Chapter 18

THE MONEY-LENDER.

Mr. Julian Roper had an establishment in Golden-square, Soho. Although this gentleman was over eighty, he had not yet repented of his many iniquities, but callously continued to conduct his evil transactions. His offices--two dingy rooms--were on the ground floor of the house; the apartments overhead being occupied by himself and a crabbed old woman who acted as his housekeeper. The hag was, if possible, worse than her master; and from long years of association, she possessed considerable influence over him; she was a widow--or at least it was as such that she described herself--for her husband had left her many years before in sheer disgust at her tyranny. Mrs. Hutt was her name; and she had a son who acted as clerk to Julian.

When Geoffrey Heron arrived at this sordid temple of Mammon, he was received by the drudge--a young-old person of no particular age, dressed in a suit of rusty black. He informed the visitor that his master was absent.

The clerk, who answered to the name of Jerry Hutt, gave Mr. Heron a broken-backed chair, and returned to his desk, which was smuggled away into a corner. With a shrug at the poverty of the place and the apparently enfeebled intellect of the person in charge, the young man took a seat and amused himself by taking stock of his surroundings.

Jerry took not the slightest notice of Geoffrey after the first greeting; he wrote hard with his tongue thrust into his cheek, giving vent at times to a faint chuckle which was positively uncanny. Coming to the conclusion that he was half-witted, Heron came to regard him in the light in which most people saw him--more as an article of furniture than a man. But in this he, in common with the rest of the visitors to that den, was wrong. For underneath his assumed stupidity Jerry was as sharp as the proverbial needle.

Luckily Heron had not long to wait. In about a quarter of an hour Jerry raised his big head and looked out of the window; a shuffling step was heard at the door; and a minute later someone came coughing and grumbling along the narrow passage. "Mr. Roper," chuckled Jerry, pointing towards the inner room. "Go in there."

Geoffrey, taking no notice of his brusque manner, passed into the back room; it was better lighted and better furnished than the clerk's den. Still, it was sordid enough, and so dirty that the young squire found it necessary to dust with his handkerchief the seat he had chosen. "Cleanliness and godliness are both absent from this establishment," thought Mr. Heron.

He could hear Roper outside growling at Jerry, but could catch nothing of their conversation. He guessed that it had to do with himself, for shortly Mr. Roper entered the back room with what was meant to be an amiable smile on his mahogany face. In appearance he was the double of his clerk, as thin, as yellow, and even smaller in stature.

"Ha! Hey!" he said; this being the way in which he was accustomed to begin a conversation. "Mr. Heron--ah, yes--Mr. Geoffrey Heron--quite so! I knew your father. A good man, Mr. Heron, but strong in his expressions."

Geoffrey took this to mean--and very rightly too--that his father had expressed himself in no measured terms as to the moneylender's professional transactions. But he made no comment, merely remarking that he had come to see Mr. Roper on business.

"Ha! Hey!" chuckled the old man, shuffling towards his desk with the aid of a heavy stick. "Quite so. Not like your father! Oh, dear, no! He never borrowed money."

"I am not here for that purpose," retorted Mr. Heron, haughtily, and the old man, panting for breath, dropped into his chair. "And I can assure you that you are the last person to whom I should come in such circumstances. My business is quite of a different nature."

"Ha! Then why do you come here, Mr. Heron? I have much to do; I am poor, and money is hard to make. If your business has nothing to do with money, why come at all?"

"Because you are the only person who can assist me?"

"I do nothing for nothing," croaked Mr. Roper, quickly. "If you want anything out of me, you must pay me--pay me--cash down, you understand! I have had enough of bills."

"Mr. Frank Marshall's bill for five hundred included?" asked Geoffrey.

The man started and plucked at his nether lip. "Ha! Hey! What do you know about Mr. Marshall, sir?"

"Not so much as you can tell me," said Heron, significantly.

"Marshall--Marshall," muttered Roper. "I don't know him--never heard of him."

Geoffrey took a new tack and prepared to go. "In that case, I need not trouble you. My business has to do with Marshall and a forgery."

"Wait. Come now, don't hurry!" screeched the old man, clawing at Heron's frock-coat. "I do begin to remember something of this. I am old--I can't remember as well as I did. Marshall--Frank Marshall--Cass and Marshall. Yes, yes, of course I know! A forgery--your father--quite so!" He stopped and looked up sharply. "Well, what is it?" he asked.

Geoffrey sat down again. He was beginning to see his way to the successful management of this old gentleman. "It is a long story," he said, slowly, keeping his eyes fixed on the avaricious face of the usurer. "Let me begin at the beginning. What about a man called Jenner?"

Roper gave another screech, and was visibly startled. He cast a swift glance at the door behind which, no doubt, the useful Jerry was eavesdropping. "Jenner," he said, recovering himself with an effort, "was a clerk of mine, and a blackguard."

"The one implies the other," Heron said, drily, "if all I have heard of you is true."

"Now, sir, don't you come libelling me," whimpered the usurer, still disturbed. "I won't have it. I will bring an action for damages--heavy damages."

"Do, Mr. Roper. I should like to see you shewn up in court. How many of your transactions will bear the scrutiny of the law?"

"I have never broken the law," he roared, with an attempt at dignity which ill became him. "I am a poor man, but honest. Jenner? Oh, yes he was murdered, and he deserved to be murdered--the beast!"

"Who did it?" asked Geoffrey, abruptly.

For the second time Mr. Roper was visibly disconcerted. "How should I know any more than yourself?" he quavered. "His wife murdered him, of course; he treated her badly, and she served him out. Women always do."

