Kept (24 page)

“Oh indeed?” said Mr. Pardew again, with perhaps rather too studied a nonchalance. “And what have they managed to discover?”

“Only that the address from which the forged notes were despatched was a poste restante.”

Despite his nonchalance, Mr. Pardew, standing on Mr. Crabbe’s
Turkey carpet with his legs opened against the warmth of the fire, was engaged in a rapid calculation. He knew, of course, that the banknotes were forgeries and the cheque was written on a stolen form because, in an assumed hand and using anonymous messengers, he had sent them to Mr. Crabbe himself. But that such transactions could be traced back to the office in Carter Lane he thought unlikely. Should anybody—the famous Captain McTurk, say, or any representative of Mr. Crabbe—take it upon himself to investigate any of the addresses to which Mr. Crabbe had been directed to write, Mr. Pardew was confident that he would find nothing in the least incriminating. Having assured himself of this, but reminding himself that there was still one favour he required of Mr. Crabbe, he drew himself up to his full height, made a little feint with his stick at the fire and said in a meditative tone, “Indeed? This is very shocking. I can only apologise, Mr. Crabbe, for the inconvenience to which you have been subject.”

This was too much for Mr. Crabbe. “Inconvenience, sir? It is more than inconvenience! Why I have had a man from the bank absolutely asking me—asking
me
, sir!—if I knew of the money’s provenance.”

“And how did you reply, I wonder?”

“I said what I believe to be the truth. That I had been requested to write a letter in connection with a debt, quite in the usual way, and this had been the result. I tell you what, sir”—and Mr. Pardew observed that Mr. Crabbe was genuinely angry, much angrier than he had been at the start of their interview—“this had better be the end of any dealings between us, indeed it had. If you have any further debts to be collected, you had better take them to some other firm and see what they say.”

Hearing this opinion, which would have had many a legal colleague with whom Mr. Crabbe dealt positively abasing himself on the carpet, Mr. Pardew hesitated. He did not believe, in the last resort, that Mr. Crabbe would altogether throw him over, for he knew—and he knew that Mr. Crabbe knew—that if questions could be asked of himself regarding the stolen cheque and the forged notes, then they could also be asked of Mr. Crabbe. Behind their conversation, as ever, lurked both the stupendous figure of His Grace the Duke of——, and the letter that Mr. Pardew had waved in front of Mr. Crabbe’s face on
their previous encounter, but Mr. Pardew acknowledged that there was a limit to both the power of His Grace’s ducal strawberry leaves and the power of the letter. He might threaten to drag Mr. Crabbe down, but he fancied that Mr. Crabbe might wish to drag him down also. He needed to appease Mr. Crabbe, but he could not afford to leave him conscious of any triumph.

“Well, if it is any consolation to you, Mr. Crabbe, that money from my former business associates is pretty much in. There is no need for me to trouble you with any further labour in that line. But there is a chance that in a month or so I shall require you to write me another letter.”

“There is, is there?”

“It may not be necessary. Indeed I trust it will not. It is a client of mine who has been sadly neglectful in the restitution of his obligations. Perhaps you have heard of him. It is the Earl of——.”

Mr. Crabbe, brooding savagely in his chair, looked up at this. He had indeed heard of the Earl of——, and from what he had heard imagined him exactly the kind of gentleman likely to fall into the hands of Mr. Pardew. Instinct told him to request Mr. Pardew to leave his chambers immediately, and yet something stayed him from issuing this demand. Mr. Crabbe could not exactly locate the source of this unease, but he told himself that he did not quite like the look in Mr. Pardew’s eye, which seemed to him both mocking and complicit, as if Mr. Pardew knew other things about him, things quite beyond those contained in that awful letter, while being altogether indifferent to any revelations that Mr. Crabbe might make with regard to his own dealings. Therefore Mr. Crabbe did not summon his clerk and have Mr. Pardew ushered away. He merely sat and stared at the fire and at the papers on his desk and at Mr. Pardew (who was now swaying luxuriously from one foot to the other like a cat that is getting ready to pounce), finding solace in none of them and feeling older than he had felt for many a year.

