Chapter Six.
Reveals the Victim.
Three days had passed.
The coroner’s inquiry had been duly held into the death of Dr Jerome Jerrold, and medical evidence, including that of the deceased’s friend, Sir Houston Bird, had been called. This evidence showed conclusively that Sir Houston had been right in his conjecture, from the convulsed appearance of the body and other signs, that poor Jerrold had died of poisoning by strychnine. Therefore the proceedings were brief, and a verdict was returned of “Suicide while temporarily insane.”
No mention was made of the sealed letter left with Mr Trustram, for in a case of that distressing nature the coroner is always ready to make the inquiry as short as possible.
Jack Sainsbury, who had been granted leave by Mr Charlesworth, the managing-director, to attend the inquest upon his friend, returned to the City in a very perturbed state of mind.
He sat at his desk on that grey December afternoon, unable to attend to the correspondence before him, unable to fix his mind upon business, unable to understand the subtle ramifications of the cleverly conceived and dastardly plot, the key of which he had discovered by those few words he had overheard between the Chairman of the Board and his close friend, the great Lewin Rodwell.
He was wondering whether his dead friend’s allegation that Rodwell was none other than Ludwig Heitzman was really the truth. Sir Houston Bird had promised to institute inquiry at the Alien department of the Home Office, yet, only that day he had heard that the official of whom inquiry must be made actually bore a German name. The taint of the Teuton seemed, alas! over everything, notwithstanding the public resentment apparent up and down the whole country, and the formation of leagues and unions to combat the activity of the enemy in our midst.
Jack Sainsbury disagreed with the verdict of suicide. Jerome Jerrold was surely not the man to take his own life by swallowing strychnine. Yet why had he left behind that puzzling and mysterious message which Charles Trustram, having given his word of honour to his friend, refused to be opened for another year?
The will had been found deposited with his solicitor—a will which left the sum of eighteen-odd thousand pounds to “my friend and assistant in many confidential matters, Mr John Sainsbury, of Heath Street, Hampstead.”
As far as it went that was gratifying to Jack. It rendered him independent of the Ochrida Copper Corporation, and the strenuous “driving-power,” as it is termed in the City, of Charlesworth, the sycophant of Sir Boyle Huntley and his fellow directors. The whole office knew that Huntley and Rodwell, brought in during days of peace “to reorganise the Company upon a sound financial basis,” were gradually getting all the power into their own hands, as they had done in other companies. The lives of that pair were one huge money-getting adventure.
In the office strange things were whispered. But Jack alone knew the truth.
The most irritating fact to him was that Jerome Jerrold, just as he had discovered Rodwell’s birth and masquerading, had died.
Why?
Why had Lewin Rodwell rung up his new friend, Trustram, just before poor Jerome’s death? Why had Jerome asked to see his friend Sainsbury so particularly on that night? Why had he locked his door and taken his life at the very moment when he should have lived to face and denounce the man who, while an alien enemy, was posing as a loyal subject of Great Britain?
Of these and other things—things which he had discussed on the previous night with Elise—he was thinking deeply, when a lad entered saying:
“Mr Charlesworth wants to see you, sir.” He rose from his chair and ascended in the lift to the next floor. On entering the manager’s room he found Mr Charlesworth, the catspaw of Sir Boyle, seated in his padded chair, smoking a good cigar.
“Oh—er—Sainsbury. I’m rather sorry to call you in, but the directors have decided that as you are of military age they are compelled, from patriotic motives, to suggest to you that you should join the army, as so many of the staff here have done. Don’t you think it is your duty?”
Jack Sainsbury looked the manager straight in the face.
“Yes,” he said, with a curious smile. “I quite agree. It certainly is my duty to resign and take my part in the defence of the country. But,” he added, “I think it is somewhat curious that the directors have taken this step—to ask me to resign.” Charlesworth, an estimable man, and beloved by the whole of the staff of the company at home and abroad, hesitated a moment, and then replied:
“Unfortunately I am only here to carry out the orders of the directors, Sainsbury. You have been a most reliable and trusted servant of the company, and I shall be only too pleased to write you a good testimonial. You will have half-pay during the time you are absent, of course, as the others have.”
