The Joker, Edgar Wallace [books you have to read TXT] 📗

panic has ultimately a

beneficial result. It finds out all the feeble spots in the structure of

finance, breaks down the weak links, so that in tile end the fabric is

stronger and more wholesome than it was before the dump occurred.’

 

‘Is it possible that the slump was engineered by a group of

market-riggers?’

 

‘Mr Harlow scoffed at the idea.

 

‘How could it have been engineered without the connivance or assistance

of the Foreign Secretary, whose speech alone was responsible?’ he asked.

‘It is certainly an amazing statement for a responsible Minister to make.

Apparently Sir John was a very sick man when he addressed the House of

Commons. It is suggested that he was suffering from overwork, but

whatever may have been the cause, he, and he alone, brought about this

slump.’

 

‘You knew Sir John?’

 

‘Mr Harlow agreed.

 

‘He was in my house, in this very room, less than a quarter of an hour

before the speech was made,’ he said, ‘and I can only say that he

appeared in every way normal. If he was ill, he certainly did not show

it.’

 

‘Reverting to the question of world-wide depreciation of stock values, Mr

Harlow went on to say… ‘

 

Jim read the interview with a wry smile. Harlow had said many things, but

he had omitted many more. He did not speak of the feverish activity of

Rata, Limited, whose every window had been blazing throughout a week of

nights—not one word had he suggested that he himself would benefit to an

enormous extent through the tragedy of that unhappy speech.

 

The man puzzled him. If he was, as Jim was convinced, behind the scare,

if his clever brain had devised, and by some mysterious means had brought

about the financial panic, what end had he in view? He had been already

one of the three richest men in England. He had not the excuse that he

had a mammoth industry to benefit. He had no imperial project to bring to

fruition. Had he been dreaming of new empires created out of the wilds;

were he a great philanthropist who had some gigantic enterprise to

advance for the benefit of mankind, this passionate desire for gold might

be understood if it could not be excused.

 

But Harlow had no other objective than the accumulation of money. He had

shown a vicarious interest in the public weal when he had presented his

model police station to the country; he had certainly subscribed

liberally to hospital appeals; but none of these gifts belonged to a

system of charity or public spirit. He was a man without social

gifts—the joys or suffering of his fellows struck no sympathetic chord

in his nature. If he gave, he gave cold-bloodedly, and yet without

ostentation.

 

True, he had offered to build, on the highest point of the Chiltern

Hills, an exact replica of the Parthenon as a national war memorial, but

the offer had been rejected because of the inaccessibility of the chosen

spot. There was a certain freakishness in his projects; and Jim suspected

that they were not wholly disinterested. The man baffled him: he could

get no thread that would lead him to the soul and the mind behind those

cold blue eyes.

 

For six hours that night he sat by the bedside of the unconscious Foreign

Minister. What strange story could he tell, Jim wondered. How came he to

be perambulating the streets in the guise of a drunken mountebank, whose

wanderings were to end in a vulgar brawl, with a policeman and the

cheerless lodgings of a prison cell? Had he some secret weakness which

Harlow had learnt and exploited? Did he live a double life? Jim thought

only to reject the idea. Sir Joseph’s life was more or less an open book;

his movements for years past could be traced day by day from the

information supplied by the diaries of his secretary, from the knowledge

of his own colleagues.

 

Whilst Jim kept his vigil he made another attempt to decipher the writing

on the card, but he got no farther. He was taking turns with Inspector

Wilton of Evory Street in watching beside the bedside. The doctor had

said that at any moment the Minister might recover consciousness; and

though he took the gravest view of the ultimate result of the drugging,

his prognosis did not exclude the chance of a complete recovery. It was

at a quarter after three in the morning that the sick man, who had been

tossing from side to side, muttering disjointed words which had no

meaning to the listener, turned upon his back and, opening his eyes,

blinked round the dimly lighted room. Jim, who had been studying the card

in the light of a shaded lamp, put it into his pocket and came to the

side of the bed.

 

Sir Joseph looked at him wonderingly, his wide brows knit in an effort of

memory.

 

‘Hullo!’ he said faintly. ‘What happened… ? Did the car smash up?’

