Jacob's Ladder Part 4

Mrs. Harris sat down suddenly and raised her ap.r.o.n to her eyes. Jacob made his escape and crossed the road. It had seemed to him that he must have exhausted the whole gamut of emotions during the day, but there was still a moment's revelation for him when the pale, shy, little woman whom he had known as his friend's wife came running out to greet him with s.h.i.+ning eyes and outstretched hands.

"Mr. Pratt!" she cried. "Is it all true?"

"It's all true, and more of it," he a.s.sured her. "Your man's set up comfortably for life, and I am a starving millionaire. Anything to eat?"

She laughed a little hysterically.

"Why, there's everything in the world to eat, and to drink, too, I should think," she answered. "What they must have thought of you two men in the shops, I can't imagine! Come into the dining-room, won't you? d.i.c.k's opening some wine."

Then followed the second feast of the day, at which Jacob had to pretend to be unconscious of the fact that his host and hostess were alternately ecstatically happy and tremulously hysterical. They all waited upon themselves and ate many things the names of which only were familiar to them. Dauncey opened champagne as though he had been used to it all his life. Jacob carved chickens with great skill, but was a little puzzled as to the location of caviare in the meal and more than a little generous with the _pate-de-foie-gras_. The strawberries and real Devons.h.i.+re cream were an immense success, and Mrs. Dauncey's eyes grew round with pleasure at the sight of the boxes of bonbons and chocolates. Afterwards the two men wandered out into the garden, a quaint strip of uncultivated land, with wanton beds of sweet-smelling flowers, and separated from the meadow beyond only by an untrimmed and odoriferous hedge, wreathed in honeysuckle. Over wonderful cigars, the like of which neither of them had ever smoked before, they talked for a moment or two seriously.

"What are you really going to do with your money, Jacob?" Dauncey asked. "And where do I come in? I do hope I am going to have a chance of earning my salary."

Jacob was silent for a few moments. In the half light, a new sternness seemed to have stolen into his face.

"Richard," he said, "you've seen men come out of a fight covered with scars,--wounds that burn and remind them of their sufferings. Well, I'm rather like that. I was never a very important person, you know, but in the old days I was proud of my little business and my good name. It hurt me like h.e.l.l to go under. It was bad enough when people were kind. Sometimes they weren't."

"I know," Dauncey murmured sympathetically.

"My scars are there," Jacob went on. "If I had such a thing, d.i.c.k, I should say that they had burned their way into my soul. I haven't made any plans. Don't think that I am going to embark upon any senseless scheme of revenge--but if this promise of great wealth is fulfilled, I have some sort of a fancy for using it as a scourge to cruelty, or for giving the unfortunate a leg up where it's deserved. There are one or two enterprises already shaping themselves in my mind, which might be brought to a successful conclusion."

"Enterprises?" Dauncey repeated a little vaguely.

Jacob laid his hand upon his friend's shoulder. There was a strange light in his eyes.

"d.i.c.k," he said, "you'd think I was a commonplace sort of fellow enough, wouldn't you? So I am, in a way, and yet I've got something stirring in my blood of the fever which sent Sam out to the far west of America, more for the sheer love of going than for any hope of making a fortune. I've lived an everyday sort of life, but I've had my dreams."

"We're not going around the world treasure hunting, or anything of that sort, are we?" Dauncey asked anxiously.

"All the treasure hunting we shall do," Jacob replied, with a little thrill in his tone, "will be on the London pavements. All the adventures which the wildest buccaneers the world has ever known might crave are to be found under the fogs of this wonderful city. We shan't need to travel far in the body, d.i.c.k. A little office somewhere in the West End, a little ground bait which I know about, and the sharks of the world will come stealing around us. There are seven or eight million people in London, d.i.c.k. A detective I once knew--kind of thoughtful chap he was--once told me that on a moderate computation there were twenty-five thousand of them who would commit murder without hesitation if they could get their hand deep enough into their neighbour's pocket."

"Talking through his hat," Dauncey muttered.

"That is what we shall find out. Only remember this, Richard. I am convinced that I possess in some degree that sixth sense the French criminologist talked about,--the sense for Adventure. I've had to keep my nose to the grindstone, worse luck, but there have been times when I've lifted my head and sniffed it in the air. In queer places, too!

In the dark, shadowy streets of old towns which I have visited as a commercial traveller, selling goods by day and wandering out alone by night into the backwaters. I've felt the thrill there, d.i.c.k, trying to look through the curtained windows of some of those lonely houses.

