The Man Who Bought London (11 page)

Vera Zeberlieff had been released from prison that morning with a batch of other Suffragettes, and had laughingly declined the official welcome which the political enthusiasts had prepared at a restaurant in Holborn.

She had looked around eagerly when she emerged from the prison gates for one face, but it was not there. She felt a sense of disappointment out of all proportion, as she told herself, to the need of the occasion. She remembered that he had his living to earn, that he might find it very embarrassing to obtain the necessary leave to meet a friend coming from prison. She smiled to herself at the thought. He would hardly lie. He was not that kind of man, and herein her estimate of Gordon Bray was an accurate one.

The taxi she hailed carried her to the hotel where she had engaged a suite, and there she found a tearful maid awaiting her. A few brusque but kindly words dried the tears and stemmed the flow, and arrested, too, a volume of altogether mistaken sympathy which the girl had prepared.

‘I will have some breakfast,’ said Vera.

She felt happy and strong, and her healthy young spirit had enabled her to overcome the little twinge of depression which had been hers at the disappointment of not seeing the man who loved her.

There were innumerable letters waiting for her; she singled out one directed in her brother’s writing; it was very brief. There was no word of recrimination, no reproach. The tone was one almost of cordiality. He told her that he would call upon her at half-past eleven on the morning of her release, and he asked her
to be so kind as to afford him this opportunity for an interview. It was a most correct epistle.

She could do no less, she thought; and gave instructions that he was to be announced the moment he arrived.

King Kerry sent a cheerful little note of welcome, and this and the conventional expressions of approval or disapproval which her conduct had called for from her numerous friends constituted her correspondence. At half-past eleven Hermann came, and was shown up into the sitting room. He did not offer his hand, nor did he take the chair which she offered him.

‘Well, Vera,’ he said, ‘I think we might as well understand each other now. I am going to make some very startling confessions, which, since you and I are alone, and we have got to start afresh, it is both expedient and necessary for me to make. In the first place, you will not be surprised to learn,’ he smiled, ‘that if you had died before the second portion of the legacy became due I should not have been particularly sorry.’

She nodded, and surveyed him strangely.

‘Does it occur to you,’ she asked, ‘that if you, on the other hand, had died before the legacy became due, that I should not have mourned to any great extent; and do you also realize that I should have benefited considerably by such a death?’

He looked at her startled. Was she of that kind? It could not be possible, he thought; but she was jesting, he saw the laughter in her eyes, her mocking merriment at his surprise.

‘Since we are both homicidal,’ he said humorously, ‘there is very little to be made in the way of confession. Now that you have inherited your money, and I understand you saw your solicitor in gaol –’

She agreed with an inclination of her head.

‘Nothing is gained by me, unless, of course,’ again with that sly smile, ‘you’ve executed a will in my favour.’

‘You must never regard that project with any certainty,’ she remarked.

‘So I gathered,’ he said. ‘Therefore, as far as I can see, the only chance I have of securing any of this money which you have, and which is so necessary to me – I beg you to believe that – is to find a husband for you.’

She laughed, but watched him narrowly. ‘My dear Hermann,’ she said, ‘you’ve been engaged in that excellent pastime for quite a while.’

‘And at last I have succeeded,’ he said.

‘You have succeeded, have you?’

The irony in her voice appealed to him.

‘I have succeeded,’ he said complacently, and sat down. ‘You are going to marry my young friend, Martin Hubbard.’

She made a little gesture of disgust.

‘You will have the satisfaction of knowing that he is the handsomest man in London, that he descends from William the Conqueror, and that he has the entrée into all the best society. He is perfectly educated – Eton and Balliol, though as to that I am not sure – and, last but not least, he plays a very excellent game of double dummy.’

‘Are there any other virtues which you have overlooked?’ she asked.

‘None,’ said Hermann – ‘that are known to me,’ he added.

‘Of course,’ she said, ‘there is something behind all this, and you know as well as I that I would no more think of marrying your freakish friend than I should think of marrying your butler.’

‘Or one of your pupils,’ suggested Hermann pleasantly.

She frowned.

‘My pupils! I don’t quite understand.’

‘I mean one of those excellent students of yours at the technical college to whom, in your large benevolence, you award, from time to time, gold medals and finely engraved diplomas of merit. That also would be a preposterous marriage, would it not?’

