The Clue of the Silver Key by Edgar Wallace (free biff chip and kipper ebooks .TXT) 📖
- Author: Edgar Wallace
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then: ‘What time is that fellow calling?’ he asked harshly.
Binny, who was pouring out the tea at a side table, turned his big head
and gazed pathetically at his employer. ‘What feller, sir? The young lady
came at nine—’
Hervey’s thin lip curled in silent fury. ‘Of course she did, you fool!
But the bank manager…didn’t you ask him to come—’
‘At ten, sir—Mr Moran—’
‘Get the letter—get it!’
Binny placed the cup of tea before his employer, rummaged through a small
heap of papers on an open secretaire and found what he sought.
‘Read it—read it!’ snapped the old man. ‘I can’t be bothered.’
He never would be bothered again. He could tell light from dark; knew by
a pale blur where the window was, could find his way unaided up the
seventeen stairs which led to his bedroom, but no more. He could sign
his name, and you would never suspect that a man more than half blind was
responsible for that flourish.
‘DEAR MR LYNE’ (read Binny in the monotonous voice he adopted for reading
aloud),’ I will give myself the pleasure of calling on you at ten o’clock
tomorrow morning.
‘Yours faithfully,
‘LEO MORAN.’
Hervey smiled again. ‘Give himself the pleasure, eh?’ His thin voice grew
shrill. ‘Does he think I’m asking him here for his amusement? There’s the
door bell.’
Binny shuffled out and came back in a few seconds with the visitor. ‘Mr
Moran,’ he announced.
‘Sit down—sit down, Mr Moran.’ The old man waved a hand vaguely. ‘Find
him a chair, Binny, and get out—d’ye hear? Get out! And don’t listen at
the door, damn you!’
The visitor smiled as the door closed on a Binny who was unconcerned,
unemotional, unresentful.
‘Now, Moran—you’re my bank manager.’
‘Yes, Mr Lyne. I asked if I could see you a year ago, if you remember—’
‘I remember’—testily. ‘I don’t want to see bank managers: I want them to
look after my money. That’s your job—you’re paid for it, handsomely,
I’ve no doubt. You’ve brought the bank statement?’
The visitor took an envelope from his pocket, and, opening it, brought
out two folded sheets of paper.
‘Here—’ he began, and his chair creaked as he rose.
‘I don’t want to see them—just tell me what my balance is.’
‘Two hundred and twelve thousand seven hundred and sixty pounds and a few
shillings.’
‘M’m!’ The’ in ‘m’ was a purr of satisfaction. ‘That includes the
deposit, eh? And you hold stock…?’
‘The stock held amounts to six hundred and thirty-two thousand pounds.’
‘I’ll tell you why I want you—’ began Lyne; and then, suspiciously:
‘Open the door and see if that fellow’s listening.’
The visitor rose, opened the door and closed it again. ‘There’s nobody
there,’ he said.
He was slightly amused, though Mr Lyne’s infirmities prevented him from
observing this fact.
‘Nobody, eh? Well, Moran, I’ll tell you candidly: I regard myself as a
remarkably able man. That’s not boastful, it’s fact which you yourself
could probably certify. I trust nobody—not even bank managers. My
eyesight isn’t as good as it was, and it’s a little difficult to check up
accounts. But I have a remarkable memory. I’ve trained myself to carry
figures in my head, and I could have told you to within a few shillings
exactly the figures that you gave to me.’
He paused, stared through his thick glasses in the direction of the man
who sat at the other side of his desk.
‘You’re not a speculator or a gambler?’
‘No, Mr Lyne, I am not.’
A pause.
‘H’m! That fool Binny was reading to me a few days ago the story of a
bank manager who’d absconded, taking with him a very considerable sum. I
confess I was uneasy. People have robbed me before—’
‘You’re not being very polite, Mr Lyne.’
‘I’m not trying to be polite,’ snapped the old man. ‘I’m merely telling
you what has happened to me. There was a scoundrelly servant of mine, a
fellow called Tickler. The fellow who was killed…’
He rambled on, a long, long story about the minor depredations of his
dishonest servant, and the man who called himself Moran listened
patiently. He was very relieved when he had taken the thin, limp hand in
his and the door of No. 17 Naylors Crescent, closed behind him.
‘Phew!’ he said. He had a habit of speaking his thoughts aloud.’ I
wouldn’t go through that again for a lot of money.’
Binny, summoned from the deeps by a bell, came in to find the visitor
gone.
‘What does he look like? Has he an honest face?’
Binny thought profoundly.
‘Just a face,’ he said vaguely, and the old man snorted.
‘Clear those breakfast things away. Who else is coming to see me?’
Binny thought for a long time. ‘A man named Dornford, sir.’
‘A gentleman named Dornford,’ corrected his master. ‘He owes me money,
therefore he is a gentleman. At what hour?’
‘About eight o’clock, sir.’
Lyne dismissed him with a gesture.
At three o’clock that afternoon he ambled out of his sitting-room,
wrapped in his thick Inverness coat and wearing his soft felt hat,
allowed himself, growling complaints the while, to be tucked into his
invalid chair, and was pushed painfully into the street; more painfully
up the gentle slope to the park and into the private gardens, entry to
which was exclusively reserved for tenants of Naylors and other terraces.
