Chapter Twenty One.
Shows Mr Statham at Home
Many a man and many a woman, as they passed up Park Lane on motor-’buses, in cabs, or on foot, glanced at the white house of Samuel Statham, and wondered.
The mystery concerning it and its owner always attracted them. Many were the weird stories afloat concerning it, stories greatly akin to those already told in a previous chapter. Men had watched, it was said, and had seen queer goings and comings. But as the matter concerned nobody in particular it merely excited public curiosity.
That Sam Statham was eccentric all the world knew. Society gossips in the papers were fond of referring to the millionaire as “the recluse of Park Lane” when recording some handsome donation to a charitable institution, or expressing a surprise that he was never seen at public functions such as the opening of hospitals or children’s homes which he had himself endowed.
But the word “eccentric” explained it all. As regards the mansion in Park Lane they were always silent, for the elastic law of libel is ever before the eyes of the journalist who deals in tittle-tattle.
Though the stories concerning the millionaire’s residence were curious and sometimes sensational – many of them of course invented – yet colour was certainly lent to them by the fact that the old man saw nobody except Levi and his secretary, and nobody had ever been known to pass that closed door at the head of the staircase.
Anyone, however, catching a glimpse of the interior of the hall when passing, saw old Levi in black, with his strip of spotless shirt-front, and behind, a wide hall with thick Turkey carpet, huge blue antique vases, carved furniture, and several fine pictures, the whole possessing an air of solidity and wealth. Beyond, however, was the Unknown and the Mysterious.
In the clubs and over dinner-tables the mystery of that Park Lane house was often spoken of. Men usually shook their heads and said little, but women expressed their opinion freely, and formed all sorts of wild theories.
Among the men who had always been attracted by the stories afloat were Charlie Rolfe, because of his close association with the old man, and Max Barclay, because of his intimate friendship with Rolfe. The latter had always been full of suspicion. Sam and Levi, master and man, were the only two who knew the truth of what lay behind that locked door. And the servant guarded his master’s secret well. He was janitor there, and no one passed the threshold into old Sam’s library without a very good cause, and without the permission of the master himself.
A thousand times, as Rolfe had gone in and out of the place, he had glanced up the broad, well-carpeted stairs, at the foot of which stood the fine marble Aphrodite, holding the great electrolier, and at the head, to the corner out of sight, was the locked door upon which half London had commented.
Had Samuel Statham thrown open his house only once, and given a reception, all gossip would be allayed. Indeed, as Rolfe sat with his master in the library the morning following Adam’s meeting with Marion, he, without telling Sam the reason, suggested an entertainment in November. He said that Society were wondering he did not seek to make their acquaintance. There were hundreds of people dying to know him.
“Yes,” snapped the old man, glancing around the darkened room, for the morning sun was full upon the house. “I know them. They’d come here, crush and guzzle, eat my dinners, drink my wine, and go away without even remembering my name. Oh! I know what the so-called aristocracy we like, never fear. Most of them live upon people like myself who are vain-glorious enough to be pleased to number the Earl of So-and-So and the Countess of Slush among their personal friends.
“Men with wives can’t help being drawn into it. The womenfolk like to speak of ‘dear Lady Longneck,’ slobber over some old titled hag at parting, or find their names in the ‘Court and Society’ column of the Daily Snivel. It’s their nature to be ambitious; but when a man’s single, like myself, Rolfe, he can please himself. That’s why I shut my door in their faces.”
“Of course, you can afford to,” the secretary replied, leaning both his elbows on the table and looking straight into his master’s face. “Few men could do as you do. It would be against their interests.”
“It may be even against my interests,” the old man said thoughtfully, leaning back in his chair, “for I might get a good deal of fun out of watching them trying to squeeze a little money out of me, or worm from me what men call ‘tips’ regarding investments. Why, my dear Rolfe, once my door is opened to them, my life would no longer be worth living. Instead of one secretary I’d want a dozen, and Levi would be at the door all day long answering callers. Other men who live in this street on either side of me have done it to their cost.”
“I’ve heard it said in the clubs that you, with your vast means and huge interests, owe a duty to Society,” Rolfe remarked.