“Well, if I leave the Ochrida Copper Corporation, as the directors have practically dismissed me, I require no half-pay—nothing whatever,” he answered, with a grim smile. “I part from you and from the company, Mr Charlesworth, with the very kindest and most cordial recollections; but I wish you, please, to give my compliments to the directors and say that, as they wish me to leave and act in the interests of my country, I shall do so, refusing to accept the half of my salary which they, in their patriotism, have so generously offered me.”
Charlesworth was a little puzzled by this speech. It was unexpected. The steady, hardworking clerk, who had been so reliable, and whom he had greatly esteemed, might easily have met his suggestion with resentment. Indeed, he had expected him to do so. But, on the contrary, Sainsbury seemed even eager to retire from the service of the company.
Charlesworth was, of course, ignorant of the conditions of Dr Jerrold’s will, or of those words Jack Sainsbury had overheard as he had entered the boardroom. Vernon Charlesworth had been a servant of the Ochrida Copper Corporation ever since its formation eighteen years ago—long before the “new blood” represented by the Huntley-Rodwell combination had been “brought into” it. From the first inception of the company the public, who had put their modest savings into it, had lost their money. Yet recently, by the bombastic and optimistic speeches of Sir Boyle Huntley at the Cannon Street Hotel, and the self-complacent smiles of Lewin Rodwell at the meetings, confidence had been inspired, and it was still a going concern—one which, if the truth be told, Huntley and Rodwell were working to get into their own hands.
“Of course I am really very sorry to part with you, Sainsbury,” the manager said, leaning back in his chair and looking at him. “You’ve been a most trustworthy servant, yet I, of course, have to abide by the decision of the board.”
Jack Sainsbury smiled.
“No, please don’t apologise, Mr Charlesworth,” he said, with a faint smile. “I daresay I shall soon find some other employment more congenial to me.”
“I hope so,” replied the manager, peering at the young man through his horn-rimmed glasses—a style affected in official circles. “Nowadays, with so many men at the front, it is not really a difficult matter to find a post in the City. It seems to me that the slacker has the best of it.”
“I’m not a slacker, though you may think I am, Mr Charlesworth,” cried Jack, reddening. “A month after war was declared I went to the recruiting office fully prepared to enlist. But, unfortunately, they rejected me as medically unfit.”
“Did they?” exclaimed the other in surprise. “You never told us that!”
“Was it necessary? I merely tried to do my duty. But—” and he paused, and then, in a meaning voice, he added: “If I can’t do my duty out in the trenches, I can at least do it here, at home.”
“If it is true that you’ve been already rejected as unfit,” exclaimed Charlesworth, “I daresay I might induce the directors to reconsider their decision.”
“No, sir,” was Sainsbury’s proud reply. “I will not trouble you to do that. It is quite apparent that, for some unknown reason, they wish to dismiss me. Therefore I consider myself dismissed—and, to tell you the truth, I don’t regret it. But, before I go, I would like to thank you and the staff for all the kindness and consideration shown to me during my illness a year ago.”
“Then you refuse to stay?” asked Charlesworth, rather puzzled, for he held Sainsbury in high esteem.
“Yes. Before dismissing me I consider that the directors should have inquired whether I had tried to enlist,” he answered resentfully.
“Then I suppose there is no more to say. Shall you remain till the end of the week?”
“No, sir. I intend to go now. It would not, I think, be a very happy seven days for me if I remained, would it?”
Charlesworth sighed. He was sorry to lose the services of such a bright, shrewd and clever young man.
“Very well,” he replied regretfully. “If that is really so, Sainsbury, I must wish you good-bye,” and with frankness he stretched forth his hand, which the young man took, and then turned on his heel and left the manager’s room.
While Jack Sainsbury was on his way through the bustle of Gracechurch Street, Lewin Rodwell, who had been upstairs at a meeting of the board, descended and entered Charlesworth’s room, closing the door after him.
“Well,” he asked carelessly, after chatting upon several important business matters, “have you spoken yet to young Sainsbury?”
