A man was standing behind it. The French window had been opened at least eight inches, and the man stood partly in the aperture and partly in the room. He did not flinch. He did not even seem scared, nor yet disturbed. He was a middle-aged man, with grey hair, and a worn, rather sad face, and he wore a blue suit of clothes, which showed earth-stains and other evidences of an exciting and violent life. He was, in fact, the man whom Ilam had buried, and who described himself to Carpentaria as Mr. Jetsam.
“What are you doing here?” demanded Pauline, in a low, brave voice. “What do you want?”
She mastered her fear, though her heart was beating madly. She determined that, just as she had proved equal to difficult situations in the past, she would prove equal to this one.
“Now that you have seen me, I want to talk to you,” replied the man.
“You climbed up by the balcony, didn’t you?” she asked.
“Yes,” said the intruder. “Nothing more simple. I found a ladder.”
“Then you had better go as you came—and quickly!” said the girl.
“And the alternative?”
“Of course, I must call the master of the house. In any event I shall do that.”
“No,” said Mr. Jetsam. “For heaven’s sake don’t call Jos.”
“Jos!” repeated Pauline, astounded at this familiarity.
“I said ‘Jos,’” the man insisted firmly. “What do you take me for?”
“Naturally I take you for a burglar. What else should you be?”
“Now, do I look like a burglar?” Mr. Jetsam asked severely. “Examine me, and tell me whether I look like a burglar.”
“Whatever you are,” said Pauline, in a tone of decision, “I cannot remain talking to you like this. I am in charge of an invalid here, and you must go.”
The man gazed at her fixedly. She thought his eyes were very sad eyes, and yet dignified, too. They reminded her of the eyes of Mrs. Ilam. And presently, when they grew moist, they reminded her even more of the eyes of Mrs. Ilam.
“Miss Dartmouth,” said the man, “I can easily prove to you that I am not a burglar.”
“Then you know me?”
“I know of you. I know your name. I know you by sight. I know that you and your sister have come into this stricken and fatal house from sheer goodness of heart!’
“Do not talk like that,” said Pauline, whom any praise, save of her personal appearance, made extremely uncomfortable. She endeavoured to make her voice cold, forbidding, and accusatory, but she could not. The eyes of the grey-haired man seemed to hypnotize her, to rob her of initiative, and of the power to decide things for herself.
“I will talk in any manner you like,” returned Mr. Jetsam, “provided you will let me come into the room and explain to you what I want.”
“Impossible,” she replied.
“Why impossible? It is, on the contrary, perfectly easy,” said Mr. Jetsam. “All I have to do is to close the window”—and he closed it—“to come into the room”—and he came in—“and to ask you to be good enough to listen.”
He put down his felt hat on a chair.
He now stood within the room, a couple of feet from Pauline, in the direction of the bed, but with his back to it.
Pauline, with a sudden sharp movement, darted to the mantelpiece, by the side of which was the bell-push. In the same instant he, too, darted forward and clutched her wrist, just as she was about to touch the bell. They held themselves rigid for a moment, like statues.
“I understand your feelings,” said Mr. Jetsam in a shaken voice. “I admire you. But before you ring that bell, let me assure you most solemnly that if you do ring it you will bring murder into this house. You will utterly ruin one family, if not two. Believe what I say; you cannot help but believe it. A man’s character for truthfulness shows itself in every accent of his voice, and by this time, you must be very well aware that when I speak, I speak the truth.”
Pauline moved from the mantelpiece and he loosed her arm.
“Well?” she said interrogatively.
She did not know it, but she was breathing very rapidly through her nose, and her charming nostrils were distended. Still, she probably noticed the admiration in Mr. Jetsam’s glance.
“Miss Dartmouth,” he began, and then stopped.
Simultaneously they both thought of the invalid stretched moveless on the bed, and Pauline bent over that form. The eyes blinked irregularly, and always they stared up at the same point of the ceiling. They were dry, but Pauline noticed traces of tears on the rugged cheeks, and she wiped them away—it was her mission.
