People were always popping in and out of the tower at this hour, when the countinghouse was closed, the weighbridge clerk gone, and he was the only one in authority about the premises. He did not look up from his desk when he heard the scrape of a boot on the stair and the creak of the door.
He said, briefly, “Well, what is it?” expecting, no doubt, a complaint about an overdue haul from Vicary's territory across the river, or some optimist who was still awaiting a Christmas delivery.
The visitor said, in a voice that reminded him of someone attempting to imitate the quaver of a music-hall tramp, “Sorry to butt in, Guv’nor, seein’ it's Christmas an’ all, but I got a present for yer…” And he looked up very swiftly for, notwithstanding the disguise, there was something chillingly familiar about the voice and the stunted, round-shouldered figure swathed in a topcoat, scarf, and jauntily-angled topper that stood in the doorway.
He said, rising, “What the devil is this…?” and the visitor laughed. There was no disguising the derision in the sound. It was the laughter of a man dead to him for more than twenty years.
He said, jaw agape, “Avery! Josh Avery, by God! It can’t be…!” And he stumped round the end of the desk to confront the stocky figure, who raised his chin so that Adam could see the pointed features of a man who had first befriended him and ultimately betrayed him, leaving his nine-year-old daughter in Adam's care as a hostage.
It was only then that he remembered the fearful risks Avery was running by coming here, a man with a double murder charge hanging over him and no means, at this distance, to establish his innocence. For who would be likely to believe that a rake like Avery had shot a man in self-defence after a whore had squeezed him dry, and afterwards fled into the night in the back of one of Swann's frigates as far as Harwich, where he had bribed a Dutch skipper to carry him to the Continent?
He would have expected Josh to have aged after all this time, and particularly after the kind of life the man had led up to the time of his flight, and probably since. He had not, or not all that much. The hair under the brim of the hat was grey but it was still plentiful and the pale, clean-shaven face, with its curiously sharp chin, high cheekbones, and restless green eyes, was that of an Avery he remembered long before their parting near Harwich all those years ago; a man who had scandalised the regiment in India by seducing his colonel's wife, and been drummed out once that silly, pretty Kitty Sullivan had been packed off home, with Avery's child in her belly.
The characteristic impudence was there too, in the man's jauntiness that nothing, it seemed, could eradicate, so that Adam thought, not for the first time, “How the devil did he manage to sire a child like Deborah, who crusades for outcasts and gets herself cut to ribbons for her pains?”
He said, carefully, “You know what you’re about, I suppose, but I shouldn’t have to remind you that you’re taking a high risk coming here. Damn it, you haven’t even gone to the trouble of disguising yourself. I would have recognised you anywhere, given a good look. You’re still a brandy man, I imagine?” He went to his cupboard beside Frankenstein, took out a bottle and glasses, and poured a couple of stiff measures, giving one to Avery and disposing of his own in a gulp.
“As to anyone recognising me, that's nonsense,” Avery said, cheerfully. “How often did I show up here when you were hardly more than a horse and cart man? You’ve come a long way, Adam, but that's no surprise, is it? I always said you would.”
“We’ll not talk about me,” Adam said. “You’ll have followed the career of Swann-on-Wheels, no doubt, for you always knew what was going on in city counting-houses, as well as city brothels.” But then he relented, for he had never borne Josh any malice and added, “I don’t mean to sound unfriendly, Josh, but a lapse of time, even twenty years or more, doesn’t scotch a murder charge. Unless you’ve come back to face up to it, that is, and I don’t think you have. It wouldn’t be in character, would it?”
“Not in the least,” Josh said, “but I had a purpose for all that. However, don’t concern yourself about the possibility of my arrest and trial for that business at the Chanticleer. Even if they laid me by the heels I daresay I’d wriggle out of it, with my connections one place and another. Until they begin to suspect the author of these notes, that is,” and he drew from his pocket a wallet containing a bulky envelope and laid it on the desk. “I dropped in to give you this. It was something I didn’t care to entrust to the mails.”
