Success
“You see,” he said, “they are letters”—he told them over counting them,
then turned to the drawer, as if to feel for more—“only letters——”
“Yes,” Sir James said impatiently, “they will be returned to you as
soon as we are assured——”
“Oh, no, they won’t,” Annarly said, and his tone was quiet and
confident. “They will never be returned to me by you, for you’ll be
dead before you get them.”
He swung round as he spoke, and Sir James found himself looking down
the barrel of a revolver.
He stepped back a pace: he was not a coward, but the thing was
unexpected and unpleasantly close. Brett stepped back too; he was very
near his chief, and, owing to the giving back and the position of the
furniture, quite unable to move away.
“Don’t be a fool, Annarly!” Sir James said sharply. “Put that down.
You’ll gain nothing by such folly.”
“Nor lose anything, either,” Annarly answered; “I’ve already done that;
I’ve not much more to lose.”
And therein, if it were true, lay the danger, and Sir James knew it.
For a second or two he did not move, nor did Annarly; they looked at
one another, seeing not much but the revolver between.
“I don’t want to make a scene,” Sir James said. “I have done what I can
to spare your feelings and avoid publicity, but if you compel me to it,
I shall have to have recourse to personal violence—we are two to one, I
may point out, and there are men within call.”
“Call them,” Annarly answered. “Though it will hardly be necessary, the
report should do it. I shall have time to get in two shots, one for
you and one for me, between the calling and the coming, and before Mr.
Brett becomes very violent.”
Brett’s white face reddened faintly; but if he had any thought of
retaliation the big bulk of his chief effectually prevented. Sir James
was no fool; he recognised the seriousness of the situation, and he was
not likely to allow matters to be fatally precipitated by Brett.
“You are hopelessly blackening yourself by this folly,” he warned
Annarly. “What is the object of it?”
Annarly looked grim. “Is there any blackening left for me to do?” he
asked. “The object? The letters. They are private letters, I have said
it, in no way concerning the firm; I’ll burn them, if you like you can
see them burnt, but I will not give them up.”
For an almost imperceptible second Sir James hesitated, then he said,
“Do you swear that those are private letters and nothing but private
letters, in no way concerned with the foreign negotiations, or anything
connected with them? On your honour, you swear it?”
“On my honour.”
“Burn them.”
They were thrown in the fire. But though Annarly had magnanimously
forborne to put the interrogative stress the situation warranted on
promising on his honour, he did not magnanimously lower the revolver.
He might trust Sir James, but he did not trust Brett; so while the
flames caught the papers no one of the three moved. Indeed, it is
doubtful if any one of them watched the burning of Lady Sibyl’s
sympathetic and emotional words, in themselves a matter of curiously
little real moment to all. It was only by the increasing and dwindling
of the light that the destruction was observed.
When the flames had died down, Annarly’s arm dropped; he turned away
as if vitality had suddenly gone out of him. Sir James moved towards
the door; Brett, carrying the confiscated papers, followed, eyeing the
pistol.
“It’s not loaded,” Annarly roused himself to say, and threw it on the
empty desk.
For half a second Sir James paused, a flush coming under his skin; then
he went out, and Brett went with him. Annarly was left alone.
CHAPTER II
Nan Barmister lived in Soho; a part of Soho which is now pulled down,
though, from a point of view of beauty, the warehouses which have taken
the place of the sombre eighteenth-century houses are scarcely an
improvement. When Nan lived there, there were no real warehouses in the
quiet street which led to nowhere. It was quite a short street, with a
blank wall at the end, and a piece more wall, enclosing a timber-yard,
on the right-hand side. The rest of the right side was taken up with
a couple of the old houses; one unoccupied, the other—to judge by the
number of plates on the door and railings—very much occupied, and by
people who were also much occupied, a surprising number of professions
being set forth—machine kilting, feather curling, and agencies for all
manner of things.
On the left-hand side Nan lived. The houses on that side had an even
more sombre look: two were shut up, the charwomen of the neighbourhood
said on account of some lawsuit; the other two were the property of
Robert Barmister, Nan’s father. By the door-lintel of one was a rubbed
brass plate, bearing his name in faint letters, and on the wire blind
of the window nearest the door the same name appeared in still fainter
letters. There was nothing to say what he did, nor why he was to be
found there; but in daylight, if one looked up at the higher windows,
one could see through the dusty panes the corners of wonderful cabinets
and the graceful backs of chairs made when the making of chairs was
a fine art. Robert Barmister used his two houses as warehouses,
and people in the second-hand furniture trade knew it without his
advertising the fact. They and others, whether interested in buying or
selling, knew that one of the finest judges of the antique, and one of
the truest connoisseurs and shrewdest dealers and matchers of old with
old or new, was to be found in the room behind the wire blind.