“Ah!” she murmured. “You can’t advise me what I ought to do.”
And then she faced Mr. Jetsam once more, still standing by the bed. The table-lamp, with the crimson silk shade, and the bright fire gave sufficient light.
“Miss Dartmouth,” Mr. Jetsam recommenced, “a great crime was committed long ago in the Ilam family, one of the most cruel crimes conceivable. It can never be atoned for in full, or nearly in full: but, even now, after many, many years, it can be partially atoned for.”
“Who committed this crime? and what was it? Murder?” gasped Pauline in a breath.
“I cannot be sure who committed it,” replied the man; “and it was not murder. It was worse than murder.”
“How do you know it was worse than murder? How does it concern you?”
“I was the victim,” said the man quietly. And then he raised his voice and repeated: “I was the victim. I am the victim.”
“Hush!” she warned him. “Not so loud.”
He turned to the bed with a strange expression on his face.
“Why not so loud?” he demanded. “She can hear, even if we speak in a whisper. She has heard everything, and she can do nothing.”
He spoke bitterly, and held a pointing finger at the old woman. And her eyes remained ever fixed, blinking irregularly, regardless of the two beings near her.
“You are cruel,” said Pauline. “You torture her.”
“Far from being cruel,” said Mr. Jetsam, “I am kind. Justice is always kind, for it alone produces peace, and peace alone produces happiness.”
“You would not talk like that if you had ever been happy,” said Pauline.
“If I have not been happy, it is because justice has been denied me. If this old woman and her son have never been happy it is because they have denied me justice. But justice may now be done, and you yourself may be the first instrument of it.”
“Tell me how,” said Pauline.
“You will be the blind instrument,” he said.
“Tell me how,” Pauline repeated.
“I have been watching a long time at that window,” said the man, always with the utmost respect—“and what I saw convinces me that you know more of this affair than you care to seem to know.”
“What do you mean?” demanded the girl defiantly.
“Well,” said Mr. Jetsam, “Mrs. Ilam cannot talk, cannot give instructions of any kind. Yet I saw you take a particular box from off the chest of drawers, and hide it under the invalid’s pillow. In order to hide it, you actually disturbed the invalid. You lifted her head to enable you to conceal the box in the bed beneath it. That is strange, Miss Dartmouth. But I have no desire to pry into your secrets. You are a friend of the family, nay more, a relative, and you had the right to do all that you have done. But let me tell you at once that I have come in search of precisely that box. I hoped to get it while everybody was asleep; but I was prepared for emergencies. If your cousin Ilam had been here in your place I should have obtained possession of it without asking his leave. But you—well, I humbly ask you to give it to me.”
Pauline gazed at the poor organism on the bed.
“Is he to have the box?” she asked. “Is he to have the box, Mrs. Ilam?”
The staring, sad eyes did not move. There was not the slightest flutter of the lids.
“Why do you put questions to her?” asked Mr. Jetsam moodily.
“She means that you are not to have the box,” said Pauline, and then she addressed Mrs. Ilam anew. “You mean that he is to go away without the box?”
The eyelids wavered and then blinked rapidly.
“That means ‘Yes.’ You must now go—at once. I have listened to you too long,” said Pauline.
“It is impossible that you should refuse me,” argued the man. “Impossible! I don’t suppose that motion of the eyelids means anything, but even if it did, naturally she does not want me to have the box. Still, I must have it. Miss Dartmouth, everything depends on my obtaining that box. Its contents are essential to the bringing about of justice. I entreat you most urgently and most solemnly to give it to me. You cannot doubt my sincerity.”
“I will admit frankly,” answered Pauline, “that I do not doubt your sincerity. But, all the same, you cannot have that box—at least from my hands. It belongs to Mrs. Ilam; she evidently treasures it highly. I put it under her pillow to satisfy her. Mrs. Ilam is helpless, and I am in charge of her. You must go, I repeat—and at once. We have talked too much.”