It was curious how quickly he could adapt to Josh Avery, who had always enjoyed making a prodigious mystery of everything he was about. The years between slipped away as though they had been weeks. They might have been sipping a brandy together in a regimental canteen, or in Avery's Guildford Street lodgings in the earliest days of the partnership.
Adam said, picking up the envelope and glancing at the addressee, “What can you and a chap like Stead have in common? He's the Holiest Joe in Fleet Street, and your daughter, as fine a young person as anyone could hope to meet by the way, works for him. Did you know that?” and when Avery smiled, “Damn it, of course you did. There's nothing you don’t know, except how to lead a civilised life. I said once that I was done with your commissions, Josh. I’m damned if I deliver this unless you tell me what it concerns.”
“No harm in that,” said Avery. “A list of people in the pay of Brussels whore-masters. I settle my debts unconventionally, Adam. But I do settle them, as you’ll find out when your bank statement comes in after Christmas.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Adam growled, not liking the turn of the conversation. “What the devil do you mean, I’ll find out via the bank?”
“A matter of nine thousand, plus interest. Paid into your account from a bank at The Hague. It was posted three days ago and will have been credited by now, so there's not a damned thing you can do about it. I’ve added the interest at eight per cent to cover the cost of raising my girl and giving her an education that leads her into the kind of scrape she was in a while back. I forget the exact sum. It was around the fifteen thousand mark.”
“You’ve paid fifteen thousand into my bank?”
“Indeed I have, and don’t think I can’t afford it.”
“But Great God, man, you landed in Holland almost penniless, unless you were lying to me that night I took you to Harwich.”
“That was one time I didn’t lie,” said Avery, “not to you at all events. I was down to one ruby and the odd guinea or two, but I had friends. Since then I’ve married money, a great deal of money. At a price, of course. My wife is a Hohenzollern. Hellishly plain but amiable in her own way, the way Prussians are when they want something and Lisa wanted me. Not that you could call me a remittance man. I earn my oats. I had something to do with promoting Government loans needed to build the fortifications systems round Liège and Namur, and after that one thing led to another. However, that isn’t what I came to see you about. The repayment to you was an incidental and don’t pretend you can’t do with it. Is it true you’ve formed a company, and taken your managers into the firm?”
“It's true, but I’m damned if I understand how you knew it. My bank doesn’t know yet.”
“Ah, bankers,” said Avery, “they only know what's sent to them in large print and misunderstand most of that. They won’t understand your motives, for instance, as I did, the moment I heard about it.”
“You should. The very last thing you said to me was take the staff into my confidence and I did just that. I had to. You’d squandered all my capital on that woman Esmeralda.”
“That's so,” Avery mused, unabashed, “but it was to your ultimate advantage. And my daughter's advantage, too. That way she came by a respectable upbringing.”
“ We gave her more than that, Josh. She got all the love she needed.”
That did disconcert him a little. He said, “Yes. I’ll concede that, Adam. For all that, I think I would have had more sense than to let her stick her nose into a foreign hornet's nest at the nod of a rabble rouser like Stead. How did that come about?�
��
“It wasn’t my doing. I did my best to stop her. After all, she's of age and as pigheaded as a daughter of yours is likely to be.”
“Aye, I gathered that,” he said, “when I read what happened to her in Brussels. How is she now?”
“Sadder and wiser, like most of us when we’ve had the stardust beaten out of us.”
“Is she still hitched to Stead and that woman Butler?”
“She's still with Stead.”
“Damn it, that's an odd line for a lass to take,” he said, grumpily. “Is she so plain?”
“On the contrary, she's extremely attractive.”
“Then why didn’t you and that plump little pigeon of yours find a husband for her?”
“Because she didn’t want a husband. Not everybody who has made his pile puts his daughters up to auction, Josh.”
“You think of her as your daughter then?”
