except at night.”
“At night,” said Jim, “that’s an extraordinary time to do business.”
The hall-keeper looked at him unfavourably.
“I suppose it is the way they do their business, sir,” he said pointedly.
It was some time before Jim could appease the ruffled guardian, and then he learnt that Selengers were evidently privileged tenants. A complaint from Selengers had brought the dismissal of his predecessor, and the curiosity of a housekeeper as to what Selengers did so late at night had resulted in that lady being summarily discharged.
“I think they deal with foreign stock,” said the porter. “A lot of cables come here, but I’ve never seen the gentleman who runs the office. He comes in by the side door.”
Apparently there was another entrance to Selengers’ office, an entrance reached by a small courtyard opening from a side passage. Selengers were the only tenants who had this double means of egress and exit, and also, it seemed, they were the only tenants of the building who were allowed to work all night.
“Even the stockbrokers on the second floor have to shut down at eight o’clock,” explained the porter, “and that’s pretty hard on them, because when the market is booming, there’s work that would keep them going until twelve o’clock. But at eight o’clock, it is ‘out you go’ with the company that owns this building. The rents aren’t high and there are very few offices to be had in the city nowadays. They have always been very strict, even in Mr. Danton’s time.”
“Mr. Danton’s time,” said Jim quickly. “Did he own this building? Do you mean Danton the shipowner millionaire?”
The man nodded.
“Yes, sir,” he said, rather pleased with himself that he had created a sensation. “He sold it, or got rid of it in some way years ago. I happen to know, because I used to be an office-boy in these very buildings, and I remember Mr. Danton—he had an office on the first floor, and a wonderful office it was, too.”
“Who occupies it now?”
“A foreign gentleman named Levenski. He’s a fellow who’s never here, either.”
Jim thought the information so valuable that he went to the length of calling up Mr. Salter at his home. But Mr. Salter knew nothing whatever about the Brade Street Buildings, except that it had been a private speculation of Danton’s. It had come into his hands as the result of the liquidation of the original company, and he had disposed of the property without consultation with Salter & Salter.
It was another blank wall.
CHAPTER NINE
“I SHALL not be in the office to-day, sir. I have several appointments which may keep me occupied,” said Jim Steele, and Mr. Salter sniffed.
“Business, Steele?” he asked politely.
“Not all of them, sir,” said Jim. He had a shrewd idea that Mr. Salter guessed what that business was.
“Very good,” said Salter, putting on his glasses and addressing himself to the work on his desk.
“There is one thing I wanted to ask, and that is partly why I came, because I could have explained my absence by telephone.”
Mr. Salter put down his pen patiently.
“I cannot understand why this fellow Groat has so many Spanish friends,” said Jim. “For example, there is a girl he sees a great deal, the Comtessa Manzana; you have heard of her, sir?”
“I see her name in the papers occasionally,” said Mr. Salter.
“And there are several Spaniards he knows. One in particular named Villa. Groat speaks Spanish fluently, too.”
“That is curious,” said Mr. Salter, leaning back in his chair. “His grandfather had a very large number of Spanish friends. I think that somewhere in the background there may have been some Spanish family connection. Old man Danton, that is, Jonathan Danton’s father, made most of his money in Spain and in Central America, and was always entertaining a houseful of grandees. They were a strange family, the Dantons. They lived in little water-tight compartments, and I believe on the day of his death Jonathan Danton hadn’t spoken more than a dozen words to his sister for twenty years. They weren’t bad friends, if you understand. It was just the way of the Dantons. There are other families whom I know who do exactly the same thing. A reticent family, with a keen sense of honour.”
“Didn’t Grandfather Danton leave Mrs. Groat any money? She was one of his two children, wasn’t she?”
Septimus Salter nodded.
“He never left her a penny,” he said. “She practically lived on the charity of her brother. I never understood why, but the old man took a sudden dislike to her. Jonathan was as much in the dark as I am. He used to discuss it with me and wondered what his sister had done to incur the old man’s enmity. His father never told him—would never even discuss the sister with him. It was partly due to the old man’s niggardly treatment of Mrs. Groat that Jonathan Danton made his will as he did.
“Probably her marriage with Groat was one of the causes of the old man’s anger. Groat was nothing, a shipping clerk in Danton’s Liverpool office. A man ill at ease in good society, without an ‘h’ to his name, and desperately scared of his wife. The only person who was ever nice to him was poor Lady Mary. His wife hated him for some reason or other. Curiously enough when he died, too, he left all his money to a distant cousin—and he left about L5,000. Where he got it from heaven knows. And now be off, Steele. The moment you come into this office,” said Mr. Salter in despair, “you start me on a string of reminiscences that are deplorably out of keeping with a lawyer’s office.”
Jim’s first call that morning was at the Home Office. He was anxious to clear up the mystery of Madge Benson. Neither Scotland Yard nor the Prisons Commissioners were willing to supply an unofficial investigator with the information he had sought, and in desperation he had applied to the Secretary of State’s Department. Fortunately he had a “friend at court” in that building, a middle-aged barrister he had met in France, and his inquiry, backed by proof that he was not merely satisfying his personal curiosity, had brought him a note asking him to call.
Mr. Fenningleigh received him in his room with a warmth which showed that he had not forgotten the fact that on one occasion Jim had saved him from what might have been a serious injury, if not death, for Jim had dragged him to cover one night when the British headquarters were receiving the unwelcome attentions of ten German bombers.
“Sit down, Steele. I can’t tell you much,” said the official, picking up a slip of paper from his blotting-pad, “and I’m not sure that I ought to tell you anything! But this is the information which ‘prisons’ have supplied.”
Jim took the slip from the barrister’s hand and read the three lines.
“‘Madge Benson, age 26. Domestic Servant. One month with H.L. for theft. Sentenced at Marylebone Police Court. June 5th, 1898. Committed to Holloway. Released July 2nd, 1898.’”
“Theft?” said Jim thoughtfully. “I suppose there is no way of learning the nature of the theft?”
Mr. Fenningleigh shook his head.
“I should advise you to interview the gaoler at Marylebone. These fellows have extraordinary memories for faces, and besides, there is certain to be a record of the conviction at the court. You had better ask Salter to apply; they will give permission to a lawyer.”
But this was the very thing Jim did not want to do.
CHAPTER TEN
EUNICE WELDON was rapidly settling down in her new surroundings. The illness of her employer, so far from depriving her of occupation, gave her more work than she had ever expected. It was true, as Digby Groat had said, that there were plenty of small jobs to fill up her time. At his suggestion she went over the little account books in which Mrs. Groat kept the record of her household expenses, and was astounded to find how parsimonious the old lady had been.
One afternoon when she was tidying the old bureau, she stopped in her work to admire the solid workmanship which the old furniture builders put into their handicraft.
The bureau was one of those old-fashioned affairs, which are half desk and half bookcase, the writing-case being enclosed by glass doors covered on the inside with green silk curtains.
It was the thickness of the two side-pieces enclosing the actual desk, which, unlike the writing-flap of the