“Suppose I take it by force?” suggested the man.
“You would never dare,” said Pauline angrily, and she rushed again to the bell. “If you attempt to take it I will ring the bell, and I will hold you till some one comes, even if I die for it.”
“Mad creature!” he exclaimed acidly. “I could kill you. It is almost worth while; but I won’t. You tell me to go, and I go; but my resources are not yet exhausted. Good-night. I can’t leave without expressing the opinion that you’ve got both sense and grit, and plenty of both. But you’ve made a mistake to-night. Good-bye.”
And while she stood with her hand on the bell-push Mr. Jetsam passed very calmly out of the window, and the curtain fell in front of him and hid him.
It was the most curious adventure of Pauline’s life, which, indeed, had hitherto been entirely free from the unusual and the mysterious. After a short period of hesitation she went to the window, drew aside the curtain boldly, and looked out into the night of the City. There was no sign of her late visitor, but the ladder rested against the balcony, a proof of his recent presence; otherwise, she might have persuaded herself that what she had been through was a dream. She shut the window and bolted it, and came back into the room. The old woman, with her dark burning eyes staring always at the same spot on the ceiling, seemed now somewhat easier. Pauline gazed at her, and, after having stirred the fire, lay down again on the couch.
And as she closed her eyes, the strange enigma of Mrs. Ilam and her son and the nocturnal visitant filled her mind with distracting and futile thoughts. Who was this grey-haired man, at once so masterful, so dignified, and so desperate? What could be the justice that he demanded? what the contents of the lacquered box? She would have a real good talk with Rosie in the morning. That prospect comforted her. Rosie—Rosie—— Suddenly she started, and gradually she perceived that she had been asleep a long time—two hours, perhaps—and that something, some presence, had wakened her. Looking round, she noticed that the door, which had been closed, was now open.
She jumped up and went out of the room to the passage, but she could neither see nor hear anything. Then, as her eyes became accustomed to the obscurity, she detected a very faint, thin pencil of light at the other end of the passage, and on approaching it she found that it came from her sister’s room. She crept forward, pushed open the door and went in. Rosie, fully dressed, was sitting on a chair near the window, which was not quite closed, and her face was hidden in her hands, and she appeared to be crying.
“Rosie,” exclaimed Pauline, “whatever’s the matter? Why aren’t you in bed and asleep?”
And Rosie subsided into her sister’s arms, weeping violently.
“I haven’t been to bed at all,” she said at last. “I’ve never slept in a room with a balcony before, and I couldn’t resist going out on to this balcony to see how beautiful the night was. And I began to think what a splendid time we were having, and I watched the stars, and I heard the clock strike in the tower over there, and the gardens looked so beautiful in the starlight, and a long, long time must have passed. And then I saw a man standing under my window. He was a man dressed in blue, with grey hair, and he began to talk to me.”
“And why didn’t you tell him to go away, my dear?”
“He seemed so sad, and he said such interesting things. Pauline, darling, there’s something very, very wrong in this house—some mystery! He told me. No one could help believing what he says, and he has such a beautiful voice. I cried, almost, in listening to him.”
“But who was he?”
“I think he must be some relative,” said Rosie. “I think so. He didn’t say. What he did say was that there was a black box which it was absolutely necessary he must have. Oh, Pauline, I’m sure he isn’t a thief! He’s a man who has suffered a great deal, and he asked me to get the box for him, and his face was so sad—well, I said I would. And he told me exactly where it was.”
“Where did he say it was?”
“He said it was under Mrs. Ilam’s pillow; and it was, true enough.”
“How do you know?” cried Pauline, aghast.
“I crept into your room, and lifted Mrs. Ilam’s head, and took the box. You were fast asleep. He asked me to see if you were asleep, and, if you were, not to wake you. So I came as quietly as a mouse.”
“And you obeyed him like that?” murmured Pauline, astounded.
“I couldn’t help it. I felt so sorry for him. And his voice was so——”
“Rosie!” said Pauline. “You used to be sensible enough!”