“God damn it!” he burst out, “of course I do! And so does Henrietta. We’ve had her since she was nine, and she's been our daughter from the moment I winkled her out of that seedy convent where you left her.”
He remained unruffled, saying, mildly, “You’ve told her about me?”
“As much as I think she should know. If you’re that interested why the devil didn’t you write? The last word I had of you was from the Mother Superior, who died soon after I lost my leg in that crash at Staplehurst.”
“I didn’t have to write,” Avery said. “You were always in the news. I would have got in touch with Henrietta if you had died in that shambles. You believe that, I hope.”
“I don’t know what the devil I believe about you,” Adam said. “You turn up here, asking all these questions after twenty years… Why are you here? It isn’t to tell me about money you banked, and it can’t be that you’re associated with Stead in any way.”
“I’m a man who likes to pay his score, and that letter will pay it. With interest. How much did Deborah tell you about what happened to her in Brussels?”
“No more than was in the papers on her return. I gather she was beaten up by some scoundrel in the pay of the brothel-keepers. It was no more than I expected. Stead carried an extensive report of it and you obviously subscribe to the Pall Mall Gazette.”
He said, moving to the window, “They would have killed her if they hadn’t got what they were after. She had a list of names. Big names. It was far more vital to them than she realised. Several high-ranking police officers were involved, as well as a couple of industrialists and a judge. She had all the pieces, and Stead, no doubt, would have put them together. Naturally they were scared. Well, they aren’t likely to meddle in that traffic again, not this side of the Channel. So long as Stead has the nerve to publish, of course.”
“Why don’t you deliver it yourself and make sure that he does?”
“That wouldn’t do at all, my friend. I should be sure to run into her and I wouldn’t like that to happen.”
“Listen here,” said Adam, “you’ve taken this much risk so why not a little more? I’m catching the seven-thirty to Croydon. I could arrange for you to see Deborah privately. She won’t reject you. She isn’t that kind of person. She's a special kind of person. We found that out at the time of the train wreck. She saved Henrietta's sanity for one thing. A child of eleven or twelve, with more courage than anyone about us. Why won’t you do that, Josh?”
“Mostly out of regard for you. She’d try and reclaim me and that would involve split loyalties. I’m past reclamation, anyway.”
“You always thought of yourself as being,” Adam said, “but it's mostly a pose.”
“You know I’m talking sense, Adam.”
He knew it and was surprised, now that it came to the point, to feel jealousy concerning their relationship. For him, for so many years now, Avery had been dead and buried, whereas he had always taken more pride in Deborah than in any of his own blood, seeing her, possibly, as something he had created, much as he had created the network.
He said, gruffly, “I wouldn’t want her harmed, or even embarrassed by your arrest. She remembers enough of you to be deeply concerned if that occurred, so have it your way. I’ll deliver your letter and say nothing about your coming here if you prefer it that way.”
“I prefer it,” Josh said, with a smile, “and so do you.”
He walked slowly round the tower, cluttered with the apparatus of Swann's life. “This place hasn’t changed,” he said, “and neither, for that matter, have you. I hadn’t looked for change, of course. Getting mauled in the train accident gave you a new lease of life. If you had come this far without a setback you would have been a Justice of the Peace by now, with any number of high-toned notions about letting a man like me walk loose. The possibility of standing trial as an accessory wouldn’t have stopped you. However, as I say, that amputation presented a fresh challenge and a man like you can’t exist without challenges. Will you shake hands, Adam?”
“Good God, why not? Do you suppose I’m that much of a prig?”
“I’m not calling you a prig,” Avery said, “just a good old British Puritan and there's a difference. Prigs have secret doubts about themselves but Puritans don’t, not even when the world falls about them. You have sons of your own, they tell me. Why aren’t they here learning their trade?”
“I drive myself,” Adam said, “but I’ve never made a practice of driving others. Unless they happened to share my objectives.”
“And your boys don’t?”
