The Shadow in the North (8 page)

"Has he, now?" said Charles. "That's interesting. I heard some gossip about Wytham himself just now—it seems the old boy's on the verge of bankruptcy. I don't loiow how true that is, mind you. And the fair-haired man's a financier—something big in railroads and mines and matches. A Swede. His name's Bellmann."

Lri GJlrange Cjroposal

Next morning, before Frederick had had a chance to tell her about Mackinnons connection with her case, Sally arrived at her office to find a client waiting for her.

At least she thought he was a client. His name, he told her, was Windlesham; he was a mild-mannered lit-de man with gold spectacles, and he waited most politely until she had settled Chaka and taken off her coat and hat. Then he sprang a surprise.

"I represent Mr. Axel Bellmann," he said. "I think his name is known to you."

She sat down slowly. What did this mean?

"It has come to Mr. Bellmanns attention," he went on, "that you have been making persistent and unfriendly inquiries into his affairs. He is a busy man, with numerous important interests and responsibilities, and such unfounded and ill-formed rumors as those you are attempting to spread, while trivial in the extreme, can only cause considerable annoyance and inconvenience. In order to spare you the embarrassment of a formal communication, and the pain of a legal threat, Mr. Bellmann has sent me to convey his

displeasure in person, in the hope that you will take it to heart and see the foolishness of continuing in the unproductive path you have sought to follow."

He folded his hands and smiled at her gendy.

Sally s heart was racing. She could think of only one thing to say.

"Did you learn that off by heart? Or were you making it up as you went along?"

The smile left his face.

"Perhaps you have not understood," he said. "Mr. Bellmann—"

"I understand very well. Mr. Bellmann is frightened, and he wants to frighten me. Well, I'm not going to be frightened, Mr. Windlesham. I have a particular reason for making my inquiries, and until I'm satisfied, I'll go on with them. And what precisely is this legal threat you mentioned?"

He smiled again. "You're too intelligent to expect me to tell you that at this stage. Mr. Bellmann will decide whether or not to use that weapon when I tell him of your response."

"Tell me," she said, "what's your particular ftmction in Mr. Bellmann's company?"

He looked mildly interested in the question. "I am Mr. Bellmann's private secretary," he said. "Why do you ask?"

"Curiosity. Well, you've told me a lot, Mr. Windlesham. I know I'm on the right track now. I wonder

whats making Mr. Bellmann so anxious? Could it be the Ingrid LindeV^

It was a shot in the dark—but it struck home. Mr. Windlesham drew breath sharply, and a scholarly frown appeared on his brow.

"I really would advise great care," he said. "It is very easy for the inexperienced person to make serious errors in the interpretation of quite innocent facts. If I were you. Miss Lockhart, I would stick to financial consultancy, I really would. And may I say'—he rose, gathering stick and hat—"as a private person, how much I admire your enterprise? I have always taken a keen and sympathetic interest in the woman question. Stick to what you know. Miss Lockhart. I wish you every success. But dont let your imagination run away with you.

He raised his stick in salute. Chaka, not understanding, leaped to his feet and growled, but the mild little man didn't flinch.

Well, thought Sally as he left, hes got nerve. What do I do now?

What she did do, as soon as he had gone, was put on her coat and hat and walk to the office of her friend Mr. Temple the lawyer.

Mr. Temple was an ironical old gentleman who moved in a faint perpetual fragrance of buckram and seedcake and snuff. He had been her father s lawyer and

had helped her when Captain Lockhart was killed six years before; Sally had so impressed him with her knowledge of the stock market and her grasp of financial affairs that he had overcome his old-fashioned reservations and had helped her to set up first her partnership with Webster Garland and second her own business.

She told him briefly about the background of the case and described Mr. Windlesham's visit that morning.

"Sally," he said when she'd finished, "you will take care, won't you?"

"That's what he said. I thought you'd come up with something more original!"

He smiled and tapped his snuffbox.

"The great strength of the law," he said, "lies in the fact that so litde of it is original. Thank heaven. Tell me what you know about North Star."

She summarized all she knew, which was not much. She left out Nellie Budd, however; she thought Mr. Temple was hardly likely to be impressed by trance revelations from the world of spirits. She wasn't even sure if she was.