 

‘Nothing serious has happened. Sir Joseph,’ said Jim gently.

 

Again the wondering eyes wandered around the bare walls of the room, and

then they fell upon a temperature chart hanging against the wall. ‘This

is a hospital, isn’t it?’

 

‘A nursing home,’ said Jim.

 

There was a long silence before the sick man spoke. ‘My head aches

infernally. Can you give me a drink, or isn’t that allowed?’

 

Jim poured out a glass of water and, supporting the shoulders of the

Minister, put the glass to his lips. He drank the contents greedily and

sank back with a sigh upon the pillow.

 

‘I suppose I am a little light-headed, but I could swear that your name

was Carlton,’ he said.

 

‘That is my name, sir,’ said Jim, and the Minister pondered this for a

little time.

 

‘Anything broken?’ he asked. ‘It was the car, I suppose? I told that

stupid chauffeur of mine to be careful. The road was like glass.’

 

He moved first one leg and then the other gingerly, and then his arms.

 

‘Nothing is broken at all, Sir Joseph,’ said Jim. ‘You have had a shock.’

He had already rung for the doctor, who was sleeping in a room below.

 

‘Shock, eh?… I don’t remember… And Harlow!’ His eyebrows lowered again.

‘A decent fellow but rather over-dressed. I went to his house tonight,

didn’t I… ? Yes, yes, I remember. How long ago was it?’ Jim would not

tell him that the visit to Harlow’s had happened days before. ‘Yes, yes,

I remember now. Where did I go after that… to the House, I suppose? My

mind is like a whirling ball of wool!’

 

The doctor came in, a dressing-gown over his pyjamas, and the Minister’s

mind was sufficiently clear to guess his profession. ‘I’m all in, doctor.

What was it, a stroke?’

 

‘No Sir Joseph,’ said the doctor. He was feeling his patient’s pulse and

seemed satisfied.

 

‘Sir Joseph thinks he might have been in a car collision,’ suggested Jim

with a significant glance at the doctor.

 

The man was terribly weak, but the brightness of his intellect was

undimmed. ‘What is the matter with me?’ he asked irritably as the medical

man put the stethoscope to his heart.

 

‘I’m wondering whether you have ever taken drugs in your life?’

 

‘Drugs!’ snorted the old man. ‘Good God! What a question! I don’t even

take medicine! When I feel ill I go to my osteopath and he puts me

right.’

 

The doctor grinned, as all properly constituted doctors grin when an

osteopath is mentioned, for the medical profession is the most

conservative and the most suspicious of any.

 

‘Then I shan’t give you drugs.’ He had a nimble turn of mind to cover up

an awkward question. ‘Your heart is good and your pulse is good. And all

you want now is a little sleep.’

 

‘And a little food,’ growled Sir Joseph. ‘I am as hungry as a starved

weasel!’

 

They brought him some chicken broth, hot and strong, and in half an hour

he had fallen into a gentle sleep. The doctor beckoned Jim outside the

room.

 

‘I think it is safe for you to leave him,’ he said. ‘He is making a

better recovery than I dreamt was possible. I suppose he has said nothing

about his adventures?’

 

‘Nothing,’ said Jim, and the man of medicine realised that, even if Sir

Joseph had explained the strange circumstances of his arrest and

appearance in the police court, it was very unlikely that he would be

told.

 

Early the next morning Jim called at Downing Street and saw the Prime

Minister.

 

‘He is under the impression that he was in a car accident after leaving

Park Lane. He remembers nothing about the speech in the House; the

doctors will not allow him to be told until he is strong again. I have

very grave doubt on one point, sir, which I want to clear up. And to

clear it up it may be necessary to go outside the law.’

 

‘I don’t care very much where you go,’ said the Prime Minister, ‘but we

must have the truth! Until the facts are known, not only Sir Joseph but

the whole Cabinet is under a cloud. I will give instructions that you are

to have carte blanche, and I will support you in any action you may

take.’

 

With this confident assurance Jim went on to Scotland Yard to prove the

truth ‘of a theory which had slowly evolved in the dark hours of the

night; a theory so fantastical that he could hardly bring himself to its

serious contemplation.