Arnold Bennett

“ We do not desire to dismiss Mr. Craig without a reason. Such a course would be unfair—and unprofitable.’
‘May I define your position thus?’ said Redgrave. ‘You do not precisely fear, but you perceive the possibility of, some scandal, some revelations, which might harm the general reputation of the bank. And therefore you wish to know, first, why Mr. Craig runs about Watling Street so much on a motor-car; second, why, being possessed of a hundred thousand pounds, he still cares to work for you; and third, why this Featherstone killed himself.’
‘Just so,’ said Simon Lock, pleased. ”

“ It is astonishing how long a falsehood, an idle rumour, will survive and flourish.’
‘There is no falsehood, no idle rumour,’ said Juana coldly; ‘and I think it proper that Mr. Redgrave should know all that I know.’
‘It will make no difference whatever to me,’ said Richard, ‘whose daughter Teresa may be. ‘It is herself, and not her ancestors, that I shall have the honour of marrying.’
‘Still,’ said Juana, ‘do you not think that you ought to know Teresa’s history?’
‘Decidedly,’ said Richard. ”

“ Before Richard could do anything, Mrs. Bridget, that gaunt and powerful creature, had picked up the little man, and by great effort carried him away again. The people downstairs saw no more of him. Mrs. Bridget had at last made up her mind to take him firmly in hand.
Richard was startled by a light touch on his shoulder, and he was still more startled when he caught the horror-struck face of Juana—the staring eyes, the drawn mouth.
‘Tell me,’ she said, her finger still on his shoulder—‘tell me—I cannot trust him—has Mr. Featherstone committed suicide? ”

“ At length the cortège—it had all the solemnity of a funeral pageant—passed safely into the field and out of Richard’s sight towards the highroad. He heard the spit, spit of the petrol-engine of the motor-car, now able to move of itself on the easy gradient, and simultaneously a startling snort and roar from one of the elephants. It occurred to him to hope that the leviathan had not taken it into his gigantic head to wreck the machine. The notion was amusing, and he laughed when he thought how frail a thing a motor-car would prove before the attack of an elephant’s trunk. ”

“ That evening Richard strolled up the Edgware Road to Kilburn, and looked at the exterior of the Kilburn branch of the British and Scottish. It presented no feature in the least extraordinary. Richard was less interested in the bank than in the road, the magnificent artery which stretches, almost in a straight line, from the Marble Arch to Chester. Truly the Roman builders of that road had a glorious disregard of everything save direction. Up hill and down dale the mighty Watling Street travels, but it never deviates. ”

“ I read in a famous book the other day,’ she went on, ‘these words: “A murderer is less loathsome to us than a spy. The murderer may have acted on a sudden mad impulse; he may be penitent and amend; but a spy is always a spy, night and day, in bed, at table, as he walks abroad; his vileness pervades every moment of his life.”’
‘Do you mean to insinuate,’ said Richard, forced to defend himself, ‘that I am a professional spy?’
‘I not only mean to insinuate it, I mean to assert it,’ she announced loftily, and then continued more quickly: ‘Mr. Redgrave, why did you come to spy on us? ”

“ As for Richard, he, too, was happy in the betrothal, but his experience of the world—a thousandfold greater than Teresa’s—was responsible for forebodings that filled him with apprehension. He could not but feel that disaster—perhaps immediate disaster—waited upon the schemes of Raphael Craig, those schemes of whose success the old man was so proudly confident Richard guessed, naturally, that Raphael Craig was waging war on Simon Lock, and his common-sense predicted with assurance that in this struggle of the weak against the strong the strong would crush and the weak would be crushed. ”

“ Richard hesitated whether to return and examine the chalk-pit or to keep in touch with the lady. What any creature—especially a woman, and a young woman—could be doing with a motor-car in a chalk-pit in the middle of the night passed his wit to conceive. Nor could he imagine how any sane driver of a motor-car could take his car down such a steep slope as that cart-track with the least hope of getting it up again without the assistance of an elephant, or at least a team of horses. She must surely have been urged by the very strongest reasons to descend into the pit. ”

“ It is too sacred a thing. You do not know what my scheme means to me; you cannot guess all that is involved in it. I can conceive that you might even laugh at my scheme—you who do not yet know what life is and what life means.’
Raphael Craig resumed with dignity his seat on the sofa. Richard was impressed by this exhibition of profound feeling on the part of the old man. He was inclined to admit, privately, that perhaps the old man was right—perhaps he did not know what life was and what life meant; perhaps there were things in life deeper, more terrible, than he had ever suspected. ”

