CHAPTER I.
THE QUEST OF THE SLEEPING BEAUTY
Mr Herbert Nestle, knocking confidently and entering softly, laid the morning’s Daily Post before his Chief, who had just entered and was pulling off his gloves.
“Anything especial?” asked Gilead.
“I have thumb-marked one,” said the secretary, “which seemed to me perhaps worth your personal attention.”
The Bureau—known as Lamb’s Agency—was already in working order, and daily settling into its pace. Its operations so far had seemed wholly to justify its existence, and its founder was satisfied. During this first month of its being some score of deserving cases had been helped, and almost as many shams exposed. The world was happier and cleaner by that measure; and, for the future, professional cadgers promised to grow shy of risking the inquisition of a body so merciless in its penetration, behind which stood a force so mysterious in its origin, and having, apparently, such inexhaustible funds at its disposal.
Gilead kept his little private office on the floor above the Agency, and from that shrouded adytum issued the motive power to the mechanism below. There he sat, or thence departed, unheard, unapproachable, an enigmatic, formidable figure to his employés, holding vast destinies in the hollow of his hand. No one of them, saving the privileged secretary, was permitted to apply to him on general grounds; and to his rare appearances in the offices was accorded, particularly by the two lady typewriters, a hushed deference almost religious in its character. Much of this was due, no doubt, to the halo of countless gold which surrounded him; but indeed Gilead’s charm of person, serene, passionless, clear-eyed as an angel’s, and as coldly beautiful, had at least its influence on the flutterings of susceptible hearts.
His establishment comprised, in addition to the secretary and the two ladies, half a dozen correspondents or book-keepers, and as many active agents, sound men and sagacious, whose business it was to visit and report upon the cases. To them was entrusted the investigation of the ‘Oh, please do help!’ petitions—the five, or fifteen, or fifty, or five-hundred pound loan-requests, for the saving of a home, or the buying of a business, or the stocking of a fashionable millinery, or the settling of debts incurred through Bridge or speculation, or the enabling a sporting curate to purchase a motor-bicycle, or the shipping of a promising family to Canada, or the feeding of a clergyman’s sick aunt on jellies and port wine. The plaints (many from titled lips) soon became susceptible to classification, and were found generally weakest on the side which betrayed the most agonized “derangement of epitaphs” and the most fervent ejaculations. The result in all ways was instructive, as much in its revelation of the systematic fraud which battened on timid uninvestigating charity, as of the pitiful flimsiness of the bulwark which stood between the light of social respectability, with a name and a number on its door, on the one side, and the outer darkness, with its obliteration of all personality, on the other. Gilead’s heart often grew sick, as this dissected stuff of craft and misery, of shamefulness and shamelessness, was submitted to his judgment. But his comfort lay in the sanitary acumen of his Bureau, and so long as that continued to work unimpaired, he had no intention of taking his hand from the lever.
The month, so far as his individual quest was concerned, had proved a dull one, void of romantic incitement. He received, therefore, his secretary’s statement with some quickening of interest. Quiet and unemotional in his decisions, he had satisfied himself that Mr Plover’s eulogium on this man had been justified. He found him acute, resourceful, penetrative, energetic, humane—such a coadjutor as he could most have desired. Nestle virtually managed the agency on its practical side, and possessed his chief’s full confidence. His features and unjarring personality were pleasant things moreover to his master, who was habitually fastidious in the matters of conduct and appearance. The secretary was a very good-looking young man, in a fair boyish way, and so gentle in voice and manner that one might never have guessed the spirit of determination which underlay that soft exterior. In suggestion he was subordinate angel to the other, though somewhat older, and far more full of worldly wisdom. But the only visible mundane feature about him was his spectacles.
Gilead sat down in his padded office-chair, and crossing his legs easily, consulted the paper lying on the desk before him.
“Indeed, Nestle?” he said. “Which is it?”