Here he sat, under the shade of a tree, while Binny, perched
uncomfortably on a folding stool, read in his monotonous voice the
happenings of the day.
Only once the old man interrupted. ‘What time is Mr Dornford calling?’
‘At eight o’clock, sir,’ said Binny.
Lyne nodded, pushed his blue-tinted glasses higher up the thin bridge of
his nose and folded his gloved hands over the rug which protected his
knees from errant breezes.
‘You be in when he comes, d’ye hear? A tricky fellow—a dangerous fellow.
You hear me, Binny?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then why the devil didn’t you say so? Go on reading that trash.’
Binny obeyed, and continued with great relish the story of London’s
latest murder. Binny was a great student of crime in the abstract.
JULES BARELY DESERVES description because he plays so small a part; but
as that small part was big enough to put one man in the shadow of the
gallows, he may be catalogued as a plump, sallow-faced young man with
perfectly brushed hair, who was invariably dressed as though he were on
his way to a wedding reception.
He was a sort of attache to a South American Legation, and a freelance
of diplomacy generally. In more suspicious countries he would have been
handed his passport with extreme politeness, and his departure from
Southampton would have been watched by the bored detective whose business
it is to superintend the shipment of oddities.
He was always important and profound; never more so than when he sat at
the bay window overlooking St James’s Street, stroking his little black
moustache thoughtfully and speaking with just the slightest trace of an
accent to Jerry Dornford.
Everybody knew and liked Jerry, whose other name was Gerald. He had all
the qualities which endear a wastrel to the monied classes. He was, of
course, a member of Snell’s, as was Jules. He was, indeed, a member of
all the important clubs where gentlemen meet. He paid his subscription,
never passed a cheque which was dishonoured, had never been warned off or
posted as a bankrupt. A tall man, with a slight stoop, brownish hair very
thin on the top, deep-set eyes that smiled in a worn, tired face.
Jerry had lived very fast. Few of his creditors could keep up with him.
He had been a co-respondent, and again a co-respondent, and was single,
and lived in a little flat in Half Moon Street, where he gave small
parties; very small. He retained his membership of exclusive racing
clubs—bookmakers lived in the hope that he would one day settle with
them. He had certain very rich relations who would certainly die, but
were not so certain whether they would bequeath their undoubted wealth to
this profligate son of Sir George Dornford.
On the other hand, why shouldn’t they?
He was in desperate need of money now. Jules knew how desperate; they had
few secrets from one another. Whenever the little party in Half Moon
Street was as many as four, Jules was the third.
‘What is this fellow’s name?’
‘Hervey Lyne.’
‘Hervey Lyne? Yes, I know him. A very odd man’—reminiscently. ‘When my
dear father was Secretary of Legation he borrowed money from Lyne. But I
thought he had retired from business. He was a money-lender, wasn’t he?’
Jerry’s lips twisted in an unpleasant smile.
‘Financier,’ he said laconically. ‘Yes, he’s retired. I owed him three
thousand for years; it’s four now. There was, of course, a chance that
the dowager would leave a packet, but the old devil left it away, to the
other side of the family.’
‘And he is pressing you?’
Jerry’s jaw set.
‘Yes,’ he said shortly.’ To be exact, he is getting a judgement in
bankruptcy, and I can’t stop him. I’ve been dodging Carey Street all my
life. Things have looked very black at times, but there’s always been
something that turned up.’
There was a long and gloomy silence. Jules—he had another name, but
nobody could remember it—stroked his little black moustache more
quickly.
‘Two thousand—that would stop the action, eh? Well, why not? There is
nothing to it. I do not ask you, like the fellow in the story-books, to
go to the War Office and rob them of their plans. But I do want
something, for a gentleman who has himself been working on the lines of
your friend. To me it seems a very large sum to pay for so small a thing.
Naturally I do not say that to my gentleman. If he desires to be
extravagant and my friend would benefit—well, why not?’
Jerry Dornford made a wry face at the street below. When he was asked to
work for money he never forgot that he was a gentleman—it was rather a
disgusting thing he was now asked to do, but he had contemplated things
even more distressful. He had, in fact, found every solution to his
difficulty except suicide.
‘I’m not so sure that it can be done, anyway,’ he said.
Two men came into the smoke-room. He looked up quickly and recognized
both, but was interested particularly in one.
‘That’s Fate,’ he said.
‘Who are they?’ asked Jules.
He knew the second of the two, who was a member, but the first man,
middle-aged, rather rotund, fair-haired, was a stranger to him.
‘That’s my bank manager. Incidentally, he’s Lyne’s banker too, a fellow
named Moran—Major Moran, he loves to call himself. A Territorial
fellow.’
Jules shot a swift glance in the direction of the men, who at that moment
were seating themselves at the table. ‘A great rifle shot. I saw him at
Bisley. I was there with one of our generals, watching the shooting.’ He
turned his black eyes to Jerry. ‘Well, my friend?’
Jerry breathed heavily through his nose and shook his head. ‘I’ll have to
think it over,’ he said. ‘It’s an awful thing to do.’
‘More awful to be a bankrupt, my friend,’ said Jules in his caressing
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