PART III

CHAPTER XIV

THE ATTACK

A. S. Voles, money lender and bill discounter, lived over his business.

That is to say his office was his dining room. He owned the house in Jermyn Street. Jones, dismissing the taxi, rang the bell and was admitted by a man servant, who, not sure whether Mr. Voles was in or not, invited the visitor into a small room on the right of the entrance hall and closed the door on him.

The room contained a desk table, three chairs, a big scale map of London, a Phoenix Insurance Almanac, and a photogravure reproduction of Mona Lisa. The floor was covered with linoleum, and the window gave upon a blank wall.

This was the room where creditors and stray visitors had to wait. Jones took a chair and looked about him.

Humanity may be divided into three cla.s.ses: those who, having seen, adore, those who tolerate, and those who detest Mona Lisa. Jones detested her. That leery, sleery, slippery, poisonous face was hateful to him as the mask of a serpent.

He was looking at the lady when the door opened and in came Voles.

Voles looked yellower and older this morning, but his face showed nothing of resentment. The turning of the Earl of Rochester upon him had been the one great surprise of his life. He had always fancied that he knew character, and his fancy was not ill founded. His confidence in himself had been shaken.

"Good morning," said Jones. "I have come to have a little talk with you."

"Sit down," said Voles.

They seated themselves, Voles before the desk.

"I haven't come to fight," said Jones, "just to talk. You known that Marcus Mulhausen has got that Welsh land from me for five thousand, and that it is worth maybe a million now."

Voles nodded.

"Well, Mulhausen has to give that property back."

Voles laughed.

"You needn't laugh. You have seen my rough side. I'm holding the smooth towards you now--but there is no occasion to laugh. I'm going to skin Mulhausen."

"Well," said Voles. "What have I to do with that?"

"You are the knife."

"Oh!"

"Yes, indeed. Let's talk. When you got that eight thousand from me, you were only the agent of the Plinlimon woman, and she was only the agent of Marcus. She got something, you got something, but Marcus got the most. Julian got something too, but it was Marcus got the joints. He gave you three the head, and the hoofs, and the innards, and the tail.

I've had it out with the Plinlimon woman and I know. You were a gang."

Voles heaved up in his chair.

"What more have you to say?" asked he thickly.

"A lot. There is nothing more difficult to get at than a gang, because they cover each other's traces. I pay you a certain sum in cash, you deduct your commission and hand the remainder over to the Plinlimon woman, she pays her Pa, and gets a few hundred to pay her milliner.

Who's to prove anything? No cheques have pa.s.sed."

"Just so," said Voles.

"I'm glad you see my point," replied Jones. "Now if you can't untie a knot, you can always cut it if you have a knife--can't you?"

Voles shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, I said you were a knife, didn't I, and I'm going to cut this knot with you, see my point?"

"Not in the least."

"I'm sorry, because that makes me speak plain, and that's unpleasant.

This is my meaning. I have to get that property back, or else I will go to the police and rope in the whole gang. Tell the whole story. I will accuse Marcus. Do you understand that? Marcus, and Marcus' daughter, and Marcus' son, and you. And I won't do that to-morrow, I'll do it to-day.

To-night the whole caboodle of you will be in jail."

"You said you hadn't come to fight," cried Voles. "What do you want?

Haven't you had enough from me? Yet you drive me like this. It's dangerous."

"I have not come to fight. At least not you. On the contrary, when I get this property back, if it turns out worth a million, I'll maybe pay you your losses. You've been paying the piper for Marcus, it seems to me."

"I have," groaned Voles.

The two words proved to Jones that he was right all through.

"Well, it's Marcus I'm up against, and you have to help me."

Then Voles began to speak. The something Oriental in his nature, the something that had driven him rushing with outspread arms at the constable that evening, began now to talk.

Help against Marcus! What could he do against Marcus? Why Marcus Mulhausen held him in the hollow of his hand. Marcus held everyone: his daughter, her husband, his own son Julian, to say nothing of A. S. Voles and others.

Jones listened with patient attention to all this, and when the other had finished and wiped the palms of his hands on his handkerchief, said:

"But all the same, Marcus is held by the fact that he forms one of a gang."

Voles made a movement with his hand.

"Don't interrupt me. The head of a shark is the cleverest part of it, but it has to suffer with the body when the whole shark is caught; that's the fix Marcus is in. When I close on the lot of you, Marcus will be the first to go into the jug. Now, see here, you have got to take my orders; they won't be hard."

"What are they?"

"You have got to write me a note, which I will take to Marcus, telling him the game's up, the gang's burst, and to deliver."

"Why d--n it, what ails you?" said Voles.

"What ails me?"