“Yes. And he’s gone.”
Lewin Rodwell drew a sigh of relief.
“He ought to enlist—a smart, athletic fellow like that! Such men are just what England wants to-day, Charlesworth. I hope you gave him a good hint—eh?”
“I did. But it seems that he has already endeavoured to enlist, but was rejected—a defective arm.”
Lewin Rodwell was silent—but only for a few seconds.
“Well, never mind; he’s gone. We must reduce the staff—it is quite imperative in these days. What about those six others? Staff reduction will mean increased profits, you know.”
“They all have notice. I’m sorry about Carew. He has an invalid wife and seven children. His salary is only two pounds fifteen.”
“I’m afraid we can’t help that, Charlesworth,” replied the man who posed in the West End as the great self-denying patriot who hobnobbed with Cabinet Ministers. “We must reduce the staff, if we’re going to pay a dividend. He’ll get work—munition-making or something. Sentiment is out of place in these war-days.”
And yet, only two days before, the speaker had made a brilliant speech at a Mansion House meeting in which he had beaten the patriotic drum loudly, and appealed to all employers of labour to increase wages because of the serious rise in food-prices. Charlesworth knew this, but made no remark. It was not to his interest to thwart the great Lewin Rodwell, or his place-seeking sycophant Sir Boyle Huntley, who had been put by his friend into the position he now held.
Truly the City is a strange, complex world of unpatriotic, hard-hearted money-seeking—a world where the Anglo-German or the swindling financier waxes rich quickly, and where the God-fearing Englishman goes to a Rowton House ousted by the “peaceful penetration” of our “dear kind friends” the Germans.
Those who have known the City for the past ten years or so know full well—ay, they know, alas! too well—the way in which Germany has prepared us for the financial aspect of the war. In the light of current events much has been made plain that was hitherto shrouded in mystery. We have seen plainly the subtle methods of the enemy.
Lewin Rodwell and his catspaw, Sir Boyle, were only typical of dozens of others in that little area from Temple Bar to Aldgate, the men who were working for Germany both prior to the war and after.
Charlesworth, to do him full credit, was an honest Englishman. Yet such a man was bound to be employed by our enemies as a safeguard against inquiry, and in order to avert suspicion. City men, like Charlesworth, might be patriotic to the backbone, yet when it became a matter of choosing between bread-and-cheese and starvation, as in his own case, the matter of living at Wimbledon on two thousand a year appealed to him, in preference to cold mutton and lodgings in Bloomsbury.
Germans, with or without assumed English names, controlled our finances, our professions, our hotels, nay, our very lives, wherefore it was hardly surprising that we were unable, in the first few months of war, to rid ourselves of that disease known as “German measles.”
“I must say I’m sorry about Carew,” remarked Charlesworth. “He’s been with us ever since the formation of the Company—and you recollect we sent him abroad two years ago upon the Elektra deal. He made a splendid bargain—one that has brought us over twenty thousand pounds.”
“And he was paid a bonus of twenty-pounds, wasn’t he?” snapped Rodwell impatiently. “Surely that was enough?”
“But really I think we should keep him; he is very valuable.”
“No, Charlesworth. Let him go. Give him the best of references, if you like. But we must cut down expenses, if you and I are to live at all.”
“We must live at the expense of these poor devils, I suppose,” remarked Charlesworth, with a slight sigh.
Truth to tell, he could not express his repugnance.
“Yes. Surely we are the masters. And capital must live!” was the other’s hard reply. “But where is Sainsbury going?” Rodwell inquired quickly. “What does he intend doing?”
“I have no idea,” the manager said. “He behaved most mysteriously when I told him that his services were no longer required.”
“Mysteriously!” exclaimed Rodwell, starting and looking straight across at his companion. “How?”
“Well, he expressed undisguised pleasure at leaving us—that’s all.”
“What did he say?” asked Lewin Rodwell, in an instant deeply interested. “Tell me exactly what transpired. I have a reason—a very strong reason—for ascertaining. Tell me,” he urged, with an eagerness which was quite unusual to him. “Tell me the whole facts.”