Kept (23 page)

15 M
AY
186–

Wm Barclay, Esq.

Director

South-Eastern Railway Company

Dear Sir,

I refer to the meeting of the 11
^th
inst, at which it was desired by the directors that our position regarding the conveyance of bullion to the French banks should be formally set down. The arrangements, which I have examined with the aid of representatives of the firms of Abell, Spielmann and Bult, and of Mr. Sellings, stationmaster of the London Bridge terminus, are duly summarised herewith.

As you are no doubt aware, the company’s overnight mail train departs for Folkestone each evening at 8:30. The ferry service is naturally dependent on the hour of high tide, when the steamer may be brought further in to embark heavy cargo. It may be observed that the safe may even be lifted aboard the steamer, should this prove necessary, such is the vessel’s proximity to crane and gantries at high water.

Naturally, our dealings with Messrs. Abell, Spielmann and Bult are of the most confidential nature. Mr. Spielmann informs me that Mr. Sellings, a most trusted and respectable employee of the company, is kept ignorant of their intentions until such time as a representative declares himself at the station office. Under Mr. Sellings’s express supervision the bullion chests are escorted by the railway police to the stationmaster’s
office. Here each is weighed. Subsequently the chests are taken under escort to the baggage van of the ferry train.

I must here emphasise the strenuous efforts of both ourselves and Messrs. Abell, Spielmann and Bult to guarantee security. Mr. Chubb has provided the company with three copies of his patented “railway safe,” constructed of steel plate to a depth of one inch and with dual locks. (It may be noted that at a recent exposition Mr. Chubb fixed one of his patent locks to a hotel door and invited the assembled company of locksmiths to pick it. None could do so.) As a precaution, copies of the keys are held by separate individuals of the company at London Bridge and Folkestone. Further, although all three safes are opened and closed by the same keys, only one is in use at any given time. The bullion boxes—each of these contains perhaps a hundredweight of gold—are of course locked, each additionally bearing the merchant’s individual wax seal.

The company’s engine having arrived at Folkestone, the railway safe remains under constant guard until such time as the bullion boxes can be removed for checking and shipment. One key is held by the station superintendent; the other is kept under lock and key at the company’s office on the harbour pier. The weight of each chest is checked against its measure in London. Additionally, the station superintendent has been instructed to conduct a close inspection of the seal. Once placed in the care of the captain and crew of the steamer, the bullion is thenceforth conveyed to Boulogne. Here it passes into the custody of the Messageries Impériales and is once again checked with regard to its weight before proceeding to the Gare du Nord and the Bank of France, where the boxes can be collected by the Paris merchants.

I should add that Messrs. Abell, Spielmann and Bult, with each of whom I had some private conversation, professed themselves thoroughly satisfied with these arrangements, Mr. Bult in particular being convinced of the impossibility of any larceny being perpetrated while the shipment was in the company’s hands. The merit of Mr. Chubb’s safe, I am assured, is that a
cracksman has nothing to work upon save the keyhole. Further, a fully loaded bullion box requires two men to carry it. In the unlikely event of any theft being committed, the outrage would become apparent as soon as the safe was opened at Folkestone. To lay hands on the stamps of merchants such as Messrs. Abell, Spielmann and Bult would, as Mr. Bult asserts, demand nothing less than the burglary of their vaults.

I trust that this information is of use, and would be glad to supplement it with any further details that may be required.

Having the honour to remain your most obedient servant,

I am, sir, yours most faithfully,

JAMES HARKER
Secretary to the Board

 

