The Sins of Severac Bablon Part 34

"Your cheque-book," he said, "and a fountain pen."

Mr. Oppner gulped; did not stir, did not speak. Severac Bablon's voice was vaguely familiar to him.

"You are the second richest man in the United States," he continued, "and the first in parsimony. I shall mulct you in one hundred thousand pounds!"

"You'll never get it!" rasped Oppner.

"No? Well let us weigh the possibilities, one against the other. There have been protests, from rival journals, against the _Gleaner's_ acceptance of foreign money for British national purposes. This I had antic.i.p.ated, but such donations have had the effect of stimulating the British public. If the cheques already received, and your own, which you are about to draw, are not directly devoted to the purpose for which they are intended, I can guarantee that you shall not be humiliated by their return!"

"Ah!" sighed Oppner.

"The _Gleaner_ newspaper has made all arrangements with an important English firm to construct several air vessels. The materials and the workmanship will be British throughout, and the vessels will be placed at the disposal of the authorities. The source of the _Gleaner's_ fund thus becomes immaterial. But, in recognition of the subscribers, the vessels will be named 'Oppner I.,' 'Oppner II.,' 'Hague I.,' etc."

"Yep?"

"At some future time we may understand one another better, Mr. Oppner.

For the present I shall make no overtures. I have no desire unduly to mystify you, however. The men whom Mr. Martin of Pinkerton's, found surrounding this house were not the men from Sullivan's Agency, but friends of my own. Sullivans were informed at the last moment that the raid had been abandoned. The car, again, which you observed, is my own.

I caused it to be driven to and fro between here and Richmond Bridge for your especial amus.e.m.e.nt, altering the number on each occasion. Finally, any outcry you may care to raise will pa.s.s unnoticed, as The Cedars has been leased for the purpose of a private establishment for the care of mental cases."

"You're holding me to ransom?"

"In a sense. But you would not remain here. I should remove you to a safer place. My car is waiting."

"You can't hold me for ever." Mr. Oppner was gathering courage. This interview was so very businesslike, so dissimilar from the methods of American brigandage, that his keen, commercial instincts were coming to the surface. "Any time I get out I can tell the truth and demand my money back."

"It is so. But on the day that you act in that manner, within an hour from the time, your New York mansion will be burned to a sh.e.l.l, without loss of life, but with destruction of property considerably exceeding in value the amount of your donation to the _Gleaner_ fund. I may add that I shall continue to force your expenditures in this way, Mr. Oppner, until such time as I bring you to see the falsity of your views. On that day we shall become friends."

"Ah!"

"You may wonder why I have gone to the trouble to make a captive of you, here, when by means of such a menace alone I might have achieved my object; I reply that you possess that stubborn type of disposition which only succ.u.mbs to _force majeure_. Your letter to the _Gleaner_ explaining your views respecting the Dominion, and proposing that an air-vessel be christened 'The Canada,' is here, typed; you have only to sign it. The future, immediate, and distant is entirely in your own hands, Mr. Oppner. You will remain my guest until I have your cheque and your signature to this letter. You will always be open to sudden demands upon your capital, from me, so long as you continue, by your wrongful employment of the power of wealth, to blacken the Jewish name. For it is because you are a Jew that I require these things of you."

CHAPTER XVII

THE DAMASCUS CURTAIN

The British public poured contributions into the air-fleet fund with a lavishness that has never been equalled in history. For, after the stupendous sums, each one a big fortune in itself, which the Jewish financiers had subscribed, every man who called himself a Britisher (and who thought that Britain really needed airships) came forward with his dole.

There was a special service held at the Great Synagogue in Aldgate, and Juda was exalted in public estimation to a dizzy pinnacle.

One morning, whilst the enthusiasm was at its height, Mr. Oppner rose from the breakfast table upon hearing the 'phone bell ring.

"Zoe," he said, "if that's a reporter, tell him I'm ill in bed."

He shuffled from the room. Since the night of the abortive raid upon The Cedars he had showed a marked aversion from the society of newspaper men. Regarding the facts of his donation to the fund he had vouchsafed no word to Zoe. Closely had the story of his doings at Richmond been hushed up; as closely as a bottomless purse can achieve such silencing, but, nevertheless, Zoe knew the truth.

Sheard was shown in.

"Excuse me," he said hastily, "but I wanted to ask Mr. Oppner if there is anything in this article"--he held out a proof slip--"that he would like altered. It's for the _Magazine of Empire_. They're having full-page photographs of all the Aero Millionaires, that's what they call them now!"

"Can you leave it?" asked Zoe. "He is dressing--and not in a very good temper."