“I owe no duty to Society,” the old fellow declared angrily. “Society owes nothing to me, and I owe nothing to it. You know, Rolfe, how – well – how I hate women – and I won’t have a pack of chatterboxes about my place. If I was a man with five hundred a year they wouldn’t want to know me.”
“That’s very true,” Rolfe remarked with a slight sigh. “Nowadays, when a man has money he is at once called a gentleman. A lady is the wife of a man with money, whatever may have been her past – or her present.”
The old man laughed.
“And there is the ‘perfect lady,’” he said. “A genus usually associated with the police-court. But you are quite right, Rolfe, nowadays, according to our modern code, a poor man cannot be a gentleman. No, as long as I live, the needy aristocracy which calls itself Society shall never my threshold. I will remain independent of them, for I have no womankind, and no fish to fry. I don’t want a baronetcy, or a peerage. I don’t want shooting, or deer-stalking, or yachting, or hunting, or any of those pastimes. I merely want to be left alone here in peace – if it is possible.” And he drew a long breath as the ugly recollection of the shabby stranger crossed his mind.
Rolfe knew well that the old man’s objections were because he dare not throw open the mansion. Some secret was hidden there which he could not reveal. What was it? Why were those brilliant lights sometimes at night in the upper windows? He had seen them himself sometimes as he passed along near midnight on his way to his chambers in Jermyn Street, and had been sorely puzzled. More than once he had been convinced that somebody lived in the upper floors – somebody who was never seen. Yet if that were so, why should there be such secrecy regarding it. The occupant, whoever it was, could easily vacate the place while a reception was held.
As he sat there listening to the old man’s tirade against the West-End and its ways he felt that there must be some far greater mystery than an unseen tenant.
That old Sam knew quite well the rumour concerning the house, was evident. Keeping secret agents in every capital as he was forced to do – agents, male and female, who knew everything and reported exactly what he wished to know – it was certain that public opinion concerning him was well-known to him. Yet, as in a scandal, the man most concerned is always the last to get wind of it. Perhaps after all he might be in ignorance of what people were saying, although it was hardly credible that Ben, his brother, would not tell him.
For craft and cunning few men in London could compare with Sam Statham, yet at the same time he was just in his judgment and honest in his transactions. The weak and needy he befriended, but woe betide any who endeavoured to mislead him or impose upon his generosity.
More than one man had, by receiving a word of good advice from Sam Statham and the temporary loan of a few thousand as capital, awakened in a week’s time to find himself wealthy. One man in particular, now a well-known baronet, had risen in ten years from being a small draper in Launceston to his present position with an estate in Suffolk and a town house in Green Street, merely by taking Sam Statham’s advice as to certain investments.
It was owing to this fact, and others, that old Sam, as he rose from the table and crossed the room to the window, where he pulled aside the blind to look out upon the sunny roadway, said —
“I myself, Rolfe, have made one or two so-called gentlemen. But,” he added, drawing a deep breath, “let’s put all that aside and get on with the letters. I’m expecting that Scotch friend of yours, the locomotive designer of Glasgow.”
“Oh, Macgregor!” remarked the secretary. “He was most pertinacious the other day.”
“All Scots are,” replied the old man simply. “Let’s get on.” And returning to the table he took up letter after letter and dictated replies in his sharp, snappy way which, to those who did not know him, would have appeared priggish and uncouth.
The reason of Macgregor’s visit to Old Broad Street had caused Rolfe a good deal of curiosity. He recollected how, on the instant his master had read the old engineer’s scribbled lines, his face fell. The visitor was at all events not a welcome one. Yet, on the other hand, he had seen him without delay, and they had been closeted together for quite a long time.
When the bearded Scot left, and he had re-entered the millionaire’s room, two facts struck him as peculiar. One was that a strong smell of burnt paper and a quantity of black tinder in the empty grate showed that some papers had been burned there, while the other was that old Sam was in the act of lighting a cigar, in itself showing a buoyancy of mind.
He never smoked when down at the bank, and very seldom when at home. His cigars, too, were of a cheap quality which even his clerks would be ashamed to offer their friends. Indeed, while all connected with the house in Old Broad Street possessed an air of solid prosperity, the head of the firm was usually of a penurious and hard-up aspect, as though he had a difficulty in making both ends meet. His smart electric brougham he used only once a week to take him to the City and back again. At other times he strolled about the streets so shabby as to pass unnoticed by those desirous of making his acquaintance and worming themselves into his good graces; or else he would idle in the park where he passed for a lounger who, crowded out by reason of his age, was down on his luck.
