The Man Who Bought London Read Online Free PDF Page B

pass along, always keeping a reserve; it shouldn’t run out faster than it runs in. I have a big dam – high up on the hills it stands; a great and mighty reservoir always filling,always running off. Farther down the hill hundreds of other men are collecting the waste from my overflow; farther down smaller men with smaller dams, and so on – till it runs away to the sea, as it must in time, to the great ocean of world-wealth which collects everything and gives back everything.’
    She looked at him in amazement, this man who had escaped death by an inch and was so absorbed in his philosophy of wealth that he had forgotten how near he had stood to the brink of eternity, and her heart warmed to this courageous man.
    He came to earth quickly, fished in his inside pocket and produced a fat little book with a soiled leather cover. He placed it tenderly on the table and opened it. It was a book which had been in use for years. Some of the pages were covered with minute writings, some had become detached and had been carefully fastened in again.
    ‘I owe you an explanation,’ he said, and sorted from a few loose papers a photograph. He looked at it for a moment and laid it on the table for the girl to see.
    She gave a gasp.
    ‘Why, that is me!’ she said, and looked at him in amazement.
    ‘It is rather like you, isn’t it?’ He replaced the photograph, his lips pressed tight together. ‘As a matter of fact it isn’t you; some time you shall know who it is – that is,’ he smiled again, ‘if I am not the victim of an imitator of the late Horace –’
    ‘Late?’ she repeated.
    The other nodded gravely.
    ‘He took cyanide of potassium in his cell at Marlborough Street,’ he said, ‘leaving his good work for his employer to carry on. What time have you to be back?’ he asked suddenly.
    ‘Two o’clock,’ she said in a sudden panic, for no great reason.
    ‘It’s now three,’ he said. ‘You need not go back till four.’
    ‘But, Mr Tack –’
    ‘I am the head of the firm,’ he smiled. ‘I have bought Tack and Brighten’s – closed the deal on the phone just before you arrived. I have taken the liberty of raising your wages to fifteen pounds a week. Shall I order you another coffee?’
    Elsie opened her mouth to say ‘yes’, but no sound came. For the first time in her life she was at a loss for words.

CHAPTER VI
    Though all the world now knows of King Kerry, and his life and achievements are inscribed more or less accurately in the scrappy works of reference which are so popular nowadays, only a privileged few know of the inception of the great Trust which came to London in 19––.
    It came about indirectly as a result of the Shearman Anti-Trust Law which caused wholesale resignations from the boards of American companies, and drove what is known on the other side of the Atlantic as the ‘mergers’ out of business. These were Trust men who had done nothing in their lives but combine conflicting business interests into one great monopoly. They found themselves scarcely within the pale of the law – they found, too, that their opportunities were limited. These men had dealt in millions. They had liquid assets, hard cash ready for employment at a moment’s notice. They came in a body to England – the eight greatest financiers of the United States. Bolscombe E. Grant rented Tamby Hall from the Earl of Dichester; Thomas A. Logge (the Wire King) settled in London; Gould Lampest bought an estate in Lincolnshire; and the others – Verity Sullivan, Combare Lee, Big Jack Simms, and King Kerry – settled down in London.
    There were others who joined forces with them; but they were unimportant. Cagely H. Smith put a million into the pool, but backed out after the Orange Street affair. The eight dispensed with his million without noticing that it had gone. He was a little man, and they made clear, for when Cagely tried to sneak back into the pool, offering not only the five million dollars he had