And he marked half a crown as paid in her greasy, dirty rent-book, and the same in his large book.
"Eh, you 're a queer 'un, Mester Machin!" murmured the old woman, as he left. He never knew precisely what she meant. Fifteen—twenty years later in his career, her intonation of that phrase would recur to him and puzzle him.
On the following Monday everybody in Chapel Alley and Carpenter's Square seemed to know that the inconvenience of bailiffs and eviction could be avoided by arrangement with Denry the philanthropist. He did quite a business. And having regard to the fantastic nature of the security, he could not well charge less than threepence a week for half a crown. That was about forty per cent. a month and five hundred per cent. per annum. The security was merely fantastic, but nevertheless, he had his remedy against evil-doers. He would take what they paid him for rent and refuse to mark it as rent, appropriating it to his loans; so that the fear of bailiffs was upon them again. Thus, as the good genius of Chapel Alley and Carpenter's Square, saving the distressed from the rigours of the open street, rescuing the needy from their tightest corners, keeping many a home together when but for him it would have fallen to pieces, always smiling, jolly, sympathetic, and picturesque, Denry at length employed the five-pound note won from Harold Etches. A five-pound note—especially a new and crisp one, as this was—is a miraculous fragment of matter, wonderful in the pleasure which the sight of it gives even to millionaires; but perhaps no five-pound note was ever so miraculous as Denry's. Ten per cent. per week, compound interest, mounts up; it ascends; and it lifts. Denry never talked precisely. But the town soon began to comprehend that he was a rising man, a man to watch. The town admitted that, so far, he had lived up to his reputation as a dancer with countesses. The town felt that there was something indefinable about Denry.
Denry himself felt this. He did not consider himself clever, nor brilliant. But he considered himself peculiarly gifted. He considered himself different from other men. His thoughts would run:
"Anybody but me would have knuckled down to Duncalf and remained a shorthand clerk for evermore."
"Who but me would have had the idea of going to the ball and asking the Countess to dance? ... And then that business with the fan!"
"Who but me would have had the idea of taking his rent-collecting off Duncalf?"
"Who but me would have had the idea of combining these loans with the rent-collecting. It's simple enough! It's just what they want! And yet nobody ever thought of it till I thought of it!"
And he knew of a surety that he was that most admired type in the bustling, industrial provinces—a card.
IV