Читать книгу A Debt Discharged - Edgar Wallace - Страница 8

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CORNELIUS HELDER was a contradiction, and Gold did not like contradictions. "A man is either one thing or the other," was a favourite saying of his; "my experience of life is that he is generally the other."

By Gold's exact measure it was impossible to reconcile the bon garçon, a man full of the joy of life, a lover of good living, good stories and luxurious tastes, with the revolutionary preaching red riot and rebellion to those effete and degenerate monarchies which sway Europe.

"It may be affectation, your Excellency," said Gold; "a pose—some men are fond of poses."

He was in the American Ambassador's private study.

"I should hardly describe Mr Helder as young," said his Excellency dryly; "he is passing into the vinegar stage of his salad days."

Gold smiled. He held in his hand a paper, a little eight-paged journal, half of which was printed in foreign characters. The title of this publication was The Red Monitor, and Helder made no secret of the fact that he was the financial support, prop, and stay of the little production.

"I must confess," said his Excellency, "I am getting a trifle weary of the cranks our beloved country sends us, and I never expected that a man like Helder, who I should describe as a 'comfortable' man, would run in the direction of anarchism."

"There does not seem to be anything particularly outrageous in this number," Gold said.

"There's not been in any, so far," said his Excellency.

Gold was skimming through the leading article, which was printed in Russian, in characters which suggested that some mischievous boy had been busy turning the letters inside out.

"That is the senselessness of it," said the Ambassador irritably; "this journal is supposed to be secretly distributed amongst the Russian peasantry. Helder might as well spend his money distributing special editions of Walt Whitman's poems."

Gold waited for the Ambassador to explain the reason for the urgent summons he had received. He had read this little journal month by month, since it had made its first appearance two years before; its existence was as well known as the existence of The Times or the New York American.

They talked for a little while in general terms, then Gold, seeing the Ambassador was getting no nearer to the explanation, asked bluntly: "What is there about this particular issue of the Monitor which annoys you?"

His Excellency rubbed his hands slowly together and leant back in his padded chair.

"You know Helder," he said. "He was telling me the other night at the Terriers' reception that you were the one American in London he had any respect for or confidence in."

A little smile played round the corner of Gold's mouth.

"I mistrust Helder," he said, "when he slops over."

"That may be," said the Ambassador carelessly; "but I want you to put to the test this regard he has for your opinion and judgement. Ask him to give up publishing this journal. The British Government does not like it. Why, he has imported a little colony of Russians somewhere down in a quiet and inoffensive Shropshire village to the scandal of the squire and local clergy." He smiled a little. "He is producing his innocuous rag with all the pomp and circumstance which attend the preparation of a coup d'état. The Foreign Office people are very touchy on the matter; they expect him to suddenly blossom forth with suggestions for wholesale slaughter. If he does, of course they will show no mercy; you know that the editor of the Italian paper who suggested the murder of his king was jailed for two years, and I don't want anything like that to happen to a man of Helder's position."

"I will see what I can do," said Gold.

He drove straight to the Terriers from Park Lane. Helder had not arrived. He saw Comstock Bell lunching at a table in the window by himself, and crossing over took a seat on the opposite side.

The young man looked ill, and his right hand was bandaged.

"Hullo!" said Gold, "what's happened?"

"Nothing," said the other shortly, "I caught my hand in a door and I think I have broken one of the fingers."

"I am sorry to hear that," said the other.

"It is not worth while worrying about," said Bell; "it is a bore eating with one's left hand, and I have to use a typewriter for letters—but what of you?"

"What of me?" repeated Gold.

"Are you so used to being shot at by strange gentlemen in the park that you forget all about such trifles?"

Gold smiled grimly.

"I remember all right," he said. He did not pursue the subject, but talked of general matters. At the end of the meal, when the men were taking their coffee, he returned to it.

"See here, Comstock, my boy," he said, "I am going to put all my straights and flushes on the table for you to inspect, and my gone-wrong flushes too. That man who met me last night was out for blood."

"You surprise me," said Bell ironically; "I thought he came to command you to Buckingham Palace."

