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Chapter Thirteen.
Describes the Man from Nowhere
Late that same night, in the small and rather well-furnished dining-room of a flat close to Addison Road station, the beetle-browed man known to some as John Adams and to others as Jean Adam was seated in a comfortable armchair smoking a cigarette.
He was no longer the shabby, half-famished looking stranger who had been watching outside Statham’s house in Park Lane, but rather dandified in his neat dinner jacket, glossy shirt-front, and black tie. Adventurer was written all over his face. He was a man whose whole life history had been a romance and who had knocked about in various odd and out-of-the-way corners of the world. A cosmopolitan to the backbone, he, like his friend Leonard Lyle, whom he was at that moment expecting, hated the trammels of civilised society, and their lives had mostly been spent in places where human life was cheap and where justice was unknown.
Alone in that small room where the dinner-cloth had been removed and a decanter and glasses had been placed by his one elderly serving-woman, who had now gone for the night, he was muttering to himself as he smoked – murmuring incoherent words that sounded much like threats.
It was difficult to recognise in this well-groomed, gentlemanly-looking man, with the diamond in his shirt-front and the sparkling ring upon his finger, the low-looking tramp whose eyes had encountered those of the man whose ruin he now sought to encompass.
In half a dozen capitals of the world he was known as Jean Adam, for he spoke French perfectly, and passed as a French subject, a native of Algiers; but in London, New York, and Montreal he was known as the wandering and adventurous Englishman John Adams.
Whether he was really English was doubtful. True, he spoke English without the slightest trace of accent, yet sometimes in his gesture, when unduly excited, there was unconsciously betrayed his foreign birth.
His French was as perfect as his English. He spoke with an accent of the South, and none ever dreamed that he could at the same time speak the pure, unadulterated Cockney slang.
He had just glanced at his watch, and knit his brows when the electric bell rang, and he rose to admit a short, triangular-faced, queer-looking little old man, whose back was bent and whose body seemed too large for his legs. He, too, was in evening-dress, and carried his overcoat across his arm.
“I began to fear, old chap, that you couldn’t come,” Adams exclaimed, as he hung his friend’s coat in the narrow hall. “You didn’t acknowledge my wire.”
“I couldn’t until too late. I was out,” the other explained, in a tone of apology. “Well,” he asked, with a sigh, as he stretched himself before he seated himself in the proffered chair, “what has happened?”
“A lot, my dear fellow. We shall come out on top yet.”
“Be more explicit. What do you mean?”
“What I say,” was Adams’ response. “I’ve seen old Statham to-day.”
“And he’s seen you – eh?”
“Of course he has. And he’s scared out of his senses – thinks he’s seen a ghost, most likely,” he laughed, in triumph. “But he’ll find I’m much more than a ghost before he’s much older, the canting old blackguard.”
Lyle thought for a second.
“The sight of you has forearmed him! It was rather injudicious just at this moment, wasn’t it?”
“Not at all. I meant to give him a surprise. If I’d have gone up to the house, rung the bell, and asked to see him, I should have been refused. He sees absolutely nobody, for there’s a mystery connected with the house. Nobody has ever been inside.”
“What!” exclaimed the old hunchbacked mining engineer. “That’s interesting! Tell me more about it. Is it like the haunted house in Berkeley Square about which people used to talk so much years ago?”
“I don’t think it’s ever been alleged to be haunted,” responded Adams. “Yet there are several weird and amazing stories told of it, and of the grim shadows which overhang it both night and day.”
“What stories have you heard?” asked his companion, taking a cigarette from the box, for he had suddenly become much interested.
“Well, it is said that the place is the most gorgeously furnished of any house in that select quarter, and that it is full of art treasures, old silver, miniatures, and antique furniture, for old Statham is a well-known collector and is known to have purchased many very fine specimens of antiques during the past few years. They say that, having furnished the place from kitchen to garret in the most costly manner possible, he sought out the old love of his earlier days – a woman who assisted him in the foundation of his fortune, and invited her to inspect the house. They went round it together, and after luncheon he proposed marriage to her. To his chagrin, she declined the honour of becoming the wife of a millionaire.”