“I couldn’t help it!” moaned Rosie again.
Juliette D’Avray had a small sitting-room of her own in the Carpentaria bungalow. It was on the first floor, and it looked west, whereas Carpentaria’s study and bedroom both looked north, on the avenue. Three days after the affair of the black box, Carpentaria ran hastily up the stairs of his house and touched the knob of the door of Juliette’s sitting-room, and then he drew back his hand, nervous and hesitant. He was evidently perturbed, and he pulled his fine beard in a series of quick twitches, and then he rapped smartly on the door and coughed.
“Juliette!” he cried. He was very much surprised to discover that he had not got complete control of his voice. It broke in the middle of his half-sister’s name. “I must do better than this,” he thought, trying to command himself.
There was a pause.
“Juliette!” he cried again, more firmly.
The word was scarcely out of his mouth when the door opened wide, and Juliette stood before him. They gazed at each other for a fraction of a second, as if inimically.
“Why don’t you come in, Carlos?” she murmured softly, and her eyes fell, “instead of knocking and making such a noise. What’s the matter?”
Carpentaria was certainly astonished at the nature and tone of her remark. She seemed to wish to run away. Then he gathered himself together, with an immense show of force, as a man will when confronted by a woman who is helpless before him, but of whom he is afraid.
“I don’t want to come in,” he said.
“Why?” she demanded.
“You know why,” he said.
“Indeed I don’t,” she asserted; and she laughed—a curt laugh.
“You promised me you wouldn’t see Ilam again at present,” said Carpentaria stoutly.
Juliette tossed ever so little her charming head, with its admirable coiffure.
“I did,” she admitted.
“Well,” said Carpentaria, “he is at this moment in the sitting-room.”
Juliette’s dainty nostrils began to dilate.
“Carlos,” she said disdainfully, “do you know what you are saying? To me! Mr. Ilam is not here. I have already asked you to come in!”
“Yes,” said Carpentaria, “but you don’t make way for me. You keep well in the doorway, Juliette!”
She moved aside with a gesture of the finest feminine scorn.
“Is there space for you to enter?” she said, bitterly sarcastic.
Carpentaria stepped forward one pace. His foot was on the door-mat.
“Stop a moment, Carlos,” she said warningly, lifting her arm. “I repeat that Mr. Ilam is not here. I cannot imagine what put the idea into your head. But whatever put it in, let me advise you to put it out again at once. Under the circumstances, if you come into this room, now that I have distinctly told you that Mr. Ilam is not here, it will be equivalent to calling me a liar. I could not suffer that, even from you, Carlos. I should leave you. We should quarrel for ever. Think what you are doing.”
Tears stood in her eyes.
Carpentaria shuffled his feet in an agony of uncertainty.
“Come in if you doubt me,” Juliette continued. “But if you do, it will be the end.”
Carpentaria turned slowly away, and passed down the corridor.
“Of course I don’t doubt you,” he called out.
Juliette made no response. She waited till her half-brother had descended the stairs, then she shut the door quietly, and ran to the Louis Quinze sofa, with its gilded borders, that stood a little way from the window.
“You can come out,” she whispered.
And from behind the sofa emerged the bulky form of Josephus Ilam.
“Great heavens!” he muttered, searching in his pocket for a handkerchief.
Juliette sat down on a chair and burst into tears. The contrast between their two handkerchiefs—Ham’s enormous, like himself, and Juliette’s a fragment of lace no larger than a piece of bread-and-butter—was one of those trifles which put an edge of the comical on the tragic stuff of life.
“You are an astounding woman!” exclaimed Ilam, wiping his brow.
“I have lied to him—I have deceived him. You heard what I said?” whimpered Juliette.
“You behaved superbly,” said Ilam.
“I behaved shamefully,” said the woman. “But I did it for you!”
And she looked at him over her handkerchief, with wet eyelashes.
