for the sake of a sapphire bracelet!

The young lady who controlled the destinies of Advice Limited was impressive enough in her personality, her pleasant but strong face, the severe elegance of her attire, the clean crispness of her sentences, but she was nevertheless a disappointment to the young man who was seated a few yards away and whose card reposed upon her table.

“It is difficult to make myself clearly understood, perhaps, baroness,” he said, “but I am representing very powerful influences.”

“Which you are not at liberty to name,” she reminded him dryly.

“Surely in your profession that is not unusual,” was the smooth reply. “You have there my name—Charles Hulings—and if you doubt my word I can easily produce proof that I am, as I say, private secretary to a Cabinet Minister. I think, under the circumstances therefore, I am entitled to certain reticences.”

“Without a doubt you are,” Clara assented. “There has never been any question about that. The fact remains, however, that I never attempt to give advice unless I know every detail of the matter under consideration. You may be sure that every word you say will be confidentially and carefully treated, and if I am not able to give you a direct reply immediately as to my views upon your case you will receive it within twenty-four hours.”

The young man continued dubious.

“It is a curious situation,” he grumbled.

“We are curious people,” she assured him.

He hesitated for a few moments and then took the plunge.

“A certain personage whom I shall not name,” he began, “but who is a member of the Government, decided some short time ago upon a particular course of policy with regard to an important foreign power. He drew up a draft treaty signed provisionally by himself and by the ambassador of the country concerned. This treaty involved the country in definite obligations under certain conditions. Is this clear?”

“It sounds,” Clara replied, “like a Chinese puzzle, but I think I know what you mean.”

“Will you please take this for granted,” the young man went on. “It is vital to British interests that no word of this proposed agreement should become known to the general public, both for reasons of general policy—which abhors secret treaties—and on account of the minister who is responsible for it. By some means or other, although every precaution was taken, a copy of the draft has been secured by the owner of a great newspaper. He is proposing to publish that copy in his morning issue next Friday and to give the names of the small section of the Cabinet who have sponsored it. The result of the publication would be, without a doubt, to bring the present Government to an end.”

There was a brief silence. With a word of apology Clara Linz lit a cigarette and pushed the box towards her visitor. For a moment or two afterwards she seemed wrapped in meditation.

“The Press and the Government of the country,” she pointed out, “are generally on excellent terms. Surely pressure can be brought to bear upon the editor of this newspaper?”

“It is not the editor but the owner—a man of considerable importance—who has the draft of the arrangement,” Hulings confided. “He has already been approached. His attitude towards the Government is inimical and towards the minister chiefly responsible one of hatred. There is no possible bribe or inducement which can be offered which has not been suggested. The result is less than nil. Unless a miracle happens or you perform something more than a miracle, the bombshell will be exploded next Friday and the present Government will come automatically to an end.”

“Mr. Hulings,” Clara said deliberately, “you have come to us for help and it would be a triumph if we were able to give it to you. We cannot move in the matter, however, unless you treat us with more complete confidence.”

He looked at her miserably.

“My dear lady,” he pleaded, “how is that possible?”

“It is for you to decide,” she answered.

He sat for a few moments in dreary silence.

“Very well,” he yielded at last. “I ask for no promises, I make no threats, but naturally if you betray my confidence your bureau is not likely to exist very much longer. The person whose reputation as a statesman is in danger is the Prime Minister, John Spencer St. Alban. The country involved is Japan.”

“And the newspaper proprietor?” she asked mercilessly.

“Lord Reisborough.”

“Upon what date does he propose to draw down the thunders?”

“Friday the twentieth.”

She glanced at the almanac upon her desk.

“It is now Tuesday the seventeenth. Be here at the same time on Thursday. If it is humanly possible to help you we will. We shall require a very large fee if we succeed and I shall ask you for a hundred pounds now for preliminary expenses.”

The young man counted out some notes. Clara handed him over a receipt.

“I shall see you again,” she reminded him, “on Thursday morning.”

That evening, whilst a very depressed Hulings was dressing for dinner, the telephone rang in his little sanctum. He shook his head.

“You can see who it is, Samson,” he told his servant, “but if it is anyone who wants me to dine or go out this evening say that I am ill or engaged.”

The man came back again a few minutes later.

“The Baroness Linz wishes to speak to you, sir,” he announced.

Hulings sprang to his feet and made his way to the instrument. That same smooth, precise voice greeted him from the other end of the wire.

“I am speaking to Mr. Hulings?”

“You are.”

“This is the Baroness Linz. I am anxious to ask you a question. It is not advisable to ask it over the telephone. Please call in here within a quarter of an hour.”