She flushed slightly.

‘So you know, do you?’ she asked coolly. ‘Preposterous or not, I think it is a more likely marriage.’

‘With the admirable Mr – I forget his name.’

‘With the admirable Mister whose name you forget,’ she rejoined.

‘That makes it rather awkward for me,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘and it makes it rather awkward for the admirable Mister –. You see, I’ve a working arrangement with Martin Hubbard. He gives me a cheque for seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds the day you are married. Do you get me?’

‘I get you,’ she said. ‘I guessed there was some such an arrangement. You are the last person in the world I should imagine who would play the part of a disinterested matchmaker.’

‘Right you are!’ he said heartily. ‘You can avoid a great many unpleasant consequences – and, incidentally, one of these is Martin Hubbard – if in a fit of generosity you gave me your cheque for the same amount, or would instruct your lawyer to cause the transfer of stock to this value from your account to mine.’

She laughed, though she was not amused.

‘I think we have gone a little too far,’ she said. ‘Now, will you speak openly what you mean and exactly what you want?’

‘You know what I want,’ he said in his most businesslike tone. ‘I want you to marry Martin Hubbard because I greatly desire three-quarters of a million pounds, being seventy-five per cent of
the portion which comes to your husband under our father’s will. Failing that, I want the money. I don’t care whether you have a husband or not. I have sense enough to realize that Martin would be rather a trial – and, anyway, he is not worth two hundred and fifty thousand pounds.’

‘I see,’ she said; then: ‘You may be as assured that I shall not be Mrs Hubbard as you can be that you will not have one single dollar of the money.’

‘Are you so sure?’ he asked.

‘I am pretty sure,’ she said coolly.

There was a little pause.

‘Are you fond of this Mr –?

‘Mr Gordon Bray,’ she supplied the name.

‘Are you very fond of him?’ he repeated.

She eyed him steadily.

‘I fail to see that that is any business of yours,’ she replied, ‘but since there is no reason in the world why I should not tell you, I must admit that I am very fond of him and that he is very fond of me.’

‘How perfectly ideal,’ said Hermann with mock ecstasy. ‘I can see King Kerry making two columns of it in his new paper – “The Romance of a Technical School: Millionairess weds Technical Student. The honeymoon to be spent at Margate, in deference to the bridegroom’s wishes.”’

She was silent under his gibes, for she knew that the real issue had to come. He would show his hand presently; it was like Hermann to wax jovial when the business ahead was sinister. She had a little worried feeling that her troubles were not over.

‘If you are really fond of this young man,’ he said deliberately, ‘at what figure do you value his life?’

‘So that is it?’

Her face was pale: the peril which had confronted her all these years had never been so terrible to contemplate or caused so tight a clutch upon her heart as the knowledge that her brother would strike at her through the man she loved.

‘Come, put a value on him. None of your King Kerry half-price values,’ he said, with his musical laugh, ‘but the full market value of a human life that is very precious to you. Shall we say three-quarters of a million?’

There surged up in her heart such a rising flood of hate against this smiling man who had tortured her for so many years, who had striven to take her life for the wealth which might accrue to him. It was a hate which blotted out and blinded all other considerations than this present fact: here before her stood the man who had caused untold misery to hundreds of his fellows, the man who had cornered food necessities, who had wrecked lives, who had ridden roughshod over susceptibilities, who had gained his pleasure at the cost of breaking hearts.

The touch of devil which was within him was within her also. They came from a common stock, and perhaps it was old Grandfather Zeberlieff, that remorseless man, who spoke in her heart now.

She had an inspiration, the hate that raged within her sharpened her perception and made her see very clearly that which she had not seen before. Upon the inspiration she acted: she went to her desk and opened the drawer.

He watched her with some amusement. It is curious how in such moments the brain works upon such magnificent materials.

She found herself calculating what would be the cost of the damage done to the wall – whether they would turn her out of
the hotel; but whatever might be the consequences, big or little, she was prepared to face it.

She knew Hermann at that moment as she had never known him before.

‘At what do you value the price of your lover’s life?’ he asked again.

‘I couldn’t tell you,’ she said.

She took something from the drawer and handled it.

It was a revolver.

He frowned.

‘We are getting melodramatic,’ he said, and the words were hardly out of his mouth when the pistol exploded and a shot whizzed past his head.

