The Angel Part 37

"What is in there?" Sir Augustus asked one of the police inspectors.

"It's a particularly bad street, Sir Augustus," the man answered. "A sort of great human rabbit-warren or rat's run, as you may say. The houses nearly all communicate through cellars and subterranean pa.s.sages."

"Shall we go down here?" Sir Augustus asked Joseph.

"I should not advise it, sir," said the policeman. "The people are so dirty and degraded and disgusting in their habits that they hardly resemble human beings at all."

"Never mind that," Sir Augustus answered. "Now we have come I wish to see everything, however personally distasteful it may be. I am ashamed gentlemen, to think that I have s.h.i.+rked so obvious a duty as this for so long! I am sorry and ashamed of myself!"

With eyes that were not quite dry the great financier took Joseph by the arm and marched down the alley, followed by the others.

They walked cautiously down the place, which seemed strangely deserted.

Sir Augustus was talking eagerly to Joseph, opening his heart in a way to which he had long been a stranger, when there was a sudden loud report in the air above them.

Looking upwards with startled eyes, they saw that a little coil of blue smoke was floating out of an open window high above them.

A second afterwards Sir Augustus Kirwan sighed twice and fell forward upon his face, dead, shot through the heart.

CHAPTER XXI

WAITING!

Mr. Andrew Levison lived in Jermyn Street. His establishment was comfortable, but modest. A sitting-room, a small dining-room, a bedroom for himself, and one for his man--these, together with the bath-room, completed his suite.

It was a bright morning as he opened his _Daily Wire_ and sat down before the kedjeree and kidneys that his servant had just brought him for breakfast. It was rather late; the Jew had been at a theatrical supper-party the night before until long after midnight. During the party, at which a great many of the stars of the lighter stage had been present, the conversation had turned almost entirely upon the marked slump in theatrical business during Joseph's ministry in London.

One and all of their company were united in their hatred and alarm of this evangelist who bade fair to ruin them.

The whole situation was, moreover, aggravated because of the immense public support Joseph was receiving from some of the most wealthy and influential people in society. There was no getting over this fact. And yet no one had any remedy to suggest.

Lord Ballina and Mimi Addington had also been of the party, and a keen observer might possibly have detected a certain furtive look which pa.s.sed between the actress, the peer, and the theatrical manager. All three, however, held their peace, and contributed little or nothing to the problem of how the situation was to be dealt with.

And now Mr. Levison, as he sat at table, smiled quietly to himself, reflecting that he could very considerably astonish many of his colleagues if it had been possible to do so.

The sitting-room--for Levison did not breakfast in the dining-room--was full of suns.h.i.+ne. A great bowl of sulphur-colored hothouse roses stood on the writing-table. The white panelled walls, hung with rare old j.a.panese color prints, caught and reflected the apricot light of the sun, which poured in through the windows.

The room was carpeted with a fabric from Persia--the veritable peac.o.c.k blue and dark red of Teheran. The armchairs were upholstered in vermilion leather. Everything harmonized and was in taste, and it was with complacency that Levison looked round him and picked up the paper.

Almost the first thing that struck his eye was a paragraph headed "Movements of Joseph."

Mr. Levison started, and read with great attention. The paragraph ran as follows:--

"We are able to give our readers exclusive information as to the next move in the vast campaign for the reformation of London which is being undertaken by the teacher known as Joseph, in company with his distinguished colleagues and helpers. One of the most crying evils of the day is undoubtedly the fact that, while one section of the population lives in a splendor and luxury perhaps unparalleled in the history of civilization, another section, and this by far the larger, lives under conditions of squalor so great that it becomes a horror, conditions that can only be hinted at in polite society or in the public prints. The state of the East End of London has long engaged the attention of philanthropists, but very little has been done to ameliorate it in comparison with its crying needs. Sociologists have long since recognized that under present conditions very little can be done until the rich property owners combine and agree to sacrifice a portion of their emoluments in order to improve the condition of the poor. The teacher Joseph has recognized this fact, and is beginning a movement which may be very far-reaching in its consequences. To-day, we understand, a party of wealthy and distinguished gentlemen will be taken by the evangelist to some of the worst parts of the East End there to see for themselves the true condition of affairs. The remarkable personality which is at present the talk of London will indeed have accomplished a greater miracle than any of those strange and unexplained occurrences attributed to him if he can cleanse and purify one half-mile of Stepney or Whitechapel. For our part, we wish Joseph and his helpers every possible success in their endeavors."

Mr. Levison laid down the paper, and got up from his seat. He walked up and down the room twice, looked at his breakfast, shook his head, and then, going to a sideboard, poured some brandy from a tantalus into a gla.s.s, added a little water with a hand that shook slightly, and drank the mixture off.

So it was to be to-day, then? Mr. Levison had not realized the imminence of his plot. It was one thing to reflect complacently that one had arranged to remove a troublesome intruder from one's path on some unspecified date; it was, as Levison realized now, quite another thing to sit down and wait for the event to happen in an hour or two.

Levison looked at his watch. It was eleven o'clock. He supposed, though he did not know with any certainty, that the party to the East End would hardly start before midday.

