CHAPTER XVI.
USURERS AND MILLIONAIRES.
When “Purchase” was in full blast the chosen race had some data to go upon as regards the “possibilities” of their clients, who for the most part were Army men, and when the mystic P appeared after a name in the Army List, they felt fairly safe that their investments were recoverable; many, however, found to their cost that “charging” one’s commission was not recognised by the Horse Guards, and that despite the production of a sackful of mortgages, Cox dared not part with a cent of the commission money to any one but the actual reprobate. Barely had a name appeared in the Gazette when a squad of these harpies hustled each other before the modest portals in Craig’s Court, and “the widows of Asher were loud in their wail” when they heard that their co-religionists had been turned empty away. In the citadel itself they, of course, had numerous paid spies, who “posted” them as to any imminent appearance in the Gazette, and no one earned more shekels by this illicit traffic than a clerk, who eventually had to leave, but who may still be seen shambling about Leicester Square in the futile endeavour to raise small loans for his shoddy clientèle. In pot-houses that he “uses” he is known as “the Captain,” and affects the old dragoon limp. For the human species, as everybody is aware, is composed but of two distinct races: the men who borrow, and the men who lend; under which two original diversities may be reduced all those impertinent classifications we are familiar with, such as Celtic and Gothic origin, white men, black men, red men, and such like. It is of the latter class during the sixties we propose to speak.
At the head of the list was Callisher—known in the family as Julius—then followed Bob Morris (“Jellybelly”) and a bad third was Sam Lewis, only then emerging from the status of a traveller in cheap jewellery, who addressed one as “Sir,” and ready at a moment’s notice to produce a ten-pound note and draw out a bill for £15, with which his pockets were invariably lined.
An undoubtedly leading usurer of the sixties was Bob Morris, who—it was no secret—was originally financed by Sir Henry De Hoghton, an eccentric baronet referred to elsewhere. “Jellybelly,” as he was familiarly known, transacted business in the vicinity of the Raleigh. A noiseless bell in a blaze of brass, and a door that opened without any visible agency, were the first objects that struck one on the threshold of the outer world. Introduced first into an ante-room, a client—subject to satisfactory scrutiny—was filtered into the presence of the great man.
No indecent hurry was permitted during these important preliminaries, and one might as reasonably have hoped to enter the library of a bishop as to approach Bob Morris without a scrupulous regard to decorum.
Numerous applicants were to be found at all hours in meek and becoming attitudes waiting for the moving of the waters, some to be rebuffed by deputy, and others only to be admitted and immediately bowed out.
A second waiting-room above relieved the congestion of the one below when unusual circumstances taxed its resources; it was heavily curtained, dark, on Turkish bath lines, and it was considered a bad sign—as the precursor to a snub—when one was promoted to this retreat.
“Jellybelly” was strictly honourable according to his lights; if he could get 100 per cent. he preferred it to 80, and if 80 was not forthcoming he would accept 60 on the security of the Consols. The variety of his transactions would have embarrassed a less brilliant mind, and at one time or another he had found himself owner (by mortgage) of the three first favourites for the Derby, the foundations and a partially completed wing of a skating-rink, and two miles of a submarine tunnel on which work had been stopped. That such multifarious responsibilities might reasonably be supposed to tax the patience of an ordinary mortal would have been matter of no surprise, but nothing appeared to give him the least concern.
It was Sam Lewis’s pluck that obtained him the colossal fortune he eventually died possessed of, and, ever ready to run the most infernal risks, it was seldom he did not come out top. During Goodwood week he did business in his bedroom at the “Grand,” and a telegram from the other end of the kingdom, followed by an acceptance, invariably produced banknotes by return post.
It was only after he began to feel his legs and to dabble in title deeds, that he abandoned the genial habits of his youth, became Mr. Lewis, could be seen only by appointment, and assumed an expression between that of a bank director and an Egyptian sphinx.