“She was a bit of a fool, I should suppose,” remarked the hunchback.
“They were fond enough of each other. She was nearly twenty years his junior, and though they had been separated for a good many years, he was still devoted to her. When she refused to marry him, there was a scene. And at last she was compelled to admit the truth – she was the wife of another! A quarter of an hour later she left the house in tears, and from that moment the beautiful mansion, with the exception of two or three rooms, has been closed. He will allow nobody to pass upstairs, and the place remains the same as on that day when all his hopes of happiness were shattered.”
“But you said there were stories concerning the house,” Lyle remarked, between the whiffs of his cigarette.
“So there are. Both yesterday and to-day I’ve been making inquiries and been told many curious things. A statement, for instance, made to me is to the effect that one night about a month ago the chauffeur of the great Lancashire cotton-spinner living a few doors away was seated on the car at two o’clock in the morning, ready to take two of his master’s guests down to their home near Epsom, when he noticed Statham’s windows all brilliantly lit.
“From the drawing-room above came the sounds of waltz music – a piano excellently played. This struck the man as curious, well knowing the local belief that the upper portion of the house was kept rigorously closed. Yet, from all appearances, the old millionaire was that night entertaining guests, which was further proved when a quarter of an hour later the door opened and old Levi, the man-servant, came forth. As he did so, a four-wheeled cab, which had been waiting opposite, a little further up the road, drew across, and a few moments later both Levi and Statham appeared, struggling with a long, narrow black box, which, with the cabman’s aid, was put on top of the vehicle. The box much resembled a coffin, and seemed unusually heavy.
“So hurried and excited were the men that they took no notice of the motor car, and the cab next moment drove away, the man no doubt having previously received his orders. The music had ceased, and as soon as the cab had departed the lights in the windows were extinguished, and the weird home remained in darkness.”
“Very curious. Looks about as though there had been some foul play, doesn’t it?” Lyle suggested.
“That’s what the chauffeur suspects. I’ve spoken with him myself, and he tells me that the box was so like a coffin that the whole incident held him fascinated,” Adams said. “And, of course, this story getting about, has set other people on the watch. Indeed, only last night a very curious affair occurred. It was witnessed by a man who earns his living washing carriages in the mews close by, and who has for years taken an interest in the mysterious home of Samuel Statham.
“He had been washing carriages till very late, and at about half-past two in the morning was going up Park Lane towards Edgware Road, where he lives, when his attention was drawn to the fact that as he passed Statham’s house the front door was slightly ajar. Somebody was waiting there for the expected arrival of a stranger, and, hearing the carriage washer’s footstep, had opened the door in readiness. There was no light in the hall, and the man’s first suspicion was that of burglars about to leave the place.
“Next instant, however, the reputation for mystery which the place had earned, occurred to him, and he resolved to pass on and watch. This he did, retiring into a doorway a little farther down, and standing in the shadow unobserved he waited.
“Half an hour passed, but nothing unusual occurred, until just after the clock had struck three, a rather tall, thin man passed quietly along. He was in evening-dress, and wore pumps, for his tread was noiseless. The man describes him as an aristocratic-looking person, and evidently a foreigner. At Statham’s door he suddenly halted, looked up and down furtively to satisfy himself that he was not being watched, and then slipped inside.”
“And what then?” inquired Lyle, much interested.
“A very queer circumstance followed,” went on the cosmopolitan. “There was, an hour and a half later, an exact repetition of the scene witnessed by the chauffeur.”
“What! the black trunk?”
“Yes. A cab drove up near to the house, and, at signal from Levi, came up to the kerb. Then the long, heavy box was brought out by the servant and his master, heaved up on to the cab, which drove away in the direction of the Marble Arch.”
“Infernally suspicious,” remarked the hunchback, tossing his cigarette end into the grate. “Didn’t the washer take note of the number of the cab?”
“No. That’s the unfortunate part of it. Apparently he didn’t notice the crawling four-wheeler until he saw Levi come forth and give the signal.”
“And the aristocratic-looking foreigner? Could he recognise him again?”
“He says he could.”
