“Moral,” mused T.B. Smith, “don’t allow yourself—”
“I know, I know,” Moss loftily waved aside the dubious morality of Mr. Assistant-Commissioner Smith. “But I was found out. Twelve months in the second division. Is that justice?”
“It all depends,” cautiously, “what you mean by justice. I thought the sentence was rather light.”
“Look here, Mr. Smith,” said Mr. Moss firmly; “let’s put the matter another way round. Here’s Baggin’s case, an’ Meyers’ case. Now I ask you, man to man, are these chaps dead?”
T.B. Smith was discreetly silent.
“Are they dead?” again demanded Moss, with emotion. “You know jolly well they ain’t. You know as well as I do who’s at the bottom of these bear raids to send the market into the mud. I know them raids!” in his excitement Mr. Moss got further and further away from the language of his adoption; “they smell o’ Baggin, George T. Baggin; he’s operatin’ somewhere. I recognize the touch. George T. Baggin, I tell you, an’ as the good book says, his right hand hath not lost its cunnin’.”
“And,” said T.B. Smith, blandly ignoring the startling hypothesis; “what is Mr. Moss doing now to earn the bread, butter, and etceteras of life?”
“Me? Oh, I’m in the East mostly,” said the other moodily; “got a client or two; give a tip an’ get a tip now an’ again. Small money an’ small profits.”
He dropped his eyes under the steady and pseudo-benevolent gaze of the other.
“No companies,” said the detective softly. “No companies, Mr. Moss? No Amalgamated Peruvian Concessions, eh? No Brazilian Rubber and Exploitation Syndicate?”
The young man shifted his feet uneasily.
“Genuine concerns, them,” he said doggedly; “an’ besides, I’m only a shareholder.”
“Not promoter. Mr. Moss is not a promoter?”
In desperation the badgered shareholder turned.
“How in ‘eaven’s name you get hold of things I don’t know,” he said in helpless annoyance. “An’ all I can say — excuse me.”
T.B. Smith saw his expression undergo a sudden change.
“Don’t look round, sir,” said the other breathlessly; “there’s one o’ my clients comin’ along; genuine business, Mr. Smith; don’t crab the deal.”
In his agitation he grew a little incoherent.
T.B. Smith might have walked on discreetly, leaving Moss to transact his business in quiet and peace. Indeed, the young man’s light blue eyes pleaded for this indulgence; but the gentleman from Scotland Yard was singularly obtuse this morning.
“You don’t want to meet him,” urged Mr. Moss. “He’s not in your line, sir; he’s a gentleman.”
“I think you’re very rude, Mr. Moss,” said T.B. Smith, and waited, whilst Moss and client met.
The client may have been a gentleman; he was certainly opulent. The day being fairly mild, T.B. Smith thought the client’s fur-lined coat a superfluity, but the silk hat which overtopped the client’s thin, long face was most correct.
“Permit me,” said Moss with all the grace he could summon at a moment’s notice, “to introduce you to a friend of mine — name of Smith — in the Government.”
The stranger bowed and offered a gloved hand.
“Er—” said T.B., hesitant. “I did not quite catch your name.”
“Count Poltavo,” said Mr. Moss defiantly; “a friend of mine an’ a client.”
“Delighted to make your acquaintance, Count. I have met you somewhere.”
The Count bowed.
“It is ver’ likely. I have been in England before.”
T.B. Smith with his head on one side, so ridiculously reminiscent of an inquisitive bird, surveyed the imperturbable foreigner with interest.
“But for the integrity of Mr. Moss,” he said, “I should believe that I had been introduced to quite an old friend of mine — Gregory Silinski, to wit.”
The foreigner smiled, showing two regular rows of white teeth.
“You think of my cousin, of whom there is some resemblance — a bad lot.” He shook his head sternly and reprovingly.
“A bad lot, indeed,” agreed T.B. Smith, and offered his hand to Moss.
“Good-day to you, Mr. Moss,” he said; “keep out of mischief; goodbye, Mr. Silinski.” He looked at his watch. “It wants four minutes to twelve; and if by five minutes to twelve tomorrow you are still in England, I shall arrest you. Comprenez?”
“Parfaitement,” said Silinski, who prided himself upon his ability to accept a situation.
T.B. Smith resumed his walk. At the corner of Threadneedle Street an able-bodied hawker offered him his choice of a box of matches or a pair of bootlaces.
“Neither in mine,” said T.B. Smith. “Have you got a hawker’s license, my man?”
“Yes, sir.”
The hawker produced from the inside pocket of his frowsy jacket a folded paper, and T.B. Smith examined it carefully. He must have read every word of it twice. After a while, he handed it back and what he said was not about hawkers, or licenses.
“I know they are here,” he said as though referring to people whose names were inscribed on the paper he had been reading, “but they don’t count, they are too small. Silinski, do you know him?”
“I’ve seen him,” said the hawker; “wasn’t he deported over the Griffon Street affair?”
T.B. Smith nodded.
“He’s way along,” he said, with a jerk of his head in the direction of Moss and client; “get one of your men to watch and report.”
“Very good, sir.”
T.B. Smith continued in the direction of the Mansion House. A famous banker passing in his motor brougham, waved his hand in salute; a city policeman stolidly ignored him.
Along Cheapside, with the deliberate air of a sightseer, the man in the grey felt hat strolled, turning over in his mind the problem of the boom.
For it was a problem.
If you see on one hand ice forming on a pool, and on the other a thermometer rising slowly to blood-heat, you may be satisfied in your mind that something is wrong somewhere. Nature cannot make mistakes. Thermometers are equally infallible. Look for the human agency at work on the mercury bulb, for the jet of hot air directed to the instrument. In this parable is explained the market position, and T.B. Smith, who dealt with huge, vague problems like markets and wars and national prosperity, was looking for the hot-air current.
The market rises because big people buy big quantities of shares; it falls because these same people sell, and T.B. Smith happened to know that nobody was buying. That is, nobody of account — Eckhardt’s, Tollington’s, or Bronte’s Bank. You can account for the rise of a particular share by some local and favourable circumstance, but when the market as a whole moves up?
“We can trace no transactions,” wrote Mr. Louis Veil, of the firm of Veil, Vallings & Boys, Brokers, “carried out by or on behalf of the leading jobbers. The marked improvement in Industrial Stocks is due, as far as we can gather, to Continental buying — an unusual circumstance.”
Who was the “philanthropist” who was