Ilam would have gone through unutterable torture for her in that moment. It was a highly strange thing—this late coming of love into the existence of Josephus Ilam. It transformed him. It made him feel that, at fifty, he was only just beginning to grasp the meaning of life. It made him see that hitherto his days and his years had been wasted on vain things, and that the only commodity really worth having in this world was such a look as Juliette gave him out of her impassioned eyes. He could not understand what so bewitching and lively a woman as Juliette could see in a heavy, gloomy fellow like him. For the matter of that, probably no other person, save only Juliette, could understand that mystery. But then, when a woman loves a man, she sees him in a radiance shed from her own soul, and it changes him.
“My poor friend,” said Juliette, composing herself, “why do you put me in such an awkward position, coming upstairs like this, and in the middle of the day, too? You must have bribed one of the servants.”
“I did,” said Ilam.
“Well, don’t tell me which,” Juliette put in quickly.
He bent down and kissed her. Yes, this heavy and rather creaky person, who had laughed at love for several decades, bent down and kissed a pretty woman sitting on a Louis Quinze sofa; moreover, he put his arms round her. He did it clumsily, of course, but Juliette did not think so.
“I was obliged to see you,” he told her. “I couldn’t go without seeing you. Why have you so persistently kept out of my way? You were so kind that morning—when Carpentaria surprised you. Has he been bullying you?”
“Ah!” exclaimed Juliette, suddenly excited. “I cannot tell you what he said to me. You know I love him best in the world—next to—you. But he said such things to me—such things!”
“He said—oh, my dearest!—he said his life was not safe—he said no one’s life was safe in this City—he said he had been shot at in the bandstand; and, you know, that business of the milk was dreadful. The strange thing is that Carlos won’t consult the police about it.”
“But how does this affect us—affect you and me?” demanded Ilam bravely.
“Dearest,” said Juliette, “poor Carlos thinks—he actually thinks——”
“That I am trying to kill him?”
“He thinks you have something to do with it.”
“But why? Why should I want to kill your brother—your brother?”
“Yes, indeed!” agreed Juliette. “And why should you want to kill anybody’s brother?” she added.
“Of course,” he said hastily. “Why should I want to kill any person at all?”
“Carlos says that he is not the only person you have tried to kill.”
“Ha! And who is the other? Give me the full catalogue.”
“I don’t know. He says you have buried a man in the grounds, and that he saw you do it.”
“Juliette!” Ilam stepped backwards. Then he stopped. “Juliette,” he repeated, “I swear to you most solemnly that I have never tried to kill anyone.”
“Dearest, you shouldn’t have said that!” she remonstrated. “You shouldn’t have sworn to me. It is an insult to my love. Do you imagine that I believed Carlos for a single instant? Do you imagine it?”
She looked at him proudly, gloriously.
“How splendid you are!” muttered Josephus Ilam, son of the soda-water manufacturer. The admiration was drawn out of him. He had not guessed that women could be so fine. And then he perceived that he, too, must be splendid, that he must be worthy of her; and so he proceeded: “Nevertheless, it is true that I did bury a man in the grounds a few nights ago.”
The perspiration stood afresh on his brow as he made the confession.
“You!” she murmured.
“I thought he was dead,” said Ilam, speaking quickly. “I thought I should be accused of his murder. And so I—the fact is, I was mad. I was off my head. I must have been. Until yesterday I actually fancied I was being haunted by his ghost. Yes! me! me—thinking a thing like that! But I did; and yesterday I was in that big crush, during the shower, in the Court of the Exposition Palace, and he, too, was in the crowd. I saw him; I touched him; he didn’t see me, thank Heaven! Then I knew that what I had buried was not a corpse.”
“Who is this man?” asked Juliette calmly.
“My angel!” said Ilam, driven to poetry by the stress of his emotion, “you mustn’t inquire; there are some things I can’t tell you—at least, not yet. When we are married, when matters are settled a bit, I will tell you everything, but not now.”
“Why not now?” she persisted.
“Look here,” he said, “if you persist I shall simply go and kill myself.”
