Читать книгу The Man Who Bought London - Edgar Wallace - Страница 8

CHAPTER VI

Оглавление

Table of Contents

THOUGH all the world now knows of King Kerry, and his life and achievements are inscribed more or less accurately in the scrappy works of reference which are so popular nowadays, only a privileged few know of the inception of the great Trust which came to London in 19—.

It came about indirectly as a result of the Shearman Anti-Trust Law which caused wholesale resignations from the boards of American companies, and drove what is known on the other side of the Atlantic as the "mergers" out of business. These were Trust men who had done nothing in their lives but combine conflicting business interests into one great monopoly. They found themselves scarcely within the pale of the law—they found, too, that their opportunities were limited. These men had dealt in millions. They had liquid assets, hard cash ready for employment at a moment's notice. They came in a body to England—the eight greatest financiers of the United States. Bolscombe E. Grant rented Tamby Hall from the Earl of Dichester; Thomas A. Logge (the Wire King) settled in London; Gould Lampest bought an estate in Lincolnshire; and the others—Verity Sullivan, Combare Lee, Big Jack Simms, and King Kerry—settled down in London.

There were others who joined forces with them; but they were unimportant. Cagely H. Smith put a million into the pool, but backed out after the Orange Street affair. The eight dispensed with his million without noticing that it had gone. He was a little man, and they made clear, for when Cagely tried to sneak back into the pool offering, not only the five million dollars he had originally staked, but half a million pounds in addition as evidence of his faith, his overtures were rejected. Another small man was Morris Lochmann, who subscribed roughly 600,000 pounds—and there were several of his kidney. The "L Trust," as it called itself, was autocratic to a degree. Men who came in with inflated ideas as to their importance were quashed as effectively as a fly is swotted. Hermann Zeberlieff was one of these. He was a big man in a small place, one of the little kings of industry, who measured themselves by the standard of local publicity. He threw some 1,200,000 pounds into the pool —but he talked. The fever for notoriety was so strong in him that he committed the unpardonable crime of having a photograph of "this mammoth cheque" (so the letterpress typed on the back of the picture called it) sent to all the papers.

The cheque was never presented. He had jeopardized the success of the project by alarming a public too ready to be scared by one of two words—"trust" and "conscription."

Zeberlieff was a large holder of United Western Railway stock. On the morning the photograph appeared the stock stood at £23 per share in the market. By the next afternoon it had beaten down to £12 10s. On the following day it slumped to £8—a sensational drop. The most powerful group in the world had "beared" it. Hermann crawled out of the mess with a loss of £800,000.

"What can I do?" he wailed to Bolscombe Grant, that gaunt man of money.

"I guess the best thing you can do," said Mr. Grant, chewing the end of his cigar thoughtfully, "is to send a picture of yourself to the papers."

It was the first hint to Hermann Zeberlieff that he was the subject of disciplinary measures.

It was typical of the Trust that it made no attempt to act collectively in the sense that it was guided by a majority. It delegated all its powers to one man, gave him a white card to scribble liabilities; neither asked for explanations nor expected them. They found the money, and they placed it at the disposal of King Kerry because King Kerry was the one man of their number who understood the value of real estate properties. They worked on a simple basis. The rateable value of London was £45,000,000. They computed that London's income was £150,000,000 a year. They were satisfied that with the expenditure of £50,000,000 they could extract ten per cent of London's income.

That was roughly the idea, and to this was added the knowledge that vast as was the importance of the metropolis, it had only reached the fringe of its possibilities. London would one day be twice its present size, and ground value would be enormously increased. Its unique situation, the security which came from the geographic insularity of England and the strength of its navy, the feeding quality of its colonies, all combined to mark London as a world capital.

"I see London extended to St. Albans on the north, Newbury on the west, and Brighton on the south," wrote King Kerry in his diary. "It may even extend to Colchester on the east; but the east side of any township is always an unknown quantity in a scheme of development."

There were difficulties to overcome, almost insuperable difficulties, but that was part of the game and made the players keener. Patience would do much: judicious pressure tactfully applied would do more.

King Kerry wanted to buy the big block of buildings comprising Goulding's Universal Stores. Goulding's stood out, so Kerry bought the next block, which was Tack and Brighten's.

Elsie Marion presented herself at ten o'clock punctually at the modest suite of offices which the "L Trust" occupied in Glasshouse Street. It was unusual that a great financial corporation should be habited so far west, but a peculiarity of the Trust and its operations was the fact that never once did it attempt to handle property in the area between Temple Bar and Aldgate Pump. It was not in the scheme of King Kerry to disturb conditions in the City of London itself.

The office in Glasshouse Street occupied the ground floor of a modern block. The floors above were let out to an insurance company, a firm of solicitors, and an estate agent—all firms of undoubted integrity, and all, moreover, largely associated with the working of the Trust.

