The Pauper of Park Lane

“You have!” gasped the young man eagerly. “What?” The other knit his brows, and was for a moment silent.

“Something – something!” he said, “that is astounding. I – I cannot give it credence. It is all too amazing – too tragic – too utterly incomprehensible.”

Chapter Forty Three.

The Lost Beloved

Weeks had dragged by. To Max Barclay they had been weeks of keen anxiety and unceasing search to discover traces of his lost beloved.

Once, and only once, had he seen Jean Adam, against whom Sam Statham had warned him. He had met the man of brilliant financial ideas by appointment at lunch at the Savoy, and had told him plainly that he had reconsidered the whole matter of the Turkish concession, and had decided to have nothing to do with it.

His excuse was lack of funds at that moment. To the old millionaire he owed a good deal for giving him the “tip” regarding the plausible Anglo-Frenchman. Adam, alias Adams, received Max’s decision without the alteration of a muscle of his face. He was a perfect actor, and betrayed no sign of surprise or of chagrin.

“Well, my dear fellow,” he remarked, raising his glass of Brauneberger and contemplating it before placing it to his lips; “you’re losing the chance of a lifetime. If Baron Hirsch had been alive he wouldn’t have allowed such a thing to slip. When old Statham knows of it he’ll move heaven and earth to come in.”

Max was silent. He did not allow his companion to know that Statham had been responsible for his refusal to join in the project.

“I’m sorry, too,” he said. “But just now I’m rather pressed. I was hard hit last week over those Siberians.”

“But the money required is a mere bagatelle. I have mine ready.”

“I regret,” answered Max, “but my decision is final.”

“Very well, my dear fellow,” replied Adam lightly. “I don’t want to persuade you. There are a thousand men in the City who’ll be ready to put up money to-morrow morning.”

And the pair finished their luncheon and parted, Adam, of course, entirely unsuspicious of the part Statham had played in upsetting his deeply-laid plans.

To every address which Marion’s brother had furnished he had gone at post-haste, only to draw blank every time. Charlie had, at Statham’s instructions, gone first to Constantinople, then to Odessa and Batoum, after which he had returned direct to London.

In Odessa he had been met by a special messenger from the London office bearing a number of documents, and his business in that city had occupied him nearly a fortnight. Therefore it was early in October when, arriving by the evening train at Charing Cross from Paris, he took a cab straight to Park Lane.

In greeting him, old Sam was rather curious in his manner, he thought. There was a lack of cordiality. Usually, when he came off a long journey, the old fellow ordered Levi to bring the decanter of whisky and a syphon. But on this occasion the head of the great financial house merely sat in his chair at his desk and heard his secretary’s report without even suggesting that he might be fagged by his rush across Europe.

Rolfe related, briefly and plainly, the various points upon which he had failed, and those upon which he had been successful. Some of his decisions had brought many thousands of pounds into the already overflowing coffers of Statham Brothers, and yet the old man made no sign. He heard all without any comment save now and then a grunt of satisfaction.

The younger man could not disguise from himself the fact that the millionaire was not himself. His face was paler and more transparent, while the green-shaded electric lamp shed upon it a hue that was unreal and ghastly. Old Levi, too, as he flitted in and out like a white-breasted shadow, seemed to regard him with unusual suspicion and distrust.

What could it all mean?

He looked from one to the other in puzzled surprise.

He was unaware that only on the previous night a thin, dark, bearded man had been ushered into that very room and had sat for two hours with the great financier. His countenance, his gestures, the cut of his clothes, all showed plainly that he was not English. Besides, the consultation was in French, a language which old Sam knew fairly well.

That man was a spy, and he was from Belgrade.

From the moment Charlie Rolfe had descended at the station to the moment he had left it, secret observation had been kept upon his movements. And to furnish the report to his master the spy had travelled from Servia to London. Samuel Statham trusted nobody. Even his most confidential assistant was spied upon, and his own reports compared with those of a spy’s.

More than once, as Charlie Rolfe, all unconscious of the surveillance upon him, related what had occurred in King Peter’s capital, the old man smiled – in disbelief. This the younger man could not understand. He was in ignorance of the great conspiracy in progress, or of the millionaire’s ulterior motives. The old man’s face was sphinx-like, as it ever was – a countenance in which no single trait was visible, neither was there human joy or human sympathy. It was the face of a statue – the face of a man whose greed and avarice had rendered him pitiless.

