The Man Who Bought London (12 page)

Hermann found Leete at his club, and explained the joke. It required some explaining, and it was a long time before Leete put down the arm-length’s barrier which he had erected in that moment of fancied peril.

‘You shouldn’t mix yourself up with that sort of thing at all, Zeberlieff,’ he said disapprovingly. ‘Whatever you do, keep away from the police. You can’t afford to be mixed up with them – particularly if you’ve friends, as I have. There’s my friend the Duke –’

‘Oh, cut out your ducal friend for this evening!’ said Hermann wearily; ‘I’m sick to death of everything, and I do not think that I can stand your gospel according to Burke.’

‘Have you had dinner?’ asked Leete, anxious to mollify him.

Hermann laughed mirthlessly. ‘I have indeed,’ he said.

‘Then come along and smoke; there’s a lot of men up there who will be glad to talk to you. Hubbard’s there, by the way,’ he said.

Hermann nodded. Hubbard! Here was another proposition.

‘Everybody is talking about that fellow Kerry; there’s a man here from Bolt and Waudry – young Harry Bolt. Their people are in an awful funk. They say that the whole of their takings for the past two days have amounted to twenty pounds. I tell you, unless we can put a stopper to King Kerry, it is ruin for us.’

‘For you individually?’

Leete hesitated.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I am not such a fool as that. My liability is limited by shares, but I’ve a much bigger holding in Goulding’s than is pleasant to think about at this particular moment. The only thing to do,’ he went on, ‘is to get at King Kerry.’

‘How is his trade?’

‘Bigger than ever!’ said the other promptly. ‘All London is flocking to his store.’

There were many gloomy faces at the Merchants’ Club that night; all the great emporium proprietors were gathered together to exchange lugubrious notes.

‘There’s old Modelson!’ said Leete, leading the way into the smoke-room. ‘They say he’ll file his petition next week.’

‘So soon?’ asked the other.

Leete nodded. ‘You hardly know how hand to mouth some of these businesses are. There ain’t half a dozen of us who can lay our hands upon any capital whatever, and even we should hesitate to use it just now.’

‘He offered me a hundred and twenty thousand pounds for the business,’ a man was saying, the centre of a little group of compassionate souls. ‘I asked him a hundred and eighty. He told me I’d be glad to take a hundred before I was through, and upon my word I think he’s right.’

The senior partner of Frail and Brackenbury, a tall, good-looking man, with a sharp, short, grey beard, walked over to Leete.

‘I suppose he is hitting you pretty bad?’ he asked.

Leete nodded.

There was no need to explain who ‘he’ was.

‘As bad as it can be,’ he said; ‘but we’re all in the swim. I suppose it doesn’t affect you?’

‘He bought me out,’ said the other quietly, ‘and if he hadn’t I don’t know that the sale would have affected our business. You see we do a line which is rather superior to that which –’ He hesitated, desiring to offend none.

‘That’s his scheme,’ said one of the club-men. ‘Can’t you see it? Every business he has bought spells “quality” – Q-U-A-L-I-T-Y
– throughout. Wherever a firm was associated with quality, he bought it, paying a heavy price for it. It is only we poor devils who live by cutting one another’s throats that he can afford to fight. You see, we’re not quality, dear old chap!’

He turned to the sad-looking Mr Bolt, of Bolt and Waudry. ‘We’re just big quantity and average quality. What I buy at your shop I can buy at any shop in the street. We are the people he is hitting at. We cannot say at our stores as old Frail can say,’ he nodded to the grey-bearded man, ‘that we have something here which you cannot buy elsewhere. If we had, why, the Yankee would have bought us up at our own price. He has gone out for quality, and he is paying money for it. And, were it just a question of common truck –’

‘I’ll have you to know, my dear sir,’ said the sad Mr Bolt very firmly and impressively, ‘that we supply nothing but the best.’

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ said the other with a grin; ‘but it is just the ordinary best, the same best as you can get everywhere else. He can buy it too, by the ton. He is selling your best at half your prices. You’ve been making sixty per cent profit: he is probably making a five per cent loss at some hour of the day, and selling square on an average. I’ve got one piece of advice to offer to everybody in this room’ – he spoke with considerable emphasis, and with the evidence of self-consciousness which comes to a man who knows that all ears are turned in his direction – ‘if King Kerry has offered you money for your businesses, you go right along tomorrow morning and take what he will give you, because if this goes on much longer we’re going to wear a channel in the pavement between Oxford Street and Bankruptcy Chambers.’

‘I say fight!’ said Leete. ‘We can hold on as long as he! Don’t you agree?’

He turned to Hermann Zeberlieff.

‘I certainly do not,’ said Zeberlieff briefly. ‘You know my views; he can sell all of you out. There may be twenty ways of smashing the big “L Trust”, but that is not one of them. My suggestion is that you should beat him at his own game.’