“That was last night – eh?”
“Yes.”
“There may be some police inquiries regarding a missing foreigner,” remarked Lyle, thoughtfully. “If so, his information may be valuable. How did you obtain it?”
“From his own lips.”
“Then we had better wait, and watch to see if anybody is reported missing. Certainly that house is one of mystery.”
“Sam Statham is unscrupulous. I know him to my cost,” Adams remarked.
“And so do I,” Lyle declared. “If what I suspect is true, then we shall make an exposure that will startle and horrify the world.”
“You mean regarding the foreigner of last night?”
“Yes. I have a suspicion that I can establish the identity of the foreigner in question – a man who has to-day been missing?”
Chapter Fourteen.
Reveals a Clever Conspiracy
“And who was he?” asked Adams, quickly.
“For the present that is my own affair,” the hunchback replied. “Suffice it for you to know that we hold Samuel Statham in the hollow of our hand.”
“I don’t know so much about that,” remarked Adams, dubiously. “I thought so until this morning.”
“And why, pray, has your opinion changed?”
“Because when he came a second time to the window and looked out at me, there was a glance of defiance in his eye that I scarcely lie. He’s wealthy and influential – we are not, remember.”
“Knowledge is power. We shall be the victors.”
“You are too sanguine, my dear fellow,” declared the other. “We are angling for big game, and to my idea the bait is not sufficiently attractive.”
“Statham is unscrupulous – so are we. We can prove our story – prove it up to the hilt. Dare he face us? That’s the question.”
“I think he dare,” Adams replied. “You don’t know him as well as I do. His whole future now depends upon his bluff, and he knows it. We can ruin both the house of Statham Brothers and its principal. In the circumstances, it is only natural that he should assume an air of defiance.”
“Which we must combat by firmness. We are associated in this affair, and my advice is not to show any sign of weakness.”
“Exactly. That’s the reason I asked you here to-night, Lyle – to discuss our next step.”
The hunchback was silent and thoughtful for a few moments. Then he said:
“There is but one mode of procedure now, and that is to go to him and tell him our intentions. He’ll be frightened, and the rest will be easy.”
“Sam Statham is not very easily frightened. You wouldn’t be, if you were worth a couple of million pounds.” Adams remarked, with a dubious shake of the head.
“I should be if upon me rested the burden of guilt.”
“Then your suggestion is that I should go and tell him openly my intentions?”
“Decidedly. The more open you are, the greater will be the old man’s terror, and the easier our ultimate task.”
“He’ll refuse to see me.”
“He goes down to the City sometimes. Better call there and present a false card. He won’t care to be faced in the vicinity of his managers and clerks. It will show him from the first that the great home of Statham is tottering.”
“And it shall fall!” declared Adams, with a triumphant chuckle. “We hold the trump cards, it is true. The only matter to be decided is how we shall play them.”
“They must be played very carefully, if we are to win.”
“Win?” echoed the other. “Why, man, we can’t possibly lose.”
“Suppose he died?”
“He won’t die, I’ll take care of that,” said Adams, with a fierce expression upon his somewhat evil countenance. “No; the old blackguard shall live, and his life shall be rendered a hell of terror and remorse. He made my life so bitter that a thousand times I’ve longed for death. He taunted me with my misfortunes, ruined me and laughed in my face, jeered at my unhappiness and flaunted his wealth before me when I was penniless. But through all these years I have kept silence, laughing within myself because of his ignorance that I alone held his secret, and that when I chose I could rise and crush him.
“He had no suspicion of my knowledge until one blazing day in a foreign city I betrayed myself. I was a fool, I know. But very soon afterwards I repaid the error by death. I died and was buried, so that he then believed himself safe, and has remained in self-satisfied security until this morning, when his gaze met mine through the window. I have risen from the dead,” he added, with a short, dry laugh; “risen to avenge myself by his ruin.”
“And his death,” added the hunchback.
“Don’t I tell you he shall not die?” cried Adams. “What satisfaction should I have were he to commit suicide? No; I mean to watch his agony, to terrify him and drive him to an existence constantly fearing exposure and arrest. He shall not enjoy a moment’s peace of mind, but shall be tortured by conscience and driven mad by terror. I will repay his evil actions towards me and mine a hundredfold.”
