The Victorian Villains Megapack (20 page)

As he strolled down the street, on a last visit to the General Post Office, the two detectives passed him on their way back in quest of the “Managing Director.”

Romney Pringle in THE FOREIGN OFFICE DE
SPATCH

“
Rien ne va plus
—the ball rolls!”

The silence was only broken by the rattle of the ivory ball over the diamond-shaped studs around the circumference of the disc. Every now and then there was a sharp click, as it struck a partition between two numbers and was viciously jerked on to the studs again.

Round and round the ball went. It was only for a minute, but to the men gathered by the green cloth it seemed a century. Suddenly the noise ceased. The disc continued to revolve, but the ball lay snug in one of the little pens.

The tailleur placed his finger on the capstan and stopped the disc.

“Twelve—rouge—manque—pair” he intoned monotonously. Then he raked the stakes off the spaces painted on the green cloth. The table had won for the eighth time in succession, with payment to hardly a single player. A kind of suppressed groan ran round the board, and the fleeced ones crowded to the bar at the end of the room for consolation.

The life at the marble caravanserais which largely do duty now for clubs was repellent to Mr. Romney Pringle and, doubtless on Pope’s principle that “the proper study of mankind is MAN,” the “Chrysanthemum Club” had many attractions for him. As to the club itself, while election was a process rather more exacting than a mere scrutiny by the hall-porter, the “Chrysanthemum” was not too exclusive; and, although situated in a fashionable street off Piccadilly, the subscription was a nominal one.

As Romney Pringle inhaled his cigarette and watched the last disastrous success of the table, a young man got up from the board and flung himself abruptly into a low chair opposite. Presently a waiter placed on the marble table at his elbow a bottle of Moet and Chandon, to which he applied himself assiduously. There was nothing in his appearance to differentiate him from any of the thousands of well-dressed and well-groomed men who frequent Clubland, but somehow or other, as they sat opposite one another, his eye continually caught that of Pringle, who at length rose and crossed the room. The club was not so large that a member need consider himself insulted did a stranger address him without a previous introduction, and the other displayed no emotion when Pringle sat down beside him and entered into conversation.

“The table seems to be having all the luck tonight,” he remarked.

“That’s true,” agreed the youth frankly. “I never heard of such luck.”

“Been playing long?” inquired Pringle sympathetically.

“I’m not a member, you know. I was introduced as a visitor for the first time tonight.” Then, growing confidential as the wine circulated in his brain, he continued, “I cashed a check for eighty pounds when I began to play, and I staked ten every time.”

“So you lost it all?”

“Lost it all,” the youth echoed gloomily.

“But why not go on? Professor Bond calculates that the chances in favor of the Bank are only thirty-seven to thirty-five.”

“Fact is, my last sovereign went there,” he tapped the bottle. “Think I’d better go now.” And he rose somewhat unsteadily. His libations to Fortune had evidently commenced very early in the evening.

“Try your luck again,” persuaded Pringle. “Allow me the pleasure of helping you to get your revenge,” and he produced a handful of gold from his pocket.

“You’re really very good, but—”

“Not at all! The luck’s sure to turn by this time,” urged the tempter.

“Well, I’ll take eight pounds, and thanks awfully, Mr.— Really I don’t know your name; mine’s Redmile.”

“Mine is James,” said Pringle. “Now in and win!”

Once more Redmile took his seat at the green board and watched the play eagerly. The table was no longer winning, and the interest in the game had revived. After a few turns he ventured a sovereign on the pair or even numbers. “Twenty-six” was called, and he was richer by as much more.

Still cautious, he placed three sovereigns below the first column of figures. “Nineteen” was the winning number, and six more sovereigns were added to his three.

“I congratulate you!” whispered Pringle behind him. “Didn’t I say the luck would change?”

“A good guess,” laughed Redmile. “Only let me win enough to redeem that check, and I shall be contented.”

“Try the twelves,” Pringle suggested.

Redmile arranged five sovereigns on the space allotted to the first twelve numbers.

“Thirty-one!” the tailleur called.

Pringle shrugged his shoulders as the money was raked into the bank.