‘What is that?’ asked a dozen voices.

‘Under-selling,’ was the calm reply.

A chorus of derisive laughter met him.

‘Under-selling,’ said Hermann Zeberlieff. ‘I assure you I am quite sane. Make a pool and under-sell him. You can do it with greater ease than you think.’

‘But what about the shareholders?’ asked a voice. ‘What about dividends? How are we going to explain at the end of the half year that instead of a surplus we show a considerable deficit, and that we may have to issue debenture stock? Do you think shareholders are going to stand that?’

‘No, no, no!’ – agreement with this view came from various corners of the room.

‘They’ve got to stand something,’ said Hermann with a smile. ‘Looking at it from a purely outsider’s point of view, I can’t see how they’ll get dividends anyway. The suggestion that I was going to offer when you interrupted me was –?’

A sudden silence fell upon the room, and Hermann turned to seek an explanation.

King Kerry stood in the doorway, his eyes searching the room for a face. He found it at last. It was the white-bearded Modelson who stood alone near the fireplace, his head bent upon his arm, dejected and sorrowful to see. With scarcely a glance at the others, King Kerry crossed the room and came to the old man’s side.

‘I want you, Mr Modelson,’ he said gently.

The old man looked at him with a pathetic attempt at a smile.

‘I am afraid you do!’ he said apologetically.

Everybody knew that old Modelson had been the first to raise the flag of rebellion against the encroachment of the big ‘L Trust’ upon the sacred dominion of Oxford Street. His store stood on the next corner to that occupied by Goulding’s, but long before the arrival of Kerry his had been a decaying property. Yet so long had he been established and so straight was his business record that it was natural he should have been chosen as chairman of the Federated Board.

Leete had seen the wisdom of electing him chairman. His concern was the shakiest of all and his failure which, as all men knew, was only deferred, must shake the credit of the Federation to a very damaging extent. And fail he must, and not one of the men to whom he had applied for assistance could help him. He had demanded what even his friends agreed was an exorbitant price for the business, and had been offered half. Now it seemed to the onlookers watching the two men talking earnestly by the fireplace, that the old man would surrender and take whatever he could to save his good name.

There were men in that room who hoped fervently that he would agree to the terms which Kerry imposed. Failure would break the old man’s heart.

Their talk ended, and after a while Kerry shook hands and departed, leaving the old man with his head in the air and his shoulders thrown back and something like a smile on his face. They longed to ask him what had resulted from the conference, but he was the doyen of them all, a man of rigid ideas as to the proprieties.

He saved them any trouble, however, for presently – ‘Gentlemen!’ he said in his rich old voice, and there was silence.

‘Gentlemen, I think you are entitled to know that Mr Kerry has purchased my business.’

There was a little murmur of congratulation, not unmixed with relief. But what was the price? It was too much to expect that this old man who had been so close and uncommunicative all his life would be loquacious now; and yet, to their surprise he was.

‘Mr Kerry has very handsomely paid me my full price,’ he said.

‘It’s a climb down!’ whispered Leete excitedly. ‘He’s going to pay –’

Hermann laughed savagely.

‘Climb down, you fool!’ he smiled. ‘Why, he’s going to make you pay for his generosity – all of you will contribute to the extra money he’s giving Modelson. Don’t you understand? Suppose old Modelson had failed – there would have been an outcry; an old-established firm ruined by unfair competition; a pathetic old man, white-haired and white-bearded, driven to the workhouse after a life spent in honourable toil. It would have made him unpopular, set the tide of public opinion against him, and possibly upset all his plans. You don’t know King Kerry!’

‘Anyway, I’m going to him tomorrow with my old offer,’ said Leete stubbornly.

‘What did he agree to pay before?’ asked Zeberlieff.

‘Three-quarters of a million,’ replied the other.

Hermann nodded.

‘He’ll offer you exactly a hundred thousand less than that,’ he said.

Well might he boast that he knew Kerry, for when, on the following morning, supremely confident, Leete elbowed his
way through the gaping crowd that was staring through the window of the Jewel House and came to Kerry’s presence, the offer ‘The King’ made him was exactly the sum that Hermann had prophesied.

Nor was Leete the only man who mistook the generosity of the other, nor the only one to be painfully undeceived.

Elsie Marion was a busy girl and a happy one. The green on the map was spreading. She called them the ‘marks of conquest’, and took a pride in their extension. Then came the day of days when the papers were filled with the colossal deal which King Kerry had carried through – the purchase of Lord George Fallington’s enormous estate. Lord Fallington was a millionaire peer, who derived an enormous income from ground rents in the very heart of the West End of London. He may have been urged to the action he took by the fear of new punitive legislation against landowners, and there certainly was justification for his fear, for at the time the government in power was the famous Jagger-Shubert Coalition which, with its huge democratic measures to be provided for out of revenue and its extraordinary demands in the matter of the navy (a rare combination in any government), was framing its estimate with an avaricious eye upon the land.

