CHAPTER VI
Showing, amongst other rather drab things, how the spell of the blade begins to work, and introducing a shrewd-eyed, gentle old man out of the East.
It was known from Wall Street to Bartholomew Lane, from the Rue Lafitte to the Nevsky Pospekt, from the cotton exchange of New Orleans to the wool exchange of Melbourne, that there was no love lost between the two Land Development Kings, Mr. Ezra W. Warburton of New York City and Mr. Preserved Higgins of the British Empire in general. Not that their mutual antipathy was in any way national, international rather, since a good half of the former's backers were British, while the latter's financial co-defendants were as often as not from the more exuberant sections of the United States, Chicago and San Francisco and Seattle and Kansas City.
Their enmity, though it affected their business relations, had not even been caused by a business quarrel, but by a fundamental difference in character—and that codified outgrowth of character called breeding. Destined ultimately to become as notorious, and quite as destructive, as the Harriman-Hill feud, it had started at the occasion of a dinner given by the great Paris banker, M. Adolphe Bischoffsheim, with the intention of bringing the two together, during which, in a hilarious mood which was both alcoholic and atavistic, the eccentric Cockney-South-African millionaire had poured a bottle of vintage champagne over the New Yorker's bald, dignified head, exclaiming:
“'Erewith I baptize you Hemperor of Dollars and Cents! Drink 'earty, cocky!”
Warburton had never forgotten the “outrageous insult,” as he styled it, had fought the other tooth and nail since then, in many a Homeric, financial battle, and had refused ever to see him again, Mr. Preserved Higgins retaliating in kind. Both men were cursed with a full-blown vanity, the result of their too-big success. In both, the selfish battle for ever more money and power had finally left no room for any outside interests, for abstract enthusiasms or abstract ideals; and it is an interesting commentary on modern financial history to consider that the congenital pettiness of the two commercial giants—for they were giants—had turned their passionate, even admirable crusade after success and might into a mean wreaking of personal malice, with the public and similar small fry paying the piper as often as not.
When Mr. Preserved Higgins arrived at the Savoy, he knew better than to have himself announced, since he was sure that the American would not see him on any pretext. Instead, by the indirect method of his chauffeur and a subsidized boy in buttons, he found out the number of his rival's suite, and went upstairs, rather an odd figure with his russet, crumb-spotted beard and his choice of attire which, from rainproof burberry coat to galoshes, was gloomily barometric and rationally Londonesque.
Fourteen was the number of the Warburton's apartment, and Mr. Preserved Higgins pressed his ear against the keyhole.
Three voices drifted through—Mr. Warburton's measured, rather pompous accents, a woman's, presumably his daughter's, and Hector Wade's. Whereupon the millionaire, without more ado, opened the door, which was unlocked, with a hearty “Wot-ho! O'Connor, old socks!” looked for the mythical O'Connor, found him not at all, mumbled lying words about having come to the wrong room, waved an apologetic hand, and made as if to retrace his steps.
It was at this moment, evidently for the first time, he seemed to become aware of the younger man's identity, and, having heard from the sharp-eared gentle man with the sandy hair that Hector, back in the alley near St. Katherine, had chosen Charles Smith as a nom de guerre, it was natural that Mr. Preserved Higgins should come out with a part hearty, part surprised “'Ullo, Wade! An' wot are you doin' 'ere, 'obnobbin' with the Hemperor of Dollars and Cents and 'er Royal 'Ighness the Crown Princess?”
He had guessed exactly right.
For, “Wade?” exclaimed the girl. “Why, I thought you said your name was Smith?”
Hector turned a deep red. He stammered something about it being rather hard to explain, and Mr. Preserved Higgins decided that now was the psychological, also the logical, moment to play trumps.
Quite dignifiedly, he turned to the American who, during the preceding, had maintained a stony silence, satisfying himself with pointing steadily and meaningly at the door after he had recognized his impromptu visitor.
“'Arf a mo', Mr. Warburton,” began the Cockney.