“I shall be there,” he promised, “in ten minutes.”

He kept his word. It was past eight o’clock but Clara was still in her small salon seated before her desk. She offered no apologies for her summons.

“I want to ask you, Mr. Hulings,” she said, “in what manner the information which Lord Reisborough threatens to use in his newspaper came into his hands.”

Hulings hesitated.

“Is it necessary for you to know that?”

“We cannot proceed with the case until we do.”

“I am glad to be able to tell you,” Hulings confided, “that the leakage was not from anyone of our departments. A copy reached Lord Reisborough from someone in the service of the Japanese Embassy.”

“What have they to say about it there?”

“Very little. The ambassador expresses himself as humiliated and quoted poetry to explain to us that he was sitting in ashes and his soul was steeped in misery. Furthermore, his second secretary, the most popular member of the embassy, has disappeared. Also his wife.”

“Do you know what has become of them?”

“So far as he is concerned,” Hulings replied, “I have not the faintest doubt but that he has committed suicide.”

“Have you made any enquiries as to what has become of him?”

“It does not seem to matter much, does it? Nevertheless, we did enquire. The ambassador’s reply, so far as I can remember it, was that Kuniashi had returned to his ancestors.”

Clara Linz considered the young man’s reply with a deepening frown on her forehead. Finally she rose abruptly to her feet.

“I am going to ask you, Mr. Hulings,” she begged, “to wait here for a few minutes.”

“I will wait all night if it is in any way helpful,” the young man assented.

Clara Linz left the room and was absent for some twenty minutes. When she returned, to Hulings’s surprise, she was dressed for the street.

“I should like you to take me,” she requested, “to the Japanese Embassy.”

Hulings was a trifle disappointed. It had seemed to him from the first that Reisborough was their only hope. The Baron Kyashti was a man of gentle, plastic personality with nothing to offer but regrets.

“I am afraid we shan’t have much chance of being received without an appointment,” he warned her.

“You will try,” Clara insisted. “The matter, as you know yourself, is urgent. The newspaper will be in the press at midnight on Thursday. It is not a long time.”

“Don’t think I do not realise it,” the young man groaned. “Come along. I have my car outside and we will see what we can do.”

They drove through the crowded streets in silence—Hulings himself at the wheel. At the Japanese Embassy they were admitted and shown into a private waiting-room. One of the officials came quickly in answer to Hulings’s enquiry.

“Is it a matter of unusual pressure this, Mr. Hulings?” he asked, speaking very precisely but in a high-pitched, monotonous voice. “His Excellency does not receive at these hours. He is engaged in studying the day’s despatches from Tokio.”

“It is a matter of vital importance,” Hulings assured him. “A matter, too, in which His Excellency is also deeply concerned.”

There was another brief delay after which they were ushered into a spacious but barely furnished apartment. Baron Kyashti was seated upon a hard chair in front of a plain but handsome desk. He was surrounded by a sea of papers. Two young men who were sorting them were waved away. The ambassador rose to his feet and shook hands with Hulings.

“You will permit me to present the Baroness Linz, Your Excellency,” her escort begged. “You will understand, I am sure, that we would not intrude if the matter were not one of urgency.”

The baron was statuesquely polite and frigid.

“I will hear what you wish to say to me,” he said. “It is not my hour to receive. What is this lady’s business?”

“I am the representative, Your Excellency, of an institution which probably does not exist in your country,” Clara explained. “We call ourselves Advice Limited and our business is to help people who find themselves in a serious position in life but are unable to resort to the police.”

“Criminals?” the baron ventured.

“As a rule,” she told him, “we work only for honest people. There is a great deal of trouble into which an honest person can get nowadays in which police intervention is impossible.”

The ambassador showed that he was not disposed to waste words.

“It is still this terrible matter of Lord Reisborough’s threat, I presume?” he said.

“It is,” she assented. “We have been engaged by Mr. Hulings to seek for some method of preventing Lord Reisborough carrying out his threat and publishing a copy of the proposed Manchurian Treaty which has been provisionally signed by the Prime Minister.”

“If you can do that,” the baron said gravely, “you will perform a good office. It is not easy.”

“It is not easy,” Clara admitted. “You should be willing to help, though, Your Excellency, if it is possible,” she went on. “The trouble started here, although it is Lord St. Alban who will suffer.”

“The lady’s words have passed outside my comprehension,” the ambassador confessed, turning to Hulings.

“What she means,” the young man explained, “is that the treacherous sale of the copy of the treaty to Reisborough was effected from here.”

