Among the men who had always been attracted by the stories afloat were Charlie Rolfe, because of his close a.s.sociation with the old man, and Max Barclay, because of his intimate friendship with Rolfe. The latter had always been full of suspicion. Sam and Levi, master and man, were the only two who knew the truth of what lay behind that locked door.
And the servant guarded his master"s secret well. He was janitor there, and no one pa.s.sed the threshold into old Sam"s library without a very good cause, and without the permission of the master himself.
A thousand times, as Rolfe had gone in and out of the place, he had glanced up the broad, well-carpeted stairs, at the foot of which stood the fine marble Aphrodite, holding the great electrolier, and at the head, to the corner out of sight, was the locked door upon which half London had commented.
Had Samuel Statham thrown open his house only once, and given a reception, all gossip would be allayed. Indeed, as Rolfe sat with his master in the library the morning following Adam"s meeting with Marion, he, without telling Sam the reason, suggested an entertainment in November. He said that Society were wondering he did not seek to make their acquaintance. There were hundreds of people dying to know him.
"Yes," snapped the old man, glancing around the darkened room, for the morning sun was full upon the house. "I know them. They"d come here, crush and guzzle, eat my dinners, drink my wine, and go away without even remembering my name. Oh! I know what the so-called aristocracy we like, never fear. Most of them live upon people like myself who are vain-glorious enough to be pleased to number the Earl of So-and-So and the Countess of Slush among their personal friends.
"Men with wives can"t help being drawn into it. The womenfolk like to speak of `dear Lady Longneck," s...o...b..r over some old t.i.tled hag at parting, or find their names in the `Court and Society" column of the _Daily Snivel_. It"s their nature to be ambitious; but when a man"s single, like myself, Rolfe, he can please himself. That"s why I shut my door in their faces."
"Of course, you can afford to," the secretary replied, leaning both his elbows on the table and looking straight into his master"s face. "Few men could do as you do. It would be against their interests."
"It may be even against my interests," the old man said thoughtfully, leaning back in his chair, "for I might get a good deal of fun out of watching them trying to squeeze a little money out of me, or worm from me what men call `tips" regarding investments. Why, my dear Rolfe, once my door is opened to them, my life would no longer be worth living.
Instead of one secretary I"d want a dozen, and Levi would be at the door all day long answering callers. Other men who live in this street on either side of me have done it to their cost."
"I"ve heard it said in the clubs that you, with your vast means and huge interests, owe a duty to Society," Rolfe remarked.
"I owe no duty to Society," the old fellow declared angrily. "Society owes nothing to me, and I owe nothing to it. You know, Rolfe, how-- well--how I hate women--and I won"t have a pack of chatterboxes about my place. If I was a man with five hundred a year they wouldn"t want to know me."
"That"s very true," Rolfe remarked with a slight sigh. "Nowadays, when a man has money he is at once called a gentleman. A lady is the wife of a man with money, whatever may have been her past--or her present."
The old man laughed.
"And there is the `perfect lady,"" he said. "A genus usually a.s.sociated with the police-court. But you are quite right, Rolfe, nowadays, according to our modern code, a poor man cannot be a gentleman. No, as long as I live, the needy aristocracy which calls itself Society shall never my threshold. I will remain independent of them, for I have no womankind, and no fish to fry. I don"t want a baronetcy, or a peerage.
I don"t want shooting, or deer-stalking, or yachting, or hunting, or any of those pastimes. I merely want to be left alone here in peace--if it is possible." And he drew a long breath as the ugly recollection of the shabby stranger crossed his mind.
Rolfe knew well that the old man"s objections were because he dare not throw open the mansion. Some secret was hidden there which he could not reveal. What was it? Why were those brilliant lights sometimes at night in the upper windows? He had seen them himself sometimes as he pa.s.sed along near midnight on his way to his chambers in Jermyn Street, and had been sorely puzzled. More than once he had been convinced that somebody lived in the upper floors--somebody who was never seen. Yet if that were so, why should there be such secrecy regarding it. The occupant, whoever it was, could easily vacate the place while a reception was held.
As he sat there listening to the old man"s tirade against the West-End and its ways he felt that there must be some far greater mystery than an unseen tenant.
