The Joker by Edgar Wallace (books to read in your 20s .TXT) 📖
- Author: Edgar Wallace
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beneficial result. It finds out all the feeble spots in the structure of
finance, breaks down the weak links, so that in tile end the fabric is
stronger and more wholesome than it was before the dump occurred.’
‘Is it possible that the slump was engineered by a group of
market-riggers?’
‘Mr Harlow scoffed at the idea.
‘How could it have been engineered without the connivance or assistance
of the Foreign Secretary, whose speech alone was responsible?’ he asked.
‘It is certainly an amazing statement for a responsible Minister to make.
Apparently Sir John was a very sick man when he addressed the House of
Commons. It is suggested that he was suffering from overwork, but
whatever may have been the cause, he, and he alone, brought about this
slump.’
‘You knew Sir John?’
‘Mr Harlow agreed.
‘He was in my house, in this very room, less than a quarter of an hour
before the speech was made,’ he said, ‘and I can only say that he
appeared in every way normal. If he was ill, he certainly did not show
it.’
‘Reverting to the question of world-wide depreciation of stock values, Mr
Harlow went on to say… ‘
Jim read the interview with a wry smile. Harlow had said many things, but
he had omitted many more. He did not speak of the feverish activity of
Rata, Limited, whose every window had been blazing throughout a week of
nights—not one word had he suggested that he himself would benefit to an
enormous extent through the tragedy of that unhappy speech.
The man puzzled him. If he was, as Jim was convinced, behind the scare,
if his clever brain had devised, and by some mysterious means had brought
about the financial panic, what end had he in view? He had been already
one of the three richest men in England. He had not the excuse that he
had a mammoth industry to benefit. He had no imperial project to bring to
fruition. Had he been dreaming of new empires created out of the wilds;
were he a great philanthropist who had some gigantic enterprise to
advance for the benefit of mankind, this passionate desire for gold might
be understood if it could not be excused.
But Harlow had no other objective than the accumulation of money. He had
shown a vicarious interest in the public weal when he had presented his
model police station to the country; he had certainly subscribed
liberally to hospital appeals; but none of these gifts belonged to a
system of charity or public spirit. He was a man without social
gifts—the joys or suffering of his fellows struck no sympathetic chord
in his nature. If he gave, he gave cold-bloodedly, and yet without
ostentation.
True, he had offered to build, on the highest point of the Chiltern
Hills, an exact replica of the Parthenon as a national war memorial, but
the offer had been rejected because of the inaccessibility of the chosen
spot. There was a certain freakishness in his projects; and Jim suspected
that they were not wholly disinterested. The man baffled him: he could
get no thread that would lead him to the soul and the mind behind those
cold blue eyes.
For six hours that night he sat by the bedside of the unconscious Foreign
Minister. What strange story could he tell, Jim wondered. How came he to
be perambulating the streets in the guise of a drunken mountebank, whose
wanderings were to end in a vulgar brawl, with a policeman and the
cheerless lodgings of a prison cell? Had he some secret weakness which
Harlow had learnt and exploited? Did he live a double life? Jim thought
only to reject the idea. Sir Joseph’s life was more or less an open book;
his movements for years past could be traced day by day from the
information supplied by the diaries of his secretary, from the knowledge
of his own colleagues.
Whilst Jim kept his vigil he made another attempt to decipher the writing
on the card, but he got no farther. He was taking turns with Inspector
Wilton of Evory Street in watching beside the bedside. The doctor had
said that at any moment the Minister might recover consciousness; and
though he took the gravest view of the ultimate result of the drugging,
his prognosis did not exclude the chance of a complete recovery. It was
at a quarter after three in the morning that the sick man, who had been
tossing from side to side, muttering disjointed words which had no
meaning to the listener, turned upon his back and, opening his eyes,
blinked round the dimly lighted room. Jim, who had been studying the card
in the light of a shaded lamp, put it into his pocket and came to the
side of the bed.
Sir Joseph looked at him wonderingly, his wide brows knit in an effort of
memory.
‘Hullo!’ he said faintly. ‘What happened… ? Did the car smash up?’
‘Nothing serious has happened. Sir Joseph,’ said Jim gently.
Again the wondering eyes wandered around the bare walls of the room, and
then they fell upon a temperature chart hanging against the wall. ‘This
is a hospital, isn’t it?’
‘A nursing home,’ said Jim.
There was a long silence before the sick man spoke. ‘My head aches
infernally. Can you give me a drink, or isn’t that allowed?’
Jim poured out a glass of water and, supporting the shoulders of the
Minister, put the glass to his lips. He drank the contents greedily and
sank back with a sigh upon the pillow.
‘I suppose I am a little light-headed, but I could swear that your name
was Carlton,’ he said.
‘That is my name, sir,’ said Jim, and the Minister pondered this for a
little time.
‘Anything broken?’ he asked. ‘It was the car, I suppose? I told that
stupid chauffeur of mine to be careful. The road was like glass.’
