“Be quiet!” Baggin turned with a snarl upon his companion. “Look here,” he said, facing Silinski, “my friend is not quite himself — I’ll take him up to my room for a minute or so: will you wait here? You might be of service to us.”
Without waiting for an answer the two men left the room, Baggin with one hand clenched on the fat man’s arm.
When they had gone Silinski turned to his sister.
“I hope you haven’t scared them,” she said in German.
“I think not,” said her amiable relative, and the two exchanged confidences.
“What have they done?” she asked.
“Nothing — as yet,” he said diplomatically.
“You have this letter?” she asked, but Silinski shook his head.
“If I had,” he said, “I could tell you all you want to know. Unfortunately I am in the dark.”
“And the money?”
“I know no more about the money than you,” he replied, with charming frankness. “Who are they?”
She laughed, showing two straight, white rows of teeth, and there was genuine amusement in her big grey eyes. “You have the money, of course, and the letter — you must tell me, Gregory. I must know where I am with them; it is due to me.”
“As to the money,” said Silinski, without shame, “it is some fifty thousand francs; one might live for a year in luxury upon fifty thousand francs. As for the letter — why, that is an annuity forever.”
He leaned over the table, and as he looked his eyes were lowered to the cloth, like a man ransacking his memory for elusive facts.
“These men are part of an epidemic — a wave of financial instability is rushing across the world — no, I will put it inimitably: There are props of rotten finance; sometimes one pole snaps and the structure trembles,’ sometimes two snap and the structure lurches, but does not fall, for there is strength in union, and it is more difficult to break a bundle of worm-eaten sticks than one honest stave. But suppose all the props are withdrawn at once — what happens? Ph-tt! And suppose the weaker props say—’ The big fellow is going — it is time for us to move’?”
Catherine listened patiently.
“I would rather you spoke less like a priest, in parables,” she said.
“Naturally,” said Silinski, with an easy inclination of his head, as though this were the very comment he expected, “yet I must deal in parables. Amongst your accomplishments, do you speak English?”
“A little.” Catherine shrugged her shoulders carelessly. “I can say ‘my dear’ and ‘I like you very much’.”
“Which hardly fulfils all commercial requirements,” said Silinski thoughtfully. “I will translate to you the interesting letter, which may be condensed into one comprehensive sentence towards the end—’When you are ready say “jump”’—”
Here Baggin appeared in the doorway, and beckoned to the polite Silinski, and that worthy made his way through the crowded room.
“Can you get that letter?” asked Baggin, without any preliminary, “or were you only joshing?”
“I can not only get the letter, but I have the letter,” said the other calmly, and Baggin’s lids narrowed. “Further, your plans are very foolish,” the Pole went on smoothly, “because you have no plans. Spain will not hold nine defaulting bucket-shop keepers — that is the idiom, is it not? — unless your retirement is organized with considerably more skill than you have up to this moment displayed.”
The American said nothing.
“I have a plan, a great plan,” said Silinski, and he drew himself erect in the pride of his authorship; “but you must take me into its working.”
“You are a damned villain,” said Baggin, “a blackmailer ‘ 9
Silinski’s brows darkened.
“Villain, yes,” he said; “blackmailer, no — I am a genius — that is all.”
III. Some Disappearances
In the month of March, 1904, a notice was posted on the doors of the London, Manhattan and Jersey Syndicate, in Moorgate Street. It was brief, but it was to the point —
“Owing to the disappearance of Mr. George T. Baggin, the L.M. and J. Syndicate has suspended operations.”
With Mr. Baggin had disappeared the sum of £247,000, an examination of the books of the firm revealed the fact that the London, Manhattan, and Jersey Syndicate was — Mr. Baggin; that its imposing title thinly disguised the operations of a bucket-shop, and the vanished bullion had been most systematically collected in gold and foreign notes.
Mr. Baggin had disappeared as though the earth had swallowed him up. He was traced to Liverpool; a ticket to New York had been purchased by a man answering to his description, and he had embarked on the Lucania. The liner called at Queenstown, and the night she left Mr. “Coleman” was missing. His clothing and trunks were found intact in his cabin, and a pathetic note addressed to the chief steward was pinned to his pillow. It said, in the extravagant language of remorse, that overwhelmed by the horror of his position, the writer had decided to leave this world for a better, and, he trusted, brighter life. It was signed “George T. Baggin.” The ship was searched from stem to stern, but no trace of the unfortunate man could be discovered.
The evening newspapers flared forth with, “Tragic End of a Defaulting Banker,” but Scotland Yard, ever sceptical, set on foot certain inquiries and learnt that a stranger had been seen in Queenstown after the ship sailed. A stranger who left for Dublin, and who doubled back to Heysham; who came, via Manchester, back to London again. In London he had vanished completely. Whether or not this was the redoubtable George T. Baggin, was a matter for conjecture.
T.B. Smith, of Scotland Yard, into whose hands the case was put, had no doubt at all. He believed that Baggin was alive. Two months after the disappearance, the firm of Woolfe, Meyers, Limited, crumbled into dust — for Louis Meyers himself failed to take his place one fine morning in the lavishly furnished boardroom in King William Street. Meyers was a dealer in Premium Bonds. A stout man, scant of breath, loose-lipped, sparing pronouns. His ingenious method of trading may be summarized in a sentence. You paid your money and he took his choice. “There can be no doubt at all,” said the Daily Megaphone, in commenting on his disappearance, “that this wretched man, face to face with exposure which was inevitable, has taken the supreme and desperate step of suicide. His overcoat, in which was a letter to the coroner, was found on one of the seats of the Thames Embankment…”
Yet Scotland Yard took no trouble to find the body. Instead, it sent its most experienced detectives to watch the seaports. T.B. Smith’s instructions to his watchful subordinates were marked with sardonic levity.
“You will recognize the body of the late Louis Meyers,” he wrote, “from the fact that it will be smoking a big cigar and carrying a portmanteau containing £150,000’s worth of French and German notes; it speaks English with a slight lisp.”
Most artistic of all was the passing of Lucas Damant, the Company Promoter. Damant’s defalcations were the heaviest, for his opportunities were greater. He dealt in millions and stole in millions. Taking his summer holidays in Switzerland, Mr. Damant foolishly essayed the ascent of the Matterhorn without a guide. His alpenstock was picked up at the edge of a deep crevasse, and (I again quote the Megaphone) “yet another Alpine disaster was added to the alarming list of mountaineering tragedies.” What time four expert guides were endeavouring to extricate the lost man from a bottomless pit,