and see what we can find out. You know Crawshaw, of Crawshaw and Vokes. They’ve been trying to find money for Greaves and Henshaw ever since they took over the option. Of course, they’ve failed, just as the Traffic Electrical crowd failed before them. They want too much.”
“Traffic Electrical?” queried Jarkins. “That’s the company that had this line originally. What sort of people are they?”
At once, and quite briskly, Kloorfain recalled a number of things in connection with them, not all that Sippens had discovered, but enough to interest both men. For now, emerging out of the pool of Kloorfain’s memories came Stane, Rider, Bullock, and Johnson, but more particularly Johnson and Stane. They had been among the principal promoters of Charing Cross and Kampstead, Stane was of the nobility and a large stockholder in District as well as City and South London. Johnson was counsel for Stane, as well as for District and Metropolitan, and also a stockholder in both lines.
Well, why not try and see this man Johnson?” queried Jarkins, all ears and attention because of his rift with Cowperwood. “He must be pretty well informed on all that’s going on.”
Kloorfain was standing at a window, looking down into the street. “Capital!” he exclaimed, turning around to face Jarkins. “The very idea! Why not? Only . . .” And now he paused and looked dubiously at Jarkins. “Is this all quite ethical? As I understand it, we haven’t the right to say we represent Cowperwood. From what you say he only agreed to hear Greaves and Henshaw in New York because we asked him to. He didn’t appoint us to do any work in connection with them.”
“Well, anyhow, I think it might be a good thing to sound out this fellow Johnson,” returned Jarkins, “indicate to him that Cowperwood, or some American millionaire that he know, is interested in a plan to unite some of these lines, and then suggest that the Charing Cross line, if they could get it back, might be sold to him. In that case, as the agents bringing them together, we ought to come in for a pretty neat bonus, and we’d be entitled to it. Besides, if any shares can be picked up now or sold for them or Cowperwood, we might come in as purchasing or selling agents. Why not?”
“Not a bad idea,” said Kloorfain, becoming more eager. “I’ll see if I can get him on the telephone.”
He lumbered into an inner office, and was about to make the call when he stopped and looked at Jarkins.
“The simplest way, I think, is to ask for a consultation in connection with a financial problem which is before us but which cannot be explained over the telephone. He’ll think there’s a fee in it for him, and we’ll just let him think so until we explain what it is.”
“Good!” said Jarkins. “Let’s call him now.”
So, after a very cautious explanation by Kloorfain to Johnson over the telephone, he turned and said: “He says he’ll see us tomorrow at eleven o’clock.”
“Capital!” exclaimed Jarkins. “I think we’re on the right track now. Anyway, we’re moving. And if he isn’t interested himself, he may know someone who is.”
“Quite right, quite right,” repeated Kloorfain, who was mainly concerned at this time to see that due credit for his share of all this fell to him. “I’m glad I thought of him. This may turn out to be the biggest thing we’ve ever done.”
“Quite right, quite right!” echoed Jarkins, who was elated enough, but not as elated as he would have been had the whole problem been worked out by himself. For Jarkins had always thought of himself as not only the brains but the dynamic force of this combination.
Chapter 18
The offices of Rider, Bullock, Johnson & Chance, as well as that of Lord Stane, were in one of the dingiest sections of Storey Street, adjacent to the Inns of Court. In fact, the whole region, except for the Inns of Court, would be regarded by Americans as most inappropriate housing for distinguished legal talent. Small, remodeled three- and four-story residences or one-time lofts and stores now contained offices, libraries, consulting chambers, for as many as a dozen solicitors, their stenographers, clerks, errand boys, and other assistants.
Storey Street itself was so narrow as almost to forbid the companionable stroll of two pedestrians arm in arm. As for the roadway proper, it might admit the easy passage of two pushcarts, but by no means two vehicles of any greater size. Yet through this lane poured a veritable host of workers, including those who used it for a quick cut to the Strand and adjacent thoroughfares.
The firm of Rider, Bullock, Johnson & Chance occupied all of the four floors of 33 Storey Street, a building no more than twenty-three feet wide, though fifty feet deep. The ground floor, originally the reception and living room of the residence of a singularly retiring judge of a preceding generation, was now the general reception room and library. Lord Stane occupied a small office in the rear of first floor; the second floor was given over to the three most important members of the firm: Rider, Johnson, and Bullock. Chance, along with the various assistants, occupied the third floor. Elverson Johnson’s office, at the extreme rear of the second floor, looked down on a small court. Its cobbled paving had once been part of an ancient Roman courtyard, but its historic luster was dimmed by too great familiarity for those who were compelled to contemplate it day after day.
There was no elevator, or “lift,” to use the English term. A fairly large air shaft extended from the middle of the second floor to the roof. The offices were also equipped with a rather antique form of air wheel, which was supposed to add to the oxygenization of the air within. In addition, each room contained a fireplace—in which soft coal was burned throughout the foggy, rainy days of winter—and this added immensely to the comfort as well as charm of these interiors. In each solicitor’s room were spacious and well-made desks and chairs, and a white marble mantelpiece on which stood books or bits of statuary. The walls were hung with rather dusty engravings of bygone English legal lights or bits of British scenery.
Johnson, the authoritative and financially ambitious member of the firm was, in the main, a practical person, and followed, for the most part, an individual course that would be most advantageous to his personal plans. In one corner of his mind, however, was a complex which led him to speculate on the value of religion and even sympathize with the advancement of the nonconformist doctrines. He was given to meditating upon the hypocrisy and spiritual stagnation of the High Church party, and also upon the earthly as well as heavenly significance of such famous religionists as John Knox, William Penn, George Fox, and John Wesley. In his complicated and curious mental cosmos, he sheltered obviously rival and even antagonistic notions. He felt that there should be a ruling class which should advance and maintain itself by a desirable if not always justifiable cunning. Since in England this class was already buttressed by laws of property, inheritance, and primogeniture, it was important, correct, and all but unalterable. Hence the poor in mind as well as substance might best trust themselves to obedience, hard work, and a faith in a Heavenly Father who would, in the last analysis—perhaps—look after them. On the other hand, the immense gulf between not always witless poverty and unearned wealth seemed to him cruel and almost evil. This viewpoint supported his more urgent religious moods, which verged at times upon the sanctimonious.
Though he had come out of the lesser world of the socially weak and ineffective, he was ever aspiring to those upper walks where, if not he, then his children—two sons and one daughter—would be as secure as those whom he so greatly admired and criticized. In fact, he was aspiring to a title for himself: an unpretentious “Sir” to begin with, which later, if luck favored him, might be accentuated by further royal consideration. To win to that, as he well knew, he must not only secure more money than he now had, but also the favor of those who possessed money and title. In consequence, he intuitively attuned his actions to the ambitions and welfare of the members of that class.
He was small, pompous, wiry, authoritative. His father, a bibulous carpenter of Southwark, had wretchedly maintained a family of seven. Young Johnson was apprenticed to a baker, for whom he delivered bread. His diligence attracted the attention of a customer who was a printer, and by him he was taken on as a “devil” and encouraged to read and fix his mind on some practical line of work which would lift him out of the drab and miserable state in which he then moved. And Johnson was an eager pupil. Delivering printed matter to all manner of merchants and tradesmen, he finally came in contact with a young solicitor, Luther Fletcher by name, who, campaigning to represent one of the Southwark divisions in the London County Council, found in young Johnson, then not more than twenty years old, one who interested him as a legal possibility. Hi