“I wouldn’t say that. They’re individuals. Alex has taken a commission, George is getting to know himself, drifting about Europe, Giles and Hugo are still at school. And the youngest is still a baby. There's time enough. Henrietta's proud of them, and I’m damned if I feel like wet-nursing a crowd of amateurs.”
“And your daughters?”
“The eldest is married to a farmer's boy. Happily, I might add, to head off your sneer.”
Avery said, with his woman's smile, “You’re the last person on earth I’d sneer at. The only Puritan I know who is still a respecter of persons. A very private Puritan, Adam.”
“I’ve always done what I wanted to do, Josh.”
“Me too. And that's one definition of success they say. Give me ten minutes to get clear of the yard. I would leave you a forwarding address but if I did the first thing you’d do would be to mail that money back.”
They shook hands, much as they had done outside Harwich twenty years before. Then Avery pulled on his gloves, smoothed them very carefully, and went out and down the stairs without a backward glance. Adam found that he was sweating, despite the nip in the air and the dead stove. He thought, “I suppose I’m closer to him than anyone has ever been, but how close is that? A million miles?”
He picked up the letter, carried it to his wall-safe, and locked it away. Stead had already devoted a year to his self-appointed task of stemming the flow of harlots across the Channel. He could wait another few days.
2
He was familiar with the offices of the Pall Mall Gazette, and his card was enough to get him an audience with Stead, who received him cordially. However, there was apprehension in his manner when, after a formal handshake, Adam went straight to the subject of the beating Deborah had received in Brussels.
“You got my letter promising redress, Mr. Swann?”
“I did indeed,” Adam said, “and I should apologise for not replying but the truth is I felt too damned outraged. Let's admit it, Mr. Stead, that wasn’t an assignment for an inexperienced young woman, and a professional like you must have been aware of that. Why did you take such a risk?”
“Against my better judgement. The fact is, Mr. Swann, Miss Avery is an extremely rare find, a young person with an active social conscience who has the ability to write ‘parlour-window’ prose. Not easy to find, I assure you.”
He must have noted Adam's baffled eyes, for he went on, “I think of writing in terms of glass. A dirty pane for obscurity, stained glass for literature, ‘parlour
-window’ for words you can look through at the meaning behind.”
Adam had come prepared to dislike the man, as he found himself disliking most of the over-earnest, over-shrill social campaigners he had met about the City in the last two decades. Stead, he discovered, had both charm and honesty, of a kind not easy to detect in his columns, that usually read like sermons by a latter-day Calvin, or at least a Luther, notwithstanding the validity of the wrongs they sought to right. He decided to hold Avery's letter in reserve while he explored the man. It was not often one had an opportunity of studying a Titan at point-blank range.
He said, “I won’t pretend I like her being exposed to this kind of hazard. No responsible guardian would. Frankly, I’d sooner see her married, and settled in a suburb, with a husband and a couple of children to coddle. It's always been my belief that any young man would be lucky to have Deborah, apart from the fact that she is likely to inherit money in due course.”
“I wasn’t aware of that,” Stead said. And then, “Would I be presuming if I asked you to tell me a little more concerning her background? She's been reticent concerning that, apart from yourself, of course.”
“I can’t tell you one thing about her background, Mr. Stead. Not because I wouldn’t, and certainly not because I don’t trust your discretion, but for reasons outside my control. All I can say is that her father was once a very good friend of mine. When he ran into difficulties and moved abroad, he made me her guardian. That was when she was nine. Since then I’ve always regarded her as my own daughter. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful.”
“You need not be. Social backgrounds count for nothing here, Mr. Swann. Miss Avery has courage and she can write. That's all that is important to me. And now, I imagine, you’ll use your influence to persuade her to leave me and dabble in journalism during spells between kitchen, sewing room, and nursery?”
“That's not the reason I asked for an interview,” replied Adam, “but it's not such a bad notion at that. Fleet Street is hardly the place one expects to look for a well-educated, personable young woman, is it?”
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