Without looking round, but breathing heavily, Redmile placed a sovereign on rouge, another on impair, and after a second’s hesitation dropped two more on twenty-one. Even as he withdrew his hand the tailleur uttered his parrot-cry
“Rien ne va plus,”
and, spinning the disc, reversed the ball against it. “Twenty-one—rouge—passe—impair” he droned, as the ball rested.

Redmile had won seventy-two pounds at one stroke! He rose from the table and vigorously shook hands with Pringle.

“I’ve got eighty-two pounds altogether with me, and I must get that check back from the manager,” he said, “Do you mind coming round to my rooms? Only as far as Dover Street, and I’ll give you a check for what you so kindly lent me.”

“With pleasure,” said Pringle, as Redmile, now flushed with success in addition to the wine, darted off to redeem his check.

“I’ve had as much as is good for me or we’d have had another bottle to celebrate the occasion,” he remarked as they strolled down Piccadilly.

“Rather more,” thought Pringle, adding politely, “I should not have noticed it.”

“Perhaps not; but I must have a clear head tomorrow. I’m in the F.O., you know, and we’re very busy just now.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed Pringle, much interested. “You must have had a harassing time lately—over this Congo affair, for instance?”

“Yes, harassing isn’t the word to describe it. Come in!”

He drew out his latchkey, and after some ineffectual efforts succeeded in opening the door. Then he insisted on writing the check in spite of all Pringle’s protestations and, opening a box of cigars, put whisky and soda on the table. The fresh air had completed the work of the alcohol. He was evidently becoming very drunk, and laughed insanely when, missing the tumbler, he directed the cascade from a syphon over the table-cloth.

“We’ll just have a nightcap before you go,” he hiccupped. “Yes, as you were saying, we’ve had a deuce of a time lately. I’m one of Lord Tranmere’s secretaries, and the berth’s not all beer and sk-skittles? Why, you mightn’t think it, but I have to examine every blessed dispatch and telegram that passes between London and Paris every day, Sundays and all; and that means some work just now, I can tell you! Yesterday was no d-day of rest for me.”

He unlocked a despatch-box and held up an official envelope for Pringle to see. The direction was printed in bold letters:

On Her Britannic Majesty’s Service

His Excellency the Right Honble.

The Viscount Strathclyde, G.C.B.,

Her Britannic Majesty’s Ambassador

Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary,

Etc. Etc. Etc.

Paris

Foreign Office

“This is the finish to the whole business,” he said. “Rather short and sweet. I only finished dr-drafting it this evening. It will be franked by the Secretary of State in the morning, and I think by this time to-tomorrow the F.O. officials will sleep sounder in both capitals.”

“Will they, indeed!” exclaimed Pringle. “I am delighted to find that diplomacy is not a lost art in England. But, talking of that, I suppose you know the story of the Queen’s Messenger and that affair of the Emperor of Austria’s razors?”

Redmile had never heard of it, and settled himself comfortably to listen. But as the combined result of his potations and the lateness of the hour, his head began to nod, and long before Pringle arrived at the climax of the story a loud snore proclaimed that his audience was asleep.

After waiting a little while to make sure of his host’s unconsciousness, Pringle cautiously reached towards the despatch-box which still lay open on the table, and possessed himself of an addressed envelope and several sheets of foolscap embossed with the Foreign Office stamp. He then turned his attention to the waste-paper basket, and after a search, as noiseless as possible, among its rustling contents, found a torn envelope bearing a nearly perfect Foreign Office seal in wax. Placing all the stationery carefully in his pocket, he gave vent to a loud sneeze.

Redmile woke up with a start, and Pringle, as if finishing the story, remarked calmly, “So that’s how the affair ended.”

“Dear me! I’m awfully sorry,” apologized Redmile thickly. “I’m afraid I’ve been asleep. It must have been that whisky that did it!”

“More likely the prosiness of my story,” Pringle suggested with a smile. “But, anyhow, I must be moving.”

“Come and look me up any time you’re passing,” said the other sleepily.

When he reached Furnival’s Inn Pringle did not trouble to go to bed. He had a hard night’s work before him and the dawn found him still busily engaged.