"I don't know whether it's manufacturing, or mining, or what it is," she ended. "There's a connection with a chemicals firm, but that's all I know. What do you think could make them want to keep it secret?"

"Chemicals," he said thoughtfully. "Nasty, smelly

things that leak and poison the water and . . . Does he still make matches?"

"No. There was a government investigation in Sweden, and his factory was closed down; but it turned out he'd sold it the year before, so he wasn't responsible."

"Well, now. I happened to come across the name North Star in another context a day or so ago. A man at my club was talking about cooperative societies, trade unions, and what-have-you, and he mentioned some new firm up in Lancashire that's been organized on odd lines—didn't quite follow what he was saying, wasn't really listening, as a matter of fact—don't go to my club for lectures on sociology—but the gist of it was that this firm had set out to organize the lives of its workers down to the last detail. Like Robert Owen. Total control, you see. It sounded appalling to me. But the point was that it was called North Star."

Sally sat up and smiled. "At last!" she said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"A clue. What does this firm do?"

"Ah, that he didn't know. Something to do with railways, he thought. . . . Would you care for a glass of sherry?"

She accepted, and watched the little motes of legal dust floating in the ray of sunshine that slanted through the old window while he poured the drink. Mr. Temple was an old friend, and she'd dined at his house many times, but she still didn't feel quite at ease when they

stopped talking about business. Things that other young women could do easily—make small talk, dance gracefully, flirt with a stranger at dinner while unerringly picking up the right knife and fork—^were difficult and embarrassing still, and hampered by the memory of humiliating failures. Away from her balance sheets and her files she was really at home, truly herself, only in the cheerful haphazardness of the Garlands'. She sipped the pale brown nectar, tongue-tied, while he leafed through the papers she'd brought.

"Nordenfels . . . ," said Mr. Temple. "Whos he? His name's come up more than once."

"Ah. Bellmann had a partner called Nordenfels—^he was a designer, an engineer. I came across an article only yesterday in the Journal of the Royal Society of Engineers where his name was mentioned. He invented a new kind of safety valve, apparently; it worked at higher temperatures, or higher pressures, or something. I must look it up in more detail. But he disappeared—Nordenfels, I mean—oh, three or four years ago. Perhaps they just parted company. But I've got a feeling about him. ..."

"Hmm," said Mr. Temple. "I'd avoid feelings if I were you. Go for facts and figures. You're on the track of something with this Anglo-Baltic business—that's quite clear. Have you checked the insurance on the In-gridLindeV

"It's on that yellow sheet—all in order. It's not an insurance fraud." After a minute she went on: "This Mr.

Windlesham mentioned a legal threat. Could he mean an injunction?"

"I doubt it very much. The court would have to be satisfied first that the activity he complained of was wrong in itself, which you would deny; and second that the proper remedy for it would not be damages."

"So the legal threat is a bluff?"

"I suspect so. But there are other ways of injuring you, my dear, than by taking you to court, which is why I urge you again: Take care."

"Yes. I will. But I'm not going to stop looking into his affairs. He's up to something wrong, Mr. Temple. I know he is."

"You may well be right. Now, I don't want to keep you, but there's a Mr. O'Connor here who's been left a thousand pounds: shall I send him along to you, so that you can tell him how to turn it into something more?"

At the same time, in the financial heart of the city, ex-Cabinet Minister Lord Wytham was sitting in a corridor outside an imposing office, drumming his fingers on his silk hat and getting to his feet every time a clerk came around a corner or out of a door.

Lord Wytham was a handsome man, but with that doe-eyed, distinguished masculine beauty seen these days only in photographs of middle-aged male models. On a real face it looks like weakness. When Frederick had seen him the evening before, his first impression had been of a gnawing anxiety, and if he'd seen him

now, that feeling would have been intensified. His fingernails were bitten to the quick, his large, dark eyes were red-rimmed, and his gray mustache was ragged where he'd chewed it. He couldn't sit still for more than a minute; if no one came along the corridor, he'd get up anyway and stare sighdessly at one of the prints on the walls or out the window overlooking Threadneedle Street, or down the marble staircase.

