The Talleyrand Maxim, J. S. Fletcher [books to read fiction TXT] 📗

CHAPTER I

DEATH BRINGS OPPORTUNITY

 

Linford Pratt, senior clerk to Eldrick & Pascoe, solicitors, of Barford,

a young man who earnestly desired to get on in life, by hook or by

crook, with no objection whatever to crookedness, so long as it could be

performed in safety and secrecy, had once during one of his periodical

visits to the town Reference Library, lighted on a maxim of that other

unscrupulous person, Prince Talleyrand, which had pleased him greatly.

“With time and patience,” said Talleyrand, “the mulberry leaf is turned

into satin.” This seemed to Linford Pratt one of the finest and soundest

pieces of wisdom which he had ever known put into words.

 

A mulberry leaf is a very insignificant thing, but a piece of satin is a

highly marketable commodity, with money in it. Henceforth, he regarded

himself as a mulberry leaf which his own wit and skill must transform

into satin: at the same time he knew that there is another thing, in

addition to time and patience, which is valuable to young men of his

peculiar qualities, a thing also much beloved by Talleyrand—opportunity.

He could find the patience, and he had the time—but it would give him

great happiness if opportunity came along to help in the work. In

everyday language, Linford Pratt wanted a chance—he waited the arrival

of the tide in his affairs which would lead him on to fortune.

 

Leave him alone—he said to himself—to be sure to take it at the flood.

If Pratt had only known it, as he stood in the outer office of Eldrick &

Pascoe at the end of a certain winter afternoon, opportunity was slowly

climbing the staircase outside—not only opportunity, but temptation,

both assisted by the Devil. They came at the right moment, for Pratt was

alone; the partners had gone: the other clerks had gone: the office-boy

had gone: in another minute Pratt would have gone, too: he was only

looking round before locking up for the night. Then these things

came—combined in the person of an old man, Antony Bartle, who opened

the door, pushed in a queer, wrinkled face, and asked in a quavering

voice if anybody was in.

 

“I’m in, Mr. Bartle,” answered Pratt, turning up a gas jet which he had

just lowered. “Come in, sir. What can I do for you?”

 

Antony Bartle came in, wheezing and coughing. He was a very, very old

man, feeble and bent, with little that looked alive about him but his

light, alert eyes. Everybody knew him—he was one of the institutions of

Barford—as well known as the Town Hall or the Parish Church. For fifty

years he had kept a second-hand bookshop in Quagg Alley, the narrow

passage-way which connected Market Street with Beck Street. It was not

by any means a common or ordinary second-hand bookshop: its proprietor

styled himself an “antiquarian bookseller”; and he had a reputation in

two Continents, and dealt with millionaire buyers and virtuosos in both.

 

Barford people sometimes marvelled at the news that Mr. Antony Bartle

had given two thousand guineas for a Book of Hours, and had sold a

Missal for twice that amount to some American collector; and they got a

hazy notion that the old man must be well-to-do—despite his snuffiness

and shabbiness, and that his queer old shop, in the window of which

there was rarely anything to be seen but a few ancient tomes, and two or

three rare engravings, contained much that he could turn at an hour’s

notice into gold. All that was surmise—but Eldrick & Pascoe—which term

included Linford Pratt—knew all about Antony Bartle, being his

solicitors: his will was safely deposited in their keeping, and Pratt

had been one of the attesting witnesses.

 

The old man, having slowly walked into the outer office, leaned against

a table, panting a little. Pratt hastened to open an inner door.

 

“Come into Mr. Eldrick’s room, Mr. Bartle,” he said. “There’s a nice

easy chair there—come and sit down in it. Those stairs are a bit

trying, aren’t they? I often wish we were on the ground floor.”

 

He lighted the gas in the senior partner’s room, and turning back, took

hold of the visitor’s arm, and helped him to the easy chair. Then,

having closed the doors, he sat down at Eldrick’s desk, put his fingers

together and waited. Pratt knew from experience that old Antony Bartle

would not have come there except on business: he knew also, having been

at Eldrick & Pascoe’s for many years, that the old man would confide in

him as readily as in either of his principals.

 

“There’s a nasty fog coming on outside,” said Bartle, after a fit of

coughing. “It gets on my lungs, and then it makes my heart bad. Mr.

Eldrick in?”

 

“Gone,” replied Pratt. “All gone, Mr. Bartle—only me here.”

 

“You’ll do,” answered the old bookseller. “You’re as good as they are.”

He leaned forward from the easy chair, and tapped the clerk’s arm with a

long, claw-like finger. “I say,” he continued, with a smile that was

something between a wink and a leer, and suggestive of a pleased

satisfaction. “I’ve had a find!”