“How can you prevent him escaping you by suicide?”
“He’ll never do that, for he knows his suicide would mean the ruin of Statham Brothers, and perhaps the ruin of hundreds of families. The canting old hypocrite would rather do anything nowadays than ruin the poor investor.”
“Yet look at his operations in earlier days! Did he not lay the foundation of the house by the exercise of cunning and unscrupulous double-dealing? Was it not mainly by his influence that a great war was forced on, and did he not clear, it is declared, more than half a million by sacrificing the lives of thousands? And he actually has the audacity to dole out sums to charities, and contributions to hospitals and convalescent homes!”
“The world always looks at a man’s present, my dear old chap, never at his past,” responded the hunchback.
“Unfortunately that is so, otherwise the truth would be remembered and the name of Statham held up to scorn and universal disgust. Yet,” Adams went on, “I grant you that he is not much worse than others in the same category. The smug frock coat and light waistcoat of the successful City man so very often conceals a black and ungenerous heart.”
“But if you really make this exposure as you threaten, it will arouse the greatest sensation ever produced in England in modern years,” Lyle remarked, slowly lighting a fresh cigarette.
“I will make it – and more!” he declared, bringing his fist down heavily upon the table. “I have waited all these years for my revenge, and, depend upon it, it will be humiliating and complete.”
For a few moments neither man spoke. At last Lyle said: “I have more than once wondered whether you are not making a mistake in your association with that young man Barclay.”
“Max Barclay is a fool. He doesn’t dream the real game we are playing with him.”
“No. If he did, he wouldn’t have anything to do with us.”
“I suppose he wouldn’t. But the whole thing appears to him such a gilt-edged one that we’ve fascinated him – and he’ll be devilish useful to us in the near future.”
“You’ve inquired about that girl, I suppose?”
“Yes. She’s in a drapery shop – at Cunnington’s, in Oxford Street, and, funnily enough, is sister of old Sam’s secretary.”
“His sister! By Jove! we ought to know her – one of us. She might be able to find out something.”
“No: we must keep away from her at present,” Adams urged. Then, in a curious voice, he added: “We may find it necessary to become her enemy, you know. And if so, she ought not to be personally acquainted with either of us. Do you follow me?”
“You mean that we may find it necessary to secure Max Barclay’s aid at sacrifice of the girl – eh?”
His companion smiled meaningly.
“We must be careful how we use Barclay,” Lyle said. “The young man has his eyes open.”
“I know. I’m well aware of that,” Adams said, quickly. “He will be of the greatest assistance to us.”
“If he has no suspicions.”
“What suspicion can he have?” laughed the other. “All that we’ve told him he believes to be gospel truth. Only the night before last we dined together at Romano’s, and after an hour at the Empire he took me to his club to chat and smoke.”
“He, of course, believes the story of the railway concession to be genuine,” Lyle suggested. “Let me see, the concession is somewhere in the Balkans, isn’t it?”
“Yes; the railroad from Nisch, in Servia, across Northern Albania, to San Giovanni di Medua, on the Adriatic. A grand scheme that’s been talked of for years, and which the Sultan has always prevented by refusing to allow the line to pass through Turkish territory.
“Our story is,” added Adams, “that his Majesty has at last signed an iradé granting permission, and that within a month or so the whole concession will be given over to an English group of whom I am the representative. I saw that the scheme appealed to him from the very first. He recognised that there was money in it, for such a line would tap the whole trade of the Balkans, and by a junction near the Iron Gates of the Danube, take the trade of Roumania, Hungary, and South-Western Russia to the Adriatic instead of as at present into the Black Sea.
“For the past week I’ve met Barclay nearly every day. He suggested that, as the railway would be a matter of millions, he should approach old Sam Statham and ask him to lend us his support.”
“Does he know Statham?”
“Slightly. But I at once declined to allow him to speak about the scheme.”
“Why?”
“Because old Sam, with the aid of his spies and informants in diplomatic circles, could in three days satisfy himself whether our story was true or false. It would have given the whole story away at once. So I made an excuse for continued secrecy.”
