Читать книгу The Hand of Power - Edgar Wallace - Страница 13

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"NO, I'm not drunk, if that is what you mean," said Bill without resentment. "I'm talking about a real policeman, though I admit that there is something very unreal about him. I've seen Lowther of the Dispatch-Herald, and he's agreed to give me the job."

Mr. Pawter leant back with an air of patient resignation.

"There are such things as contracts," he said gently, "such words as obligations, which probably do not appear in your bright lexicon. You are perfectly serious?"

Bill nodded.

"Then there is nothing more to be said. It is such a novel experience to find you serious about anything that I am enjoying an unusual sensation. I shall miss you, in the same sense that a flagellant misses a whip that is mislaid. You're a queer, unscrupulous lad, and I like you for it. You keep me from being respectable."

"Let us skip the badinage and come to cases," said Bill. "You owe me a month's salary."

Mr. Pawter sighed, took a cheque-book from his drawer, and wrote laboriously.

"Your job is open when you like to come back to it," he said casually, "though the thought of the way you handle this business keeps me awake at night. What is the game, William—seriously?"

"I'll tell you," said Bill, and sat down.

For a quarter of an hour Mr. Pawter listened to a series of suspicions, and, when his assistant had finished:

"Very sensational," he said, disparagingly. "It's queer how the merest hint of crime arouses your imagination, which, in the operations of this business is so conspicuously dormant. By the way, did you see Mr. Stone?"

"Yes, I've got another interview with him to-day. I like his majesty rather much. He's a good, straight, honest citizen, deficient in only one respect—he seemed to think there was something in your advertising proposition."

"Naturally," murmured Mr. Pawter. "Fix that before you leave us, William, and, for the first time since you have been working with me, I shall feel that your salary hasn't been wrung from the firm by a confidence trick."

Mr. Stone was not living at an hotel; he had taken a furnished flat in Albermarle Street for the season, and it was there that Bill had found him on the Monday morning. He was a tall, slight man, with the face of one who lived in the open. His hair was almost white; the thin face heavily lined; but there was a sparkle of humour which Bill had noticed was almost inseparable from the eyes of those giants of industry, who are sometimes labelled "captains," and more often "kings."

His English valet admitted the visitor, and took him straight into the drawing-room, which had been converted into something which was half office and half lounge.

"Come along in, Mr. Holbrook," said Stone. "You're staying to lunch?"

"Yes."

"I have invited my brother, but I very much doubt if he'll come." He laughed softly. "You're a newspaper man, aren't you? Or you were before you took up advertising?" and, when Bill nodded: "I was certain of that. One can't mistake men of your profession; there is something about them that is characteristic. English or American, they're all the same. But you're American?"

"I have that distinction," said Bill. "Yes, Mr. Stone, I was a newspaper man, and, what is more, I am a newspaper man again. In fact, you're the last client of Pawter's I shall see for a very long time."

"Going back, eh?" The keen-eyed man nodded. "You fellows can never keep away from ink. I suppose you're just aching for somebody to discover a dismembered body in the river, or maybe you'd prefer something with poison in it?" He went on abruptly to the business in hand.

"This proposition of Pawter's appeals to me. There has never been a selling campaign for lumber in this country, and yet you're using it all the time. Most of it comes from Norway and Scandinavia. I don't see why we shouldn't have a bigger share of the market."

He talked wood for the best part of an hour, kept his listener working on his amendments to Pawter's scheme, and as suddenly as he began, he stopped and looked at his watch.

"That fellow won't be here," he said. "It is ten minutes after one, and though he has many drawbacks, he has one virtue—punctuality."

"Does your brother live here?"

The other nodded.

"Yes, he lives here," he said shortly. "I haven't seen him in ten years, though I hear from him occasionally."

"You have been in London before, Mr. Stone?" asked Bill, as he unfolded his serviette.

"Yes, I know the country rather well, though I haven't been here since—well, since the last time I met my brother, and then I was only in England from Wednesday to Saturday."