Whatever was the cause, Lord Fallington sold out, and when, following that event Bilsbury’s fell into the hands of the Trust, the battle was half won.

One day Kerry came into the office hurriedly, and there was a look on his face which the girl had never seen before. He closed the door behind him without a word, and crossed the room to the steel door which opened into the front office, that bemirrored apartment in which stood the great safe of the Trust.

She looked up astonished as the steel door clanged behind him.

Only once since she had entered his employ had he passed that door, and she had accompanied him, standing with her back to the safe at his request whilst he manipulated the combination lock.

He was gone ten minutes, and when he returned he carried in his hand a small envelope. He stood in the centre of the room, lit a match, and applied it to one corner of the letter. He put his foot on the ashes as they fell upon the square of linoleum and crushed them to powder. This done he uttered a sigh of infinite relief, and smiled at the girl’s evident concern.

‘Thus perish all traitors!’ quoth he gaily. ‘There was something in that envelope which I very much wanted to destroy.’

‘I gathered that,’ she laughed.

He walked over to her desk.

‘You’re getting snowed under,’ he said. ‘I’ll buy you one of those talking machines, and you can dictate your replies. There’s room in the commissionaire’s office for a typist.’

She shook her head. ‘There isn’t enough work, really,’ she protested.

He made no further allusion to the burnt envelope. She might speculate (as she did) upon the contents: what precious secret was here hidden, what urgency dictated its destruction. There were such secret places in this unknown world into which she had entered in the joyous spirit of exploration – thick jungles where lurked the beast of prey waiting to spring, dark woods above and morasses beneath her feet, pitfalls cunningly dug and traps ingeniously laid.

Kerry was an experienced hunter. He skirted trap and fall, walked warily always, with an eye to dangers of the tall grasses, and never penetrated the dim channels of his profession without being sure that every weapon in his arsenal was in good working order and to hand.

Notes, letters, telegrams came every minute of the day. Mysterious and brief epistles unintelligible to her, full of meaning
to him. The telephone bell would ring: ‘Yes!’ he would reply, or ‘No!’ and hang up the receiver. What was his objective in this campaign of his? The newspapers were asking, his friends were asking, his enemies were demanding an answer to that question. Why was he buying up unfashionable Tottenham Court Road and Lambeth Walk and a score of other places which just stood on the fringe of the shopping centre of London?

‘He is acting,’ said one critic, ‘as though he expected shopping London to shift from the circle – the centre of which is halfway along Regent Street to –?’

Here the critic must pause irresolutely.

‘To whither?’

It seemed that Kerry anticipated not so much the shifting of the centre, as the extension of the circle. A sanguine man if he imagined that his operations and the operations of his syndicate would so increase the prosperity of London that he would double the shopping area of fashionable London.

There was a Mr Biglow Holden, a pompous, self-important man who had earned a fortune as a designer of semi-important buildings, who wrote a very learned article in the
Building Mail
. It was filled with statistical tables (printed in small type) showing the growth of London in relation to population, and it proved conclusively that Mr King Kerry must wait some three hundred and fifty years before his dream materialized.

Gordon Bray, who happened to be engaged in Mr Holden’s office, typed the article for his employer, and heartily disagreed with every conclusion, every split infinitive and error of taste and grammar that it contained.

Holden asked him his opinion of the article, and the young man in his honesty hesitated before replying.

‘I suppose you think you could do it better?’ said Mr Biglow Holden, in his heavy jocular style.

‘I think I could,’ replied Gordon innocently.

Mr Holden glowered at him.

‘You’re getting a swelled head, Bray!’ he said, warningly. ‘This isn’t the office for young fellows with swelled heads, remember that.’

King Kerry read the article and frowned. He had a very good reason for frowning. He sent for Mr Holden, and, for one who had so openly despised ‘Yankee acumen’, to quote his own phrase, he obeyed the summons with considerable alacrity.

‘So you think my scheme is all wrong?’ asked the millionaire.

‘I think your judgement is at fault,’ said Mr Holden with an ingratiating smile.

‘Does everybody think that?’

‘Everybody except my draughtsman,’ smiled Mr Holden again.

It was intended to be a politely crushing answer, and to convey the fact that only the more inexperienced and menial departments of architecture would be found ranged on the side of the amateur designer.

‘Your draughtsman?’ Kerry frowned again. ‘I have an idea we know him.’ He turned to the girl.

‘Mr Bray is the gentleman, I think,’ said Elsie.