That old Sam knew quite well the rumour concerning the house, was evident. Keeping secret agents in every capital as he was forced to do--agents, male and female, who knew everything and reported exactly what he wished to know--it was certain that public opinion concerning him was well-known to him. Yet, as in a scandal, the man most concerned is always the last to get wind of it. Perhaps after all he might be in ignorance of what people were saying, although it was hardly credible that Ben, his brother, would not tell him.
For craft and cunning few men in London could compare with Sam Statham, yet at the same time he was just in his judgment and honest in his transactions. The weak and needy he befriended, but woe betide any who endeavoured to mislead him or impose upon his generosity.
More than one man had, by receiving a word of good advice from Sam Statham and the temporary loan of a few thousand as capital, awakened in a week"s time to find himself wealthy. One man in particular, now a well-known baronet, had risen in ten years from being a small draper in Launceston to his present position with an estate in Suffolk and a town house in Green Street, merely by taking Sam Statham"s advice as to certain investments.
It was owing to this fact, and others, that old Sam, as he rose from the table and crossed the room to the window, where he pulled aside the blind to look out upon the sunny roadway, said--
"I myself, Rolfe, have made one or two so-called gentlemen. But," he added, drawing a deep breath, "let"s put all that aside and get on with the letters. I"m expecting that Scotch friend of yours, the locomotive designer of Glasgow."
"Oh, Macgregor!" remarked the secretary. "He was most pertinacious the other day."
"All Scots are," replied the old man simply. "Let"s get on." And returning to the table he took up letter after letter and dictated replies in his sharp, snappy way which, to those who did not know him, would have appeared priggish and uncouth.
The reason of Macgregor"s visit to Old Broad Street had caused Rolfe a good deal of curiosity. He recollected how, on the instant his master had read the old engineer"s scribbled lines, his face fell. The visitor was at all events not a welcome one. Yet, on the other hand, he had seen him without delay, and they had been closeted together for quite a long time.
When the bearded Scot left, and he had re-entered the millionaire"s room, two facts struck him as peculiar. One was that a strong smell of burnt paper and a quant.i.ty of black tinder in the empty grate showed that some papers had been burned there, while the other was that old Sam was in the act of lighting a cigar, in itself showing a buoyancy of mind.
He never smoked when down at the bank, and very seldom when at home.
His cigars, too, were of a cheap quality which even his clerks would be ashamed to offer their friends. Indeed, while all connected with the house in Old Broad Street possessed an air of solid prosperity, the head of the firm was usually of a penurious and hard-up aspect, as though he had a difficulty in making both ends meet. His smart electric brougham he used only once a week to take him to the City and back again. At other times he strolled about the streets so shabby as to pa.s.s unnoticed by those desirous of making his acquaintance and worming themselves into his good graces; or else he would idle in the park where he pa.s.sed for a lounger who, crowded out by reason of his age, was down on his luck.
Samuel Statham loved the Park. Often and often he would get into conversation with the flotsam and jetsam of London life--the unemployed, and the men who, in these days of hustle, alas! find themselves too old at forty. The ne"er-do-wells he knew quite well, and they believed him to be one of themselves. But he was ever on the look-out for a deserving case--the starving, despondent man with wife and children hungry at home. He would draw the man"s story from him, hear his complaint against unfair treatment, listen attentively to his wrongs, and pretending all the time to have suffered in a similar way himself.
Usually the man would, in the end, invite him to the home or the lodging-house where his wife and children were, and then, on ascertaining that the case was genuine, he would suddenly reveal himself as the good Samaritan.
To such men he gave himself out as Mr Jones, agent of a benevolent society which was nameless, and which did its work without advertis.e.m.e.nt, and extracted a pledge of secrecy. By such means many a dozen honest, hard-working men, who through no fault of their own had been thrown out of employment, had been "put upon their legs" again and gained work, and yet not one of them ever suspected that the shabby, down-at-heel man Jones was actually the millionaire Samuel Statham, who lived in the white house in fall view of the seat whereon they had first met.
Even from Rolfe he sought to conceal this secret philanthropy, yet the young man had guessed something of it. He had more than once caught him talking to strange men whose pinched faces and trim appearance told the truth.
The man whose vast wealth had brought him nothing but isolation and loneliness, delighted in performing these good works, and in rescuing the unfortunate wives and families of the deserving ones who were luckless. He loved to see the brightness overspread those dark, despairing faces, and to hear the heartfelt thanks which he was told to convey to the mythical "society."
