(1929) The Three Just Men (2 page)

“You are qualified.” His harsh voice grew more strident as he impressed this upon her. “I need a laboratory secretary. You are qualified”—he hesitated, and then went on—“by reason of distinguished parentage. Also”—he hesitated again for a fraction of a second—“also because of general education. Your duties shall commence soon!” He waved a long, thin hand to the door in the corner of the room. “You will take your position at once,” he said.

The long face, the grotesquely high forehead, the bulbous nose and wide, crooked mouth all seemed to work together when he spoke. At one moment the forehead was full of pleats and furrows—at the next, comparatively smooth. The point of his nose dipped up and down at every word, only his small, deep-set eyes remained steadfast, unwinking. She had seen eyes like those before, brown and pathetic. Of what did they remind her? His last words brought her to the verge of panic.

“Oh, I could not possibly start to-day,” she said in trepidation.

“To-day, or it shall be never,” he said with an air of finality.

She had to face a crisis. The salary was more than desirable; it was necessary. The farm scarcely paid its way, for Alma was not the best of managers. And the income grew more and more attenuated. Last year the company in which her meagre fortune was invested had passed a dividend and she had to give up her Swiss holiday.

“I’ll start now.” She had to set her teeth to make this resolve.

“Very good; that is my wish.”

He was still addressing her as though she were a public meeting. Rising from his chair, he opened the little door and she went into a smaller room. She had seen laboratories, but none quite so beautifully fitted as this—shelf upon shelf of white porcelain jars, of cut-glass bottles, their contents engraved in frosted letters; a bench that ran the length of the room, on which apparatus of every kind was arranged in order. In the centre of the room ran a long, glass-topped table, and here, in dustproof glass, were delicate instruments, ranging from scales which she knew could be influenced by a grain of dust, to electrical machines, so complicated that her heart sank at the sight of them.

“What must I do?” she asked dismally.

Everything was so beautifully new; she was sure she would drop one of those lovely jars…all the science of the school laboratory had suddenly drained out of her mind, leaving it a blank.

“You will do.” Remarkably enough, the doctor for the moment seemed as much at a loss as the girl. “First—quantities. In every jar or bottle there is a quantity. How much? Who knows? The last secretary was careless, stupid. She kept no book. Sometimes I go for something—it is not there! All gone. That is very regrettable.”

“You wish me to take stock?” she asked, her hopes reviving at the simplicity of her task.

There were measures and scales enough. The latter stood in a line like a platoon of soldiers ranged according to their size. Everything was very new, very neat. There was a smell of drying enamel in the room as though the place had been newly painted.

“That is all,” said the long-faced man. He put his hand in the pocket of his frock-coat and took out a large wallet. From this he withdrew two crisp notes.

“Ten pounds,” he said briefly. “We pay already in advance. There is one more thing I desire to know,” he said. “It is of the aunt. She is in London?”

Mirabelle shook her head.

“No, she is in the country. I expected to go back this afternoon, and if I was—successful, we were coming to town to-morrow.”

He pursed his thickish lips; she gazed fascinated at his long forehead rippled in thought.

“It will be a nervous matter for her if you stay in London to-night—no?”

She smiled and shook her head.

“No. I will stay at the flat; I have often stayed there alone, but even that will not be necessary. I will wire asking her to come up by the first train.”

“Wait.” He raised a pompous hand and darted back to his room. He returned with a packet of telegraph forms. “Write your telegram,” he commanded. “A clerk shall dispatch it at once.”

Gratefully she took the blanks and wrote her news and request.

“Thank you,” she said.

Mr. Oberzohn bowed, went to the door, bowed again, and the door closed behind him.

Fortunately for her peace of mind, Mirabelle Leicester had no occasion to consult her employer or attempt to open the door. Had she done so, she would have discovered that it was locked. As for the telegram she had written, that was a curl of black ash in his fire.