Drawing up the blinds he admitted the morning light. The Venetian mirror which hung above the mantel had seldom reflected such a scene of confusion as the usually neat room presented. Pringle’s hat crowned one of the two choice pieces of delft which flanked the brass lantern-clock, while his overcoat sprawled limply across the reading-easel. On a table in one corner stood a glass vessel containing a chemical solution. In this, well coated with black-lead, was immersed the seal abstracted from the waste-paper basket, which, with a plate of copper, also hanging in the solution, was connected with the wires of a “Daniell’s” chemical battery; in the course of the night the potent electricity had covered the wax with a deposit of copper sufficiently thick to form a perfect reverse
intaglio
of the seal. A centre-table was littered with pieces of paper, scrawled over with what appeared to be the attempts of a beginner in the art of writing. A closer inspection would have revealed a series of more or less successful reproductions of Redmile’s handwriting—his check for eight pounds being pinned to a drawing-board and serving Pringle as a copy. With frequent reference to a Blue-book which lay open before him, Pringle penned a communication in a couple of short paragraphs, which he carefully copied onto one of the sheets of foolscap. Then, folding it into the envelope, he sealed it with a neat impression from the copper electrotype.

One thing only remained to complete the official appearance of the package; that was the “frank.” Turning to the dado of dwarf bookcases which ran round the room, Pringle took down an album containing the portraits and autographs of celebrities of the day, and looked up that of the Foreign Secretary. Lord Transmere’s signature was a bold and legible one, and with the skill of an expert copyist he soon had a facsimile of it written in the lower left-hand corner of the envelope.

Eight o’clock was striking just as he had finished. He rose and stretched himself languidly, when his eye fell on the check. Unpinning it from the board, he attached a “y” to the written word “eight,” and deftly inserted a cipher after the somewhat unsteady figure which sprawled in the corner, thus converting it into a check for eighty pounds.

His task was now done, and after swallowing a cup of chocolate brewed over a spirit-lamp, he made a hurried but careful toilet. Endowed by Nature with a fresh complexion which did much to conceal the ravages of a sleepless night, he presented his usual youthful appearance on leaving the Inn, and having chartered a passing cab, was swallowed up in the sea of traffic already beginning to surge down Holborn.

Work, as a general rule, begins later at the Foreign Office than elsewhere, but although it was only a little past nine when Pringle dismissed his cab in Downing Street and entered the portico of Lord Palmerston’s architectural freak, several cabs and a miniature brougham were already waiting in the quadrangle. He inquired at the door for Redmile, and was directed up the magnificent staircase to a waiting-room on the first floor.

“I will not detain Mr. Redmile long if he is at all busy,” he remarked to the messenger who took his name.

“Mr. Redmile is always busy, sir,” was the man’s reply.

Pringle sat down and devoted himself to a study of
The Times
, and it was fully a quarter of an hour before the messenger returned and led him along a dismal and vault-like corridor to an apartment overlooking the Horse Guards’ Parade.

The room was empty, but he had scarcely had time to seat himself when a side-door, through which he caught a glimpse of a vast and lofty room beyond, suddenly opened, and Redmile entered with a packet in his hand.

“Good-morning, er—Mr. James,” he said rather stiffly, and remained standing.

“I must apologize for intruding upon you when you are so busy,” Pringle commenced.

Redmile said nothing, but glanced at the paper he held, which Pringle at once recognized as the momentous despatch which the other in his vinous indiscretion had shown him the previous evening.

“I should not have troubled you so early,” continued Pringle, “but on looking at your check when I got home I found that instead of repaying me my small loan you had drawn it for a much larger sum.” And he handed the altered check to Redmile, who started when he saw the amount. He stared at it a second or two before he spoke, and then it was in a much more cordial tone.

“Pray sit down, Mr. James. Excuse my not having offered you a chair. I am really greatly obliged to you. As a man of honor, which I see you are, may I ask you to do what I shall regard as an even greater service—that is, to forget that you saw me at that infernal club? I had only been there once before with Lord Netherfield”—he named a well-known man-about-town—“and I should not have gone there again had I not dined rather too freely with an old friend last night. I remember very little of what occurred, and I need not tell you how fatal the events of last night would be to my official position if they became known.”

“You may rely on me implicitly, Mr. Redmile. I do not play myself, and indeed I only regard the ‘Chrysanthemum’ as an interesting place to pass an idle hour. One can study there emotions more realistic than any which are travestied on the stage.”