“Yes, Mr.—oh—Higgins?”—chillily.
“Mr. Warburton,” went on the other, “I bloomin' well knows that you don't like me worth a blarsted damn—if the lydy will forgive my French—and I can't say as I would die of 'eart failure if you'd kick the bucket to-morrow, nor ain't I denyin' as I'd jolly well do you a 'ole lot in the heye if I 'ad 'arf a fair chance. But”—he continued with a magnificent lack of logic—“I ain't the sort to bear a grudge. Not me, so 'elp me! And so I sez to you that if this 'ere Wade or Smith or Brown or Robinson or wotever 'e calls 'is bleedin' self is tryin' to get you into a jolly little gyme of two 'anded poker, my advice to you is wot Punch sed to the young fellow about to be married: “Don't! Because 'e's a thimblerigger—a lousy card sharp! 'E pl'ys with marked cards, see?”
Mr. Preserved Higgins never knew how near to death he was at that moment. For, suddenly, all sobering impulses had ebbed away from Hector's brain, leaving it vacant and dry and crimson, bringing him to the very abyss of raving, tearing, killing brutality.
Just as suddenly he controlled himself. He relaxed his bunched muscles, unclenched his fists. He had promised his father that he would carry on the old tradition of the Wades of Dealle, that, to the end of life, he would bear his brother's guilt. He was helpless, and he knew it.
But, instinctively, his eyes sought the girl's.
“What—what do you mean?” she stammered, simultaneously with her father's “Mr. Wade! Or—Smith! Will you kindly …”
“Explain?” sneered Mr. Preserved Higgins. “There ain't such a bloomin' lot to explain. I tell you 'e's been kicked out of 'is club and drummed out of 'is regiment and broken the 'eart of 'is dotin' father, the Earl of Dealle, not to mention my own 'eart, because 'e 'as cheated at cards!”
“Cheated whom?”
“Me!”
“Oh,” said the girl, “then it is a question of personal malice?”
“Call it wot you will, lydy. But it's the truth. Arsk 'is nibs 'imself if you don't believe me!”
And, to the girl's silent question—it was all in her eyes, the helpless, pitiful clasping of her narrow hands—Hector inclined his head and walked to the door. On the threshold he turned. He caught the girl's eye—it was moist with tears and a terrible, aching appeal.
Then words came to her.
“Is it true?” she asked.
“Yes,” Hector replied, steadily, and left the room, Mr. Preserved Higgins following.
Like a man in a dream, he walked downstairs, out of the hotel and into the street that stretched from the Embankment to the dim outlines of Parliament in a gentle curve of lights, when, at the corner, he was stopped by the Cockney millionaire.
“Wade,” said the latter, “now that you see that you're bloomin' well down and bout, s'pose we talks business. I repeat wot I sed to the Hemperor of Dollars and Cents upstairs. I ain't the sort to bear a grudge. And I want to 'elp you myke your w'y in the world, and I can give you a tip 'ow to myke oodles of the ready—thousands and thousands of guineas—guineas, mark you, not pounds! I needs a young lad like you. You see, there's a country over in Asia called Tamerlanistan—and the young princess wot rules it …”
That's as far as he got.
For, at that very moment, the younger man's fist struck him square between the eyes. He dropped like a log; and, for several minutes, until the crimson-coated, gold-gallooned commissionaire of the Savoy Hotel dashed a glass of water in his face, Mr. Preserved Higgins was oblivious to everything except a motley and brilliant collection of shooting stars that suffused his brains; while Hector, employing tactics he had learned at rugger football, sidestepped a policeman and an intoxicated gentleman in evening dress, catapulted between two costermongers, a man-o'-war's man, three ladies with bedraggled ostrich plumes on on their hats, a Cheapside Hebrew who sold baked potatoes, and a sightseeing Wessex yeoman in velveteens, and beat a strategic retreat toward Soho.
