Chapter XXIII

Margaret Maddison had spent a torturing two hours before the shabby messenger had brought her the note which told her at least that Luke was alive. At the bottom of the letter there was scrawled in a different hand--Connor’s own--“Come round about eight.” The postscript he had not communicated to the Gunner.

The letter confirmed all she had feared. She sat motionless at her desk for half an hour with the copper-plate communication before her, trying to formulate a working theory. Luke was in trouble--had trouble. She had accepted this fact as a starting point. In her mind she did not reproach him for the monstrous eccentricity which had brought him to his present position--rather she hated herself that in a moment of crisis she had deserted him and urged him into deeper folly.

A servant came into the room and spoke to her, but she was so absorbed that she did not notice his presence, and he spoke again.

“Mr. Morell?” She came to reality with a start. She had not seen Danty for days, and her first inclination was to send a message that she was not well enough to be seen. And then a thought occurred to her, and she nodded.

“Ask him to come up, please.”

Danty came in, a sprucely dressed man about town, and bore in his smiling face no evidence of his embarrassment.

“Any news of Luke?” he asked, almost jovially. “I was on my way to the City and I thought I’d call in.”

She was regarding him curiously. Danton the friend, and Danton the gang leader, were indistinguishable. It came almost as a shock to her to realize that her confidence in him had already evaporated before Gorton had told her the truth about this adventurer. In that moment she realized how complete had been his duplicity, yet in her desk was that fatal message from Rex. That at least must have been true. It was Danty who had arranged to send her the message from Paris which bore Luke’s signature.

Yet she felt no indignation, no resentment--Danton was an ugly fact, no less or more a fact because of its ugliness.

“I heard from a friend of mine that Luke’s flat was burgled last night. Did they get anything?”

“Nothing of any great consequence,” she said.

He saw her fold in some haste a letter that was in front of her, and put it in a little handbag that lay on the table, and he wondered what there was in that epistle which brought the colour into her cheeks.

“I expect Luke’s having the time of his life. Have you heard from him?”

She shook her head.

“No, I haven’t heard from him.” And then, a little awkwardly: “Did you see that curious case in the paper this morning?”

He thought she was trying to turn the conversation into other channels. It seemed a little gauche, but he did not suspect her object in asking the question--her embarrassment saved her from suspicion.

“There are hundreds of cases in the paper: which is the one?”

“About the man who was living a double life: a respectable merchant by day and a--a burglar by night.”

Danty smiled. He lived too near the criminal world to harbour any illusions about its romantical character.

“That’s the sort of stuff you read in stories,” he said, “but I have known such cases. I’ve read about them, of course,” he added hastily. “There was a man in Liverpool who preached in a local chapel on Sundays and ran a forgery plant the rest of the week. I know another man--by hearsay, of course--who was the head of a prosperous shoe company in the Midlands, and one of the cleverest jewel thieves the police have ever had through their hands.”

She was looking out of the window, apparently uninterested.

“Why do men do that sort of thing?”

Danty shrugged.

“I don’t know. It’s a sort of field of adventure--there are precious few fields left. I wanted to talk to you about my South American company, Margaret. I’m in rather serious trouble. I want seventy thousand pounds to finish the deal, to be exact seventy-six thousand pounds, and I’ve raised sixty-nine. I was thinking this morning that if Luke was here I could get all I wanted. He didn’t like me, but he was a very good business man.”

She was neither amused nor indignant at the cool request. For a moment she had a wild idea of supplying him with the money he required. He might prove a useful ally, if all Gorton had said was true. Then the danger of making a confidant of this unscrupulous creature became apparent. Danty was a parasite living on society: he would not fail to exact the fullest advantage from his knowledge.

She was confronted with the alternatives of seeking the aid of the society in which Luke had found a discreditable place, or of going to the police, who, she knew, were no respecters of persons, and would as lief send Luke to penal servitude as they would the jailbirds with whom he was in association.

