Free The Man Who Bought London by Edgar Wallace Page A

noticeably absent.
    ‘Ah, well,’ he said, offering his hand, ‘we mustn’t quarrel – use your influence with Mr Kerry for good.’
    ‘I hope I shall,’ she said, ‘though I cannot see how that is going to help you.’
    He was in the street before he thought of a suitable response.
    Oxford Street, and especially the drapery and soft goods section of Oxford Street, was frankly puzzled by the situation as it stood between Goulding’s Universal Store and Tack and Brighten. It was recognized that Tack’s – as it was called in drapery circles – could not fight against the rush and hustle of its powerful neighbour. Apparently King Kerry was doing nothing wonderful in the shape of resuscitating the business. He had discharged some of the old overseers, and had appointed a new manager, but there was nothing to show that he was going to put up a fight against his rival, who surrounded him literally and figuratively.
    Goulding’s offer had leaked out, and experts’ view placed it as being exactly thirty-three per cent more than the business was worth; but what was Kerry to do?
    Kerry was content apparently to flit from one department of trade to another. He bought in one week Tabards, the famousconfectioner, the Regent Treweller Company’s business, and Transome’s, the famous Transome, whose art fabrics were the wonder and the joy of the world.
    ‘What’s his game?’ asked the West End, and finding no game comprehensible to its own views, or measurable by its own standard, the West End decided that King Kerry was riding for a fall. Some say that the ground landlords had been taken into the Big Buyers’ confidence; but this is very doubtful. The Duke of Pallan, in his recently published autobiography, certainly does make a passing reference to the matter which might be so construed; but it is not very definite. His Grace says –
    ‘The question of selling my land in the neighbourhood of Regency, Colemarker, and Tollorton Streets was satisfactorily settled by arrangement with my friend Mr King Kerry. I felt it a duty in these days of predatory and pernicious electioneering …’
    The remainder is purely political, but it does point to the fact that whether King Kerry bought the land, or came to a working arrangement with the ground landlords, he was certainly at one time in negotiation for their purchase. No effort was spared by those interested to discover exactly the extent of the ‘L Trust’s’ aspirations.
    Elsie, returning to her Chelsea flat one night, was met by a well-dressed stranger who, without any preliminary, offered her £5,000 for information as to the Trust’s intended purchases. Her first impulse was to walk on, her second to be very angry. Her third and final resolution was to answer.
    ‘You must tell your employer that it is useless to offer me money, because I have no knowledge whatever concerning Mr King Kerry’s intentions.’
    She went on, very annoyed, thereby obeying all her impulses together.
    She told the millionaire of the attempt the next morning, and he nodded cheerily. ‘The man’s name was Gelber; he is a private detective in the employ of a Hermann Zeberlieff, and he will not bother you again,’ he said.
    ‘How do you know?’ she asked in surprise.
    He was always surprising her with odd pieces of information. It was a stock joke of his that he knew what his enemies had for dinner, but could never remember where he put his gloves.
    ‘You never go home without an escort,’ he said. ‘One of my men was watching you.’
    She was silent for a moment, then she asked, ‘Does Zeberlieff dislike you?’
    He nodded slowly. Into his face crept a look of infinite weariness.
    ‘He hates me,’ he said softly, ‘and I hate him like the devil.’
    She looked across at him and met his eyes. Was it over a question of business that their quarrel arose? As clear as though she had put the question in so many words, he read the unspoken query and shook his head. ‘I hate him’ –