“Quite right. We must not court failure by allowing any inquiry to be prematurely made,” said Lyle. “Make the project a secret one, and speak of it with bated breath. Hint at diplomatic difficulties between Turkey and England, if the truth were known.”
“That’s just what I have done, and he’s completely misled. I explained that Germany would try and bring pressure upon the Sultan to withdraw the iradé as soon as it were known that the railway had fallen into British hands. And he believed me implicitly!”
“He had no suspicion of whom you really are?”
“Certainly not. He believes that I’ve never met Statham but that I have the greatest admiration for his financial stability and his excellent personal qualities,” Adams replied: “He knows me as Jean Adam, of Paris, as they do here in these flats – a man who has extensive business relations in the Near East, and therefore well in with the pashas of the Sublime Porte and the officials of the Yildiz. I tell you, Lyle, the young fellow believes in me.”
“Because you’re such a confoundedly clever actor, Adams. You’d deceive the cutest business man in London, with your wonderful documents, your rosy prospectuses, and your tales of fortunes ready to be picked up if only a few thousands are invested. You’ve thoroughly fascinated young Max Barclay, who, believing that you’ve obtained a very valuable concession, is seized with a laudable desire to share the profits and to obtain a lucrative occupation as a director of the company in question.”
“Once he has fallen entirely in our power, the rest will be easy,” answered the adventurer. “I mean to have my revenge, and you receive thirty thousand as your share.”
“But what form is this revenge of yours to take?” the hunchback inquired. “You have never told me that.”
“It is my own affair,” answered Adams, leaning back against the mantelshelf.
“Well, I think between friends there should not be any distrust,” Lyle remarked. “You don’t think I’d give you away, do you? It’s to my interest to assist you and obtain the thirty thousand.”
“And you will, if you stick to me,” Adams answered.
“But I’d like to know your main object.”
“You know that already.”
“But only yesterday you told me that you don’t want a farthing of old Statham’s money.”
“Nor do I. His money has a curse upon it – the money filched from the pockets of widows and orphans, money that has been obtained by fraud and misrepresentation,” cried Adams. “To-day he is respected and lauded on account of his pious air and his philanthropy; yet yesterday he floated rotten concerns and coolly placed hundreds of thousands in his pocket by reason of the glowing promises that he never fulfilled. No!” cried the man, clenching his strong, hard fist; “I don’t want a single penny of his money. You, Lyle, may have what you want of it – thirty thousand to be the minimum.”
“You talk as though you contemplated handling his fortune,” the other remarked, in some surprise.
“When I reveal to him my intentions, his banking account will be at my disposal, depend upon it,” Adams said. “But I don’t want any of his bribes. I shall refuse them. I will have my revenge. It shall be an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. He showed me no mercy – and I will show him none – none. But it is Max Barclay who will assist me towards that end, and the girl at Cunnington’s, Marion Rolfe, who must be made the catspaw.”
Lyle remained thoughtful, his eyes upon the carpet.
“Yes,” he said, slowly, at last. “I quite follow you and divine your intentions. But, remember she’s a woman. Is it just – is it human?”
“Human!” echoed the cosmopolitan, removing his cigarette as he shrugged his shoulders with a nonchalant air. “To me it matters nothing, so long as I attain my object. Surely you are not chicken-hearted enough to be moved by a woman’s tears.”
“I don’t understand you,” his friend declared.
“No; I suppose you don’t,” he answered. “And, to be frank with you, Lyle, I don’t intend at this moment that you shall. My intention is my own affair. I merely foreshadow to you the importation into the affair of a woman who will, through no fault of her own, be compelled to suffer in order to allow me to achieve the object I have in view.”
The hunchback turned slightly towards the curtained window. He moved quickly in order to conceal an expression upon his face, which, had it been detected by his companion, the startling and amazing events recorded in the following chapters would surely never have occurred.
But John Adams, standing there in ignorance, was chuckling over the secret of the terrible triumph that was so very soon to be his – a triumph to be secured by the sacrifice of an honest woman!
