Читать книгу The Hand of Power - Edgar Wallace - Страница 10

Table of Contents

THE Proud Sons of Ragusa were celebrating the inauguration of a new lodge, and the opening of a new lodge-room, and Bill Holbrook, standing on the edge of the sidewalk, watched with wonder and amusement the passing of a procession, which contained six brass bands and some fifty silken banners, each representative of a branch lodge except for one, heavily embroidered with bullion, and bearing the inevitable golden argosy that marked in the parade the symbol of the officers of the district lodge.

Behind each great banner, borne by two men, marched the members of the lodge it stood for, respectable, important, and wearing purple scarves about their shoulders.

Fifty lodges were represented—Bill Holbrook counted the banners—the Pride of Kent, the Pride of Hampshire, the Pride of the Five Ports, the Pride of Limehouse...

It was a procession of ordinary people—artisans, factory folk, small shopkeepers, a sprinkling of office men, honest, self-conscious individuals, some wearing that hang-dog expression which comes to the Englishman when he is feeling foolish, a few beaming at the joke of appearing in public wearing purple plush regalia, not a few immensely serious, transfigured by the unaccustomed publicity.

The spectacle was not altogether unexpected by Bill Holbrook. He knew that odd experiences have a trick of duplicating themselves. If he saw an unaccustomed word in a book to-day, he would meet the same word in a newspaper to-morrow. On the Sunday he had met the Ragusans in the flesh—he had been waiting all week to meet them again.

"What have they got to be proud about, anyway?" he asked.

The policeman, by whose side he stood, smiled slowly, but had no very lucid explanation.

"Well—you've seen these societies before... Good Templars and Buffaloes and Sons of the Phoenix and Knights of the Round Table, haven't you? They like it. I'm a member of one myself—as a matter of fact, I'm chief noble of my lodge—Sons of the Phoenix. But these chaps aren't temperance. At the same time it's not a boozing crowd. I thought of joining myself. It's worth while. Costs a pound a year, but there's two Argosies, one in June and one in December, and they're worth fifty thousand pounds each. That's why the order has caught on."

"Fan me or I'll faint!" said Bill. "What is all this stuff about Argosies? I see now! There's a golden ship on every banner. But what do you mean by fifty thousand pounds—a quarter of a million dollars!"

The policeman looked at him suspiciously. He saw a tall, thinnish young man, rather good-looking and untidily dressed. When, later, he moved, he was to discover that the youth wore odd socks. Bill was a careless dresser.

"You're American, aren't you? I thought you was from the bad way you talk English. About these Argosies. You pay one pound a year, and you're insured for a hundred—if you join young enough. Then every half-year there's a drawing. In June there's a first prize of ten thousand and hundreds of others—at Christmas there's a big bonus and only one prize—fifty thousand."

Bill watched the tail of the procession, with its little crowd of small boys bringing up the rear, until it passed from sight, and the delayed crossways traffic was allowed to move.

"That's a new one on me," he said. "I'll have to consult my police adviser."

Again the officer grinned.

"You lodge with Mr. Bullott, don't you, sir?"

"Yes." Holbrook was surprised that his fame extended to the Edgware Road.

"I've seen you go in and out; I used to be on that beat. As a matter of fact, I didn't recognise you till that bird asked me if you had rooms at the inspector's house."

Bill followed the constable's quick sidelong glance. A few feet away from them, gazing after the procession, was a man, who, in ordinary circumstances, would not have attracted his attention. Bill had a practice of dividing people he met casually into classes; one of these he called "the adequately paid," and it was in the last category that he placed the interested spectator.

He was dressed in a well-made tweed suit. He wore a spotless wide-winged collar; his cravat was black, his shoes sensible and solid. The face was thin, almost intellectual. He had a slight red moustache, and on the bridge of his bony nose rested a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles.

"What do you think he is?" asked the policeman, with a superior smile.

"I'll guess," said Bill. "He's a floor manager."