It was now too late to return to the East India Docks and find out about passage to Calcutta; but he was more firmly resolved than ever that he must put as many miles as possible, not only between himself and England, the England of “county” and Belgravia and the Badminton Club and the Ninety-Second Dragoons which, rightly as he added bitterly in his thoughts, had cast him out as a cad, but between himself and Jane Warburton. For, quite suddenly, and with a sort of savage, hurtful pride, he knew that he loved her, that he wanted and needed her, that she was dearer to him than the dwelling of kings. His love was as his hate, like Autumn rain, the kind which one does not see but which one feels, unceasing, penetrating, slightly chilling, and he knew that if she should ask him again: “Is it true? Did you cheat at cards?” there would be the terrible temptation to reply:
“No. I took the blame—before the world. But it was my brother Tollemache who marked the pack.”
And there was the promise he had given to his father, and all his stiff, surly, wiredrawn moral rectitude with which to back it up.
“I can never see her again!”
He said it with a loud voice, very much to the surprise, followed by ribald comments, of half-a-dozen cab drivers huddled around a coffee stand on the south side of Soho Square.
India!
There lay the solution. Now more than ever; and he went straight to his shabby hotel in Moor Street and made ready for bed.
The next moment he was face to face with a catastrophe. The fifty pounds, every penny he possessed in the world with the exception of a few shillings in his trousers, had disappeared from his coat.
His first impulse was to blame the roug hs whom he had fought in the alley for the loss, but a short examination told him that, indirectly, it was the ancient blade which had played thief. Putting it back, he must have rammed it down too hard; it had bitten through the thin, threadbare velvet sheath, had made a neat slit in the pocket lining, and the money had dropped through.
Not for a second did he consider asking his father for assistance. Not for a second did he give up his plan of going to Calcutta by the first steamer.
“If I can't go first class,” he said to himself, “I'll go steerage—Asiatic steerage if I have to.”
And then, with that dry, rather grim humor, typically English in its way, disconcerting, incongruous, bobbing up in moments of emotional stress, acting as a safety valve as it were:
“You stole my money,” addressing the blade which flickered ironically beneath the lamp-light, “and now you are going to pay for it—and serve you jolly well right!”
He weighed it in his hand, and, continuing his soliloquy:
“I have been told that there's nothing you can't buy or sell in London, for the right price, from the Ko-hi-noor to a paper of Yankee chewing gum. Very well. Let's see if there's a market for thieving, dishonest Oriental blades!”
He had no other valuables. His watch was a simple silver half-hunter; and the few shillings in his trousers were just about enough to pay for his room and perhaps a drink. He decided that he needed that drink right now, and went down to the old-fashioned saloon bar with its two or three dozen oaken, strong-backed chairs that stood round against the farther wall, each fitted with its genial occupant—cab drivers and small tradesmen of the vicinity; the black settle where the pompous landlord presided and gave his opinion on politics, cricket, and the lamentable shortcomings of the County Council; the neat, sanded floor; the small, round window high up on the wall, with a wheel ventilator in one of the panes.
“A mug of bitters,” he called to the bar maid, sat down, and picked up a copy of the Times which a former occupant of the chair had left.
Idly he turned to the second page. Square in its center was a large advertisement printed in heavy, extravagant Gothic type. He read, read again, sat up straight, tore off the page, crammed it in his pocket, and rose.
“I say!” he shouted excitedly to the bar maid. “Never mind that mug of bitters!”—and he picked up his hat and ran out of the saloon bar, the hotel, and away across Soho Square as fast as his legs would let him, while the landlord looked after him, open-eyed, open-mouthed.
“I don't know wot this 'ere young generytion is comin' to,” he said, disapprovingly, to his neighbor, Tom Jenks, the glazier. “Well—never mind—Lloyd George, as I was a-sayin' of just now, will ruin England as sure as …”
Hector, meanwhile, had come to a stop beneath a lamp post that squinted down on the oozy London pavement with a yellow, arrogant eye.
He took the advertisement from his pocket and read it over again.
