The Yellow Streak Part 51

Parrish calculated that Marbran would not dare to denounce him. He had always taken the lead in their schemes and he affected to disregard Marbran altogether.

So he left the latter's letters unanswered and laughed at his threats. He was quite sure that Marbran would never risk losing his pile by giving Parrish away, for they were, of course, both British subjects and both in it together ...

Marbran always distrusted Parrish, and long before the breach came, he picked on me to act the spy on my employer. I, too, was born a gambler, but, like Marbran, I lacked the lucky touch which made Parrish a millionaire. Speculation proved my ruin. I have often thanked my G.o.d on my bended knees--as I shall do again to-night before I pa.s.s over--that my insane folly has ruined no one but myself ...

Already, when Hartley Parrish engaged me, I was up to the neck in speculation. Up to that time, however, I had managed to keep my head above water, but the large salary on which Parrish started me dazzled me. I tried a flutter in oil on a much larger scale than anything I had hitherto attempted, with the result that one day I found myself with a debt of nine hundred pounds to meet and no a.s.sets to meet it with. And I was two hundred pounds in debt to Hartley Parrish's petty cash account, which I kept.

It was Victor Marbran who came to my rescue.

Parrish had sent me over to Rotterdam to fetch some papers from Marbran. At this time I knew nothing of Parrish's blockade-running business. Parrish never took me into his confidence about it and the whole of the correspondence went direct to him through a number of secret channels with which I only gradually became acquainted behind his back.

I had met Marbran several times in London and also at Rotterdam. It had struck me that he had formed a liking for me. On this particular visit to Rotterdam Marbran took me out to dinner and encouraged me to speak about myself. He was very sympathetic, and this, coupled with the wine I had taken, led me to open my heart to him. Without giving myself away, I let him understand that I was in considerable financial difficulties, which I set down to the high cost of living as the result of the war.

Without a word of warning Marbran pulled out his cheque-book.

"How much do you want," he asked, "to put you straight?"

Nine hundred pounds, I told him.

He wrote the cheque at once there at the table. He would advance me the money, he said, and put me down for shares in a business in which he was interested.

It was a safe thing and profits were very high.

I could repay him at my leisure.

In this way I became a shareholder in Parrish's blockade-running syndicate. The return I was to make was to spy on my employer and to report to Marbran the letters which Parrish received and the names of the people whom he interviewed.

Of course, Marbran did not propose this plan at once. When I took leave of him that night, I remember, I all but broke down at the thought of his unsolicited generosity. I have had a hard life, Miss Trevert, and his seeming kindness broke me all up.

But I might have known.

I cashed Marbran's cheque and put back the two hundred pounds I had taken from the petty cash account.

But I went on speculating. You see, I did not believe Marbran's story about the shares he said he would put me down for. I thought it was a charitable tale to spare my feelings. So I plunged once more in the confident hope of recovering enough to repay my debt to Marbran.

A month later Marbran sent me a cheque for one hundred pounds. He said it was the balance of fifteen hundred pounds due to me as profits on my shares less the nine hundred pounds I owed him and five hundred pounds for my shares. But my speculations had by this time gone wrong again, and I was heartily glad presently to receive a further cheque for two hundred pounds from Marbran. From that time on I got from Marbran sums varying between one hundred and fifty pounds and five hundred pounds a month.

When Marbran made me his shameful offer, I rejected it with indignation. But I was fast in the trap.

Marbran explained to me in great detail and with the utmost candour the working of the Parrish syndicate.

He let me know very plainly that I was as deeply implicated as Parrish and he. I was a shareholder; I had received and was receiving my share of the profits. In my distress and shame I threatened to expose the pair of them. Had I known the source of his money, I told him, I should never have accepted it.

At that Marbran laughed contemptuously.

"You tell that yarn to the police," he sneered, "and hear what they say!"

And then I realized that I was in the net.

I make no excuses for myself. I shall make none to the Great Judge before whom in a little while I shall appear. I had not the moral force to resist Marbran.

I did his bidding: I continued to take his money and I held my peace.

And then came the breach between Parrish and Marbran. I was the cause of it. But for me, his trusty spy, Marbran would have known nothing of this payment of 150,000 which Parrish received from Spain, and this tragedy would not have happened.

G.o.d forgive me ...

Marbran appealed to Parrish in vain. What he wrote I never knew, for, shortly after, Parrish quietly and without any explanation took the confidential work out of my hands. I believe he suspected then who Marbran's spy was. But he said nothing to me of his suspicions at that time ...

Finally, Marbran came to London. It was on Tuesday of last week. I had been up in Sheffield on business, and on my return I found Marbran waiting for me at my rooms.

He was like a man possessed. Never before have I witnessed such an outburst of ungovernable rage. Parrish, it appears, had declined to see him. He swore that Parrish should not get the better of him if he had to kill him first. I can see Marbran now as he sat on my bed, his livid face distorted with fury.