"Come, Mr. Roper, you are evading my questions. But I have no time to play the fool. I have come to talk to you about that forged bill."

"Have you got it--have you got it?" he shrieked, making a dart with one claw at Geoffrey. "Oh, give it to me, if you can! I want to see that Marshall in gaol--with hard labour--hard labour!" he repeated, with evident relish. "My dear gentleman, if you can, help me to crush him!"

"Why?" asked the young man, drawing back.

"Because I hate him. I had a daughter; she loved him; but he would not marry her--oh, dear, no! Her father's reputation was too bad for so fine a gentleman. So she died--pined away. Mr. Heron, as I am a sinner! Oh how Jerry felt it! He admired Elsa, he loved her--so did Marshall." His eyes flashed. "But he would not marry her, for all that. She is dead and buried now--a most expensive tomb!" he added, vaguely. "All marble--most costly. But she was my daughter: I hate to spend good money; but Elsa was my daughter--a most expensive tomb!"

His listener took all this for the senile babble of age. Perhaps it was, for tears stood in the usurer's eyes--those hard eyes which had remained dry whilst looking upon much deliberately-created misery. He wiped them now with snuffy red bandana, and then looked fiercely at his client.

"Come," he said, roughly, with a growl as of a beast about to spring. "What about Marshall!"

Geoffrey said nothing for the moment, but stared fixedly at the moneylender.

"Ha! Hey!" said Roper, impatiently, and there was a yellow gleam in his eyes. "I am waiting. What about Marshall?"

"I would rather ask you what about Jenner?"

"I do nothing for nothing, as I have told you," was the reply. "If you could assist me to punish that wretch, I might perhaps help you; otherwise----"

"Well, I may be able to help you in that!"

"Oh, oh!" said the old man. "And what grudge have you against Marshall?"

"I have none but I have a very good reason for acting as I am doing."

"What is your reason?"

"That I refuse to tell you. Speak freely to me, or leave the matter alone, my good man. I can do without your assistance."

"No, no!" cried the usurer, with frightful energy. "If Marshall is to get into trouble, I am the man to assist. He broke my Elsa's heart; I wish to be revenged. What is it you want to know?"

"Tell me about Jenner," Heron said, curtly. He saw that the old man, moved by the recollection of Marshall's behaviour to his daughter, was in the mood to be confidential. He would get all he could out of him before the wind changed.

Roper commenced speaking in a hurry as though in fear that his resolution would fail him. "Jenner was a wretch--a scamp!" he said. "He was in my employment before Jerry grew up to assist me. I took him off the streets, and he repaid my kindness by robbing me."

"Of the bill of exchange on which was the forgery of my father's name."

"Oh, you know that!" he said with a glance of surprise. "Well, I daresay. Your father--worthy man--would no doubt tell you. Yes, Jenner took the bill--just when I thought I had Marshall in the palm of my hand. Ah, that was a blow! I would have given hundreds to have kept that bill--to have lodged Marshall in gaol. But when that was gone, I could do nothing. Have you the bill--do you know where it is? Give it to me. I'll work the matter."

"I have not the bill," said Geoffrey, deliberately. He saw that the honour of the Cass family would be lost if entrusted to the hands of this man. "The bill was stolen from Jenner's dead body," he added, with studied equivocation.

"By whom?" Roper asked, abruptly. "Do you not know?"

"Certainly not," he said, with violence. "Are you about to accuse me of the crime? Why, I do not even know of the place where he met his death. You can prove nothing against me, sir, however cleverly you lay your trap."

"I am not laying any trap," Geoffrey said, mildly. "I want to know something more about Jenner--as I have told you at least five times! He was in your employment, you say?"

"Yes, I took him off the streets! One day Marshall brought that bill; I discounted it, and gave him five hundred pounds! Then I found out--how, it does not matter--that your father's signature had been forged. I saw your father----"

"I know all about that interview. You saw my father and he refused to prosecute, did he not?"

"He did; but I would have prosecuted myself, and would have called your father as a witness. Well, I came back after that visit, and placed the bill in my safe then I told my housekeeper all about it: Jenner must have listened. Shortly afterwards he disappeared; I made a search to see if he had taken anything. Then I found that the bill had gone--that Marshall had escaped me! I managed to set the police on Jenner's track, and he was arrested. I offered not to prosecute if he would give me back the bill: but he refused. Then I prosecuted him for stealing my money, and he got three years. When he came out, I believe he went down to the country to see his wife; and she murdered him. What became of the bill, I never could discover. He must have destroyed it."

"It is possible," said Heron. "I suppose that the bill was valuable to Marshall as well as to you! No doubt he paid Jenner to destroy it."

"Or else he murdered Jenner to obtain possession of it," the old man said, gloomily. "But, no! Mrs. Jenner killed him I was at the trial; I heard all the evidence nothing could have been clearer or fairer. She killed her husband. Now. I wonder if she could have taken possession of that bill! No, I don't think so; it would have been found on her when she was arrested. I believe Marshall must have bribed Jenner to destroy it; more's the pity. I'll never get at him now, the beast!"

Geoffrey rose to go. "Well," he said, "I have learnt something; but I hardly know if it will be of much assistance to me."

"What are you going to do?" Roper asked.

"Satisfy my conscience. Listen, Mr. Roper; in my father's diary I found a full account of your visit and the truth about the forgery. I was anxious to know all--therefore, I came to you. Now I am satisfied. So far as I am concerned, the matter shall rest where it is."

"Then you won't help me to crush Marshall? Will nothing deliver him into my hands?" he muttered. "I'll make a last effort; he must be punished for Elsa's sake."