Samuel Statham loved the Park. Often and often he would get into conversation with the flotsam and jetsam of London life – the unemployed, and the men who, in these days of hustle, alas! find themselves too old at forty. The ne’er-do-wells he knew quite well, and they believed him to be one of themselves. But he was ever on the look-out for a deserving case – the starving, despondent man with wife and children hungry at home. He would draw the man’s story from him, hear his complaint against unfair treatment, listen attentively to his wrongs, and pretending all the time to have suffered in a similar way himself.
Usually the man would, in the end, invite him to the home or the lodging-house where his wife and children were, and then, on ascertaining that the case was genuine, he would suddenly reveal himself as the good Samaritan.
To such men he gave himself out as Mr Jones, agent of a benevolent society which was nameless, and which did its work without advertisement, and extracted a pledge of secrecy. By such means many a dozen honest, hard-working men, who through no fault of their own had been thrown out of employment, had been “put upon their legs” again and gained work, and yet not one of them ever suspected that the shabby, down-at-heel man Jones was actually the millionaire Samuel Statham, who lived in the white house in fall view of the seat whereon they had first met.
Even from Rolfe he sought to conceal this secret philanthropy, yet the young man had guessed something of it. He had more than once caught him talking to strange men whose pinched faces and trim appearance told the truth.
The man whose vast wealth had brought him nothing but isolation and loneliness, delighted in performing these good works, and in rescuing the unfortunate wives and families of the deserving ones who were luckless. He loved to see the brightness overspread those dark, despairing faces, and to hear the heartfelt thanks which he was told to convey to the mythical “society.”
Never but once did he allow a man to suspect that the money he gave came from his own pocket. That single occasion was when, after giving a man whom he believed to be deserving a sovereign, he next evening found him in the park the worse for liquor.
He said nothing that night, but a few days later, when he met him, he gave him a piece of his mind which the plausible good-for-nothing would not quickly forget.
“Such frauds as you,” he had said, “prevent people from assisting the deserving poor. I’ve made inquiry into your story, and found it false from beginning to end. You have no wife, and the four children starving and ill that you described to me do not exist. You live for the most part in the bar of the ‘Star,’ off the Edgware Road, and on the night after I gave you the money you were so drunk that they wouldn’t serve you. Such men like you,” he went on with withering sarcasm, his grey beard bristling as he spoke, and his fist clenched fiercely, “are a disgrace to the human race, for you are a liar, a drunkard, and a blackguard – a man who deserves the death that will, I hope, overtake you – death in the gutter.”
And he turned upon his heel, leaving the accused man standing staring at him open-mouthed, utterly unable to offer a single word in self-defence.
This secret charity was Sam Statham’s only recreation. By it he made many friends whom he had taken out of the slums – friends who were perhaps more devoted and true to him than those to whom he had given financial “tips,” and who had made many thousands thereby. In many a modest home was Mr Jones a welcome guest whenever he called to see how “his friends” were progressing, and many a time had he drunk a humble glass of bitter “sent out” for by his thankful and devoted host who was all unconscious of who his guest really was. The world would have laughed at the idea of a working man standing Samuel Statham a glass of ale.
One case was old Sam’s particular pride. About eighteen months before, in the park one day, he came across a despairing but well-educated, middle-aged man, who at first was not at all communicative, but whose bearing and manner was that of refinement and culture. Three times they met, and it was very evident that the sad-faced man was starving.
At last Sam offered to “stand him” a meal, and over it the man told a pathetic story, how that he was a fully-qualified medical man in practice in York, but owing to his unfortunate habit of drinking he had lost everything, sold his practice, and had been compelled to leave the city. The proceeds of his practice had soon gone in drink, and now, with all the bitter remorse upon him, he and his wife and two small children were faced with starvation. Friends and relations would not assist him because of his intemperance. There was only one way out of it all, he declared – suicide.