“ Redgrave will be your husband, Teresa.’
‘Father!’
Richard tried to think of something suitable to such an extraordinary occasion, but could not.
‘You have hopelessly compromised yourself with him, and he shall marry you.’
‘Never!’ said Teresa, with every nerve tingling with a girl’s pride. ‘I will die first!’
‘Very well,’ said Mr. Craig, with frightful calmness, ‘you will die, Teresa.’
His lips were white, and his eyes blazed as he opened the clock-case and took there from a revolver. ”

“ CHAPTER II—THE CIRCUS A week later—and in the meantime he had been far from idle—Richard Redgrave arrived in Dunstable. It was a warm, sunshiny, sleepy day, such as suited that sleepy town, and showed off its fine old church and fine old houses to perfection. There is no theatre in Dunstable, no concert-hall, and nothing ever excites this staid borough save a Parliamentary election or the biennial visit of Bosco’s Circus. ”

“ Richard wondered at its promptness in this happy-go-lucky household, but when he saw the face of the stern old woman named Bridget he ceased to wonder. Bridget was evidently a continual fount of order and exactitude. Whatever others did or failed to do, she could be relied upon to keep time.
Mr. Raphael Craig came out of the room into which he had vanished six hours earlier. He kissed Teresa, and shook Richard’s hand with equal gravity. In the morning light his massive head looked positively noble, Richard thought. The bank manager had the air of a great poet or a great scientist. ”

“ In the presence of the silver I exist solely for it, and can think of nothing else.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Richard dispassionately, ‘I was told in the village to-day that you paid for everything in silver. If you are so attached to silver, how can you bring yourself to part with it? Why not pay in gold?’
‘Because,’ Raphael replied, ‘I never handle gold save in my professional capacity as bank manager. I take my salary in silver. I cannot help it. The weight frequently proves a difficulty, but I cannot help it. Silver I must have. It is in my blood, the desire for silver. ”

“ Conversation, led judicially by the host himself, was kept up without a break, but Simon Lock distinctly proved that the social arts were not his forte. The girls talked timidly, like school misses on their best behaviour, while Richard’s pose and Richard’s words were governed by more than his characteristic caution. Only Raphael Craig seemed at ease, and the old man appeared to take a ferocious but restrained delight in the unnatural atmosphere which he had created. ”

“ The car climbed over the hill on which stands the town of St. Albans, and then slipped easily down towards Redbourne and the twelve miles of lonely and straight Watling Street that separates St. Albans from Dunstable. On this interminable and monotonous stretch of road there are only two villages; mile succeeds mile with a sort of dogged persistency, and the nocturnal traveller becomes, as it were, hypnotized by the ribbon-like highway that stretches eternally in front of him and behind him. ”

“ But that night, as soon as I saw you behind me in the shed, the truth burst upon me. It was that, more than anything else, that caused me to faint. Why did you do it, Mr. Redgrave? My father liked you; I—I—I——’ She stopped for a moment. ‘Surely a man of your talents could have found a profession more honourable than that of a spy?’
She looked at him, less angry than reproachful.
‘I am a private detective,’ said Richard sullenly, ‘not a spy. My business is perfectly respectable.’
‘Why trouble to play with words?’ she exclaimed impatiently. ‘We took you for a gentleman. ”

“ The last of my silver is disposed of—safely negotiated. Go into my sheds now, and you will discover—nothing. My machinery is destroyed; all evidence is annihilated. For twenty years I have been crossing an abyss by means of a tight-rope; at any moment I might have been precipitated into the gulf. But at last I am on firm ground once more. It is the Other, now, who will shortly be plunged into the abyss.’
‘The Other!’ Richard repeated, struck by the strange and mordant accent with which Raphael Craig had pronounced that word. ”

“ Richard Redgrave stepped that way, and presently found himself in front of a mahogany door, on which was painted the legend, ‘Directors’ Parlour’—not ‘Board Room,’ but ‘Directors’ Parlour.’ The British and Scottish was not an ancient corporation with a century or two of traditions; it was merely a joint-stock company some thirty years of age. But it had prospered exceedingly, and the directors, especially Mr. Simon Lock, liked to seem quaint and old-fashioned in trifles. Such harmless affectations helped to impress customers and to increase business. ”