“As I say,” Mr. Pardew continued, with an unmistakable note of deference in his voice, “such a course may not be necessary. It may not indeed. And even if it were not, I should of course be delighted to return that piece of property of yours of which we spoke…”

Mr. Crabbe made some feeble motion of assent with his hands and muttered something. It was not intelligible to Mr. Pardew, but its meaning was clear. Mr. Crabbe, if absolutely entreated and compelled to, would write the letter. For the moment, however, he would do nothing other than to have Mr. Pardew take his leave at the earliest possible juncture, would be glad, in fact, if he never had to set eyes on Mr. Pardew again. Mr. Pardew understood this as well as he understood the rates of interest in that morning’s
Financial Gazette
, and was quick to depart, shaking the single finger that the lawyer extended to him from behind his desk and stalking down the staircase into the vestibule at such a rate of knots that he altogether forgot his overcoat and had to be followed out of the door by one of the clerks with that garment gathered up in his arms. Mr. Crabbe, watching him go, felt so wretched that he flung a pen wiper into the fire and sent his clerk out to a law stationer’s in Carey Street to fetch a copy of the
Legal Review
that he did not in the least want to read. Such was the wretchedness of Mr. Crabbe.

Mr. Pardew, now striding away across the green grass towards the gate, congratulated himself on the result of his dealings with Mr. Crabbe, but he did not linger on this congratulation. Having gained his immediate object, his mind was bent on the greater purpose which he had been considering half an hour before and on which, it is fair to say, his mind had been bent for many months. Mr. Pardew was not a timid man, and yet the boldness of the scheme greatly alarmed him. It was an enterprise, he was aware, that might crash without warning over his head, one that would involve extraordinary risks and dangers, the principal danger being to Mr. Pardew and his liberty. Half a dozen times, as he sped over the grass, past the daffodils, through the great gate and into the street beyond, Mr. Pardew declared to his inner self that he would not do it, that the risk was too great. Half a dozen times, too, he corrected himself, slashed at the thin air with his stick, settled his hat more advantageously upon his head and plunged on again. In this way, arguing furiously with himself, at one point calm, confident and assured of his abilities, at another cast down, unhappy and sure that all would fall instantly into ruins, he walked back down the long expanse of the Farringdon Road and bent his steps in the direction
of Carter Lane. It was midmorning now, and the streets, especially those side streets through which Mr. Pardew walked, were not unduly crowded. Turning into the lane, he saw on the other side of the pavement from his office door, smoking a pipe and staring up and down the street, an exceedingly ill-favoured man in threadbare clothes with a cotton handkerchief tied round his neck. When this gentleman saw Mr. Pardew, he gave the faintest perceptible sign—no more than a movement of his eye—that he recognised him. Mr. Pardew, even less perceptibly, acknowledged this and then turned into his office.

Here he found Bob Grace, feet up on a chair, hat pulled low over his eyes, eating his lunch out of a pastrycook’s carton. Seeing his employer, he removed his boots from the chair and cocked up his hat, but did not otherwise salute him. Mr. Pardew smote his desk hard with the ferrule of the stick.

“Upon my word, Grace, I never knew such a one as you for eating. Well, has anything happened?”

“Davidson undertook to pay ten now and renew for another month. Here’s the stamped paper. And that Pearce is outside. Brought a letter here, which he says you’ll want to see. I told him as you’d want to see the letter first and him second, most probably.”

“Most probably is right. Where is it?”

Grace flicked across the desk a piece of rough white paper, which Mr. Pardew immediately picked up and smoothed beneath his fingers. He knew, as soon as the paper passed into his hands, that it was not in fact a letter but a copy of one, or rather the first attempt of a clerk working to dictation, for there were several crossings-out and emendations by a second hand. Nonetheless, the paper was entirely sufficient for Mr. Pardew’s purpose, and he examined it with great interest. The letter was signed by the secretary to the South-Eastern Railway Company and addressed to its directors. Such was the care taken with the alterations that Mr. Pardew declared himself certain that the information contained in it was accurate and that a final document would soon after have been prepared.

