Читать книгу The Million Pound Deposit - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 6

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Charles Philip Boothroyd, second Baron Dutley, still odoriferous of bath salts and shaving soap, fresh from the careful hands of his valet, left his dressing room, descended the curving stairway of his pleasant little bachelor Mayfair residence, and entered the library where his recently announced visitor was awaiting him.

"Awfully sorry to keep you waiting, Sir Matthew," he apologised. "I didn't get back from the Club until eight—just before you arrived, as a matter of fact—and one always meets such a lot of fellows when one's been away—pretty well a year, too, this time."

Sir Matthew Parkinson shook hands but made no immediate reply. Pleasantly large though the room was, it seemed almost cramped when he loomed up from his place, a towering, dignified figure, somehow portentous notwithstanding his forced smile of welcome. He was a tall, broad-shouldered Yorkshireman, six feet four at least in height, erect, with a broad, benevolent face, little patches of side whiskers, black streaked with grey, and a mouth which had puzzled every physiognomist who had studied it. "A fine-looking man", they called him in Leeds and all through the county, as indeed he was. At the head of his dining table, on the back of a hunter, presiding in the Board Room of Boothroyds over a meeting of his fellow directors, at any of those public functions to which duty continually took him, every one realised that Sir Matthew Parkinson upheld with dignity and distinction the great position which he had attained as head of the famous house of Boothroyd. It was true that Charles, the son of old Boothroyd, who had been raised to the peerage in the last year of his life, was still the titular Chairman of the Company, but it was Sir Matthew who was the life and soul of the firm. Dutley was an athlete himself, but by the side of his visitor he seemed almost insignificant in stature and weak in physiognomy.

"What will you have?" the latter demanded hospitably, with his finger upon the bell. "I'm terribly sorry to have to push off, but I'd no idea you were in town, and I have to be in Grosvenor Street in a few minutes. As a matter of fact, I've scarcely seen my fiancée yet and I'm dining there to-night."

Sir Matthew looked a little dazed. It was obvious that he had expected a different sort of reception.

"I will drink a glass of sherry," he rejoined, "and I will be as brief as possible. Nevertheless, it is serious business we have to discuss—and not business to be hurried over either."

A footman entered, to whom Dutley gave an order. Then he helped himself to a cigarette, pushed the box towards his visitor, and leaned against the mantelpiece.

"How's Grace?" he enquired.

"Grace is well enough. Discontented as usual, but all young people seem to be getting that way nowadays. She sent you the usual messages."

"And what's this serious business that you want to talk about?" Dutley asked, with a grimace.

Sir Matthew looked at his host reprovingly.

"Have you by chance looked at any of the letters I have written you since July?" he demanded.

Dutley was promptly apologetic.

"To tell you the truth, Sir Matthew," he confessed, "I haven't. When I left Abyssinia, which was in March, I wasn't at all sure how long it would take me to get clear of the country, or how I should come home. It depended what sort of a steamer I could catch, and it was just on the cards I might have had to go up to Khartoum to make some plans for next winter. We had a lot of sickness amongst the boys, too, crossing the desert, and that always throws you back. Anyhow, I sent home to say that they'd better hold all the letters. They'd only have missed me if they'd tried sending them on."

Sir Matthew was aghast.

"Great heavens!" he exclaimed. "Do you really mean to tell me that you haven't read a letter of mine for months?"

The young man pointed a little guiltily to the library table, upon which was stacked a huge pile of unopened correspondence.

"There they all are," he declared cheerfully. "Sorry if I've made a bloomer, but supposing I had read them, what difference could it make? If you've asked my advice about anything, my opinion wouldn't be worth a snap of the fingers. I'm only a figurehead in the concern anyway."

There was a brief silence, which even to Dutley seemed pregnant with sinister meaning. A log of wood broke off from the fire in the open grate. Taxicabs were all the time honking by. London seemed alive to the fact that this was the pleasant hour before dinner. The cocktails and sherry arrived and were duly served. Sir Matthew watched his glass filled but made no movement towards it. Dutley, on the other hand, drank off his cocktail and replenished his glass. The servants left the room.

"Come on," the younger man begged, with a glance at the clock. "Let's hear the worst."

"It is probably news to you," Sir Matthew confided slowly, "that there was a burglary at the Works three months ago."

"Heard something about it this afternoon," Dutley acknowledged. "The fellows at the Club were chaffing—seemed surprised that I could afford to buy them a drink. Got away with five thousand quid, didn't they?"

"They got away also," was the grave reply, "with something of far greater importance. They murdered poor old Rentoul, who was the only one of his chemists whom your father ever trusted, and they got away with Blunn's formula."

"I'm sorry about poor old Rentoul," Dutley said. "I remember the old boy quite well. What's Blunn's formula, though? It sounds familiar, but I can't exactly place it."

"It is the formula for the manufacture of artificial silk," Sir Matthew declared solemnly, "upon which your father built up the whole of his business—the formula which is responsible for the fortunes of the House of Boothroyd."

"The devil!" Dutley exclaimed, a little startled.

"The five or six thousand pounds," Sir Matthew went on, "wasn't worth thinking about. It didn't matter a snap of the fingers. The theft of those papers is nothing more nor less than a colossal disaster to the firm."

"But what on earth use is the formula to a gang of burglars?" Dutley demanded.

"They weren't ordinary burglars," was the portentous explanation. "It is my conviction that they came for the formula, and for nothing else. If they had been ordinary burglars, the Police would probably have had them before now. As it is, they haven't a single clue to work upon."

