The Man Who Bought London Read Online

He would like to get even with the man who had struck him—but there were risks.

    "You made a mistake, didn't you?"

    The beggar turned with a snarl.

    At his elbow stood Hermann Zeberlieff, King Kerry's shadower, who had been an interested spectator of all that had happened.

    "You mind your own business!" growled the beggar, and would have slouched on his way.

    "Wait a moment!" The young man stepped in his path. His hand went into his pocket, and when he withdrew it he had a little handful of gold and silver. He shook it; it jingled musically.

    "What would you do for a tenner?" he asked.

    The man's wolf eyes were glued to the money.

    "Anything," he whispered, "anything, bar murder."

    "What would you do for fifty?" asked the young man.

    "I'd—I'd do most anything," croaked the tramp hoarsely.

    "For five hundred and a free passage to Australia?" suggested the young man, and his piercing eyes were fixed on the beggar.

    "Anything—anything!" almost howled the man.

    The young man nodded.

    "Follow me," he said, "on the other side of the road."

    They had not been gone more than ten minutes when two men came briskly from the direction of Westminster. They stopped every now and again to flash the light of an electric lamp upon the human wreckage which lolled in every conceivable attitude of slumber upon the seats of the Embankment. Nor were they content with this, for they scrutinized every passer-by—very few at this hour in the morning.

    They met a leisurely gentleman strolling toward them, and put a question to him.

    "Yes," said he, "curiously enough I have just spoken with him—a man of medium height, who spoke with a queer accent. I guess you think I speak with a queer accent too," he smiled, "but this was a provincial, I reckon."

    "That's the man, inspector," said one of the two turning to the other. "Did he have a trick when speaking of putting his head on one side?"

    The gentleman nodded.

    "Might I ask if he is wanted—I gather that you are police officers?"

    The man addressed hesitated and looked to his superior.

    "Yes, sir," said the inspector. "There's no harm in telling you that his name is Horace Baggin, and he's wanted for murder—killed a warder of Devizes Gaol and escaped whilst serving the first portion of a lifer for manslaughter. We had word that he's been seen about here."

    They passed on with a salute, and King Kerry, for it was he, continued his stroll thoughtfully.

    "What a man for Hermann Zeberlieff to find?" he thought, and it was a coincidence that at that precise moment the effeminate-looking Zeberlieff was entertaining an unsavoury tramp in his Park Lane study, plying him with a particularly villainous kind of vodka; and the tramp, with his bearded head on one side as he listened, was learning more about the pernicious ways of American millionaires than he had ever dreamt.

    "Off the earth fellers like that ought to be," he said thickly. "Give me a chance—hit me on the jaw, he did, the swine—I'll millionaire him!"

    "Have another drink," said Zeberlieff.

    The "tube" lift was crowded, and Elsie Marion, with an apprehensive glance at the clock, rapidly weighed in her mind whether it would be best to wait for the next lift and risk the censure of Mr. Tack or whether she should squeeze in before the great sliding doors clanged together. She hated lifts, and most of all she hated crowded lifts. Whilst she hesitated the doors rolled together with a "Next lift, please!"

    She stared at the door blankly, annoyed at her own folly. This was the morning of all mornings when she wished to be punctual.

    Tack had been mildly grieved by her innumerable failings, and had nagged her persistently for the greater part of the week. She was unpunctual, she was untidy, she was slack to a criminal extent for a lady cashier whose efficiency is reckoned by the qualities which, as Tack insisted, she did not possess.

    The night before he had assembled the cash girls and had solemnly warned them that he wished to see them in their places at nine o'clock sharp. Not, he was at trouble to explain, at nine-ten, or at nine-five, not even at nine-one—but as the clock in the tower above Tack and Brighton's magnificent establishment chimed the preliminary quarters before booming out the precise information that nine o'clock had indeed arrived, he wished every lady to be in her place.

    There had been stirring times at Tack and Brighton's during the past three months. An unaccountable spirit of generosity had been evinced by the proprietors—but it had been exercised towards the public rather than in favour of the unfortunate employees. The most extraordinary reductions in the sale price of their goods and the most cheeseparing curtailments of selling cost had resulted—so traitorous members of the counting-house staff said secretly—in a vastly increased turnover and, in some mysterious fashion, in vastly increased profits.

    Some hinted that those profits were entirely fictitious, but that were slander only to be hinted at, for why should Tack and Brighten, a private company with no shareholders to please or pain, go out of their way to fake margins? For the moment, the stability of the firm was a minor consideration.

    It wanted seven minutes to nine, and here was Elsie Marion at Westminster Bridge Road Tube Station, and Tack and Brighton's Oxford Street premises exactly twelve minutes away. She shrugged her pretty shoulders. One might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, she thought. But she was angry with herself at her own stupidity. The next lift would be as crowded—she was left in no doubt as to that, for it was full as soon as the doors were open—and she might have saved three precious minutes.

    She was crowded to the side of the lift and was thankful that the unsavoury and often uncleanly patrons of the line at this hour in the morning were separated from her by a tall man who stood immediately before her.

    He was bareheaded, and his grey hair was neatly brushed and pomaded. His high forehead, clean-cut aquiline nose and firm chin, gave him an air of refinement and suggested breed. His eyes were blue and deep-set, his lips a trifle thin, and his cheek-bones, without being prominent, were noticeable on his sun-tanned face. All this she took in in one idle glance. She wondered who he was, and for what reason he was a traveller so early in the morning. He was well-dressed, and a single black pearl in his cravat was suggestive of wealth. His hat he held between his two hands across his breast. He was an American, she gathered, because Americans invariably removed their hats in elevators when women were present.

    The lift sank downward to the platform sixty feet below, and as it did she heard the faint sound of a "ting," which told her she had missed a train. That would mean another three minutes' wait.