The Four Invisibles/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
DEAD MEN'S SHOES
“AND the last piece of evidence in this long-laid plot, at least as far as I am personally concerned,” said Mr. Ferrars to Mr. Wapshot, “came last night. A letter from the butler at Stanton, which I found at the Piazza. An answer to an inquiry I had sent, in my own name by the way, from Paris the day before my departure.”
They were passing under the great plane-trees of Gray's Inn Gardens, that swayed and roared in the gusts of a tempestuous wind, on the morning of the fifteenth of October.
Mr. Ferrars, still rather lame, his face badly scarred, but now free from its bandages, was leaning on the arm of his friend and legal counselor on the way from the latter's offices in Gray's Inn Square to those of Messrs. Johnstone & Mesurier in Bedford Row.
“The man states that he knows nothing of any letter for Captain Hanstedt and that he certainly forwarded none. He adds, unfortunately,” said Mr. Ferrars, “that he has no news from his master. It bodes ill.”
Mr. Wapshot had listened that morning to a detailed account of his client's experiences, but without committing himself to an opinion. After a span of thoughtful silence, he dryly remarked:
“All this, my dear sir, if it does bode ill for Sir Jasper, may mean a singular change in the state of your own affairs. Well, in less than an hour, we shall know where we stand.”
“I am still much in the dark. Will you not explain?”
“I really have no knowledge of the matter. It is all in Johnstone and Mesurier's keeping—and, no doubt, they will explain it—if the occasion arises. I have been asked to have you within call. And I am thankful—for, if I don't actually know, I think, I guess—that I have brought you here in time.”
They were ringing at the attorney's office. The clerk who opened the door requested them, with Mr. Johnstone's compliments, to step up-stairs and wait in a private room.
Ferrars sat at a bare table and, leaning his head on his hands, lost himself in brooding cogitation.
Mr. Wapshot, however, in the midst of his professional reticence, showed distinct signs of nervousness; pacing the room; consulting his watch at ever shorter intervals; peering with unmistakable anxiety into the broad coldness of Bedford Row, whenever wheels or footsteps were heard approaching the front door. A great clock outside in the passage struck the half-hour; then the three-quarters. Within the room the silence between the two men remained unbroken. At last, the deeper strokes of the hour began to fall.
“Twelve o'clock,” said Mr. Wapshot, with attempted indifference consulting his own watch for confirmation. “Twelve by Greenwich.”
The last vibration had scarce vanished, when the door was opened:
“Mr. Johnstone's compliments,” said the clerk, “and will Mr. Ferrars and Mr. Wapshot be so good as to step down to his room.”
Mr. Wapshot heaved a sigh of satisfaction and smilingly motioned his client on.
Four gentlemen, seated round the great mahogany table, rose on their entrance. Every countenance behind the mask of official decorum betrayed an expectant agitation, tinged, in the case of the head of the firm, with a noticeable look of concern. This personage was a pompous man with a large handsome face.
“Mr. Ferrars,” he began in a rich unctuous voice and a self-conscious precision of speech, “allow me to offer you welcome—although your presence in this room today betokens the possibility—nay, I fear, the probability—of some tragic occurrence. I am glad, I say, to see you, at least, in attendance on this occasion. I will explain presently. Let me introduce my partner, Mr. Mesurier, also Mr. Parker and Mr. Willis, who represent Tellson's Bank.”
The young man bowed; then in silence he took the seat that was offered.
“Mr. Ferrars,” went on the attorney, in his methodical, ore rotondo, board-room manner, “these gentlemen and ourselves have met for the purpose of bearing testimony to the actual attendance in propria persona, before the hour of twelve noon—in accordance with a stringent clause of the document which you see on the table and which you will presently have an opportunity to examine—of certain persons, beneficiaries under the provision of a scheme which, for want of another name, we must call a tontine. The scheme in question, however, differs in many ways from the usual device of annuity which goes under that appellation.
“Your interest in the funds involved—and I may as well say at once, the sum is an important one—was only contingent. By your father's absence, it has become capital. Further, by the inexplicable absence of two others, who, unlike yourself, were fully aware of every clause in this deed, your interest has become total.
“On some other occasion, if you care, I shall tell you the full history of this extraordinary scheme which, started eight and twenty years ago, has reached maturity on this day. Now, however, not to trespass unduly upon the time of these gentlemen, I will only deal with the salient points.
“During the Summer of the year 1789—at a time when all who had eyes to see the swiftly approaching upheaval in France gave anxious thought to the future—a number of gentlemen, most of them French, but with them some of other nationalities—one of these being Sir Jasper Ferrars—organized among themselves—there were, to be precise, thirteen of them—a tontine of unusual character, regulated with meticulous care and with the stringent insistence upon the letter as well as the spirit of the agreement.
“The essence of the scheme was that a sum of one million French livres, or in sterling money forty thousand pounds, subscribed by the thirteen original members, was to be deposited outside Revolutionary France—in fact, with an English bank of repute. It was to be left at compound interest for the space of twenty-eight years—after which the accumulated capital would be distributed, each in the proportion of his original subscription, among the survivors, or, in default of any of them, their surviving eldest sons.
“You are aware, no doubt, Mr. Ferrars, that a capital sum placed at five per cent. compound interest doubles itself in fourteen years. Twenty-eight have elapsed since this contract was made—or rather since the money was lodged in its entirety at the bank—and that was on October 14, 1789. The original capital has therefore quadrupled itself. In other words, it now amounts to a little over one hundred and sixty thousand pounds.”
The attorney paused a moment, looking, no doubt, for signs of overwhelming emotion in the young man's face. But to his great astonishment finding nothing of the kind, he resumed in the same orating style:
“The point which, as I hinted before, touches you closely and brings you, Mr. Ferrars, into a position which it was your father's intention—for reasons best known to himself; I will not enter into that painful family matter here—which it was your father's intention, I say, to keep you from if he could, is that by your actual presence here at this moment, of which we take due cognizance, you become beneficiary, beyond the reach of dispute, of the whole of this accruing fund.”
Ferrars had grown pale. He was a little giddy, and he had to clear his voice as he said:
“This accession of fortune is very strange, singularly unexpected. But not stranger than the experiences I have met with during this last week.”
“To say the truth,” went on Mr. Johnstone, considerably surprized at this laconic attitude, “we had reason to fear that something untoward might have happened to Sir Jasper. But we had every reason to expect the appearance of the young Baron Hanstedt and that of M. de Gournay, or, in his default, of his son. There is,” said Mr. Johnstone, solemnly, “something sinister attaching to a tontine of this kind, which at best is only a gamble of death and hazard, not an insurance.”
“Well may you think so, sir,” said Ferrars gravely. “Of the last five survivors, my father would seem to have been hunted—hunted relentlessly by some unknown enemies, invisible, but suspected everywhere in everything, till they appear to have driven him wellnigh out of his mind—by now no doubt to an unknown death, or he would be here in my stead at this moment.
“As for M. de Gournay: he died, as I heard, just before I left Paris; died of the death of his son, who was murdered by a duelling bravo. I myself only escaped assassination by a hair's breadth. And Baron von Hanstedt, the organizer for a certainty, of all these 'suppressions,' as he called it, if not indeed of many others among the members of the tontine, has made away with himself in the hour of detection.”
Here Mr. Wapshot, who, unable to repress his not unpleasurable emotion, had been almost dancing in his chair, broke all professional decorum and sprang to his feet.
“Mr. Ferrars,” he exclaimed. Then, snapped his fingers, “No—Sir Adrian! I congratulate you!”