Finally a door opened and a clerk came out.

"Mr, Bellmann will see you now, my lord," he said.

Lord Wytham snatched his silk hat from the chair, picked up his stick, and followed the clerk through an anteroom and into a large and newly furnished office. Axel Bellmann got up from behind the desk and came forward to shake hands.

"Good of you to come, W\Tham," Bellmann said, motioning him to an armchair. "Curious evening at Lady Harborough's, was it not?"

His voice was deep and almost unaccented, his fiice unlined, his blond hair thick and straight. He could have been any age between thirt}^ and sixty. Like his office, he had a factory-finished look about him, being large and smooth and heavy—but it was the smoothness of machined steel, not of pampered flesh. His prominent eyes were direct and disconcerting. They gave no hint of mood, humor, or temper; the)' rarely blinked, yet they weren't dead. They were electrically intense.

Lord Wytham found himself looking away and fid-

cDing with the rim of his hat. The clerk offered to take it for him, and Wytham handed it over. Bellmann watched as the man placed it on the hatrack and went out; then Bellmann turned back to Lord Wytham.

"Lady Harborough's," he prompted. "Interesting evening, no?"

"Ah. Chap disappearing like that. Yes, indeed."

"Do you enjoy the performance of magic, Wytham?"

"Can't say Ive had much experience ..."

"Really? It is interesting to watch, I find. Perhaps you should have watched more closely."

If that was a curious way of putting it. Lord Wytham did not notice. His eyes, dark and bloodshot, flickered around the room as if he was unwilling to look Bellmann in the face.

"Well, now," said Bellmann, after a few seconds of silence. "Perhaps you are wondering why I invited you to visit me this morning. I understand you have been dismissed from the Cabinet."

Lord Wythams face became a shade darker. "The Prime Minister—er—^wished to redistribute the portfolios among . . . ummm . . .," he said, faltering.

"Yes. You were dismissed. So now you are free to take an active part in the world of business, is that not so?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"There is no impediment now to your becoming the director of a company?"

"Well, none. Except. . . No, none. I dont understand, Bellmann."

"Evidently not. I shall explain more fully. I know your financial position in detail, Wytham. You are in debt to the extent of nearly four hundred thousand pounds, because of a combination of foolish investments, bad management, and incompetent advice. There is no prospect of your paying it back, especially since you have no job now that you are out of government, so you are considering bankruptcy as a final option. Of course, that will mean every kind of disgrace. Let us look for a moment at your assets: they consist almost entirely of your London house and your estate. But they are both mortgaged, are they not?"

Lord Wytham nodded. How did the man know all this? But he was too sickened to protest.

"And then there is your daughter's property," Bell-mann said. "I understand she owns land in Cumberland."

"Eh? Yes. That's right. No good to me, though. I can't touch it—I've tried. Some kind of entail; mother's side of the family, property tied to her, that kind of thing. Mines and so forth."

"Graphite."

"Is it, by Jove. Something to do with pencils, I know that."

"Her mines have a monopoly of a certain pure form of graphite."

"Wouldn't be surprised. My agent in Carlisle stcs to it. Done it for years. They make pencils with the stuff. But there's no money in it; no way out there."

"I see," said Bellmann. "Well, there is no use my asking what you intend to do. It's plain you have no idea." Lord Wytham began to protest, but Bellmann held up his hand and went on. "Which is why I asked you here this morning. I can offer you a position as director of a company I have set up. You are no longer in the government, but your contacts in Whitehall will be of considerable use to me. I shall not be paying you for any business ability you possess, for you have none. The fees you earn as director will be related to the connections you have in the civil service."

"Connections?" said Lord Wytham faintly.

"With officials in the Board of Trade and the Foreign Office. To be precise, in the matter of export licenses. You know the gentleman concerned, no doubt?"

"Oh, yes. Of course. Permanent secretaries, and so forth. But—"

"I do not expect you to exert influence; you would not be able to. You supply the contacts, and I shall supply the influence. That settles the matter of your income. There remains the problem of the debts. You will not pay those out of a director s fees, I regret to say. However, there is a solution. I wish to marry your daughter."