Sam had taken him in hand. He had seen the wife and children, and then explained, as usual, that he was Mr Jones. Small sums he first gave them, and finding that his charity was never abused, and that the doctor withstood the temptation to drink, he had gone to an agency, the address of which he had found in the Lancet, and bought a comfortable little practice with a furnished house in West Norwood, where the doctor and his family were now installed and doing well.
In West Norwood to-day that doctor is the most popular and the most sought after. His practice is ever increasing, and already he has nearly repaid the whole of the sum which Mr Jones lent him, and has been compelled to take an assistant.
The doctor is still in ignorance, however, for he has never identified Mr Jones with Statham the millionaire. But was it surprising that at his house no guest was more welcome than the man who had rescued him from ruin and from death?
Truly money, if properly applied, can do much to alleviate the sufferings of the world, and as it is the “root of all evil,” so it is also the root of all good.
Chapter Twenty Two.
Tells of the Three
“Well?”
“Weel?” asked Duncan Macgregor, who was seated in an easy attitude in Sam Statham’s library. At the table sat the millionaire himself, while near by, in the enjoyment of a cigar, sat old Levi. The latter was still in his garb of service, but his attitude was certainly more like that of his master’s intimate friend than that of butler.
It was from his thin lips that the query had escaped in response to a fact which the Scot had emphasised with his hairy fist.
“Well,” exclaimed Statham after a pause, “and what do you suppose should be done, Mr – ”
“Macgregor – still Duncan Macgregor,” exclaimed the bearded man, concluding the millionaire’s sentence. “That’s the verra thing that puzzles me, mon. P’raps we’d best wait a wee bittie an’ see.”
Levi dissented. He knew that whatever his position in that strange household, his master always listened to him and took his advice – sometimes when it involved the risk of many thousands. He was a kind of oracle, for generally when Ben came there to consult his brother upon some important point, the old servant remained in the room to hear the discussion and to give his dry but candid opinion.
“My own opinion is that we should act at once – without fear. The slightest hesitation now will be our undoing, depend upon it,” he said.
“Ah! Mr Levi,” exclaimed the Scot, “I’m a’ways for caution. Hasna’ our ain Bobbie said that facts are chiels that winna ding, and downa be disputed?”
“Yes; but we’ve not yet quite established the facts yet, you see,” Statham said.
“Why, mon, isn’t it as plain as plain can be? What mair d’ye want?”
“A good deal,” Levi chimed in in his squeaky voice. “We can’t act on that. It’s too shadowy altogether.”
“I tell ye it isn’t!” cried Duncan, shaking his clenched fist again. “Mr Statham is in sair peril, I tell ye he is, an’ I’ve proved it.”
“Mr Statham must be allowed to be the best judge of that,” Levi said, placing his hands together, and holding his cigar between his teeth.
“Mr Statham knows me weel. He knows I’d nae tell him what I didn’t ken ma’sel’.”
The great financier rose thoughtfully and stood with his back to the mantelshelf.
“Look here, Macgregor,” he said, fixing his eyes upon the man seated before him. “When you called at the office and was fool enough not to give your proper name you had a difficulty in getting an interview with me. I hadn’t any idea till I received your note that – well, that you were in the land of the living. When we met before it was under different circumstances – very different, weren’t they?” and the millionaire smiled. “Shall I recall to your memory one scene – long ago – a scene that lives in my memory this moment as though the events happened but yesterday. We were both younger, and more active then – you and I – and – ”
“Nae, Mr Statham. We’re better not bearin’ it,” he protested, holding up his hands. “I jalouse what you’re again’ to say.”
“To you, my friend, I owe much,” the old man went on. “The place was in a sun-baked South American city, the time was sunset, fierce and blood-red like the deeds of that never-to-be-forgotten day. There was war – a revolution was in progress, and the Government forces had been that day driven back into the capital followed by us. I remember you, with that great bullet furrow down your cheek and the blood streaming from it as you fought at my side. I see you bear the scar even now.” Then, with a quick movement he pulled up his sleeve and showed on his right forearm a great cicatrice, asking: “Do you remember how I received this?”
“Nae, nae, Mr Statham, enough!” cried the Scot. “Our days of war are long since past. They’ll come again nae mair.”