The girl had read something of this office in the newspapers. A flippant evening journal had christened it "The Jewel House," because it bore some resemblance to the famous store of Britain's treasures in the Tower of London. In her desire to be punctual she had arrived a quarter of an hour before the appointed time, and she had leisure to inspect the remarkable facade. A small brass plate against the entrance gave the seeker after information the news that this was the registered office of the "L Financial Corporation, Limited," for a small company with a ridiculous capital had been registered as a matter of expediency. The company owned the building in which it was situated and little more, but it served as a cover for everyday purposes. It supplied an office and a repository for the documents of larger concerns, and, by the very publicity it afforded, effectively veiled the private transactions of its select shareholders.

The windows of the office reached to the ground. They were made of three huge sheets of plate-glass set roughly bow-shaped between solid brass pillars. Before them were three screens of large-meshed steel netting, held in their place by pillars of gun-metal.

It was this which inspired the reference to "The Jewel House," for here the resemblance ended. Yet the interior of the front office was remarkable. It was bare of furnishing. A blood-red carpet covered the floor, and in the centre, supported by a square pedestal of granite which ran up from the basement, was a big safe. Apparently, it rested on the floor, but no ordinary floor could support the weight of metal, and the central pedestal had been put in whilst the building was in course of erection.

Nor was this the only remarkable feature of the room.

The walls were completely covered by lengths of mirror, two of which were set at an angle in the far corners of the room. Add six arc lamps depending upon independent supplies, and hung so that their rays fell upon the safe at every aspect and burning day and night, and you have some idea of this unique department which attracted all London and became one of the sights of the metropolis.

Day or night, the passer-by had a full view of the safe, and no man entered that room save King Kerry and the armed guard which watched the cleaners at their work every morning.

Even in the clear light of day it was an impressive sight, and Elsie entered the building a little awe-stricken. She was taken to the back office by a uniformed commissionaire and found the grey-haired young man alone in his office, writing. He jumped up as she came in and pulled forward a luxurious chair.

"Sit down, Miss Marion," he said. "I shall be calling you Elsie soon, because"—he smiled at the little flush that came to her cheek—"in America, why, I guess we're more friendly to our business associates than you are in this country."

He pushed a button and the commissionaire came in.

"Are your two comrades outside?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," said the man.

"Tell them to come in."

A few seconds later the man returned, bringing two other commissionaires. They stood stiffly by the door.

"This is Miss Marion," said King Kerry, and the girl rose.

The men scrutinized her seriously.

"Do you mind standing over by the wall?" asked Kerry.

She obediently walked across the room as Kerry switched on all the lights.

"You will know Miss Marion now," said Kerry, "in whatever light she appears. She is to have access to this office day or night. That is all."

The men saluted and withdrew as Kerry extinguished the electric bulbs.

"I'm sorry to bother you," he said; "but since you are the only other person in the world who will have this privilege, it is necessary that I should be very thorough. These men are in charge of the guards, and one of them is on duty day and night."

She seated herself again with a pleasurable sense of importance.

"May I ask you one question?" she said.

He nodded.

"Why have you chosen me? I am not a proficient secretary, and you know nothing whatever about me. I may be an associate of the worst characters."

He leant back in a padded chair, surveying her quizzically.

"All that I know about you," he said, "is that you are the daughter of the Rev. George Marion, a widower, who died seven years ago and left you little more than would carry you to your aunt in London. That you have an uncle in America, who is raising a large family and innumerable mortgages in the middle west; that you had a brother who died in childhood; and that you have been engaged by three firms—Meddlesohn, of Eastcheap—you left them because you refused to be party to a gross fraud: Highlaw and Sons, of Moorgate Street—which you left because the firm failed; and Tack and Brighten—which you would have left, anyway."

She stared at him in amazement.

"How did you find this out?"

"My dear child," he said, rising and laying a fatherly hand upon her shoulder, "how does one find things out? By asking the people who know. I take few risks; I came down to Southwark to see you, and if possible to speak to you before I engaged you or you knew that I wanted to engage you. Now!"

He returned to his desk briskly.

"This is business. You receive fifteen pounds weekly from me and a bonus at the end of every year. Your duty is to act as my confidante, to write letters—not as I shall dictate them, for I hate dictating —but in the sense of my instructions."

She nodded.

"There is one other thing," he said, and lowered his voice as he leant across the desk. "I want you to remember three words."

She waited, expecting a conventional little motto which pointed out the way of efficiency.

"Those three words," he went on in the same tone, "must never be uttered to a living soul whilst I am alive; must be repeated to nobody but myself."

Elsie felt incapable of being further amazed than she was. The last twenty-four hours had held, so it seemed to her, the very limit of surprises.

"To my partners, to my friends, or to my enemies—and especially to my enemies," he continued with a fleeting smile, "you must never employ them—until I am dead. Then, in the presence of the gentlemen who are connected with this corporation you shall say "—he dropped his voice to a whisper—"you shall say, 'Kingsway needs Paving.'"

"'Kingsway needs Paving,'" she repeated in a whisper.

"Whatever happens do not forget those words," he said gravely. "Repeat them to yourself till you know them as you know your own name."

She nodded again. Bewildered as she was, half inclined to laugh, with the old suspicion as to his sanity recurring, she knew that immense issues hung upon those meaningless words—"Kingsway needs Paving."

The Man Who Bought London

Подняться наверх