The baron winced perceptibly. If it were possible for him to have gone paler he had done so. The light in his eyes was colder. His tone was icy.

“It is a great humiliation but it is the truth.”

“Where is Kuniashi?” Hulings asked bluntly.

The baron considered for a moment.

“Kuniashi is dead,” he said with cold finality.

Hulings started. The woman gave vent to a smothered exclamation.

“How does this concern you?” the ambassador demanded. “How are you concerned in his life or death? Here you are in Japan. Here things may happen which could not happen in the streets without or the adjoining buildings. Here the laws of Japan are administered. Kuniashi is dead.”

“That seems rather a pity,” Clara reflected. “His death was well deserved, without a doubt, but there was just a chance that certain information——”

“He has no longer any information concerning events in this world,” Kyashti interrupted. “He was subjected to great temptation and he fell. In the hours that followed came light. The only thing that could happen to him has happened.”

“But it is impossible that he should be dead,” Clara reflected in her matter-of-fact way. “There has been no word in the papers—no announcement. People cannot disappear like that in England.”

“This is not England, madam,” was the measured reply. “I would not have you doubt the word of a Japanese nobleman, but with your own eyes you shall see.”

The baron crossed the room with swift, even footsteps. He touched a bell and spoke to the servant who answered it a few words in Japanese. Then he turned and beckoned his two visitors to follow him. They passed across the great hall into one of the smaller rooms at the back of the house. Every curtain was tightly drawn. The room itself was in darkness until the Japanese servant who had preceded them had touched the switch of the electric light. They looked around curiously to find that they were in an apartment almost devoid of furniture. Upon two wooden trestles at the farther end stood two coffins draped in white. In a niche of the wall above them was the image of a Buddha seated with clasped hands at the top of a gilded dais. The ambassador motioned his visitors forward and spoke a word or two to the servant, still in Japanese. The latter lifted the lids of the two coffins. In the nearer was the body of a young man wrapped in a loose robe. In the farther the body of a girl in white. Both were already embalmed. There were flowers on the bosom of the girl, and fastened to the robe of the man, just over his heart, was an oblong strip of paper. The baron pointed to it. They both leaned a little forward. It was a cheque upon a London bank for a hundred thousand pounds and it was signed Reisborough!

“The bodies leave for Japan on Monday,” the ambassador announced. “If this thing had happened in my own country Kuniashi would have been less kindly treated. Here we had charity. The woman was unused to Western ways and it was her voice which prevailed.”

“Kyoto—his wife,” Hulings groaned.

“Certainly his wife,” the ambassador assented. “A Japanese gentleman does not keep a mistress. When he commits a folly, when he sins, it is for his wife. If this atonement, my friend Mr. Hulings, can be of any satisfaction to your illustrious master, you can tell him that you have seen it. You will excuse?”

Out in the street they stumbled back into the car. Hulings was still shivering as he took the wheel. The woman was deep in thought.

“I am wondering,” she confessed, “how this is going to help us.”

Reisborough, glossy and perfumed, with a white carnation in his buttonhole, priceless black pearls in his shirt-front, his shrunken limbs tailored by an artist, sat at dinner that night with a sly grin of content upon his lips. It was a dinner à deux at the most desirable table in the most fashionable club restaurant of the moment, his companion—Clara, Baroness Linz—one of the most admired women in London. In his acquired habits Reisborough was no ordinary vulgarian. He ordered his food and wine with distinction. His manner with the waiters was excellent. Nothing that he did or said savoured of ostentation. His conversation, perhaps, was limited, but he himself was a sympathetic listener. He was content to know that his companion was exciting the admiration of all his neighbours. It was only when she led the conversation round to the power of the Press that he expressed himself with a certain amount of egotism.

“I never meant to be a newspaper man,” he confided. “I was a millionaire several times over before I sat back and asked how I could make the best use of my money to gain power. A woman,” he went on, “lives for admiration. A man lives for power.”

“There are other things in the lives of some of us,” Clara murmured, toying with her bracelets. “I agree with you so far as men are concerned. There are a few women, however, who possess brains——”

“Not many,” he interrupted bluntly. “If they do they don’t use them. Haven’t they proved it? Women are failures in every serious position in life. They have had their chances and lost them. They are objects of ridicule in Parliament or any public office. They can write inferior novels glibly, but there has never been a great woman poetess, soldier, financier or diplomatist. Women are coming back to their own in this generation. They are beginning to understand again what their grandmothers knew—that they were made for love and to be loved and for nothing else.”