"Rotten!" Dutley murmured. "How are you getting on at the Works without the formula?"

"We aren't getting on," Sir Matthew groaned. "That's our trouble, as you'll find out when you read my letters. You'll have to try to grasp the situation, young man. It's serious enough, I can tell you. Your father, although I say it to his son, was one of the most obstinate men who ever breathed. He built up great works here and in Switzerland, in Germany and in France, in Italy, on the strength of a single extremely complicated formula. On the day of his death—"

"Yes, I remember that," Dutley interrupted, with a covert glance towards the clock. "He called you in, and me, and Stephenson, and Watherspoon. We all promised that the formula should be kept in the safe, and never copied."

"And we kept our word, worse luck!" Sir Matthew regretted bitterly. "Now we are paying for humouring a dying man's whim. Without the formula, we have been hopelessly at sea. Fortunately it doesn't matter quite so much abroad where we are mostly making by-products. Up in Marlingthorpe we're in the hell of a mess. We have been manufacturing on guesswork, and guessing wrong all the time. Our chemists have been working night and day. We've spent thousands on experiments and we're no nearer the real thing. Making silk indeed! We're making muck. We're nowhere near the right thing. Do you know what our shares stand at in the market to-day?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," the young man rejoined. "The Stock Exchange news came up when I was waiting on the tape to see whether Reggie Fulford had won the Guards' Steeplechase. About eighty, aren't they?"

"Yes, somewhere about that. Do you know what they're worth?"

"Don't know that I do," Dutley admitted. "Those Stock Exchange fellows generally hit it off about right though, don't they?"

"If the world knew the truth," Sir Matthew confided impressively, "they're worth somewhere about forty, and at that they'd be a speculation. I wouldn't buy them myself at the price."

All the light-hearted good nature faded from Charles Dutley's face. He set down his glass and stared at the speaker. There was no doubt about Sir Matthew's being in earnest. The fist of his great right hand was clenched so tightly that the veins stood out in deep blue cords as he banged the arm of his chair. In his excitement, the Yorkshire accent of his youth forced its way to the surface.

"Listen, lad," he continued, "we've sent out already five hundred thousand pounds' worth of rotten stock, and God knows the trouble it's going to lead us into. We've five hundred thousand pounds' worth more in the warehouse, and at the present moment our machinery, which is running at a cost of over five thousand pounds a day, is turning out material which, instead of being fit to sell at a fifteen to twenty per cent. profit is only fit for the cesspool."

There was another silence. Sir Matthew was breathing heavily. He took out his lavender-scented white cambric handkerchief and wiped his forehead. A pale streak had crept into Dutley's cheeks underneath the dark coat of sunburn. The words were there still, lingering in the air, words of hideous import, which might spell approaching ruin.

"My God, Sir Matthew," he exclaimed, "and I hadn't an idea!"

"How the hell could you have," Sir Matthew pointed out, "if you go and bury yourself in these outlandish countries, shooting animals which have never done you any harm, and never even taking the trouble to have your letters sent after you? What did it matter to you? You've been content with your princely income and your life of sport. Old Stephenson's on a trip round the world. Watherspoon is past his job, and all the time I've had to bear this alone. Every morning I've had to inspect the muck that's come out of the Works and pretend it's all right."

"Are there any signs," Dutley enquired, "of any one else having got hold of the formula?"

"That's the first sensible question you've asked," was the gruff response. "We've lost in round figures pretty well half a million in making filthy stock since the formula went, but there's no other firm that I can hear of who's improved its manufacture, or who's making the stuff we used to make. That's where there's a gleam of hope for us. We've got to get the formula back even if we pay for it."

"Why not offer a big reward?" Dutley suggested.

Sir Matthew scoffed.

"Ask the Police," he rejoined. "Any one who can lay his hands on that formula is likely enough to stand his trial for murder. Besides, we've managed to keep the thing secret so far. If the merest rumour of it gets round the Stock Exchange there'll be such a slump in Boothroyds as the City has never seen."

There was a discreet knock at the door. A servant presented himself.

"Mr. Ronald Bessiter has telephoned from Grosvenor Street, my lord. I was to remind you that they were expecting you there for dinner. It's already twenty minutes to nine."

Dutley nodded, and dismissed the man.

"When can I see you to-morrow, Sir Matthew?" he asked anxiously.

"As early as possible. I don't suppose you can help any more than any other man could, but I must have some one to share the responsibility. What about quite early—say eight o'clock?"

"Suit me all right," Dutley assented. "Come round here and have a spot of bacon and eggs. I'm sorry to have to hurry away. I'd cancel the dinner, only it's with my prospective father-in-law, and I expect I shall get it in the neck as it is. Burdett will look after you—get you another glass of sherry if you'll have it."

The young man took swift leave of his visitor, and Sir Matthew rose heavily to his feet. He lingered for a moment on his way to the door, his eyes fixed upon that enormous, still unopened heap of correspondence. He was by no means a visionary, but there seemed to him something a little allegorical in that sublime indifference to passing events which such an accumulated mass denoted. He thought of old Boothroyd, seated at his desk at half-past eight every morning, an envelope opener in his hand. One—two—three. Private letters on the left, business letters on the right, envelopes and circular appeals into the waste-paper basket.... The butler entered the room quietly.

"I have called a taxi for you, Sir Matthew," he announced. "May I offer you another glass of sherry?"

Sir Matthew pulled himself together.

"No thanks. Tell his lordship that I shall be here punctually at eight o'clock to-morrow morning," he said, as he took his departure.