PROLOGUE
BY the side of a printer's steel table, a B young man was working busily with tweezers and awl. A page of type neatly bound about with twine was the subject of his attention, and, although his hand was shaky and he was, for reasons of expediency, working with only one of the two hundred lights which illuminated the “book room” of Ponters, he made no mistake. Once he raised his head and listened. There was no other sound than the clickety-clack of the linotypes on the floor below, where the night shift was “setting up” a Sunday newspaper, and as a background to this clatter, the low rumble of the presses in the basement.
He wiped his streaming forehead and, bending lower over the page, worked with incredible rapidity. He was a man of twenty-three or twenty-four. His face was a little puffy, and his eyes were dull. Tom Elmers liked his cups a little too well, and since that day when Delia Sennett had told him in her quiet, earnest way, that she had other plans than those he suggested with such vehemence, he had not attempted to check the craving.
Again he raised his head and listened, putting one hand up to the key of the hanging light, in readiness to switch it out, but there was no sound of footsteps on the stone corridor without and he resumed his work.
So engrossed was he, that when the interruption came he was not aware of another presence in the room, and yet he should have remembered that when Joe Sennett was on night work he invariably wore felt slippers, and should have known that the swing door was practically noiseless in operation.
Old Joe Sennett, master printer to the firm of Ponters, Limited, stood with his back to the door looking in amazement at the solitary workman. Then he came softly across the floor, and stood at the other's elbow.
“What are you doing?” asked Sennett suddenly, and the man dropped his awl with a little cry and looked round.
“I didn't hear you come in,” he gasped.
“What are you doing?” asked Sennett again, fixing those china-blue eyes of his upon the young man.
“I remembered those corrections I had to make. I didn't get them down until just before we knocked off, and they were worrying me, Mr. Sennett.”
“So you came back on Saturday night to do them?” said the other dryly. “Well, you're a model workman, Tom.”
The man gathered up his tools, and slipped them into his waistcoat pocket.
“A model workman,” repeated the other. “I'd like to know why you came back, Tom.”
“I've told you, haven't I?” growled Elmers, as he put on his coat.
Joe Sennett looked at him suspiciously.
“All right,” he said, “you can clear out now, and don't do it again. If you haven't time to finish your work, leave it.”
Near the entrance was a yellow-painted iron door marked “Private.” It was toward this that Joe went. He stopped to switch on three pilot lights that gave the room sufficient illumination to allow him to move without risk of damage and then, taking a key from his pocket, he inserted it. The light pressure he exercised was sufficient to send the door ajar. He turned in a flash.
“Have you been to this room?” he asked sternly.
“No, Mr. Sennett.”
Joe pushed open the door and switched on another light. He was in a small case room, which was also equipped with a hand press. It was the holy of holies of Ponters' vast establishment, for in that chamber two trustworthy compositors, one of whom was Joe Sennett, set up those secret documents which the government, from time to time, found it necessary to print and circulate.
“Who opened the door?”
“I don't know, Mr. Sennett.”
Joe walked into the room and looked around. Then he turned.
“If I thought it was you, Tom, do you know what I'd do with you?”
“What's the use of threatening me?” said the young man sullenly. “I've had enough trouble with you already. Delia's put you against me.”
“I don't want you to mention Delia's name to me, Tom,” said Joe Sennett sharply. He lifted a warning finger. “You're going the right way to get into bad trouble, Tom Elmers. For the sake of your father, who was a friend of mine, I'd like to save you from your own folly, but you're one of the clever kind that'll never be saved.”
“I don't want any saving, either,” growled Elmers, and the old man shook his head.
“You're keeping bad company. I saw you in High Street the other night with that man Palythorpe.”
“Well, what about it?” asked the other defiantly. “He's a gentleman, is Mr. Palythorpe. He could buy up you and me a hundred times over. And he's a newspaper proprietor, too.”
Joe chuckled in spite of his annoyance. “Mr. Palythorpe is an ex-convict who served ten years for blackmailing Mr. Chapelle's daughter. You know that. If you don't, you ought to.”
Tom shuffled uneasily. He had been somewhat disconcerted to learn that his friendship with a man of doubtful antecedents was so well known.
“He was innocent,” he said a little lamely, feeling that he must justify himself at any rate.
“Dartmoor is full of people who are innocent,” said Joe. “Now, Tom, you're not a bad boy,” he said in a more kindly voice, “but you've got to keep away from that sort of trash. He could give you a job, I dare say. He's running a paper now, isn't he? But it's not the kind of job that's going to get you anywhere, except into the cell which he has just left.”
He jerked his head in sign of dismissal, and Tom, without a word, pushed through the swing doors and disappeared.
Old Joe paced the length of the big room—it occupied the whole of a floor, and “room” was a ridiculously inadequate description—his hands behind his back, speculating upon the reason for Tom Elmers' sudden industry. His own impression was that the surprise of Elmers was simulated, and that he had heard the master printer coming and had busied himself with a page of type in order to hide his real occupation. Joe looked carefully at every case, as he passed, switching on the local lights for the purpose of his scrutiny.
Ponters were the biggest printers in the kingdom, and from their book room went forth a good proportion of the educational works which were published every year. Here men of all nations worked. French, German, Japanese, and Chinese, for the publishing business of Ponters had a world-wide clientele.
He finished his inspection and went back to what was known as the secret pressroom, and settled himself down for the night to put into print a very important memorandum which had been issued that morning by the first lord of the admiralty.
But the thought of Tom and his visit constantly intruded. It was true that Palythorpe was an undesirable acquaintance for any honest man. He had been the proprietor of a scurrilous little sheet, which enjoyed a semiprivate circulation—it was sent out to its subscribers in envelopes—and he had utilized the paper for the collection of information which might be and was extremely useful and profitable to him. The paper was called Spice, and it purported to deal in a flippant manner with the doings of high society, enjoying in consequence a circulation in certain basement kitchens of Mayfair.
Because he offered generous payment for news about the doings of society people, Mr. Palythorpe had gathered about him a staff of correspondents ranging from valets to tweeny maids who sent him, in addition to such items as were put into print, news that he could not publish, but could embody in letters written under an assumed name; and which, being addressed to the subjects of these paragraphs, might produce results which were at once lucrative and satisfactory.
Family scandals, the pitiful little tragedies which break and mar the lives of ordinary men and women, indiscreet letters left about by their careless recipients, these were the marketable commodities which gained for Mr. Palythorpe a handsome income, and might have continued, had he not made the mistake of attempting to blackmail a foolish girl, whose father was the cleverest lawyer of the day. A bad companion for the susceptible Tom Elmers.
“Palythorpe and Tom between them are going to give me trouble,” said Joe aloud.
But his prophecy was only realized in part. Mr. Palythorpe himself had small responsibility for the events which sent four men to their graves, and made the hair of Jimmy Blake go white, not in a night, but in one stormy afternoon on Salisbury Plain.