"They can't leave much before twelve, I should think, from wherever they meet," he muttered to himself. "Give them an hour to get down to the East End, another hour or more, perhaps, for the people"--another and far less pleasing word almost escaped Mr. Levison's lips--"for the people I have employed to do what has to be done. Roughly, I suppose there ought to be some news in the paper between four and five."

The man's face had grown quite white, and his hands began to tremble more and more. No one had ever seen the self-possessed, genial-mannered _entrepreneur_ like this. And when he stopped in front of the gla.s.s which hung over the mantel-shelf, he started at the sight of his own guilty and terrified countenance.

Supposing that something should go wrong! Supposing the man was caught, and confessed! A thousand horrid apprehensions began to crowd into his mind, and the sweat came out cold and damp upon his forehead.

There were hours to wait. How should he employ them? The theatre was closed; there was no particular business claiming his attention at the moment. And he felt less and less inclined to sit alone in his chambers waiting. Exercise, he came to the conclusion, a long, brisk walk, was the only thing that could restore his mental tone.

He rang for his coat and hat, took a stick from the stand in the hall, and went out into Jermyn Street. For a moment he was undecided as to his direction. The thought of the Park crossed his mind, but it was superseded by another and more welcome one. He would walk up to St.

John's Wood--that was a good distance--and he would call on Mimi Addington, and tell her the news that he had read in the paper. He smiled maliciously at the idea. Perhaps Lord Ballina might be there, too; if so, well and good. His fellow conspirators should share his uneasiness. They were in the thing as much as he was, and he saw no reason why he should be the only one to suffer. The idea appealed to his Oriental imagination, and in picturing to himself the probable fears of his companions when they knew that this was the actual day on which the a.s.sa.s.sination was to be attempted, Levison forgot his own, and it was quite with a jaunty step that he turned into St. James' Street.

Even at the moment when he had realized that the dark deed which he had instigated was to be attempted on that very day, Levison had felt not the slightest remorse or compunction. Fear he had felt, the fear of discovery, but that was all. A criminal is nothing more or less than a supreme egotist. Levison saw everything in its relation to himself, and himself alone; never in relation to other people, or to G.o.d. Joseph was ruining his business, therefore he had plotted Joseph's death. He had no bitter feeling against Joseph whatever, even though the Teacher's advent and appearance in the theatre had done him such serious harm. Levison was a philosophic scoundrel, and took things as they came, and wasted no brain power or mental force in the exercise of personal dislikes.

He arrived at Mimi Addington's house in St. John's Wood a little before two, not having hurried at all. The actress was at home, and he was at once shown into the drawing-room, where she was sitting with Lord Ballina and a friend of his, who was introduced to Levison as Mr. Errol Smith. Fortunately for Levison's plans, Lord Ballina's friend was on the point of departure, and shortly went away, leaving the three conspirators together.

"Well, Andrew, how goes it?" Ballina said, with his vacuous dissipated little simper. "When are you going to open the theatre again?"

"Well, that depends," Levison answered, with a meaning look. "You know very well what that depends on!"

He was watching the effect of his words upon Mimi Addington as he spoke, and saw the hard, cruel eyes glisten with hate at his reference, and the beautifully shaped mouth harden into a thin line of crimson.

"It's some time now since we had that little talk, Andrew," the woman said, in a voice that she strove to keep well under control, though every now and then the hysteria of her hate crept into it and suggested that which lay, lava-hot, deep down in her heart.

"Well, d'you know, my dear," Levison said, taking out a cigar and lighting it with great deliberation--"well, d'you know that it's the little matter that we discussed that I've come up about this afternoon."

"How much longer is that Joseph to be allowed to c.u.mber London?" she said, with a hissing intake of the breath.

"Well, that all depends," Levison answered, amused with the skill with which he could play upon her pa.s.sion. The Jew loved power and the exercise of it. He gratified himself now by playing on her as if she were an instrument and noticing how swiftly she responded to his touch.

"Oh, hang it all, Andrew," Lord Ballina said, "don't tease Mimi. If you've got any news about this business let's have it."

Levison thought he had gone far enough, and took the _Daily Wire_ which he had brought with him from his pocket.

"Read that," he said, handing it to the young peer.

Ballina read out the paragraph in a monotonous sing-song, with now and then such observations as suggested themselves to his limited and vicious intelligence.

"Well," he said, "for the matter of that, Andrew, the papers are full of the fellow every day, and his goings on. I don't see what news there is in that, it's only just another of his games. Was that all you came up to tell us?"

Levison saw the look of scorn that Mimi Addington flashed at the young man. Her own intelligence was infinitely keener; and though Levison had not gone into any details about the arrangements he had made, she saw the significance of the fact in the newspaper immediately.

"What a duffer you are, Bally," she said contemptuously. "Why, it's perfectly clear of course. What better place could you have for knocking a Johnny on the head than an East End slum? That's what Andrew means, and that's what he's come to tell us, isn't it, Andrew?"

"Your brilliant intellect, a.s.sisted by your personal dislike, has at once divined the truth, Mimi," said Levison, leaning back upon the divan and blowing a blue cloud of smoke up towards the hanging Moorish lamp.