"Do you like London?"

"No," was the immediate answer. "That is hardly a fair thing to say, because as a capital I like it immensely. It is a city of comfort and kindness; although the English people are a little thick-headed and a little priggish, behind all the disagreeable facets of their nature there is a large charity and a courtesy beyond the understanding of most folks who have only a superficial acquaintance with them. Leiff would be an Englishman—I am talking about my brother—if he were anything!" He smiled faintly. "There you have an instance of a genius on the wrong track. As a newspaper man you must have met them a score of times in the criminal courts—oh no, Leiff isn't a criminal! He has great gifts, but he uses them queerly. His life is rather like one of those rivers that run into the desert and are swallowed up in the unproductive sand. He would have made a good churchman; equally he would have been a great historian. He has just that touch of romantic medievalism, which produces fascinating and inaccurate histories!"

He stared out of the window absently, and bit his lip. "Yes, I know England," he said, speaking half to himself. "I sometimes wish I'd never seen the country, never put my foot upon its shores, and sometimes I'm on my knees in gratitude that fate led me to this land."

He caught Bill's fascinated eyes and laughed.

"You would like Leiff—he is one of those charming idealists that newspaper men find so refreshing and so rare. If he has any mean qualities, it is that touch of the theatrical, which you see in the Sons of Ragusa"

"The Sons of Ragusa!" gasped Bill. "What has your brother to do with that?"

"He founded the order," said Mr. Stone, his eyes twinkling at the effect he had produced upon his guest.

"Fifteen to twenty years ago Leiff had his great uplift scheme, and laid down the plans for his society. I tell you, that man is a natural born organiser. In a business man's office he wouldn't be worth two cents a month. But give him something bizarre, something fantastical, something that gives him an opportunity of introducing the atmosphere of the middle ages, and Leiff will work twenty-three hours out of the twenty-four, and spend the other hour thinking. He tried to start a branch of the society on the other side, but it didn't work. Maybe our people aren't gamblers, for a gamble is at the bottom of the Ragusans' popularity. That annual, or semi-annual, bonus of his was the inspiration of a genius. It got people interested in his society who never would have dreamt of joining. He brought in every class from the highest to the lowest, and, incidentally, got round the anti-gambling laws of England so effectively that your Government—"

"Not my Government," protested Bill.

"Well, the Government of England have never been able to take action against him. Nobody knows how the fortunate recipients of the argosies are chosen. If there is a lottery, nobody has seen the lottery drawn, and no announcement has ever been made that it has been drawn. Twice a year some lucky people receive a bald intimation that their number has received a huge prize. The process of selection is not known, and by the rules of the Proud Sons of Ragusa (I'm not so sure it isn't part of their oath) the method of choice is not even discussed. There is no doubt about the bona fides of the members who have benefited. But how or why the luck should come to them is not explained."

Again he was looking out of the window, deep in thought. "A membership of four hundred thousand," he said, and his lips clicked impatiently. "What a selling organisation!" After that the talk turned to home politics, to the depredations of the cotton boll, and to other matters of peculiar interest to a Southerner. Lambert Stone was a Virginian, and although the greater part of his life had been spent in the western states, his heart was on the right side of the Potomac, and Roanoke was home to him.

Bill Holbrook went back to his office, delivered the fruits of his discussion (with a great deal of self-commendation, coldly received) and hurried back to his lodgings to square up some work that he had taken home to finish. He had forgotten his key, and when he knocked the door was opened by Inspector Bullott, and on the police officer's face was an expression which Bill had never seen before. "Hullo!" he said in surprise. "You're home early?"

"I've left the office for good, I hope," said Bullott solemnly. "The chief has given me a roving commission, and I'm not going back to that darned bureau until I can wear a police uniform without blushing."

Bill held out his hand.

"Brother," he said, "a new life has dawned for both of us. Bring up a bottle of beer, and let's talk murder!"