“Dear Mr. Vandermeer,—You, who were an old friend of my husband’s in our better days and know how valiantly I have struggled to keep the home together, can’t you help me now? I am ill in bed, my children are starving. The little ones are lying now even too weak to cry out for bread. It would break a wolf’s heart to see them. If you can’t help me, for I know how things are with you, can’t you bring my case before your rich friend, Mr. Quixtus, of whose kindness and generosity you have so often spoken? . . .
“Yours sincerely,
“Emily Wellgood.”
It bore the address “2, Transiter Street, Clerkenwell Road, N.W.”
“What do you bring me this for?” asked Quixtus as soon as he had read it.
“I am satisfying my own conscience as far as Mrs. Wellgood is concerned,” replied Vandermeer, “and at the same time giving you an opportunity of being wicked. It’s a genuine case. You can let them die of starvation.”
Quixtus leaned back in his chair and gave the matter his consideration. Vandermeer had interrupted him in the midst of a paper which he was writing to controvert a new theory as to the juxtaposition of the palæolithic and neolithic tombs at Solutré, and he required time to fetch back his mind from the quaternary age to the present day. The prospect of a whole family perishing of hunger by an act; as it were, of his will, pleased his fancy.
“Very good. Very good, Vandermeer. Let them starve,” said he. “Let them starve,” he murmured to himself, as he took up his pen.
Vandermeer, hanging about, hinted at payment for the service rendered. Quixtus met his crafty eyes with equal cunning.
“You would be too soft-hearted—you would give them some of the money. Wait till some of them are dead.” He rolled the last words delectably round his tongue. “And now, my dear Vandermeer, I’m very busy. Many thanks and good-bye.”