“I’m afraid that is impossible, Danton,” she said quietly. “Why don’t you see Mr. Stiles? He is a business man.”

Danton shrugged his shoulders.

“Stiles! A servant--the man is without any initiative, and a word from you----”

She shook her head.

“That I can’t give,” she said.

There was a silence after this; then Danton Morell began to speak easily about trivialities, and in a short time took his leave. At least, he thought, as he went down the stairs, he had satisfied himself that she was not definitely antagonistic to him.

That he was on his way to the City was true. There was a little City office where he occasionally met his humble associates. Since Lewing’s death the gang which bore his name had lain very quiet. It comprised a not inconsiderable number of men, old and young, who lived on the river and its cargoes. Though Danty took no part in their operations, he had organized their work and reduced their methods to a system. His corner was a small one, for receivers paid badly. The work was dangerous and difficult, and sometimes weeks would pass before the gang could make a good clean-up. Bales of silk, chests of tea, pockets of rubber--nothing came amiss to the thieves; but the commodities they stole were hard to dispose of, and Danty’s share hardly paid the rent of his flat.

A proposal put up to him that morning that he should take a more active part in the work was negatived by him.

“It is not my graft,” he said. “I’m not a Connor. You don’t imagine that I’ll come and live in Bermondsey, do you?”

The active leader of the gang--a short, thick-set man who bore the name of Dick and apparently nothing else, did not receive the refusal without protest.

“The boys say that Connor’s crowd are making big money, and that they ought to be making the same. Even if you didn’t stay in Bermondsey, and only came down occasionally, you might help.”

“You’re having all the help you’ll get from me,” said Danty impatiently. “What’s the sense of comparing Connor’s crowd with ours? Connor does land work, and that’s different. If your people hadn’t had my advice they’d spend their time in stir. Who was it made you buy an electric boat--it was I! Who arranged to supply you with lists of cargoes and the lightering contracts? You’re doing a small business because it’s the only kind of business you know. Do you think Connor would take any one of your crowd and use him?”

“We could go into Connor’s trade and make good pickings,” insisted Dick doggedly. “Lewing would have been more use to us than you are.”

Danty was not easily cowed. He showed his teeth in a mirthless smile.

“And Lewing’s dead! Do you know why? It wasn’t because he put up a squeal, but because he poached on Connor’s territory.”

He sent the man away dissatisfied, folded the notes which Dick had brought as his share of a recent haul, and went to a respectable City club to lunch.

Every thief has his failings, and Danty was a gambler. He loved that part of the City which immediately surrounds the Stock Exchange; he would spend hours poring over the rise and fall of prices; he speculated heavily in every kind of share, and had seen the considerable fortune he had achieved by the crooked practice of his profession melt like snow in the sun. Rex Leferre had been a useful lieutenant--he had been the money getter at a period when money was tight. He had served other purposes--paid with real money for blocks of unsalable shares with which Danty was saddled. The time had come when Danton Morell must find a new source of revenue, or vanish forever from his usual haunts.

It was his boast that he was the best confidence man in England; yet he was made to look a child in that place that has been the ruin of so many confidence men--the London Stock Exchange.

He stopped long enough in the City to discover many unpleasant truths. Shares which he held in considerable quantities were sliding steadily down the list. He met his broker, a cold-blooded man, who laid before him a statement of account which made Danton Morell go cold.

Danty left the City in a state of desperation, and arrived at his flat at the same time as the lawyer’s clerk who served him with a writ for £140 from his tailor--the tenth writ Danty had received in the past month. Pi Coles, his so-called valet, took his coat and hat.

“Any luck?” asked the little man with the ease and familiarity of one who was addressing a friend.

“No luck, Pi,” said Danty with a twisted smile. “But every cloud has its silver lining.”

He did not realize that the silver lining in this case radiated from one called Connor. To do him justice, Mr. Connor was unaware of the fact that he was destined to assist the head of a rival gang.