“You remember how we followed the troops of Hernandez into the capital, shooting and killing as we drove them before us, and how you and I and a few more of the younger bloods made a dash for the Palace to secure the President himself. I recollect the wild excitement of those moments. I was tearing along the street shouting and urging on my men, when of a sudden I found myself surrounded by a dozen soldiers of Hernandez. I fought for life, though well knowing I was lost. As a prisoner I should be tortured, for they had long sworn to serve me as they had served our friends José and Manuel. This recollection flashed across me, and with my back to the wall I fired my pistol full in a man’s face and blew it out of all recognition. A man had raised his rifle and covered me, but next moment I gave him an upward cut with my sword.
“At the same instant I felt a sharp twinge upon my right arm, and my sword dropped from my grasp. I was maimed, and stood there at their mercy. A dark-faced, beetle-browed fellow raised his sabre with a fierce Spanish oath to cut me down, but in the blood-red sunlight another blade flashed high, and the man sank dying in the dust.
“It was you, Macgregor – you alone had come to my aid, and four of my attackers fell beneath your blows in that hand-to-hand struggle as you, with your own body placed before mine, fought on, keeping them back and yet without assistance. Shall I ever forget those moments, or how near both of us were to death? I was already half-fainting, but you shouted to me to keep courage, and in the end we were discovered by our men and saved. If ever a deed deserved the Victoria Cross, yours did. You, Macgregor – as you now call yourself – saved my life.”
“An’ I’m here, Mr Statham, to save it again, if ye’ll only let me,” was the Scot’s dry reply.
“Years have gone since that day,” the millionaire went on, with a distinct catch in his voice. “I lost sight of you soon afterwards, and heard once that you were in Caracas. Then there was no further news of you. We drifted apart – our lives lay in opposite directions. Yet to you – and to you alone – I owe my present life, for were it not for your aid at that moment I should have been put to the torture in that terrible castle where Hernandez did his prisoners to death, and my body given to the rats like others of our friends.”
“Eh, mon, ye really make me blush,” laughed Macgregor. “So please don’t talk of it. That’s all over the noo. Let the past take care of itsel’. We’ve got the present to face.”
“I have never ceased reflecting upon the past,” Sam declared in a rather low and husky voice. “I never dreamed that the man Macgregor, in the employ of the Clyde and Motherwell Works, was the same man to whom I am indebted for my life.”
“Ah! man’s a problem that puzzles the devil hissel’,” laughed Macgregor. “I’d nae ha kenned ye were the Statham I knew out there in the old days till I saw the picture of ye in the Glasgie News one nicht when I bought it at the corner of Polmadie Street on me way hame. An’ there was a biography of ye – which didn’t mention very much. But it was the real Sam Statham – and Sam Statham was my friend of long ago.”
“Most extraordinary!” remarked Levi, who had been smoking quietly and listening to the conversation. “I had so idea of all this!”
“There are many incidents in my career, Levi, of which you are unaware,” remarked his master drily.
“I have no doubt,” retorted the servant in a tone quite as dry as that of his master’s. This was Duncan Macgregor’s first visit to Park Lane, and Levi did not approve of him. He always looked askance at any friend of Mr Samuel’s of the old days. Everybody who had ever known him in the unknown and struggling period, now claimed his acquaintance as his intimate friend, and various and varied were the ruses adopted in order to endeavour to obtain an interview.
He suspected this hairy Scot – whose bravery in his youth had saved Sam’s life – of working for his own ends.
“This is a strange story of yours, Duncan,” remarked the millionaire a few moments later, his eyes fixed upon the seated man – “so strange that I should not believe it, but for one thing.”
“An’ what’s that?”
“Other information in my possession goes to prove that your surmise is actually correct, and that your apprehension has foundation. I know that Adam is in London. I’ve seen him!”
“An’ he’s seen you – eh?” cried Macgregor, starting up in alarm.
“Yes, he’s seen me.”
“Did he speak to ye?”
“No. He watched me through the window from yonder pavement outside.”
A silence fell in that warm room where the blinds were still down to exclude the sun, a silence unbroken save by the buzzing of the flies and the low, solemn ticking of the clock.
At last the Scot spoke.
“He means mischief. Depend on it.”
“I quite believe he does,” Statham admitted.
“That is why we should act at once,” Levi chimed in.
