“It must be done most delicately. He mustn’t, for a single moment, suspect the reason of his dismissal.”
Lewin Rodwell reflected for a second, and then, as though in his active, clever brain a sudden suggestion had arisen, he laughed and replied:
“There are more ways than one by which to crush an enemy, my dear Boyle—as you yourself know. Leave all to me, and I can guarantee that we shall have nothing to fear from this young prig, Sainsbury. So set your mind at ease at once over it.”
“Very well, Lewin. I know how clever you always are in avoiding trouble,” laughed Sir Boyle Huntley. “Had it not been for you we’d both have more than once been in a very tight corner. As it is we’ve prospered famously, and—well, I suppose the world thinks quite a lot of us—especially of you—the man who does so much good and charitable work without any thought of reward—purely as a patriotic Briton.”
Lewin Rodwell winked knowingly, and both men laughed aloud.
Rodwell’s eye caught the clock. It was half-past four.
“By Jove! I must fly!” he cried. “I promised to be at Lady Betty’s soon after four. Trustram, of the Admiralty, will be there, and I particularly want to meet him. I’ve got my car. Can I drop you anywhere?”
“Yes. At the Constitutional. I’m meeting a man there.”
So the pair, leaving the room, were helped on with their overcoats by an obsequious liveried servant and, descending in the lift, passed through the handsome set of offices where a hundred clerks were working beneath the electric-light, and out into Gracechurch Street, where Rodwell’s fine limousine was awaiting him; the footman standing with the fur rug ready to throw over his master’s knees.
On their way through the City the elder man reverted to the subject they had discussed in the boardroom of The Ochrida Copper Corporation—one of the greatest copper concerns in the world—and, drawing a long breath, he said:
“I really do hope that young fellow heard nothing. What if he knew—eh?”
“Of course he heard,” was his co-director’s reply. “But whether he understood is quite another thing.”
“I fear he did understand.”
“Why?”
“Because, as he left the room, I watched his face, and saw both suspicion and surprise upon it.”
“Bah! My dear Boyle, don’t let that worry you for a second longer,” Rodwell laughed, as the car sped silently along Queen Victoria Street and across to the Embankment. “Even if he does suspect he’ll soon be rendered quite harmless. When Lewin Rodwell makes up his mind to sweep an enemy from his path, you know that the enemy always disappears.”
“I know that,” replied the Baronet, with a slight hardening at the corners of his flabby mouth. Perhaps he recollected the fate of certain other enemies. He well knew the callous unscrupulousness of his friend and associate in his determined efforts to get rich quickly. Indeed, they had both got rich very quickly—more especially Rodwell—during the past four or five years by methods which would never bear investigation. Yet, as in so many other cases in our great complex London, the world regarded him as a perfectly honest and trustworthy man—a true Briton, who was ever ready to place both his valuable time and his money at the disposal of the British cause against her barbaric enemy.
“Sainsbury will never trouble us, I assure you,” he repeated, as at last Sir Boyle alighted in Northumberland Avenue, and he waved him a cheery good-bye as he went up the steps of the club.
Then, as the car re-started off to Upper Brook Street, Lewin Rodwell sat back, his hands resting idly on the fur rug, his cold, round blue eyes staring straight before him, the skin drawn rather tightly over his cheek-bones, giving him a look haggard and quite unusual.
“Yes,” he exclaimed to himself, drawing a long breath, “Boyle is quite right. That young man suspects—curse him! Phew! I must close his mouth somehow. But how? That’s the question. In these days, with the Government deceiving the people and lulling them into a false sense of security, the very least breath of suspicion quickly becomes magnified into an open scandal. And scandal, as far as I am concerned, would mean that I should be compelled to invite investigation. Could I bear such a test?” he asked. “Gad! no!” he gasped.
He set his lips firmly, and his eyes narrowed. He tossed his cigar angrily out into the roadway. It tasted bitter.
As the car went up the Haymarket, boys were crying the evening papers. Upon the contents-bill he noticed that the British were fighting gallantly at the Yser, stemming the tide of the Devil’s spawn, who were endeavouring to strike a death-blow at French’s little army and get through to Calais.
He smiled at his own strange thoughts, and then sank back into the soft cushions, again reflecting. That contretemps in the boardroom had really unnerved him. It unnerved him so much, indeed, that from Piccadilly Circus he drove to his club and swallowed a stiff brandy-and-soda—an action quite unusual to him—and then he went along to Upper Brook Street.
When the rather pompous elderly butler announced him at the door of the large drawing-room, Lady Betty Kenworthy, a tall, middle-aged woman, rose, greeting the great man affably, and then she introduced him to the dozen or so of her friends who were gossiping over their teacups—the names of most of them being household words both to those in society and the readers of the halfpenny picture-papers out of it.
Lady Betty, a well-preserved, good-looking woman, whose boy was at the front, was one of those leaders of society who, at the outbreak of war, for want of something more exciting, had become the leader of a movement. In London, after the first few months of war, the majority of society women took up one movement or another: red cross, Serbian relief, socks for the troops, comforts for mine-sweepers, huts for soldiers, work for women, hose-extensions for Highlanders, or one or other of the thousand-and-one “movements” which cropped up and duly found their places in the advertisement columns of the Times.
Lady Betty Kenworthy’s particular movement was the Anti-Teuton Alliance—an association formed by a few patriotic enthusiasts who bound themselves to take action against the hated German in every way—to expose and intern the enemy in our midst, to free the country from the baneful German influence which has spread into every sphere of our national life, to purchase no goods of German origin, to ban the German language, and to discover the existence of the pro-German sentiment, German intrigue, and the expenditure of German gold—“palm-oil” one distinguished writer has called it—in official and Parliamentary circles.
The programme was, to say the least, a wide and laudable one, and afforded ample scope to the thousands of members who had enrolled themselves.
In Lady Betty’s drawing-room that afternoon the committee of the movement had assembled, eager to meet Mr. Lewin Rodwell, who had shown such patriotism that even Cabinet Ministers had publicly bestowed great praise upon his ceaseless and self-denying efforts.
There were present, first of all, the usual set of society women of uncertain age, dressed in the latest French models, which gave them an air of youth, yet, at the same time, accentuated their angularity and unnatural freshness; two or three elderly men, led there against their will by their strong-minded spouses, a pretty girl or two from nowhere, and one or two male enthusiasts, including two good-looking and merry-going peers who were loud in their condemnation of the whole Government—from the Prime Minister downwards.
Among those to whom the great and much-advertised Lewin Rodwell was introduced was a rather thick-set, dark-haired, clean-shaven, middle-aged man named Charles Trustram, a thoroughly John Bull type of Englishman, who occupied a highly responsible position in the Transport department of the Admiralty.
The two men shook hands warmly, whereupon Trustram expressed his great pleasure at meeting a man so famous as Lewin Rodwell.
“I came here this