Spring had come, finally and after much hesitation, to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and there were daffodils out upon the green grass and gillyflowers blooming in the window boxes of the ground-floor sets. This being Lincoln’s Inn, where an air of general severity prevails, they did so with an unconscionable meekness, as if they feared that some legal eminence—Mr. Crabbe perhaps—would descend in wrath from his chambers and present them with a writ for unlicensed blossoming or occupying too great a proportion of space. Mr. Pardew, hurrying through the great black gate on his way to see Mr. Crabbe, saw neither the daffodils nor the gillyflowers, saw nothing, in fact, other than the several phantoms that rose up and stalked through his imagination. Though he strode with his customary vigour, had walked all the way to High Holborn from his office in Carter Lane brandishing his stick as if all manner of unseen enemies were about to leap up at him, Mr. Pardew was not happy in his mind. There are some men who pride themselves on their autonomy, of having their progress through the world laid out in a manner that they themselves have arranged, and Mr. Pardew was such a one. He was the kind of man who, if he wished to have the pleasure of dining with a certain gentleman, would make sure that the invitation came from himself, or if he wished to pursue a
certain course of commercial action would insist that the business was of his own devising. Such a resolve to follow his own inclinations had perhaps contributed, some years before, to his falling out with the late lamented Mr. Fardel.

Just at this moment, on the other hand, Mr. Pardew was on his way to an engagement to which he had been summarily bidden not once but twice, and he did not like it. To be sure, he had begun by treating the affair with his customary insouciance. A letter had come from Mr. Crabbe suggesting that he might present himself at the former’s chambers at such and such a time, and Mr. Pardew had…ignored it. Then a second letter had come repeating the suggestion advanced in the first in such a way that it became a request. This too, after a certain amount of reflection and calculation, Mr. Pardew had ignored. Finally, a third letter had come, whose tone was so unambiguous that not even Mr. Pardew, however insouciant the remark he pronounced over it to his clerk, could deign to throw it in the wastepaper basket. This, consequently, was the chain of events that brought him to Lincoln’s Inn Fields on a bright March morning with the breeze springing this way and that through the newly risen grass, gnawing savagely at his finger ends and waving his stick at the shifting air in a manner quite worthy of Don Quixote with the windmills.

In truth Mr. Pardew was not greatly alarmed at the prospect of facing Mr. Crabbe in his den. He had taken up arms against Mr. Crabbe before and knew that he had had the better of him. The letter whose production had so enraged and cowed Mr. Crabbe lay still in the pocket of his coat. This repeated summons to the old lawyer’s presence was but a consequence of that victory. Moreover, he had an idea of what Mr. Crabbe might say to him and what he himself might say in reply. Yet there were other anxieties revolving in his mind, other schemes on which he hesitated to embark but which could not long be postponed, which agitated him to a much greater degree. The conflict that these precipitated in his mind became so great that at the door to Mr. Crabbe’s chambers he halted, made a great slash with his cane at some chimerical adversary and muttered to himself something to the effect that he could not be eaten by Mr. Crabbe, and that this gentleman might, if he did not take care, be eaten himself. Having
taken himself in hand in this way, he rapped noisily on Mr. Crabbe’s brass knocker, was admitted with such alacrity that it appeared the old clerk had known of his coming and been expressly stationed behind the door, divested himself of his coat—the stick he retained in his hand—and whipped smartly up the stairs to Mr. Crabbe’s room.

Mr. Crabbe was awaiting Mr. Pardew. In fact, having seen him coming across the grass from his window, he had been able to make certain preparations in advance of his visit. In particular, he had envisioned a ruse not uncommonly thought up by gentlemen who wish to interview other gentlemen and appear to some advantage: he had with his own hands taken the chair that stood in the centre of his room for the use of visitors and propelled it behind a screen that faced onto one of the bookcases. This meant, according to Mr. Crabbe’s reasoning, that Mr. Pardew would be compelled to stand in front of him and should, additionally, find it very difficult to avoid Mr. Crabbe’s gaze. In this assumption Mr. Crabbe was, as it turned out, altogether wrong. Mr. Pardew, coming into the room with the old clerk panting at his heels, saw immediately the nature of the ruse and decided that he would have nothing to do with it. Shaking hands with Mr. Crabbe and muttering some civility, informing the clerk that, yes, he would have a cup of tea if such were procurable, he took himself first to the fireplace, where he stood for a moment warming his hands, and then to the window, where he appeared to take a very keen interest in a cherry tree whose burgeoning upper branches could be seen perhaps twenty yards away. Mr. Crabbe, seating himself behind the desk from which he had risen to shake Mr. Pardew’s hand, was not quite put out by this cavalier treatment, but he was aware that his preliminary stratagem had failed and that an advantage could only be secured by the ingenuity of his tongue. Accordingly, he shuffled the papers on his desk—papers which related to his recent dealings with the firm of Pardew & Co.—and did his best to attract Mr. Pardew’s attention.