She paused.
“My friend,” she resumed, “you do not love me as much as I love you. The measure of love is trust, and you do not trust me completely.”
“I love you in my way,” said Ilam doggedly; “men are not like women.”
“That is true,” she admitted philosophically.
“I would tell you everything if I was free to do so,” he said.
“Dearest”—she addressed him in quite a new tone—“you know something about those attacks on Carlos’ life.”
She spoke with an air of absolute certainty.
“I have had nothing to do with them,” he said.
“But you know something about them.”
“Why do you think so?”
“I can tell from your manner,” she said triumphantly.
“I know nothing for certain, nothing precise,” said Ilam—“nothing that I can tell you—nothing that I dare tell you.”
“Dearest,” she remarked, with a faint acidity, “it seems to me that you have come here to-day in order not to tell me things.”
He deprecated her tone with an appealing gesture.
“I can tell you, at any rate, this,” he said, “that your brother’s life is no longer in danger—of that I am sure.”
“You are atoning,” she smiled.
“Which is more than can be said of my life,” Ilam proceeded, not heeding her smile.
“Your life is in danger?” she questioned, rushing to him as though she would protect him.
Ilam, without a word, led her to the window, from the corner of which a glimpse of the avenue could be caught, and walking to and fro there in the avenue was the Soudanese.
“You see that man?” said Ilam. “It’s the fellow they call ‘Spats’ in the native village. I don’t know why. He is devoted to me; he is fully armed; he follows me everywhere. I have only to blow this whistle”—and Ilam produced a whistle from his pocket.
“Darling”—and Juliette clung to him—“is it so bad as that? Who is it that threatens you?”
“The man that I buried,” said Ilam quietly.
“But what are you going to do?”
“Well,” said Ilam, “I’m come here to see you. We must get your brother on our side.”
“I’ll force him to understand at once,” cried Juliette.
“No,” said Ilam, “perhaps you would fail, as things are, but if you were my wife, you would not fail then. Carpentaria, once the thing was done, would do everything in his power to protect your husband; he likes you well enough for that. He might be angry at first, but he would see reason.”
“Dearest, you want me to marry you secretly?”
“I merely want you to go with me to the registry office at Putney.”
“Is that what you came for?”
“That is what I came for.”
“My love!” she murmured.
Yet, with that cold and penetrating insight which women have, she saw clearly that, though Ilam’s idea of getting Carpentaria’s assistance in a moment of grave danger was doubtless quite serious, it was somewhat fanciful, and that Ilam’s professed reason for their instant marriage was also fanciful, and was not a real reason, but only an excuse. He merely wanted to marry her at once, that was all, and although his life was threatened, he thought little of that. She loved him the more.
“I can make the arrangements pretty quick,” said Ilam. “You will agree, my angel?”
And she nodded, and the compact was sealed. They heard a scurrying in the passages of the house.
“Juliette! Juliette!”
It was Carpentaria’s voice, and other voices mingled with it indistinctly—the voices of the servants. “Yes!” she answered loudly and, whispering to Ilam, “Get out of the window; whistle softly for your Soudanese. You can get on to the roof of the outhouse. He will help you.”
And noiselessly she opened the window, and Ilam, struck by her tremendous resourcefulness, passed out. She heard his low whistle, and then she ran to the door and into the passage.
“The house is on fire,” said Carpentaria, meeting her.
“Is it?” she answered calmly. “Are the firemen come? where’s the fire?”—She sniffed—“Yes,” she said, “I can smell it.”
She was amazingly calm. “No woman with a man concealed in her sitting-room,” said Carpentaria to himself, “could behave so calmly upon being informed that the house was on fire. Her first thought would have been to secure the hidden man’s safety.” And Carpentaria ran downstairs with a great show of activity. He was baffled, disappointed, for he had deliberately set fire to his own house in order to drive Ilam from the sitting-room, where he felt sure Ilam was. And the trick had failed. After all, he had been mistaken. He had been convinced of his sister’s deception, and lo! she had not deceived him. Carpentaria could have killed himself.
