“What are you doing?” asked the chief.
“About Farrington?” asked T. B. “I am having the house kept under observation, and I am taking whatever precautions I can to prevent our friend from being scared. I am even attempting to lure him into the open. Once I can catch him outside of the Secret House, I think he will be a clever man to escape.”
“And Poltavo?”
“He is in town,” said T. B. “I think he will be a fairly easy man to circumvent; he is obviously acting now as the agent of our friend Farrington, and he is horribly proud of himself!”
XIV
As T. B. had said, Poltavo had returned from his brief sojourn in Great Bradley, and emerged into society a new and more radiant being than ever he had been before.
There had always been some doubt as to the Count’s exact financial position, and cautious hostesses had hesitated before they had invited this plausible and polished man to their social functions. There were whispers adverse as to his standing; there were even bold people who called into question his right to employ the title which graced his visiting cards. There were half a dozen Poltavos in the Almanack de Gotha, any one of whom might have been Ernesto, for so vague is the Polish hierarchy that it was impossible to fix him to any particular family, and he himself answered careless inquiries with a cryptic smile which might have meant anything.
But with his return to London, after his brief absence, there was no excuse for any hostess, even the most sceptical, in refusing to admit him to social equality on the ground of poverty. The very day he returned he acquired the lease of a house in Burlington Gardens, purchased two motorcars, paying cash down for an early delivery, gave orders left and right for the enrichment of his person and his domicile, and in forty-eight hours had established himself in a certain mode of living which suggested that he had never known any other.
He had had his lesson and had profited thereby. He had experienced an unpleasant fright, though he might not admit it to Dr. Fall and his master; it was nevertheless a fact that, realizing as he did that he had stood face to face with a particularly unpleasant death, he had been seized by a panic which had destroyed his ordinary equilibrium.
“You may trust me, my friend,” he muttered to himself, as he sorted over the papers on his brand-new desk in his brand-new study, in a house which was still redolent of the painter’s art and presence. “You may trust me just so long as I find it convenient for you to trust me, but you may be sure that never again will I give you the benefit of my presence in the Secret House.”
He had come back with a large sum of money to carry out his employer’s plans. There were a hundred agents through the country, particulars of whom Poltavo now had in his possession. Innocent agents, and guilty agents; agents in high places and active agents in the servants’ hall. Undoubtedly Gossip’s Corner was a useful institution.
Farrington had not made a great deal of money from its sale; indeed, as often as not, it showed a dead loss every year. But he paid well for contributions which were sent to him, and offered a price, which exceeded the standard rate of pay, for such paragraphs as were acceptable.
Men and women, with a malicious desire to score off some enemy, would send him items which the newspapers would publish if they concerned somebody who might not be bled. Many of these facts in an amended form were, in fact, printed.
But more often than not the paragraphs and articles which came to the unknown editor dealt with scandal which it was impossible to put into print. Nevertheless, the informant would be rewarded. In some faraway country home a treacherous servant would receive postal orders to his or her great delight, but the news she or he had sent in their malice, a titbit concerning some poor erring woman or some foolish man, would never see the light of day, and the contributor might look in vain for the spicy paragraph which had been composed with such labour.
The unfortunate subjects of domestic treachery would receive in a day or two a letter from the mysterious Montague Fallock, retailing, to their horror, those precious secrets which they had imagined none knew but themselves. They would not associate the gossipy little rag, which sometimes found its way to the servants’ hall, with the magnificent demand of this prince of blackmailers, and more often than not they would pay to the utmost of their ability to avoid exposure.
It was not only the servants’ hall which supplied Montague Fallock with all the material for his dastardly work. There were men scarcely deserving the name, and women lost to all sense of honour, who found in this little journal means by which they could “come back” at those favoured people who had offered them directly or indirectly some slight offence. Sometimes the communication would reach the Gossip anonymously, but if the facts retailed were sufficiently promising, one of Fallock’s investigators would be told off to discover how much truth there was in it. A bland letter would follow, and the wretched victim would emerge from