He moved first one leg and then the other gingerly, and then his arms.
‘Nothing is broken at all, Sir Joseph,’ said Jim. ‘You have had a shock.’
He had already rung for the doctor, who was sleeping in a room below.
‘Shock, eh?… I don’t remember… And Harlow!’ His eyebrows lowered again.
‘A decent fellow but rather over-dressed. I went to his house tonight,
didn’t I… ? Yes, yes, I remember. How long ago was it?’ Jim would not
tell him that the visit to Harlow’s had happened days before. ‘Yes, yes,
I remember now. Where did I go after that… to the House, I suppose? My
mind is like a whirling ball of wool!’
The doctor came in, a dressing-gown over his pyjamas, and the Minister’s
mind was sufficiently clear to guess his profession. ‘I’m all in, doctor.
What was it, a stroke?’
‘No Sir Joseph,’ said the doctor. He was feeling his patient’s pulse and
seemed satisfied.
‘Sir Joseph thinks he might have been in a car collision,’ suggested Jim
with a significant glance at the doctor.
The man was terribly weak, but the brightness of his intellect was
undimmed. ‘What is the matter with me?’ he asked irritably as the medical
man put the stethoscope to his heart.
‘I’m wondering whether you have ever taken drugs in your life?’
‘Drugs!’ snorted the old man. ‘Good God! What a question! I don’t even
take medicine! When I feel ill I go to my osteopath and he puts me
right.’
The doctor grinned, as all properly constituted doctors grin when an
osteopath is mentioned, for the medical profession is the most
conservative and the most suspicious of any.
‘Then I shan’t give you drugs.’ He had a nimble turn of mind to cover up
an awkward question. ‘Your heart is good and your pulse is good. And all
you want now is a little sleep.’
‘And a little food,’ growled Sir Joseph. ‘I am as hungry as a starved
weasel!’
They brought him some chicken broth, hot and strong, and in half an hour
he had fallen into a gentle sleep. The doctor beckoned Jim outside the
room.
‘I think it is safe for you to leave him,’ he said. ‘He is making a
better recovery than I dreamt was possible. I suppose he has said nothing
about his adventures?’
‘Nothing,’ said Jim, and the man of medicine realised that, even if Sir
Joseph had explained the strange circumstances of his arrest and
appearance in the police court, it was very unlikely that he would be
told.
Early the next morning Jim called at Downing Street and saw the Prime
Minister.
‘He is under the impression that he was in a car accident after leaving
Park Lane. He remembers nothing about the speech in the House; the
doctors will not allow him to be told until he is strong again. I have
very grave doubt on one point, sir, which I want to clear up. And to
clear it up it may be necessary to go outside the law.’
‘I don’t care very much where you go,’ said the Prime Minister, ‘but we
must have the truth! Until the facts are known, not only Sir Joseph but
the whole Cabinet is under a cloud. I will give instructions that you are
to have carte blanche, and I will support you in any action you may
take.’
With this confident assurance Jim went on to Scotland Yard to prove the
truth ‘of a theory which had slowly evolved in the dark hours of the
night; a theory so fantastical that he could hardly bring himself to its
serious contemplation.
FOUR HUNDRED and fifteen cablegrams were put on the wire in one morning
and they were all framed in identical terms:
Remit by cable through Lombard Bank Carr Street Branch all profits taken
in Rata Transaction 17 to receipt of this instruction. Acknowledge. Rata.
This message was dispatched at three o’clock in the morning from the GPO.
The Foreign Department manager of the Lombard Bank was an old friend of
Mr Ellenbury, and had done business with him before. Mr Ellenbury drove
to the bank the following afternoon and saw the head of the Foreign
Department.
‘I am ejecting some very extensive cable remittances through the
Lombard,’ he said, ‘and I shall want cash.’
The sour-looking manager looked even more sour.
‘Rata’s, I suppose? I’m surprised that you are mixed up with these
people, Mr Ellenbury. I don’t think you can know what folks are saying in
the City… ‘
He was a friend and was frank. Mr Ellenbury listened meekly.
‘One cannot pick and choose,’ he said. ‘The war made a great deal of
difference to me; I must live.’
The war is an unfailing argument to explain changed conditions and can be
employed as well to account for adaptable standards of morality. The
manager accepted the other’s viewpoint with reservations. ‘How much has
Harlow made out of this swindle?’ he asked, again exercising the
privilege of friendship.
‘Someday I will tell you,’ said the lawyer cryptically. ‘The point is, I
expect very large sums.’
‘Sterling or what?’
‘Any currency that is stable,’ said Mr Ellenbury.
That evening came the first advice—from Johannesburg.
The sum remitted was not colossal, but it was large. New Orleans arrived
in the night and was delivered to Mr Ellenbury with Chicago, New York,
Toronto and Sydney.
The cable advices accumulated; Mr Ellenbury took no steps to draw the
money that was piling up at the Lombard Bank until the second day.
On the morning of that day he walked round his bedraggled
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