CHAPTER TWO - THE THREE MEN OF CURZON STREET

No. 233, Curzon Street, was a small house. Even the most enthusiastic of agents would not, if he had any regard to his soul’s salvation, describe its dimensions with any enthusiasm. He might enlarge upon its bijou beauties, refer reverently its historical association, speak truthfully of its central heating and electric installation, but he would, being an honest man, convey the impression that No. 233 was on the small aide.

The house was flanked by two modern mansions, stone-fronted, with metal and glass doors that gave out a blur of light by night. Both overtopped the modest roof of their neighbour by many stories—No. 233 had the appearance of a little man crushed in a crowd and unable to escape, and there was in its mild frontage the illusion of patient resignation and humility.

To that section of Curzon Street wherein it had its place, the house was an offence and was, in every but a legal sense, a nuisance. A learned Chancery judge to whom application had been made on behalf of neighbouring property owners, ground landlords and the like, had refused to grant the injunction for which they had pleaded, “prohibiting the said George Manfred from carrying on a business, to wit the Triangle Detective Agency, situate at the aforesaid number two hundred and thirty-three Curzon Street in the City of Westminster in the County of Middlesex.”

In a judgment which occupied a third of a column of The Times he laid down the dictum that a private detective might be a professional rather than a business man—a dictum which has been, and will be, disputed to the end of time.

So the little silver triangle remained fixed to the door and he continued to interview his clients—few in number, for he was most careful to accept only those who offered scope for his genius.

A tall, strikingly handsome man, with the face of a patrician and the shoulders of an athlete, Curzon Street—or such of the street as took the slightest notice of anything—observed him to be extremely well dressed on all occasions. He was a walking advertisement for a Hanover Street tailor who was so fashionable that he would have died with horror at the very thought of advertising at all. Car folk held up at busy crossings glanced into his limousine, saw the clean-cut profile and the tanned, virile face, and guessed him for a Harley Street specialist. Very few people knew him socially. Dr. Elver, the Scotland Yard surgeon, used to come up to Curzon Street at times and give his fantastic views on the snake and its appearances, George Manfred and his friends listening in silence and offering no help. But apart from Elver and an Assistant Commissioner of Police, a secretive man, who dropped in at odd moments to smoke a pipe and talk of old times, the social callers were few and far between.

His chauffeur-footman was really better known than he. At the mews where he garaged his car, they called him “Lightning,” and it was generally agreed that this thin-faced, eager-eyed man would sooner or later meet the end which inevitably awaits all chauffeurs who take sharp corners on two wheels at sixty miles an hour: some of the critics had met the big Spanz on the road and had reproached him afterwards, gently or violently, according to the degree of their scare.

Few knew Mr. Manfred’s butler, a dark-browed foreigner, rather stout and somewhat saturnine. He was a man who talked very little even to the cook and the two housemaids who came every morning at eight and left the house punctually at six, for Mr. Manfred dined out most nights.

He advertised only in the more exclusive newspapers, and not in his own name; no interviews were granted except by appointment, so that the arrival of Mr. Sam Barberton was in every sense an irregularity.

He knocked at the door just as the maids were leaving, and since they knew little about Manfred and his ways except that he liked poached eggs and spinach for breakfast, the stranger was allowed to drift into the hall, and here the taciturn butler, hastily summoned from his room, found him.

The visitor was a stubby, thick-set man with a brick-red face and a head that was both grey and bald. His dress and his speech were equally rough. The butler saw that he was no ordinary artisan because his boots were of a kind known as veldtschoons. They were of undressed leather, patchily bleached by the sun.

“I want to see the boss of this Triangle,” he said in a loud voice, and, diving into his waistcoat pocket, brought out a soiled newspaper cutting.

The butler took it from him without a word. It was the Cape Times—he would have known by the type and the spacing even if on the back there had not been printed the notice of a church bazaar at Wynberg. The butler studied such things.