And yet, strangely enough, this very man was, to Charlie’s knowledge, a philanthropist in secret, giving away thousands yearly to the deserving poor without any thought of laudatory comment of either press or public.

Samuel Statham was not well; of that Charlie felt assured. He noticed the slight trembling of the thin white hands, the fixed, anxious look in his eyes, the curl of the thin grey lips, all of which caused him anxiety. In his ignorance he had grown to be greatly fond of the eccentric old man who pulled so many of the financial wires of Europe and whose word could cause the stock markets to fluctuate. A scribbled word of his that night would be felt in Wall Street on the morrow, whilst the pulses of the Bourse of Berlin, Paris, and Vienna were ready at any moment to respond instantly to the transactions of Statham Brothers, often so gigantic as to cause a sensation.

Presently Sam Statham commenced his cross-questioning regarding the exact situation in Belgrade, the attitude of the Minister-President, and the strength of the Opposition in that wooden shed-like Parliament-house, the Skuptchina, of whom he had seen, and what information he had gathered regarding the tariff-war with Austria.

To all the questions Charlie replied in a manner which showed him to be perfectly alive to all the requirements of the firm. To those in Old Broad Street, City, secret information regarding the future policy of Servia means the gain or loss of many thousands, and though during his sojourn in the City of the White Fortress his mind had been so perturbed over his own private affairs, he had certainly not neglected those of the great firm who employed him.

The old man gave little sign of approbation, and after nearly an hour suddenly dismissed him abruptly, saying:

“Very well. You’re tired, I expect. You’d better go to dinner. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“There’s another matter I wanted to speak to you about,” Charlie said, still remaining in his chair, watching the old fellow as he turned towards his desk and drew some papers on to his blotting-pad.

“Eh? What?” asked the old fellow sharply, turning again to the other.

“You did very well in Odessa. I was very pleased to receive that last cable from you. Souvaroff grew frightened evidently – afraid I should withdraw and let the whole business go into air.” And he chuckled to himself in delight at how he had worsted a powerful Russian banker who was his enemy.

“It was not of that I wish to speak,” remarked Rolfe quietly. “It was with regard to my sister Marion.”

The old fellow started uneasily at his secretary’s words. “Eh? Your sister?” he said. “What about her?”

“She’s left Cunnington’s,” Charlie said. “According to what I hear, she’s been discharged in some disgrace.”

“Ah! yes,” was the old man’s response, as though recalling the fact. “I’ve heard so. Your friend Barclay came to see me, and told me some long story about her. I wrote to Cunnington, but I haven’t seen any reply from him. It may have gone to the office.”

“My sister has left Oxford Street – and hidden herself, in disgrace. We can’t find her.”

“Then if you can’t find her, Rolfe, I don’t see how I can assist you,” remarked the elder man. “Girls entertain strange fancies, you know – especially the sentimental-minded. Been reading novels, perhaps – eh? Was she given to that?”

“The girls at Cunnington’s have little time for reading,” he said, piqued at Statham’s careless manner. Hitherto he had believed that the old man was genuinely interested in her, but he now saw that her future was to him nothing. He was too much occupied in piling up wealth to trouble his head over a girl’s distress, even though that girl might be the sister of the man who by his acute business foresight often won for him thousands in a single day.

Charlie rose, full of suppressed anger. He did not notice the look of anxiety and shame upon the old man’s face, for his head was bowed beneath the lamplight as he pretended to fumble with his papers.

“Perhaps your sister was tired of the place – too much hard work. Thought to better herself.”

“My sister was, like myself, much indebted to you, Mr Statham,” was Rolfe’s reply. “If she has been discharged in disgrace, it is, I feel confident, through no fault of her own. Therefore, I beg of you, to ask fit. Cunnington to make full inquiry.”

“What is the use? It is Cunnington himself who engages the hands and discharges them,” replied Statham evasively. “I can’t interfere.”

“But,” Rolfe argued, “for the sake of my sister’s good name you will surely do me this one small favour?”

“I have already seen Barclay, who says he’s engaged to her. Call on him, and he’ll explain what I have already said and the inquiry I have already made,” replied the old man in growing impatience.

“But weeks have gone by, and you’ve received no reply from Cunnington. He does not usually treat you with such discourtesy.”

“I can only think that he acted as his own judgment directed him,” the millionaire replied. “You know how strict the rules are that govern shop-assistants, and I suppose he could not favour your sister any more than the others.”

“Marion wanted no favours,” he declared. “She never asked one of anybody at Oxford Street. She only desires justice and troth – and I mean to have them for her.”