He staggered back, pale to the lips.

‘My God, what are you doing?’ he gasped in that shrill high voice of his which invariably betrayed his distress.

She smiled as sweetly as ever Zeberlieff had smiled in a moment of such crisis.

‘I am so sorry,’ she said. ‘I trust I haven’t hurt you.’

He stared at her in mortal terror for the space of a minute, and then walked quickly to the door.

‘Stop!’ she said.

There was something in her voice which claimed his obedience.

‘What do you want?’ he asked shakily.

‘I want to tell you,’ she said quietly, ‘that if any harm comes to Gordon Bray I will kill you, that is all. Now, get out!’

He needed no second telling, and was halfway down the stairs when he met the excited manager of the hotel running up to discover the cause for a pistol shot – an occurrence which even the occupation of a private sitting room did not justify.

It was easy to explain; much easier for a lady known to be enormously rich, and the relieved manager bowed himself out.

She took from the drawer where the revolver again reposed a little case and opened it. On the one side was a portrait of their father, and on the other a photographic study of Gordon Bray taken by one of the technical students.

She looked at the clear-cut face and shook her head.

‘Poor dear,’ she said whimsically, half to herself, ‘you are marrying into a queer family!’

Zeberlieff hurried back to Park Lane, shaken and panic-stricken. Never before in his life had anything affected him as it had at the moment when he had seen the pistol barrel turned slowly in his direction, and had known before the shot was fired that it was being aimed at him. He remembered now that she was a most excellent revolver shot.

Was it by accident she missed him?

He might have spared himself the trouble of speculating. If she had intended killing him, he would have been dead. He was afraid of her now – more afraid because she was the one human in the world of whom he was in terror at any time. She was now a terrifying figure.

He had one intention, and that to release Gordon Bray from the wine cellar, where he was at that moment secured hand and foot to a heavy oaken chair.

He found Leete waiting on the doorstep, and inwardly cursed him; but he could not afford to be impolite. He wanted every friend he could muster now.

‘I’ve been waiting for an hour,’ grumbled Leete. ‘Where the devil are all your servants?’

‘They’re all out,’ said the other. ‘Come in.’

He unlocked the door, and ushered Leete into the dining room, on the ground floor.

‘What is the news?’

‘Oh, he’s at it again,’ said Leete despairingly. ‘He isn’t satisfied with ruining our business in Oxford Street, but he’s bought up a huge block of buildings along one side of Regent Street, and he has bought the Hilarity Theatre. Why, soon, the man will own the best part of London.’

‘You haven’t come all the way to tell me that, have you?’ asked Hermann.

‘No, there’s something else. That young man you introduced me to last night –’

‘What about him?’ asked Hermann quickly.

‘Well, the police have been round to see me.’

‘The police!’ Zeberlieff changed colour.

‘Yes. It appears that he hasn’t been home all night. He was seen to go into your house, and since then all trace has been lost of him.’

‘Who saw him go in?’ asked Zeberlieff.

‘A reporter on Kerry’s paper. They brought me round a proof of the story they’re going to run in this evening’s edition. Would you like to see it?’

‘Tell me what it is – quickly!’ said Hermann.

‘Oh, it’s a sensational story,’ said the other disparagingly. ‘They describe it as the remarkable disappearance of a young man who accompanied the famous Mr Zeberlieff to his house and did not come out again. It appears the reporter followed you and has been watching the house all night.’

Zeberlieff bit his lip.

‘So that was what he was talking to my servant about, was it?’ he said; and then, seeing that the other man was regarding him curiously, he turned with a laugh.

‘My dear chap, what should I know about this man? All that I can tell you is that he came here and he was rather impertinent. I don’t mind confessing to you that he went as far as to say that he wanted to marry my sister – an altogether preposterous suggestion. So I kicked him out,’ he continued airily.

Leete sniffed.

‘The unfortunate thing is,’ he said, ‘that nobody saw you kick him out. That’s where all the trouble is going to be. I came round here expecting to find the police in possession of the place.’

His host was startled – alarmed. If the police came and he was taken to the station – and searched!

‘Just wait one moment,’ said Hermann. ‘Sit here!’

Without a word of explanation he went out through the door and closed it behind him. He went down the kitchen stairs, and turned into the dark, narrow passage which led to the wine cellar. The door was locked, but the key was in his pocket. He entered, switching on the electric light which dangled between the bins. The cellar was empty!