"I'll give him a last chance," he cried, "and then, by G.o.d, let our smart Alec look out!"

This sort of talk frightened me. I knew Marbran meant mischief. He was a bad man to cross. I was desperately afraid he would waylay Parrish and bring down disaster on the three of us. I did my utmost to put the idea of violence out of his mind. I begged him to content himself with trying to frighten Parrish into paying up before trying other means.

My suggestion seemed to awaken some old memory in Marbran's mind.

"By Gad, Jeekes," he said, after a moment's thought, "you've given me an idea. Parrish has a yellow streak. He's scared of a gun. I saw it once, years ago, in a roughhouse we got into at Krugersdorp on the Rand. d.a.m.n it, I know how to bring the yellow dog to heel, and I'll tell you how we'll do it ..."

He then unfolded his plan. He would send Parrish a last demand for a settlement, threatening him with death if he did not pay up. The warning would reach Parrish on the following Sat.u.r.day. Marbran would contrive that he should receive it by the first post.

As soon as possible thereafter I was to go to Parrish boldly and demand his answer.

"And you'll take a gun," Marbran said, peering at me with his cunning little eyes, "and you'll show it.

And if at the sight of it you don't get the bra.s.s, then I don't know my old pal, Mister Hartley Parrish, Esquire!"

The proposal appalled me. I knew nothing of Hartley Parrish's "yellow streak." I knew him only as a hard and resolute man, swift in decision and ruthless in action. Whatever happened, I argued, Parrish would discharge me and there was every prospect of his handing me over to the police as well.

Marbran was deaf to my reasoning. I had nothing to fear, he protested. Parrish would collapse at the first sign of force. And as for my losing my job, Marbran would find me another and a better one in his office at Rotterdam.

Still I held out. The chance of losing my position, even of being sent to gaol, daunted me less, I think, than the admission to Parrish of the blackly ungrateful role I had played towards him. In the end I told Marbran to do his dirty work himself.

But I spoke without conviction. I realized that Marbran held me in a cleft stick and that he realized it, too. He wasted no further time in argument. I knew what I had to do, he said, and I would do it. Otherwise ...

He left me in an agony of mental stress. At that time, I swear to Heaven, Miss Trevert, I was determined to let Marbran do his worst rather than lend myself to this odious blackmailing trick, my own suggestion, as I bitterly remembered. But for the rest of the week his parting threat rang in my ears. Unless he heard by the following Sunday that I had confronted Parrish and called his bluff, as he put it, the British police should have word, not only of Parrish's activities in trading with the enemy, but of mine as well.

It was no idle threat. Parrish and Marbran had put men away before. I could give you the names ...

It is quite dark now. It must be an hour since Greve took you away. Soon he will be back with the police to arrest me and I must have finished by then, finished with the story, finished with life ...

Last week I worked at Parrish's city office. I told you how he kept me off his confidential work. On Sat.u.r.day morning I went round to the house in St.

James's Square to see whether Marbran had really sent his warning. Archer, my colleague, who was acting as confidential secretary in my stead, was there.

Parrish was at Harkings, he told me. Archer was going down by car that morning with his mail. It included two "blue letters" which Archer would, according to orders, hand to Parrish unopened.

These "blue letters," as we secretaries used to call them, written on a striking bluish paper, were the means by which all communications pa.s.sed between Parrish and Marbran on the syndicate's business.

They were drafted in conventional code and came to Parrish from all parts of Europe and in all kinds of ways. No one saw them except himself. By his strict injunctions, they were to be opened only by himself in person.

When Archer told me that two "blue letters" had come, I knew that Marbran had kept his word. Though my mind was not made up, instinct told me I was going to play my part ...

I could not face the shame of exposure. I was brought up in a decent English home. To stand in the dock charged with prolonging the sufferings of our soldiers and sailors in order to make money was a prospect I could not even contemplate.

I thought it all out that Sat.u.r.day morning as I stood at the dressing-table in my bedroom by the open drawer in which my automatic pistol lay. It was one given me by Parrish some years before at a time when he thought we might be going on a trip to Rumania ...

I slipped the pistol into my pocket. I felt like a man in a dream. I believe I went down to Harkings by train, but I have no clear recollection of the journey.

I seemed to come to my senses only when I found myself standing on the high bank of the rosery at Harkings, looking down upon the library window.

Outside in the gardens it was nearly dark, but from the window fell a stream of subdued light. The curtains had not been drawn and the window was open at the bottom. Parrish sat at the desk. Only the desk-lamp was lit, so that his face was in shadow, but his two hands, stretched out on the blotter in front of him, lay in a pool of light, and I caught the gleam of his gold signet ring.

He was not writing or working. He seemed to be thinking. I watched him in a fascinated sort of way.