Happily the fire was of no importance, and it was extinguished before it had done more than about five pounds’ worth of damage and alarmed more than about five thousand visitors to the City.
The situation of the heart of the City was one of the secrets of the City. It was not located, perhaps, exactly where you might have expected it to be, and for a very good reason. The magnificent building which housed the managerial, clerical, and inspectorial staff of the City was near the south end of the Central Way. It comprised four floors, and more than a hundred clerks spent seven hours a day there. On the first floor was the President’s Parlour, where Ilam held consultations with Carpentaria and with the heads of departments, from the department of catering to the department of road-cleaning. On the floor above was the Manager’s and Musical Director’s Parlour, where the august Carpentaria held consultations with Ilam and with the heads of other departments, from that of music, with its subsections (a) open-air bands, (b) theatre and other bands, (c) restaurant bands, (d) vocal music, (e) pianolas, gramophones, and mechanical orchestras, to the procession and fêtes department. But the heart of the City was nowhere in this building.
There were also scattered about the immense grounds, various other executive buildings of a smaller size, where sectional managers, viceroys of Ilam and Carpentaria, held their mimic sway. But the heart of the City was not in any of these, either.
Very few persons, even among those on the salary-list of the City, did know where the heart was; for it was not talked about. Talking about it was discouraged; the hearts of such places are never talked about. And it is a most singular thing that visitors to the City scarcely gave a thought to the question of the situation of the heart of the City. The most interesting of all the many secrets of the City seldom aroused public curiosity, so strange is the public.
The heart of the City, as I propose to reveal, was situated beneath the Storytellers’ Hall, near the northern end of the Central Way, on your left hand as you passed down from the north entrance-gates. The Storytellers’ Hall was an invention of Carpentaria’s—one of his best. Between two o’clock and four, between five o’clock and seven, and between half-past eight and closing-time you could pay sixpence to go into the Storytellers’ Hall and listen to a succession of American and Irish and English performers, whose sole business it was to sit in an armchair on the diminutive stage and tell funny stories. The entertainment consisted in nothing else. It was the simplest thing in the world, and yet one of the completest successes of the City. It was a success from the very first hour of its existence. The little hall was nearly always crowded, chiefly by men. One is bound to admit that women were not enchanted by it; either they laughed in the wrong places, or they turned to their husbands, sweethearts, uncles, nephews, at the end of the story, and asked if that really was the end of the story, and, if it was, would their husbands, sweethearts, uncles, nephews kindly explain the joke to them.
Well, the heart of the City was beneath that gay and mirthful structure. While storytellers told stories above the level of the ground, the most serious business of the City was being transacted a few feet away, below the level of the ground. Let me explain.
Take an average intelligent visitor to the City. He approaches, say, the northern entrance, and among the twenty patent turnstiles which confront him he chooses the nearest one that is empty. He puts a shilling on the iron table of the turnstile; an official in the livery of the City scrutinizes the coin to make sure that it is what it pretends to be, and then pushes it down a little hole. The shilling disappears—not only from the sight, but from the thoughts of the visitor.
It is a highly remarkable fact—as he squeezes through the turnstile he actually forgets all about his shilling, forgets it for evermore!
Yet shillings are being poured in a continuous stream into the mouth of that turnstile and into the mouths of scores of similar turnstiles, all day. What becomes of them? Surely this question ought to interest the average intelligent visitor! What becomes of them? The turnstiles won’t hold an unlimited number of shillings; nevertheless, shillings are falling into them eternally and they are never emptied; they are never even moved; they could not be moved, since they are imbedded in concrete. Here is a puzzle for the average intelligent visitor.
It will occur to anyone that when four hundred thousand people have each paid a shilling entrance, quite a nice little lot of money must have accumulated somewhere in the City by nightfall; for, besides the entrance shillings, there is the vast expenditure of the visitors after they have entered.