Never but once did he allow a man to suspect that the money he gave came from his own pocket. That single occasion was when, after giving a man whom he believed to be deserving a sovereign, he next evening found him in the park the worse for liquor.
He said nothing that night, but a few days later, when he met him, he gave him a piece of his mind which the plausible good-for-nothing would not quickly forget.
"Such frauds as you," he had said, "prevent people from a.s.sisting the deserving poor. I"ve made inquiry into your story, and found it false from beginning to end. You have no wife, and the four children starving and ill that you described to me do not exist. You live for the most part in the bar of the `Star," off the Edgware Road, and on the night after I gave you the money you were so drunk that they wouldn"t serve you. Such men like you," he went on with withering sarcasm, his grey beard bristling as he spoke, and his fist clenched fiercely, "are a disgrace to the human race, for you are a liar, a drunkard, and a blackguard--a man who deserves the death that will, I hope, overtake you--death in the gutter."
And he turned upon his heel, leaving the accused man standing staring at him open-mouthed, utterly unable to offer a single word in self-defence.
This secret charity was Sam Statham"s only recreation. By it he made many friends whom he had taken out of the slums--friends who were perhaps more devoted and true to him than those to whom he had given financial "tips," and who had made many thousands thereby. In many a modest home was Mr Jones a welcome guest whenever he called to see how "his friends" were progressing, and many a time had he drunk a humble gla.s.s of bitter "sent out" for by his thankful and devoted host who was all unconscious of who his guest really was. The world would have laughed at the idea of a working man standing Samuel Statham a gla.s.s of ale.
One case was old Sam"s particular pride. About eighteen months before, in the park one day, he came across a despairing but well-educated, middle-aged man, who at first was not at all communicative, but whose bearing and manner was that of refinement and culture. Three times they met, and it was very evident that the sad-faced man was starving.
At last Sam offered to "stand him" a meal, and over it the man told a pathetic story, how that he was a fully-qualified medical man in practice in York, but owing to his unfortunate habit of drinking he had lost everything, sold his practice, and had been compelled to leave the city. The proceeds of his practice had soon gone in drink, and now, with all the bitter remorse upon him, he and his wife and two small children were faced with starvation. Friends and relations would not a.s.sist him because of his intemperance. There was only one way out of it all, he declared--suicide.
Sam had taken him in hand. He had seen the wife and children, and then explained, as usual, that he was Mr Jones. Small sums he first gave them, and finding that his charity was never abused, and that the doctor withstood the temptation to drink, he had gone to an agency, the address of which he had found in the _Lancet_, and bought a comfortable little practice with a furnished house in West Norwood, where the doctor and his family were now installed and doing well.
In West Norwood to-day that doctor is the most popular and the most sought after. His practice is ever increasing, and already he has nearly repaid the whole of the sum which Mr Jones lent him, and has been compelled to take an a.s.sistant.
The doctor is still in ignorance, however, for he has never identified Mr Jones with Statham the millionaire. But was it surprising that at his house no guest was more welcome than the man who had rescued him from ruin and from death?
Truly money, if properly applied, can do much to alleviate the sufferings of the world, and as it is the "root of all evil," so it is also the root of all good.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.
TELLS OF THE THREE.
"Well?"
"Weel?" asked Duncan Macgregor, who was seated in an easy att.i.tude in Sam Statham"s library. At the table sat the millionaire himself, while near by, in the enjoyment of a cigar, sat old Levi. The latter was still in his garb of service, but his att.i.tude was certainly more like that of his master"s intimate friend than that of butler.
It was from his thin lips that the query had escaped in response to a fact which the Scot had emphasised with his hairy fist.
"Well," exclaimed Statham after a pause, "and what do you suppose should be done, Mr--"
"Macgregor--still Duncan Macgregor," exclaimed the bearded man, concluding the millionaire"s sentence. "That"s the verra thing that puzzles me, mon. P"raps we"d best wait a wee bittie an" see."
Levi dissented. He knew that whatever his position in that strange household, his master always listened to him and took his advice-- sometimes when it involved the risk of many thousands. He was a kind of oracle, for generally when Ben came there to consult his brother upon some important point, the old servant remained in the room to hear the discussion and to give his dry but candid opinion.