‘You see,’ explained Holden hurriedly, ‘his ideas are rather fantastic. He’s a product of what I might term the Evening Class – all theory and half-digested knowledge. He has an idea that you can jump into the middle of London and push it out.’

‘Humph!’ said King Kerry thoughtfully – then – ‘And you would not advise me to rebuild – let us say, Tottenham Court Road?’

The architect hesitated.

‘No,’ he said – and what else could he say in the face of his article?

‘I’m sorry,’ said King Kerry shortly, ‘for I was going to ask you to submit designs – but naturally I cannot give the work to a man without enthusiasm.’

‘Of course there might be something I haven’t understood about your –’

Kerry shook his head.

‘I think you understand all that I wish anybody to understand,’ he said, and saw the discomfited Mr Holden to the door.

Gordon Bray stood at the broad draughtsman’s table employing his compasses and his rulers to the front elevation of a particularly hideous building which Mr Holden was calling into being.

He was in a state of depression. The goal was very far distant to him. He could never marry now until he had secured a position in the world. His self-respect would not allow him to share the fortune of the woman he loved. So far he was ignorant of the provisions of her father’s will, but enlightenment on that question would not have changed the outlook. A man loves a woman best when he can bring gifts in his hands: it is unnatural to come not only empty-handed but with hands to be filled. He had all the pride and sensitiveness of youth. The whisper of the phrase ‘fortune hunter’ was sufficient to turn him hot and cold, though it might bear no relationship to him and had never been intended to apply. Though, possibly, only three persons in London knew of his love, he thought his secret was common property, and it was a maddening thought that perhaps there were people who spoke disparagingly or sneeringly of his beautiful lady for her graciousness to a penniless draughtsman.
He had had wild thoughts of ending the situation. It was unfair to her. He would write a letter and go away to Canada, and perhaps come back some day a wealthy man to find her heart still free.

Many young men have the same heroic thought and lack the ready cash necessary to make the change. He at any rate was in this position, and had grown savage in the realization when Holden’s bell summoned him.

Holden was very red in the face, and very angry. His fat cheeks were puffed out and his round eyes stared comically – but he had no desire to amuse anybody.

His stare was almost terrifying as Gordon entered.

‘I’ve just seen that damned Yankee!’ he said.

‘Which damned Yankee?’ demanded the young man. In his own distress of mind he forgot to be impressed by his employer.

‘There’s only one,’ growled Mr Holden. ‘He’s full of sillyass ideas about building … sent for me to insult me … thinks he knows … here, take this letter to him!’

He handed a sealed envelope across the table with a malicious grin.

‘You seem to have friends in that office,’ he went on, and fished in the drawer of his desk for a cheque book. ‘I’m beginning to understand now how Kerry came to buy that Borough property that my client wanted!’

He referred to a transaction which was a month old, but the memory of which still rankled.

‘What do you mean?’ asked the young man, raising his voice.

‘Never mind what I mean,’ said Mr Holden darkly; ‘and don’t shout at me, Gordon!’ he snorted the last word. ‘Here’s your cheque for a month’s salary. Deliver the letter and you needn’t
come back: perhaps Mr Kerry will engage you as his architect – you’ve passed all the examinations, I understand.’

Gordon picked up the cheque slowly. ‘Do you mean that I am dismissed?’

‘I mean,’ said Mr Holden, ‘that you’re too clever for this office.’

It was with a heavy heart that the young man entered Kerry’s office. Elsie was not there, and Kerry received him alone, read the letter in silence, then tore up a letter he was writing himself.

‘Do you know the contents of this?’ Mr Kerry held up Holden’s epistle.

‘No, Mr Kerry.’

‘I thought you didn’t,’ said the big man with a smile, ‘otherwise you mightn’t have brought it. I’ll read it to you –’

Gordon’s face was crimson.

‘How dare he!’ he cried.

‘Dare he?’ Kerry’s eyebrows rose. ‘Goodness gracious! – as you English say – he’s given you the finest testimonial I have ever had with a young man. I gather you’re sacked?’

Gordon nodded.

‘Excellent!’ said the other. ‘Now you go along to an office I have just taken in St. James’s Street and furnish it – I give you
carte blanche – as a surveyor’s office should be furnished. And if anybody asks who you are, you must say: “I am the architect of the big L Trust,” and,’ he added solemnly, ‘they will probably take their hats off to you.’

‘But, seriously, Mr Kerry?’ protested the laughing Gordon.

‘Never more serious. Go along and design something.’

Gordon Bray was transfixed, hypnotized – he couldn’t grasp the meaning of it all.

‘Design me,’ said Kerry, wrinkling his brow in thought, ‘a public square set around with buildings, shops, and public offices. Let the square be exactly half the length of Regent Street from side to side.’

With a curt nod he dismissed the dazed youth.