"Right!" said Sheard promptly, and laid the slip on the table. "'Phone me if there is anything to come out. Good-bye."

Zoe was reading the proof when her father came in again.

"Newspaper men been here?" he drawled. "Thought so. What a poor old addle-pated martyr I am."

"Listen," began Zoe, "this is an article all about you! It quotes Dr.

Herman Hertz, that is to say, it represents you as quoting him! It says:--

"'The true Jew is an integral part of the life and spiritual endeavour of every nation where Providence has allotted his home. And as for the Jews of this Empire, which is earth's nearest realisation hitherto of justice coupled with humanity, finely has a n.o.ble Anglo-Jewish soldier, Colonel Goldschmidt, expressed it: "Loyalty to the flag for which the sun once stood still can only deepen our devotion to the flag on which the sun never sets."' Is that all right?"

"H'm!" said Oppner. "Have Rohscheimer and Jesson seen this article?"

"Don't know!" answered Zoe.

"Because," explained Oppner, "they've showed their blame devotion to the flag on which the sun don't set, same as me, and if _they_ can stand it, my hide's as tough as theirs, I reckon."

It was whilst Mr. Oppner was thus expressing himself that Sheard, who, having left the proof at the Astoria, had raced back to the club to keep an appointment, quitted the club again (his man had disappointed him), and walked down the court to Fleet Street.

Mr. Aloys. X. Alden, arrayed in his capacious tweed suit, a Stetson felt hat, and a pair of brogues with eloquent Broadway welts, liquidated the business that had detained him in the "Cheshire Cheese" and drifted idly in the same direction.

A taxi-driver questioned Sheard with his eyebrows, but the pressman, after a moment's hesitancy, shook his head, and, suddenly running out into the stream of traffic, swung himself on a westward bound bus.

Pausing in the act of lighting a Havana cigarette, Alden hailed the disappointed taxi-driver and gave him rapid instructions. The broad-brimmed Stetson disappeared within the cab, and the cab darted off in the wake of the westward bound bus.

Such was the price that Mr. Thomas Sheard must pay for the reputation won by his inspired articles upon Severac Bablon. For what he had learnt of him during their brief a.s.sociation had enabled that clever journalist to invest his copy with an atmosphere of "exclusiveness" which had attracted universal attention.

As a less pleasant result, the staff of the _Gleaner_--and Sheard in particular--were being kept under strict surveillance.

Sheard occupied an outside seat, and as the bus travelled rapidly westward, Fleet Street and the Strand offered to his gratified gaze one long vista of placards:

"M. DUQUESNE IN LONDON."

That item was exclusive to the _Gleaner_, and had been communicated to Sheard upon a plain correspondence card, such as he had learnt to a.s.sociate with Severac Bablon. The _Gleaner_, amongst all London's news-sheets, alone could inform a public, strung to a tense pitch of excitement, that M. Duquesne, of the Paris police, was staying at the Hotel Astoria, in connection with the Severac Bablon case.

As the bus stopped outside Charing Cross Station, Sheard took a quick and anxious look back down the Strand. A taxi standing near the gates attracted his attention, for, although he could not see the Stetson inside, he noted that the cab was engaged, and, therefore, possibly occupied. It was sufficient, in these days of constant surveillance, to arouse his suspicion; it was more than sufficient to-day to set his brain working upon a plan to elude the hypothetical pursuer. He had become, latterly, an expert in detecting detectives, and now his wits must be taxed to the utmost.

For he had a correspondence card in his pocket which differed from those he was used to, in that it bore the address, 70A Finchley Road, and invited him to lunch with Severac Bablon that day!

With the detectives of New York and London busy, and, now, with the famous Duquesne in town, Sheard well might survey the Strand behind, carefully, anxiously, distrustfully.

Severac Bablon, so far as he was aware, no longer had any actual hold upon him. There was no substantial reason why he should not hand the invitation--bearing that address which one man, alone, in London at that hour cheerfully would have given a thousand pounds to know--to the proper authorities. But Severac Bablon had appealed strongly, irresistibly, to something within Sheard that had responded with warmth and friendship. Despite his reckless, lawless deeds, the pressman no more would have thought of betraying him than of betraying the most sacred charge. In fact, as has appeared, he did not hesitate to aid and abet him in his most outrageous projects. But yet he wondered at the great, the incredible audacity of this super-audacious man who now had entrusted to him the secret of his residence.

Hastily descending from the bus, he walked quickly forward to the nearest tobacconist's and turned in the entrance to note if the man who might be in the taxi would betray his presence.