 

“Oh!” responded Pratt. “One of your rare books, Mr. Bartle? Got

something for twopence that you’ll sell for ten guineas? You’re one of

the lucky ones, you know, you are!”

 

“Nothing of the sort!” chuckled Bartle. “And I had to pay for my

knowledge, young man, before I got it—we all have. No—but I’ve found

something: not half an hour ago. Came straight here with it. Matters for

lawyers, of course.”

 

“Yes?” said Pratt inquiringly. “And—what may it be?” He was expecting

the visitor to produce something, but the old man again leaned forward,

and dug his finger once more into the clerk’s sleeve.

 

“I say!” he whispered. “You remember John Mallathorpe and the affair

of—how long is it since?”

 

“Two years,” answered Pratt promptly. “Of course I do. Couldn’t very

well forget it, or him.”

 

He let his mind go back for the moment to an affair which had provided

Barford and the neighbourhood with a nine days’ sensation. One winter

morning, just two years previously, Mr. John Mallathorpe, one of the

best-known manufacturers and richest men of the town, had been killed by

the falling of his own mill-chimney. The condition of the chimney had

been doubtful for some little time; experts had been examining it for

several days: at the moment of the catastrophe, Mallathorpe himself,

some of his principal managers, and a couple of professional

steeplejacks, were gathered at its base, consulting on a report. The

great hundred-foot structure above them had collapsed without the

slightest warning: Mallathorpe, his principal manager, and his cashier,

had been killed on the spot: two other bystanders had subsequently died

from injuries received. No such accident had occurred in Barford, nor in

the surrounding manufacturing district, for many years, and there had

been much interest in it, for according to the expert’s conclusions the

chimney was in no immediate danger.

 

Other mill-owners then began to examine their chimneys, and for many

weeks Barford folk had talked of little else than the danger of living

in the shadows of these great masses of masonry.

 

But there had soon been something else to talk of. It sprang out of the

accident—and it was of particular interest to persons who, like Linford

Pratt, were of the legal profession. John Mallathorpe, so far as anybody

knew or could ascertain, had died intestate. No solicitor in the town

had ever made a will for him. No solicitor elsewhere had ever made a

will for him. No one had ever heard that he had made a will for himself.

There was no will. Drastic search of his safes, his desks, his drawers

revealed nothing—not even a memorandum. No friend of his had ever heard

him mention a will. He had always been something of a queer man. He was

a confirmed bachelor. The only relation he had in the world was his

sister-in-law, the widow of his deceased younger brother, and her two

children—a son and a daughter. And as soon as he was dead, and it was

plain that he had died intestate, they put in their claim to his

property.

 

John Mallathorpe had left a handsome property. He had been making money

all his life. His business was a considerable one—he employed two

thousand workpeople. His average annual profit from his mills was

reckoned in thousands—four or five thousands at least. And some years

before his death, he had bought one of the finest estates in the

neighbourhood, Normandale Grange, a beautiful old house, set amidst

charming and romantic scenery in a valley, which, though within twelve

miles of Barford, might have been in the heart of the Highlands.

Therefore, it was no small thing that Mrs. Richard Mallathorpe and her

two children laid claim to. Up to the time of John Mallathorpe’s death,

they had lived in very humble fashion—lived, indeed, on an allowance

from their well-to-do kinsman—for Richard Mallathorpe had been as much

of a waster as his brother had been of a money-getter. And there was no

withstanding their claim when it was finally decided that John

Mallathorpe had died intestate—no withstanding that, at any rate, of

the nephew and niece. The nephew had taken all the real estate: he and

his sister had shared the personal property. And for some months they

and their mother had been safely installed at Normandale Grange, and in

full possession of the dead man’s wealth and business.

 

All this flashed through Linford Pratt’s mind in a few seconds—he knew

all the story: he had often thought of the extraordinary good fortune of

those young people. To be living on charity one week—and the next to be

legal possessors of thousands a year!—oh, if only such luck would come

his way!

 

“Of course!” he repeated, looking thoughtfully at the old bookseller.

“Not the sort of thing one does forget in a hurry, Mr. Bartle. What of

it?”

 

Antony Bartle leaned back in his easy chair and chuckled—something,

some idea, seemed to be affording him amusement.

 

“I’m eighty years old,” he remarked. “No, I’m more, to be exact. I shall

be eighty-two come February. When you’ve lived as long as that, young

Mr. Pratt, you’ll know that this life is a game of topsy-turvy—to some

folks, at any rate. Just so!”

 

“You didn’t come here to tell me that,