The constable shook his head.

"Wait a minute," said Bill, "I haven't got him high enough. He's a storekeeper—one of the synthetic intelligentsia. He has socialistic tendencies, believes in the land theories of Henry George"

"No, sir," said the policeman triumphantly; "not that I know anything about his the'ries."

"I'll try again," said Bill. "He's a clerk in a Government office, probably holds some good position"

"You're wrong, sir," said the officer, enjoying his mystery.

"Then what is he?"

"He's a burglar."

The policeman made the startling statement with great calm.

"That is Toby Marsh," he went on, before Bill could recover from his shock, "one of the cleverest cracksmen in London—he's only been caught once, and that was by accident."

At that moment the spectacled eyes turned and surveyed the two men in a scrutinising, unabashed stare. In another instant he had resumed his inspection of the procession.

"I'd like to talk to him. Bring him over."

"Me?" said the officer, aghast. "Good heavens! I couldn't do that! Why, he'd tie me up in knots! Ordinary kind of police don't deal with people like that," he explained. "You see, we've got nothing on him, and the plain clothes branch doesn't thank you for interfering with that kind of feller."

At this moment, "that kind of feller" walked away from them, and disappeared in the crowd.

"Besides, you never know whether chaps like that are working for our people or not. Though I wouldn't say Toby was a 'nark'."

"Nark?" said the puzzled Bill. "Oh, you mean a stool pigeon. I get you!"

"All the same," the policeman went on, "a high-class burglar can be very useful to Scotland Yard, and if I started getting fresh with him, the chances are I'd get a rap over the knuckles to-morrow morning."

There was a time when Bill Holbrook would have followed the exclusive Mr. Marsh, and wrung from him a crisp column for the Dispatch-Herald; but journalism belonged to the past. Bill was now a business man, an expert on matters pertaining to publicity; and although his connection with Fleet Street was necessarily unbroken, it was rather as a supplicant for free advertisement than a contributor of news that he appeared.

The initiative in the matter, however, was taken out of his hands. He had said good-night to the policeman, and had turned into Cambridge Terrace, when he saw Toby Marsh a little ahead of him. He was standing with his back to the railings, in the attitude of one who was waiting for somebody, and Bill would have passed him, but suddenly the man moved across the path to intercept him.

"Excuse me, sir."

His tone was that peculiar falsetto, which a certain class regard as an easy advertisement of good-breeding.

"I observed you regarding the rabble, or, as one would put it, the hoi polloi, and possibly you, as a newspaper reporter, are interested in the psychology of the lower orders which makes such exhibitions possible."

Bill was taken aback, both by the elegance of the diction, and the unusual nature of the man's opening.

"The lower orders," Mr. Marsh went on, evidently enjoying the sound of his own voice most thoroughly, "have the instinct of imitation. And when the instinct of imitation coincides with the desire for aggrandisement, the natural consequence is something foolish. Hence the Sons of Ragusa, with their pathetic mysteries, their grips, their password—which, by the way, is 'Drake'—their robes, their cowls, their blue fire initiations, their priors, their grand priors, captains of lodges and orders of the day." Bill grinned.

"You seem to have a close acquaintance with the order."

"All orders are familiar to me," said Mr. Marsh, with a modest and self-deprecating gesture. "But the Twenty-Third Degree of the Sons of Ragusa more especially."

He saw the look of mystification in the other's face, and was smugly gratified.

"With the Twenty-Third Degree of the Proud Sons of Ragusa," he repeated with relish; "and more especially with the Golden Voice of the Absolute!"

For a moment Bill stared at him suspiciously. Was he drunk? Apparently Mr. Marsh read his thoughts.

"I am an abstainer, and a believer in prohibition. When I speak of the Golden Voice of the Absolute, I speak of a tangible, material being, beautiful to the eye, pleasant to the ear—her terrestrial name is Miss Elizabeth Carew!"