Much of what it had to say was known to Mr. Pardew, but a certain proportion was not. These parts of the letter he read over two or three times, committing them to memory as he did so, before placing the
piece of paper on the table before him. As he did so he became aware, once again, of his surroundings, the shabby room in which he sat and the saturnine figure of his clerk, and resolved to himself that whatever steps might be necessary to remove himself from Carter Lane, its bleary window, the piles of stamped paper and Bob Grace would be worth the taking. Again he picked up the paper and read through it once more, lest there were some detail that had escaped his eye. But there was nothing, and having assured himself that he had the words by heart, and thinking such a course of action prudent in the circumstances, he crumpled the paper quickly between his fingers and flung it into the wastepaper basket. As he did so his gaze fell upon his clerk, who had ceased all pretence of eating his lunch and was sitting with his hands drawn up over his chest regarding him keenly.

“Now,” said Mr. Pardew, looking up again at the bare, distempered ceiling of his office and thinking that he hated it. “Now, Grace, what hour would you say it was?”

Grace licked some gravy from the ends of his fingers, staring all the while at these appendages as if he fancied that they might serve as his dessert. “It’s a few minutes after midday, I daresay.”

“Where is Latch?”

“Out collecting. Gone after the swell in Monmouth Street as was supposed to have renewed this day fortnight.”

“You had better go and find him. You needn’t trouble to come back this afternoon.”

“Not come back! Why, who’s to lock up the shop? I should like to know?”

“I think you’ll find,” Mr. Pardew observed tartly, staring at the bleary window and hating it, “that I can turn a key in a lock if I have to. Now, be off with you. And ask Pearce to step in on your way out, if you please.”

With the expression of one greatly wronged, Grace rose to his feet, scattering a fine spray of crumbs negligently on the desk as he did so, jammed his hat as low over his brow as it would go and took his leave, taking care to slam the door smartly behind him as he went. In truth he was not unduly displeased by the turn that events had taken, having grasped the opportunity to read the letter before it passed into his
master’s hands, and also to have spoken several words to Pearce when that gentleman first presented himself in Carter Lane. Armed with this information, and with certain other hints that Mr. Pardew had let fall, deliberately or otherwise, over the past month, he had a fair idea of what his master was about, and the advantages that might accrue to himself from this knowledge. “He is a sly one and no mistake,” he said admiringly to himself as he lumbered out into the street, “and yet I’ll be even with him too.”

Left on his own in the office, Mr. Pardew got up immediately from his desk and performed several rapid actions. First he took a small notebook from out of a drawer and laid it open before him. Then he inspected the contents of a metal cash box that sat upon his clerk’s desk, replaced the lid but did not lock it. Finally, he took Grace’s chair and, lifting it easily in one hand, placed it in the centre of the room. This done, he returned to his own chair just as Pearce, following the instructions given to him by Grace, came through the street door.

Mr. Pardew laid his hands out squarely on the desk before him, stuck his chin up at an angle and gave his visitor a glance. On close inspection, he seemed even more haphazardly attired than he had appeared in the street. The cotton handkerchief looped round his neck was stiff with grease, and his hands, half protruding from his trowser pockets, were extremely dirty. Seeing Mr. Pardew, he raised his eyebrows slightly in a gesture that spoke of an intelligence greater than that suggested by his outward demeanour and accepted the proffered chair. He smelled very strongly, Mr. Pardew now noticed, of beer and tobacco smoke.

“It’s a Friday afternoon,” Mr. Pardew said, without preamble. “Why ain’t you at work?”

“Sick,” Pearce rejoined, hoisting one leg over the other so that Mr. Pardew could take better notice of a pair of exceedingly patched and battered boots. “Left word at the orfice. Expected back Monday.”

“You’d better take care, else you’ll be out of a situation,” Mr. Pardew told him with a familiarity that suggested he had perhaps met Mr. Pearce once before and perhaps even enjoyed with him a previous conversation of this nature. “Now, you’ll oblige me by telling me where this letter came from.”

Pearce opened one of his eyes, having for some reason closed both of them during Mr. Pardew’s earlier remarks. “Fellow named Tester as is assistant to the superintendent.”

“A young man?”

“Four- or five-and-twenty. I daresay you’d call that young.”

“I daresay indeed.” It may be seen from these remarks that Mr. Pardew was not altogether certain of the man who sat before him. The problem was that he disdained to attempt any intimacy with him and yet he fancied that scant progress could be made until at least some kind of intimacy had been established. Accordingly, he went off on a different track.