Hermann gasped.

There was the chair, the leather thongs, with which he had bound the drugged and helpless Gordon, lay around in confusion, as though they had been thrown hastily away; but there was no sign of Gordon Bray.

He made a careful examination of the cellar. The young man might have escaped and be in hiding; but he searched without result. The cellar was too small for a man to conceal himself, and the bins offered very little shadow to any man who might seek concealment.

He came back to the chair and looked at it, and something on the ground attracted his attention, and he stooped down and looked.

At first he thought the man had helped himself to his wine, and had spilt some on the ground. The electric light did not show him what he wanted to know, and he bent down and examined the stain at close range.

He sprang up again with a cry, for that which was splashed about the ground was blood!

He ascended the stairs slowly; he was mystified and badly frightened. Who had opened the cellar door and released the prisoner? Whose blood was it that lay upon the ground and sprinkled the chair?

‘What is the matter?’ asked Leete, as his host re-entered the dining room.

‘It was a joke,’ stammered the other. He was shaking, for twice today had the fear of death been upon him.

‘I took him into my study and gave him a drink, and he – he collapsed under it,’ he said incoherently.

‘Drugged?’ said Leete accusingly.

‘No, no, no! It was just a little too strong for him, that is all,’ protested Hermann. ‘For a joke I took him into the cellar and tied him up to a chair. I swear I meant him no harm, Leete,’ he said eagerly. ‘Come and look!’

The two men descended the stairs together, and Leete gazed in silence.

‘What is that on the floor?’ he asked.

‘Blood,’ said Hermann.

Leete shivered and drew back.

‘I don’t want to be mixed up in this,’ he said.

‘But I swear to you,’ stormed the other, ‘I know nothing about it. I left him here this morning.’

‘I don’t want to hear anything at all about it,’ said Leete, raising a protesting hand. ‘I am not in this, and know nothing of it. I most distinctly do not want to be drawn into a case of this description. Good morning!’ he said hurriedly, and made a hurried and undignified exit.

Hermann was left alone in the house.

‘My God!’ he muttered. ‘They will think I did it! The police will come here and search the place. I must wash it down.’

With feverish haste he descended to the cellar, and dragged up the chair to the daylight. He cleaned the priceless tapestry as well as he could with warm water, and set it in front of a gas stove to dry. He worked at top speed. At any moment the men of the law might call.

With great difficulty he found a pail and some water, and the paraphernalia of the charwoman, and not for the first time in his life he was engaged for ten minutes on his hands and knees in his own wine cellar removing all trace of whatever tragedy there had been.

Who could have come to the rescue? And who, having released him, would wound him? Suppose that anarchist man had come – the man he had employed to extract the secret of the combination safe from Elsie Marion? Suppose he had stolen in stealthily and discovered the prisoner? Suppose the police had already been; but no, they would not have left the house again?

In a fever of anxiety he paced the study floor, waiting for the inevitable. The evening came, but still no sign of the police. He was feeling desperately hungry; he had not eaten since breakfast, and he made a hurried toilet and went out, resolved not to return that night. He would dine at the Carlton grill. One need not dress for that, and he found himself at a little table in one of the recesses of that famous underground dining room, eating ravenously the meal which Gaston, the head waiter, put before his client.

In the next recess a merry party was dining, if he could judge from the laughter. He was too hungry to take much notice; but
when the first cravings of his appetite had been assuaged he found himself with an interest in life and his surroundings. The laughter was insistent, and it grated a little on him in his present mood. Then he thought he heard his name mentioned, and half rose, straining his ears to catch what was said. He heard a voice he did not recognize.

‘Of course, it was a hateful thing to do, but I just had to do it, Miss Zeberlieff.’

Hermann knitted his brows. Who was this?

‘It was the artistic finish which circumstances demanded. Red ink wouldn’t deceive a baby; but I’ll bet it deceived him. So after I released Mr Bray …’

Hermann rose and stepped out so that he could see the diners. His sister was one, a stranger whose face he dimly remembered was another, and Gordon Bray was a notable third. They looked up and saw him staring down at them, and his sister, with a smile, caught his eye.

‘You seem to have had quite an exciting day, Hermann,’ she said with her sweetest smile.