“I am afraid that you cannot see Mr. Manfred without an appointment,” he said. His voice and manner were most expectedly gentle in such a forbidding man.

“I’ve got to see him, if I sit here all night,” said the man stubbornly, and symbolized his immovability by squatting down in the hall chair.

Not a muscle of the servant’s face moved. It was impossible to tell whether he was angry or amused.

“I got this cutting out of a paper I found on the Benguella—she docked at Tilbury this afternoon—and I came straight here. I should never have dreamt of coming at all, only I want fair play for all concerned. That Portuguese feller with a name like a cigar—Villa, that’s it!—he said, ‘What’s the good of going to London when we can settle everything on board ship?’ But half-breed Portuguese! My God, I’d rather deal with bushmen! Bushmen are civilized—look here.”

Before the butler realized what the man was doing, he had slipped off one of his ugly shoes. He wore no sock or stocking underneath, and he upturned the sole of his bare foot for inspection. The flesh was seamed and puckered into red weals, and the butler knew the cause.

“Portuguese,” said the visitor tersely as he resumed his shoe. “Not niggers—Portugooses—half-bred, I’ll admit. They burnt me to make me talk, and they’d have killed me only one of those hell-fire American traders came along—full of fight and fire-water. He brought me into the town.”

“Where was this?” asked the butler.

“Mosamades: I went ashore to look round, like a fool. I was on a Woerman boat that was going up to Boma. The skipper was a Hun, but white—he warned me.”

“And what did they want to know from you?”

The caller shot a suspicious glance at his interrogator.

“Are you the boss?” he demanded.

“No—I’m Mr. Manfred’s butler. What name shall I tell him?”

“Barberton—Mister Samuel Barberton. Tell him I want certain things found out. The address of a young lady by the name of Miss Mirabelle Leicester. And I’ll tell your governor something too. This Portugoose got drunk one night, and spilled it about the fort they’ve got in England. Looks like a house but it’s a fort: he went there…”

No, he was not drunk; stooping to pick up an imaginary match-stalk, the butler’s head had come near the visitor; there was a strong aroma of tobacco but not of drink.

“Would you very kindly wait?” he asked, and disappeared up the stairs.

He was not gone long before he returned to the first landing and beckoned Mr. Barberton to come. The visitor was ushered into a room at the front of the house, a small room, which was made smaller by the long grey velvet curtains that hung behind the empire desk where Manfred was standing.

“This is Mr. Barberton, sir,” said the butler, bowed, and went out, closing the door.

“Sit down, Mr. Barberton.” He indicated a chair and seated himself. “My butler tells me you have quite an exciting story to tell me—you are from the Cape?”

“No, I’m not,” said Mr. Barberton. “I’ve never been at the Cape in my life.”

The man behind the desk nodded.

“Now, if you will tell me—”

“I’m not going to tell you much,” was the surprisingly blunt reply. “It’s not likely that I’m going to tell a stranger what I wouldn’t even tell Elijah Washington—and he saved my life!”

Manfred betrayed no resentment at this cautious attitude. In that room he had met many clients who had shown the same reluctance to accept him as their confidant. Yet he had at the back of his mind the feeling that this man, unlike the rest, might remain adamant to the end: he was curious to discover the real object of the visit.

Barberton drew his chair nearer the writing-table and rested his elbows on the edge.

“It’s like this, Mr. What’s-your-name. There’s a certain secret which doesn’t belong to me, and yet does in a way. It is worth a lot of money. Mr. Elijah Washington knew that and tried to pump me, and Villa got a gang of Kroomen to burn my feet, but I’ve not told yet. What I want you to do is to find Miss Mirabelle Leicester; and I want to get her quick, because there’s only about two weeks, if you understand me, before this other crowd gets busy—Villa is certain to have cabled ‘em, and according to him they’re hot!”

Mr. Manfred leant back in his padded chair, the glint of an amused smile in his grey eyes.