“ If he lied, he is the finest actor I ever saw.’
‘Listen,’ said Nolan. ‘Does this tale of Craig’s explain his daughter’s visit to Bosco’s circus and her chat with Juana, and her unblushing fibs to you afterwards?’
‘How did you hear about that?’ questioned Richard savagely.
He scarcely liked Nolan’s curt language in regard to Teresa.
‘I did hear about it,’ said Nolan; ‘let that suffice. And listen further. I will make you a present of a fact—an absolutely indisputable fact—which I have discovered: Raphael Craig never had an uncle. His father was an only son. ”

“ Speeding through the country lanes, with this beautiful girl by his side, Richard was conscious of acute happiness. He said to himself that he had never been so happy in the whole of his life. He wished that he could forget the scene in the chalk-pit, the mysterious crash, Teresa’s lies, the suicide of Featherstone, and every other suspicious circumstance. He wished he could forget Mr. Simon Lock and his own mission. ”

“ With painful clearness Richard now perceived that Simon Lock was, in fact, fighting for all that he held most dear—perhaps for his very life and liberty, in addition to the whole of his fortune, for Richard knew that when these colossal financiers do happen to topple over into ruin the subsequent investigation of their affairs often leads to criminal prosecution, a process disagreeable to the financier, but pleasant enough to the public. ”

“ Lord Dolmer had discreetly remained a bachelor, and, in the common phrase, ‘he did himself uncommonly well.’ He had a suite of finely-furnished rooms in Half-Moon Street, and his domestic staff there consisted of a valet, who was also butler and confidential factotum; a boy, who fulfilled the functions of a ‘tiger,’ and employed his leisure hours in not cleaning knives and boots; a housekeeper, who wore black silk and guarded the secret of her age; and two women servants. It was the valet who answered to Richard’s masterful ring; the valet’s name was Simpkin. ”

“ Puddephatt. ‘But everyone doesn’t pay all their bills in new silver same as the Craigs.’
‘They pay for everything in new silver, do they?’ said Richard.
‘That they do, sir. I sold ’em a couple of Irish mares when they first come to the Queen’s Farm. Dashed if I didn’t have to take the money away in my dog-cart!’
‘But is it not the fact that an uncle of Mr. Craig’s died a couple of years ago and left him a large fortune in silver—an old crank, wasn’t he?’
‘So people say,’ said Mr. Puddephatt sharply, as if to intimate that people would say anything. ”

“ Useless for Raphael Craig to pretend that he and Teresa had been engaged in some perfectly usual and common-place task. Useless for Richard, notwithstanding his lame explanation, to pretend that he had not been spying. The heaps of silver made all parties excessively self-conscious, and when you are self-conscious you can never say the right thing in the right manner. ”

“ Raphael Craig went on, looking at Richard: ‘These great financiers, Redgrave—you see they are not so great after all. The genius of Simon Lock in juggling with other people’s money is supposed to be transcendent, yet how easily I have juggled with his! It is not more than three months ago that I first saw my opportunity of working on a big scale. I obtained information about the probable tactics of the people in charge of Princesse shares, and I took my measures accordingly. By the way, it is surprising the number of people in the City who were delighted to assist me in ruining Simon Lock. ”

“ As Richard gazed at that article of furniture and listened to the busy scratching of pens, he saw, with the prophetic vision characteristic of all men who are born to success, that a crisis in his life was at hand. He had steadily risen throughout his brief life, but he had never before risen so high as a bank parlour, and the parlour of such a bank! His history, though a short one, was curious. He came to London from Westmoreland at the age of nineteen as a clerk in the Customs. ”

“ It was his habit to repeat the exact words of an interlocutor before giving a reply. ‘No, thanks,’ said he. ‘I’m walking to Dunstable Station for exercise.’
‘What are you going to Dunstable Station for?’ asked Richard.
‘I’m for Lunnon—horse sale at the Elephant and Castle. Perhaps you know the Elephant and Castle, sir?’
‘I’ll give you a lift to London, if you like,’ said Richard, seizing the chance of companionship, of which he was badly in need. ‘We shall get there quite as soon as your train.’
Mr. Puddephatt eyed the car suspiciously. He had no sympathy with motor-cars. ”

“ Bah! it was his trade to be a spy, for what other term could be employed in describing a private inquiry agent? And as for Teresa’s innocence, probably she was not so innocent after all. The entire household was decidedly queer, unusual, disconcerting. It decidedly held a secret, and it was the business of him, Richard Redgrave, specialist, to unearth that secret. Simon Lock was one of the smartest men in England, and his doubts as to the bona fides of Mr. Raphael Craig seemed in a fair way to be soon justified. ‘To work, then,’ said Richard resolutely. ”