"Quit fooling," said Gold seriously, "it affects you as well as me. I had a letter asking me to meet one of my men in the Mall last night. Sometimes," he dropped his voice, "it is essential that I should know what certain people are doing; that is my business. My man told me that he would be between the third and fourth electric standards in the Mall. He must have been watched quis custodiet ipsos custodes, eh? Whoever it was followed him to the post. Two men representing themselves as English detectives arrested him for loitering with intent, and my man, a perfectly law-abiding citizen, not wishing for trouble, accompanied his captors. They took him through two parks, bundled him into a cab and marooned him in the wilds of Hampstead Heath."

He chuckled.

"That was smart," he said; "they left a gentleman behind to settle accounts with me—"

"Your friend," repeated the other. "You'll excuse me."

Out of the corner of his eye he had seen Helder standing for a moment in the doorway of the dining-room.

"Is that a friend of yours, too?"

There was a studied carelessness in Comstock Bell's voice.

"No—he's a subject for my insatiable curiosity," answered Gold. With a nod to his companion he crossed the room and passed into the smoke-room beyond.

Helder was turning the leaves of an illustrated paper.

He looked up as the other man came to him.

"I want to see you, my anarchist friend," said Gold. Helder laughed.

"Am I to be deported?" he asked, and made room for the other on the settee by his side; "or am I in danger of a charge of high treason?"

"Nothing quite so heroic," said Gold dryly; "you're in some danger of being a nuisance. I happened to meet the Ambassador the other day, and knowing that I exercise some influence on my young and innocent compatriots, he asked me to make it clear to you that just so long as you continued on your sinful path, it would embarrass him less if you did not look forward with too much eagerness to invitations to the Embassy."

A dull red glow spread over Helder's face, beginning at the bald forehead and descending like a curtain over his cheek.

"You are the little express messenger of the great democrat?" he sneered. "I'd like to get my congé from the Embassy first hand, I guess."

It was the first time he had shown himself in this light, and Gold was intensely interested. This was a new Helder and an ugly one. The humour had gone from his eyes, this soft lines about the mouth stretched tight and hard. A curious contradiction, said Gold to himself.

Helder had laboured hard to reach his present position in society. His father had left his artist son a bare income—little more than was sufficient to keep body and soul together. He had had to drop his silver-point work and his etchings, and leave Paris. For years he had worked in London. He dealt in American stock, was reported to have amassed a small fortune when Southern Pacifics boomed sky-high. And he had never looked back.

It had been a fight, but the greater fight had been to establish himself a member of the select little coterie of London's Americans of which Comstock Bell was the bright particular star. Helder was not popular with men, socially he had to win out. There were stories about him which women did not like, a damning circumstance for a man desirous of treading that path to eminence which runs through the drawing-rooms of Belgravia and ends at the Ambassador's dinner-table.

And now he had "got there" he was threatened with social extinction. To the society of the other cranks, to be relegated to the congregation of the "nearly theres."

His eyes narrowed as he looked down at Gold.

"I claim the privilege of my citizenship," he said, "which is my right to do as I please, to order my life in any way which is in the bounds of decency and the law. There is nothing in the Monitor which is offensive."

"There is no reason for its existence," said Gold.

"Your cynicism is offensive, Gold."

Cornelius Helder rose to his feet.

"I don't think we need to go on with his conversation."

Gold nodded. "It is pretty unprofitable," he said. "Now—by Jove!"

He looked at the clock and began searching his pockets.

"I promised myself to mail a nephew of mine in New Jersey a birthday present."

He drew out his pocket-book and opened it. What he sought was not there.

"Have you any money?" he asked. "American money. I want twenty dollars."

Comstock Bell had come into the room, and Gold's last words were addressed to the world at large.

Helder shook his head.

"Twenty dollars?"

Bell broke in on the conversation.

"I have some money," he said. He slipped his hand into his hip pocket and produced a wallet.

This he opened and extracted the money required.

He handed the bills to Gold, and the third man watched them narrowly.

He saw Gold count the English equivalent into the other's palm; saw him looking at the bills carelessly, then:

"Good God!" said Gold, and Cornelius Helder saw his face go bleak.