The Cold Blooded Vengeance: 10 Mystery & Revenge Thrillers in One Volume. E. Phillips OppenheimЧитать онлайн книгу.
thousand pounds to find the next day doesn’t sound exactly comfortable to me.”
“I agree with you,” her husband answered. “I didn’t like it at all.”
“What have you done?” she asked.
“I rang Weare up from the club,” Letheringcourt answered, “and asked him to come here to-night.”
His wife nodded.
“He didn’t make any difficulties, I suppose?” she asked. “He was willing enough to come?”
“Curiously enough, he wasn’t,” her husband replied. “He reminded me that never during the whole of our association had we transacted any business, or spoken of it, after office hours. He added that he personally, during all that time, had never set foot west of Temple Bar. He asked me to wait until the morning.”
“You insisted upon his coming, I hope?” she exclaimed.
“I did,” he answered. “He evidently did not like it, but he agreed to be here at half-past nine.”
“What a curious sort of person he must be!” Mrs. Letheringcourt remarked. “Tell me, what is he like?”
Letheringcourt smiled faintly.
“He might have stepped out from some book of Dickens’s or Anthony Trollope’s,” he answered. “Trim, grey-headed, old-fashioned, with formal manners; always dressed in black, never been known to be sixpence wrong in any account in his life. Everyone at the office swears by him.”
“Ambrose Weare!” she remarked. “It’s a singular name.”
“He’s a singular person,” Letheringcourt answered. “I have never heard of his having a friend or a relative; no one even knows where he came from! By the by, there is someone in the hall now. He is coming up, I believe.”
Joan Letheringcourt picked up her novel.
“I am going to my room for a little time,” she said. “I shall be down again—perhaps before your man has gone. I am rather curious to see him.”
She swept out of the room with a little farewell nod—graceful, good-natured, beautiful—a delightful wife and hostess. Outside, she passed with a pleasant smile a little man following a tall footman. The little old man started, but she had already gone by. The footman threw open the door. “Mr. Ambrose Weare, sir, from the office,” he announced.
Letheringcourt turned in his chair and welcomed his visitor.
“Come and sit down, Weare,” he said. “Will you have a glass of port or some coffee? It is your first visit here and I shall expect you to take something.” The clerk bowed a little stiffly.
“Thank you, sir,” he answered. “I am afraid that I must ask you to excuse me.”
“As you will,” Letheringcourt answered, carelessly. “Sit down there by the table, please. There are just one or two questions I wanted to ask you. I am sorry to have fetched you up after office hours, but the fact is that I have been a little uneasy.”
The footman had left them; the two men were alone. Ambrose Weare was certainly a somewhat curious character. His face was white, and dry as parchment. His eyes were very bright, although he wore spectacles, and he had still an abundance of grey hair neatly parted in the middle. His clothes were old-fashioned, considering his position as head cashier of a well-known City firm. He wore a frock-coat, pepper-and-salt trousers, a black satin tie which resembled a stock, and a collar of ancient shape. He folded his gloves deliberately and placed them inside his silk hat. Then he turned towards his employer.
“I have come to answer any questions, sir,” he said, “which you may care to ask.”
“Oh, I am not going to put you through a catechism!” Letheringcourt declared. “You know much more about the conduct of the business than I do, of course. I will tell you exactly what it is that made me send for you. I happened to go into the bank this afternoon, and Jarndyse called me into his office. He pointed out that our account was thirty thousand pounds overdrawn, and that we had a draft due to-morrow for fifty-five thousand pounds. Of course, he didn’t doubt but that it would be all right, for a moment, but he simply thought that it would be a great deal better not to run things so close. I must say that I agreed with him. It didn’t seem to me to be exactly in accord with your methods, Weare, to leave so large a sum to be covered on the actual day.”
Ambrose Weare inclined his head slowly. His fingers were interlocked. He was leaning a little across the table.
“There is not the slightest chance, sir,” he said, “of its being covered!”
Letheringcourt looked at him for a moment as a man might look at a visitant from another world. It was impossible that Ambrose Weare should have said this. His hearing must have played him some strange trick.
“Do you mind repeating that, Weare?” he said.
“Certainly, sir,” the clerk answered. “I regret to say that there is not the faintest chance of Messrs. Cunliffe and Peabody’s draft for fifty-five thousand pounds being honoured to-morrow morning.”
Letheringcourt sat like a man only half conscious of his surroundings.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “Do you mean to tell me that we are short of money, Weare?—that there is any real difficulty about meeting our engagements?”
“We are very short indeed, sir,” the clerk answered. “We have been very short for a long time. The financing of your business has been an exceedingly difficult operation during the last few years. I must admit that the task has now grown beyond me.”
Letheringcourt grasped the sides of his chair and looked around him wildly. For a moment he thought that he had fallen asleep and been visited by a nightmare. Everything else about him was as usual. There were all the evidences on every side of his luxurious home. And in the midst of it sat this strange, still figure—the Ambrose Weare whom he had known all these years, and yet—another man!
“If this is a joke,” Letheringcourt exclaimed, hoarsely, “it’s a—a bad one! Do you know what you’re saying, Weare? You should know your place better—”
“I know it far too well,” the man interrupted, “to joke upon such a subject. Your firm, sir—the firm of Holt, Letheringcourt, and Company—has been losing money for something like twelve years. Chiefly owning to my efforts, your credit has remained unimpaired. It is impossible, however, to preserve it any longer. To-morrow the crisis comes!”
“You must be mad!” Letheringcourt exclaimed, rising unsteadily to his feet. “Why, no one has ever breathed a word of this to me! You yourself have said nothing! Year by year you have brought me into my private office balance-sheets showing large profits. Last year you told me that we had made seventeen thousand pounds. I have been extravagant, but I have not spent money like this. What has become of it? Where is all this money? Our capital stood at one hundred and seventy thousand pounds seven years ago.”
“It is all gone,” Ambrose Weare said, calmly. “Perhaps it was never as much as that.”
“But the balance-sheets!” Letheringcourt exclaimed—“the balance-sheets! You have brought them to me year by year. Not one has ever shown a loss.”
“They were made out, alas,” Ambrose Weare answered, “from the ledger of my imagination.”
“In plain words, then,” Letheringcourt cried, “we are ruined!—we have to fail! Is that what you mean?”
“Precisely!” Ambrose Weare declared. “I have not the figures with me, but I believe that we could not, at the moment, pay a fraction more than two shillings in the pound.”
Letheringcourt swayed upon his feet. Then he leaned forward and struck the table before which the other man was sitting.