“A very fine day,” Mr. Pardew observed from the window, where he was still engrossed in the cherry tree. “Upon my word, I think I never knew it so fine for March.”

“I don’t doubt it is a fine day,” Mr. Crabbe deposed, with a blandness that he did not at all feel.

“By the by, I saw His Grace the Duke of——the other night. He seemed to be in extraordinarily good spirits.”

Mr. Crabbe, staring at his visitor’s back, the front half of him still being turned towards the window, felt that this allusion was too much to be borne. He laid the papers down on the desk in front of him with a little crash of his fingers and coughed.

“Mr. Pardew. I have asked to see you because a very serious matter has arisen with regard to your affairs.”

Mr. Pardew turned abruptly from his station by the window. “Indeed? Anything that concerns my business is serious to me. By all means say what you have to say, and you shall find me a willing listener.”

Mr. Crabbe nodded at this courtesy, which was far more like the kind of thing to which he was accustomed, but at the same time he hesitated, for there was a difference between what he knew or suspected of Mr. Pardew’s affairs and what he could decently insinuate. A gentleman, after all, does not invite onto his premises another gentleman with whom he had business dealings and accuse him of being a thief. On the other hand, he may very easily introduce into his conversation a presumption of thievery which the presumed thief can either acknowledge or deny as he chooses, while being aware that this presumption exists. Mr. Crabbe, to be blunt, remembering the course of their last meeting, was wondering how far he could go and what might be the consequence if, in a manner of speaking, he went too far.

The facts of the case were these. In the course of the past two months, relying solely on information provided by Mr. Pardew, Mr. Crabbe, or rather Mr. Crabbe’s clerks, had written letters to perhaps half a dozen persons at addresses in the north of England requesting payments of debts owed to the firm of Pardew & Co. Somewhat to Mr. Crabbe’s surprise, these debts had all been paid, either by cash, cheque or a combination of the two, the payment being made either by post (the letter generally lamenting Mr. Pardew’s exigent attitude towards his debtors) or by emissary to Mr. Crabbe’s office. In each case the money or moneys having been received by Mr. Crabbe and transferred into Crabbe & Enderby’s bank account, where all the firm’s receipts were customarily deposited, Mr. Crabbe, having first deducted
his commission, had written a further cheque in favour of Pardew & Co. How Mr. Crabbe now regretted having written those cheques! For in the fullness of time word had come back from Mr. Crabbe’s bank that one of the cheques had been inscribed on a form that, it was alleged, had been stolen from the person on whose account it was drawn, and that two of the banknotes were forgeries. All this was necessarily a source of horror to Mr. Crabbe, for he knew that he had been the party to a fraud. The loss to the bank had been instantly made good out of his own pocket. The circumstances—the promptness of the payments, a certain consistency in the tone of the letters lamenting Mr. Pardew’s harshness—made him deeply suspicious. But still he had accepted Mr. Pardew’s instructions in respect of his debtors—something that he now greatly deplored—and there was, he thought, a limit to the crimes of which Mr. Pardew might legitimately be accused.

Divining something of the thoughts that were oppressing the old lawyer’s mind, Mr. Pardew, prowling now in the region of the fire, determined to make them work to his advantage. Smiling in the friendliest manner imaginable, he remarked, “I suppose it is something to do with those debtors of mine. I presume one of the cheques has not been honoured, or something of the sort?”

“It is worse than that,” Mr. Crabbe told him grimly, wishing for all the world that the interview was over and he could go back to his copy of the
Times
and the devising of errands on which to send his clerk. “One of the cheques was written on a stolen form, and two of the notes were false.”

At this Mr. Pardew opened his eyes very wide. “Indeed? How very provoking. But then I suppose a man to whom a debt is owed can scarcely be held responsible for the honesty of his debtors.”

“Perhaps not.” To allow even this concession was a source of pain to such a one as Mr. Crabbe. “Naturally the police have become involved.”