It was a good-sized room, with a painted ceiling, mellowed past
recognition by years of smoke, and a chimney-piece, ornamented with
dolphins in relief, for which a considerable sum had been offered. In
this room, on a gloomy first of October, Nan sat, rather inadequately
filling Robert Barmister’s desk-chair. She looked younger than her
five-and-twenty years; her slight figure and earnest eyes gave an
impression almost of childishness. But in some respects, at least, she
was not childish; the Jew dealers, who came there to buy and sell,
knew that, and any one of them would have dealt with her as with her
father—with a bias in favour of extra honesty for her. And any one of
them would have taken her opinion against most others on an article of
virtu, for she had not only inherited her father’s judgment and grown
up under his tuition, but also had unerring instincts of her own.
It was on some such business she had been fetched to the office that
afternoon: she was seldom to be found there unless fetched. Barmister
did not care to actually associate her with himself in his trade,
though he valued her opinion. Josiah Foregood, clerk, foreman, and
general factotum, valued it still more. It was he who fetched her that
afternoon, for Barmister was out, and a man had called with a chest to
sell.
The man, a voluble, weakly individual, was in the office now,
expatiating on the beauties of the chest and, seeing he had a woman
to deal with, the hardships of his own situation. Josiah, at his desk
behind a partition, heard all that he said, and knew that it was
wasted breath. He could, by leaning forward, see Nan’s face, and he
knew that, whether she was really listening or not—and there was some
doubt about that—she would form her own judgment of man and article
entirely apart from anything she heard. She rose at length, and came
to look at the chest. It was small, and of metal, with a wonderful
complication of locks in the lid: inside it was divided into several
compartments, and outside ornamented with fine wrought work and some
curious little paintings on the panels in between.
“It is an Armada treasure-chest,” the vendor announced; “it has been in
my family for generations. I’m a Cornishman.”
“Ah?” Nan examined the box: she examined with her hands, which were
rather large, and as sensitive as a blind person’s.
“It is of Dutch workmanship,” she said at length, and somewhat as if
the man had not spoken, “made under the Spanish influence probably
fifty years after the Armada, I cannot be sure of the exact date. I
should say it was made for a burgomaster: one who had trade with India.
The shape and size of it, and of the compartments inside, suggest it
was meant more for the reception of unset jewels than for papers or any
other form of treasure. If it has been in the possession of your family
for generations, your family should be of Dutch extraction.”
The man stared; he was of the constitutionally inefficient, and such
are easily upset by the efficient, even when the latter have no thought
of doing so.
“Do you think I did not come by it honestly?” he demanded, between
bluster and affront.
Nan looked up in surprise. “Why should I?” she said, and clearly no
such idea had occurred to her. “I should rather like to know how you
did come by it, though,” she said, “only out of curiosity; these things
do not very often come to England.”
“It belonged to a lodger me and my wife had,” the vendor admitted
rather sulkily; “he was a Dutchman, an oldish man, and he died while he
was with us. We didn’t know anything about his people, and we haven’t
been able to hear anything; and as he died a bit in our debt, and
didn’t leave much, we thought we might as well take what there was: I
don’t know who’s a better right to it than us.”
“No,” Nan agreed, whereupon he went on to explain again the badness of
times.
She listened, or appeared to: at the end she said, “The chest is not
really worth much, that is, you could not anywhere get much for it.
Such things are of no actual use now, and not much ornament; they are
little more than curiosities, and they do not happen to be the fashion.
It would be almost impossible to sell it to a collector, or amateur,
at any price, consequently, a dealer would not be likely to give you
anything worth having for it. Were my father here, I think it is very
doubtful if he would buy it; but personally I like it, and, as you say
you are in need of money, I will give you three pounds for it, if you
care to sell it for that.”
He did not—if he could get any more—though he was satisfied with it
when he was convinced more was not to be got. It took a little while
to convince him; which was, perhaps, not surprising, seeing that it
took other, and more experienced, people a little while to realise that
Nan’s first price was her last one, both in buying and selling, and
that in such matters, as well as others, she simply said what she meant
and no more. But after a time he did realise it, took the money, and
departed, leaving the chest behind.
When he was gone, Josiah came from behind his partition to look at the
purchase. He had worked with Robert Barmister from the early days and
the small beginnings, and he loved the work with the whole-hearted
completeness that Barmister did, and Barmister himself, as that shrewd
dealer loved no one, and Nan, better still. He came now to look at the
newly made purchase, and to shake his head over it.
“He won’t be pleased,” he said.
Nan was obliged to agree. “If he does not approve, I can pay for it
myself,” she said.
At that moment Barmister came in, and almost instantly his eye fell on
the chest.
“What is that?” he asked.
“I have just bought it,” Nan answered.
“For how much?”
She told him.
“What!” he said, and his tone conveyed his opinion.
But she stood her ground: she ventured to do far more on her own
authority than ever Josiah did, perhaps because she did not act unless
she was sure; and when she was sure, she was sure indeed. She was sure
now that the price she had paid for the chest was a fair one.
“If it is not sold well and reasonably soon,” she said, “I can buy
it in myself. Or you can give it me on my birthday, if you like; my