“And perhaps by a premature move spoil the whole of our chance of victory!” remarked the millionaire, very thoughtfully.
“Remember that Adam holds very strong cards in the game,” the butler urged, knocking the ash slowly from his cigar. Surely it was a queer, unusual scene, this conference of three!
“I have suspected something for some time past, Levi,” was his master’s response. “And I took steps to combat my enemies; but, unfortunately, I was not sufficiently wary, and I failed.”
“What, mon!” gasped the man from Glasgow; “ye don’t say ye’re at the mercy of those devils?”
“I tell you, Macgregor, that my position is more insecure than even you believe it to be,” was the response, in a low voice, almost of despair.
Levi and Duncan exchanged glances. The millionaire’s words were somewhat enigmatical, but the truth was apparent. Samuel Statham was in fear of some revelation which could be made by that shabby stranger whom he had seen idling at the Park railings.
“Tell me, Macgregor. Does Adam know you?”
“No.”
“You’ve seen him, and you know him?”
“Perfectly weel. I kept ma eye on him when he didn’t dream that anybody was nigh him.”
“And what you told me in the City you are prepared to stand by?”
The Scot put out his big hands, saying:
“Mr Statham, what I’ve told ye I stick to.”
“Duncan,” said the great man, clasping the hand offered him. “You were my friend once – my best friend – and you will be so again.”
“If ye’ll let me be,” answered the other warmly. Statham could read a man’s innermost character at a glance. He was seldom, if ever, mistaken. He looked into Macgregor’s eyes, and saw truth and friendship there.
As Levi watched the two men his lip curled slightly. He was a cynic, and did not approve of this outburst of sentimentality on the part of his master. Samuel Statham, the man of millions and the controller of colossal interests, should, he declared within himself, be above such an exhibition of his own heart.
“Is it not strange,” remarked Statham, as though speaking to himself, “that you should actually have been engaged in my works without knowing that it was the head of the firm who was indebted to you for his life?”
“Ay, the world’s only a sma’ space, after all,” Duncan replied. “I was apprenticed to the firm, but soon got sick of a humdrum life. So I went out to South America to try ma fortune, an’ we met. After the war I went to Caracas, and then back to Glasgie to the old firm, where I’ve been ever since. I thought that when the new company took the place over I’d be discharged as too old. Indeed, more than once Mr Rolfe has hinted at it.”
“I don’t think you’d need fear that, Duncan. Both you and I recollect scenes set in strong remembrance – scenes that are never to return. I had no idea it was you to whom the creditable work turned out at Glasgow was due until Rolfe told me all about you,” and as he uttered those words a twinge of conscience shot through his mind as he recollected how he had ordered the man to be summarily discharged for daring to seek an interview. And then how, when he had entered his presence, he had handed him something that was far better destroyed. They had indeed destroyed it together.
He saw that Macgregor had no great love for Rolfe, but put it down to the fact that his secretary, being practically in charge of the works, had become out of favour with the men over the question of labour. The Scot had said nothing derogatory regarding Charlie, but merely expressed surprise that he had not been accorded an interview at once. Then he had urged that he had something of importance and of interest to impart.
“Well, you see, Macgregor,” replied the millionaire, half apologetically; “the fact is I have to make it a rule to see nobody. Of course, to old friends, like yourself, I am always accessible, and delighted to have a chat, but if it were known that I received people, I should be besieged here all day long. I make it a rule not to allow anybody here in my house.”
“Why?” asked the Scot, quite unconscious of the gravity of his inquiry. He was in entire ignorance of the strange stories concerning the house wherein he was at that moment. The papers never mentioned them for fear of an action for libel. As far as he had seen there was nothing peculiar or extraordinary about the place. The hall and the library were very handsomely furnished, as befitted the home of one of England’s wealthiest men. The fact that Levi had been called into conference even was not remarkable, for the reason had already been explained to him briefly, in half-a-dozen words.
“But you have your ain circle of good friends here, I suppose?” suggested the Scot, as the great man had not replied to his question.
“No,” replied Statham. “Nobody comes here – nobody enters my door.”
“But why?”
Master and servant exchanged glances. It was a direct question to which it was impossible to give a truthful reply without the revelation of a secret.
And so Samuel Statham lied to his best, humble yet most devoted friend.