The nice little bit of money runs to the heart of the City. That is what the heart of the City is for; that is why it is called the heart.
Now, the heart was a long, wide, and low apartment, lighted by electricity, and lined with concrete. In the centre, its top level with the floor, was a huge safe, which by hydraulic power could be raised till its top was nearly level with the ceiling, and its doors bared to the persuasions of keys. Round about were large wooden tables, furnished with large and small balances, copper scoops, bags, and steel coffers. A few chairs completed the apparatus of the apartment.
The shillings of the clients of the City dropped through the mouths of the turnstiles right down to a small subterranean chamber, which could only be reached from a tunnel beneath each entrance. Thus, the officials in charge of the turnstiles had no control whatever over the coins once they had been slipped into the orifices. The coins were checked and collected by an entirely separate set of officials, who visited the underground chambers every three hours and brought back the booty, enclosed in coffers, in specially constructed insignificant-looking carriages, to the solitary door of the heart. And the door of the heart was by no means in the Central Way; it gave on a back entry running parallel to the Way and just wide enough to permit the passage of one carriage. The coffers were received, and receipted for, by an official of the heart, and handed by him into the interior. Neither he nor the collectors were ever allowed to enter the heart.
On the evening of the day of the secret interview between Juliette and Ilam, the inconspicuous door of the heart was guarded, not by its usual official, but by a tall Soudanese, and waiting close to him was an automobile with chauffeur on board. The automobile was one of several employed specially to transport the riches of the City to the head offices of the London and West-End Bank in King William Street. The journeys were made at night, twice a week, and the offices of the London and West-End were specially opened to receive the coin. Automobiles laden with vast wealth are less apt to be remarked when they travel at night.
Within the heart itself were three people—Ilam; a middle-aged man named Gloucester, who spent all his days in counting and weighing gold and silver, and who was the presiding genius of the heart; and, thirdly, a clerk from the London and West-End Bank.
Gloucester was weighing sovereigns, the clerk was counting coffers and piling them up in a corner near the door, and Ilam was idly inspecting the doors of the huge safe, which had been raised out of its well and stood open and empty.
During that day and the previous two days, what with a monster Y.M.C.A. fête then in progress, and what with the weather, over a million shillings had been taken at the turnstiles. Now, a new shilling weighs eighty-seven grains, and about seven thousand average current shillings go to the hundredweight. A million shillings, or fifty thousand pounds in silver, will weigh, therefore, something like seven tons. Nearly the whole of this treasure had already started on its way to the famous vaults of the London and West-End Bank; only a few coffers remained. But there was, in addition, about ten thousand pounds in gold, which weighed about a couple of hundredweight, and it was chiefly for this gold that the last automobile was waiting.
“Seven coffers of silver, Mr. Gloucester,” said the clerk; “two of gold.”
“I shall be ready with the others in a few minutes,” replied Mr. Gloucester.
“Then I’ll be making out the check-sheets,” said the clerk.
“Do so,” said Mr. Gloucester, who was a formal old person, and wore steel-rimmed spectacles. And he continued his weighing of the gold.
At this interesting and dazzling juncture, the unique door of the apartment, an affair of solid Bessemer steel, swung slowly on its hinges, and disclosed the figure of a man in a blue suit, with grey hair under his soft hat. Mr. Gloucester, being just a little short-sighted and just a little hard of hearing, neither saw nor heard the visitor. Nor did Mr. Ilam, who was actually within the safe, measuring its-shelves. But the bank-clerk, who was quite close to the door, most decidedly did see the man. And the clerk started, whether with fear, surprise, or mere nervousness, will probably never be known.
The man shut the door.
“What——” began the clerk.
“Go to the other end of the room,” said the man commandingly.
“Mr. Ilam!” the clerk called out respectfully, alarmed.
“Go to the other end of the room,” repeated the man.’
The clerk perceived then that he had a revolver. Mr. Gloucester also perceived the man and his revolver, and Mr. Ilam came out of the safe rather like a jack out of a box.