She laughed softly and with genuine amusement.

“The most humorous part of it is,” she declared, “that what you are saying is very nearly the truth.”

“What I say generally has the truth in it,” he observed, so quietly that the conceit was almost non-rapparent. “I bought newspapers because through newspapers you can govern the world much better than from the senate or parliament. You can sit upon the Olympian mountain-tops above the clouds and listening nations will dance to the tune of your trumpet.”

“I suppose you are right,” she admitted. “I do not agree with you but that makes no difference. I do not think I could even explain.”

“Try,” he suggested.

“It is very difficult,” she murmured. “The power of the Press is so ruthless. It is used to sway the mob, not to appeal to the brains of the world. It can do as much harm as it does good. The influence of a great statesman who has seen the truth and carried it always with him lives after his death. The Press is just a day-by-day power. It fashions the thoughts of one week and pulls down everything it has built up the next.”

He indulged in his hateful smile.

“You will live and learn if you get to know me better,” he said. “I know of circumstances where the Press in one issue can send the fame of a great statesman crumbling into the dust, where in one issue it can turn war into peace or peace into war.”

“But its methods,” she argued. “Have you ever stopped to analyse its methods? A foul little revolver can end the life of the noblest of men. Those creeping reptiles from West African forests can sting the life out of the great explorers of the world. Any power is great that governs life or death, but it may be foul.”

“We must be friends,” he insisted.

“You laugh at me,” she complained. “Come, we have finished dinner. It is too late for the theatres. Will you trust yourself to me for half an hour and I will give you an instance of what I mean?”

There was a sudden flash of suspicion in his face, a mean thought that travelled through his mind. She laughed scornfully, and so far as he could feel shame he felt it.

“You will run no risk,” she assured him. “I wish you no harm. You will come to none in my company.”

“I could find the one thing more to be valued than power in your company,” he whispered.

She laughed again as she gathered her trifles together and left the restaurant.

“Tell your man,” she enjoined, as they stepped into the car, “to drive to the side door of number 18a Grosvenor Gate. The side door is in Ladbroke Street.”

“Grosvenor Gate, 18a. Grosvenor Gate,” he repeated, as they rolled off. “Surely that is the Japanese Embassy or next to it?”

“Never mind where it is,” she said. “I shall show you something. I shall try to prove my point. Then, if you feel like it, we can go on somewhere. We both have cards, I suppose, for Berkeley House. One had better make one’s bow there.”

They pulled up in a dark narrow street. She stepped lightly on to the pavement and rang the bell by the side of a solid door of imposing appearance. The door was opened at once by a manservant in sombre livery. Without any exchange of words he led them into a vast, gloomy hall at the end of a long passage.

“Why, this is the Japanese Embassy!” Reisborough exclaimed.

She held up her finger.

“Hush!”

The man who was their guide led them, according to his previously received instructions, into the chamber of death, turned on a light which showed them the two draped boxes and flashed softly upon the set placidity of the ever-watching Buddha. In silence the man removed the two coverings. Clara pointed downwards.

“Kuniashi and his bride Kyoto,” she announced. “Do you see what is pinned to his robe? It is what the Japanese call ‘the price of dishonour.’ ”

“They are dead!” her companion gasped, as soon as the power of speech came to him.

“They are dead,” she assented. “It is the juggernaut of the Press which has killed them. On Friday morning a famous statesman may be crucified and a great newspaper treble its circulation. Only listen to me, Lord Reisborough. If that happens there will be another story the next day in the papers across the street. There will be the true story of that cheque lying on a dead man’s chest and the history of the little Japanese girl, his wife, lying by his side. Cannot you hear the wind of horror which will sweep across the world when people realise the price that was paid for their news?”

Reisborough said not a word. The lids were replaced. The light extinguished. Together they crossed the floor, made their way down the passage and re-entered the waiting car.

“What do you want me to do in this matter?” he demanded, his thin voice more metallic and unpleasant than ever.

“Return the copy of the Manchurian agreement to the Japanese ambassador, find some other melodrama for the black headlines of your newspaper on Friday morning and forget, above all forget, upon your word of honour, the whole events of this evening and every little thing which has connected me with it.”

“A bargain,” he agreed sourly....

The car rolled on through the thronged streets, Reisborough leaning back in his corner, his arms folded, his forehead furrowed, a shrunken figure of mingled malice and humiliation. Suddenly his lips parted in a malevolent smile. His dominant cynicism came to his rescue.

“The damn’ thing looked safe enough where it was,” he muttered, “but I shall stop payment of that cheque the first thing in the morning.”