I've been brushed by a stranger in Fleet Street and felt it; looked into a woman's mysterious eyes as she turned around, with a latchkey in her hand, before a house in Bloomsbury. We shan't need to wander far away, Richard."

"Seems to me," the latter observed, "that I am to play Man Friday to--"

He suddenly stood rigid. He gripped his friend's arm, his lips a little parted. He was listening in a paroxysm of subdued joy. From out of the sitting-room window came faint sounds of melody.

"It's Nora," he murmured ecstatically. "It's the first time for years!

She's singing!"

He moved involuntarily towards the house. Jacob filled his pipe and strolled across the way, homewards.

CHAPTER IV

Mr. Edward Bultiwell, of the House of Bultiwell and Sons, sat alone in his private office, one morning a week or so later, and communed with ghosts. It was a large apartment, furnished in mid-Victorian fas.h.i.+on, and, with the exception of the telephone and electric light, dest.i.tute of any of the modern aids to commercial enterprise. Oil paintings of Mr. Bultiwell's father and grandfather hung upon the walls. A row of stiff, horsehair chairs with ma.s.sive frames stood around the room, one side of which was gla.s.s-fronted, giving a view of the extensive warehouse beyond. It was here that Mr. Bultiwell's ghosts were gathered together,--ghosts of buyers from every town in the United Kingdom, casting occasional longing glances towards where the enthroned magnate sat, hoping that he might presently issue forth and vouchsafe them a word or two of greeting; ghosts of sellers, too, sellers of hides and skins from India and South America, Mexico and China, all anxious to do business with the world-famed House of Bultiwell. Every now and then the great man would condescend to exchange amenities with one of these emissaries from distant parts.

Everywhere was stir and bustle. Every few minutes a salesman would present himself, with a record of his achievements. All the time the hum of voices, the clattering of chains, the dust and turmoil of moving merchandise, the coming and going of human beings, all helping to drive the wheel of prosperity for the House of Bultiwell!...

The ghosts faded away. Two old men were outside, dusting stacks of leather. There was no one else, no sound of movement or life.

Bultiwell glanced at his watch, as he sat there and waited. Presently he struck the bell in front of him, and a grey-haired bookkeeper shuffled in.

"What time did Pedlar say Mr. Pratt would be round?" he asked harshly.

"Between eleven and twelve, sir."

Mr. Bultiwell glanced at his watch and grunted.

"Where's Mr. Haskall?"

"Gone round to the sale, sir."

"He got my message?" Mr. Bultiwell asked anxiously.

"I told him that he was on no account to buy, sir," the cas.h.i.+er a.s.sented. "He was somewhat disappointed. There is a probability of a rise in hides, and most of the pits down at the tannery are empty."

Mr. Bultiwell groaned under his breath. His eyes met the eyes of his old employe.

"You know why we can't buy--at the sales, Jenkins," he muttered.

The man sighed as he turned away.

"I know, sir."

Then there was a little stir in the place. The two men left off dusting; the clerks in the counting-house raised their heads hopefully. Jacob Pratt arrived and was ushered into the presence of the head of the firm. It was a trying moment for Mr. Bultiwell, but he did his best. He wished to be patronising, kindly and gracious.

He succeeded in being cringing.

"Glad to see you, Pratt. Glad to see you," he said. "Try that easy-chair. A cigar, eh? No? Quite right! Don't smoke much myself till after lunch. Seen Pedlar this morning?"

"I've just come from his office," Jacob replied.

Mr. Bultiwell thrust his hands into his trousers pockets and leaned back in his chair.

"Clever fellow, Pedlar, but not so clever as he thinks himself. I don't mind telling you, Pratt, between ourselves, that it was entirely my idea that you should be approached with a view to your coming in here."

"Is that so?" Jacob observed quietly.

"I knew perfectly well that you wouldn't be content to do nothing, a young man like you, and if you're going to keep in the leather trade at all, why not become a.s.sociated with a firm you know all about, eh?

I don't want to flatter myself," Mr. Bultiwell proceeded, with a touch of his old arrogance, "but Bultiwell's, although we haven't been so energetic lately, is still pretty well at the top of the tree, eh?"

"Not quite where it was, I am afraid, Mr. Bultiwell," Jacob objected.

"I've been looking through the figures, you know. Profits seem to have been going down a good deal."