It was short and to the point:
“Blades bought! Oriental blades! Top prices paid for the right sort! OPEN FOR BUSINESS DAY AND NIGHT!
“Ali Yusuf Khan, 356 Coal Yard Street, Drury Lane.”
“Open for business day and night thought Hector. "Well—it seems that Mr. Ali Yusuf Khan is as anxious to buy them as I am to sell this particular one.”
He caught a green bus, dropped off at Drury Lane, and turned into Coal Yard Street, that ancient, crooked alley still fragrant with memories of Nell Gwynne and, too, with the names rather less ambrosial, of Jack Sheppard and the Round House.
It was deserted but for a mangy, guilty looking tomcat, and the nearest lamp post was at the corner of Drury Lane. But a full, golden moon was in the western heaven, and Hector Wade found Number 356 without trouble, in the middle of a packed, greasy mob of low, sixteenth-century houses that rose sheer from the pavement, with leaded windows protruding like bastions, with wrought-iron scrapers and yawning cellar hatches and overhanging, buttressed angles of walls that in the course of time had become bow-legged and knock-kneed.
A flickering, neurotic gas jet lit up a fly-specked display window. But there were no swords nor daggers of any sort; only a large square of pasteboard which echoed the newspaper advertisement:
“Blades bought. At all times of the day and night. Ring bell at left.”
“Be pleased to enter, saheb,“ he said, in halting English and a slurring, foreign accent.
Hector smiled.
India? Asia?
Why! It began here, in the gray heart of London! And so he dropped into gliding Hindustani, the language which his Behari nurse had taught him and which he had never forgotten.
“Apanan duari,” he said, the words coming smoothly, evenly, without the trace of an accent, “kukoro hariyar, ya sheik!”
Ali Yusuf Khan smiled in return. But he shook his head.
“No, no!” he continued in his halting English. “I am no—ah—Hindu. I speak—Persian.”
“So do I!” rejoined Hector in the latter language; and the other, with sudden excitement, took him by the arm and pulled him across the threshold into the shop that lay beneath a fretted Damascan brass lamp in a mass of delicate purple and heliotrope shadows.
“Good, by Allah!” he exclaimed. “I am an old and very stupid camel. I cannot twist my withered tongue around the language of the foreigners.”
He waited courteously till Hector had taken a seat.
Then, anxiously:
“You have come to—buy a blade, sword or dagger or yataghan?”
“No. I have come to sell …” and, with English directness, pulling the ancient weapon from his pocket, “this!”
Ali Yusuf Khan picked up the blade and looked at it. At once a tremor ran through his body. His hand shook as if with palsy. But he controlled himself, went to the corner of the shop, lit another lamp, and examined the dagger minutely.
Finally he turned.
“You—” he asked, staring straight at Hector, “you say you want to sell—this?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you get it?”
Hector flared up.
“Look here,” he said, “if you're trying to insinuate that I came by it through dishonest means …”
“No, no.” Ali Yusuf Khan was stern, domineering. “Answer me, saheb. Where did you get it?”
“Well—if you must know—it has always been in my family's possession.”
“Always?”
“For centuries. My father told me once that one of my ancestors brought it with him from Asia hundreds of years ago.”
“You—you know nothing else about this weapon—a legend? Perhaps a tradition?”
“No.” Hector was getting impatient. “Look here—I didn't come here to be cross-examined. I saw your advertisement, accepted it in good faith, and …”
"Why do you want to sell it?” cut in the other.
“Why?” Hector laughed, shortly, disagreeably. “ You're inquisitive, aren't you? But—all right—I'll tell you. I want to sell it because I need money, because I am through with England, with my family, with—oh—everything! Because I want to go to Calcutta, to Asia, on the first ship. Now—tell me—how much money will you give me for it?”
“I shall not buy it!”
“You—you mean to say …”
“Wait! But I shall lend you money on it.”
“How much?”
And then Ali Yusuf Khan's answer, soft, low:
“As much as you want, saheb. A hundred guineas! A thousand! Ten thousand! It is for you to say!”