Davenport Dunn, a Man of Our Day. Volume 2

“The Garottaman is one of the first clubs in town,” broke in Fisk.

“You ‘re too much like sailors on a raft for my fancy,” said Grog, dryly.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Just that you are hungry and have got nothing to eat, – you ‘re eternally casting lots who is to be devoured next! But we ‘ll not fall out about that. I ‘ve been turning over in my head about this Simmy Hankes, and I ‘d like to have an hour in his company, all alone. Could you manage to be out of the way to-morrow morning and leave me to entertain him at breakfast?”

“It will suit my book to a trivet, for I want to go over to Barnes to look after a yearling I ‘ve got there, and you can tell Hankes that the colt was taken suddenly ill.”

“He ‘ll not be very curious about the cause of your absence,” said Grog, dryly. “The pleasure of seeing me so unexpectedly will put everything else out of his head.” A grim smile showed the spirit in which he spoke these words.

It was now very late, and Davis threw himself on a sofa, with his great-coat over him, and, wishing his friend a goodnight, was soon sound asleep; nor did he awake till aroused by the maid-servant getting the room into readiness and arranging the table for breakfast. Then, indeed, Grog arose and made his toilet for the day, – not a very elaborate nor a very elegant one, but still a disguise such as the most practised detective could not have penetrated, and yet removable in a moment, so that he might, by merely taking off eyebrows and moustaches, become himself at once.

Having given orders that the gentleman he expected should be shown in on his arrival, Grog solaced himself at the fire with a morning paper, in all the ease of slippers and an arm-chair. Almost the first thing that struck his eye was a paragraph informing the world that the marriage of a distinguished individual – whose approaching elevation to the peerage had been already announced – with one of the most beautiful daughters of the aristocracy would take place early in the ensuing week. And then, like a codicil to a will, followed a brilliant description of the gold dressing-case ordered by Mr. Davenport Dunn, at Storr’s, for his bride. He was yet occupied with the paragraph when Mr. Hankes entered the room.

“I am afraid I have made a mistake,” said that bland gentleman. “I thought this was Captain Fisk’s apartment.”

“You’re all right,” said Grog, leisurely surveying the visitor, whose “get up” was really splendid. Amethyst studs glittered on his shirt; his ample chest seemed a shrine in its display of amulets and charmed offerings, while a massive chain crossed and recrossed him so frequently that he appeared to be held together by its coils. Fur and velvet, too, abounded in his costume; and even to the immense “gland” that depended from his cane, there was an amount of costliness that bespoke affluence.

“I regret, sir,” began Hankes, pompously, “that I have not the honor – ”

“Yes, yes; you have the honor,” broke in Grog. “You’ve had it this many a year. Sit down here. I don’t wear exactly so well as you, but you ‘ll remember me presently. I ‘m Kit Davis, man. You don’t require me to say who you are.”

“Davis, – Grog Davis,” muttered Hankes to himself, while an ashy paleness spread over his face.

“You don’t look overjoyed to meet with an old friend,” said Grog, with a peculiar grin; “but you ought, man. There’s no friendships like early ones. The fellows who knew us in our first scrapes are always more lenient to our last wickednesses.”

“Captain Davis, – Captain Davis!” stammered out Hankes, “this is indeed an unexpected pleasure!”

“So much so that you can hardly get accustomed to it,” said Grog, with another grin. “Fisk received a hasty message that called him away to the country this morning, and left me to fill his place; and I, as you may guess, was little loath to have a cosey chat with an old friend that I have not seen – how many years is it?”

“It must be nigh ten, or even twelve!”

“Say, seven or eight and twenty, man, and you ‘ll be nigher the mark. Let me see,” said he, trying to remember, “the last time I saw you was at Exeter. You were waiting for your trial about those bills of George Colborne. Don’t look so frightened; there’s no one to hear us here. It was as narrow an escape there as ever man had. It was after that, I suppose, you took the name of Hankes?”

“Yes,” said the other, in a faint whisper.

“Well, I must say Christianity does n’t seem to have disagreed with you. You ‘re in capital case, – a little pluffy for work, but in rare health, and sleek as a beaver.”

“Always the same. He will have his joke,” muttered Hankes, as though addressing some third party to the colloquy.

“I can’t say that I have committed any excesses in that line of late,” said Grog, dryly. “I ‘ve had rather a tough fight with the world!”

“But you’ve fought it well, and successfully,” Davis said the other, with confidence. “Have n’t you married your daughter to a Viscount?”

“Who told you that? Who knows it here?” cried Grog, hurriedly.

“I heard it from Fordyce’s people a fortnight ago. It was I myself brought the first news of it to Davenport Dunn.”

“And what did he say?”

“Well, he didn’t say much; he wondered a little how it came about; hinted that you must be an uncommon clever fellow, for it was a great stroke, if all should come right.”

“You mean about the disputed claim to the title?”

“Yes.”

“He has his doubts about that, then, has he?”

“He has n’t much doubt on the subject, for it lies with himself to decide the matter either way. If he likes to produce certain papers, Conway’s claim is as good as established. You are aware that they have already gained two of their actions on ejectment; but Dunn could save them a world of time and labor, and that’s why he’s coming up to-morrow. Fordyce is to meet him at Calvert’s Hotel, and they ‘re to go into the entire question.”

“What are his terms? How much does he ask?” said Grog, bluntly.

“I can’t possibly say; I can only suspect.”

“What do you suspect, then?”

“Well,” said Hankes, drawing a long breath, “my impression is that if he decide for the present Viscount, he ‘ll insist upon an assignment of the whole Irish property in his favor.”

“Two thousand a year, landed property!” exclaimed Grog.

“Two thousand eight hundred, and well paid,” said Hankes, coolly; “but that is not all.”

“Not all! what do you mean?”

“Why, there’s another hitch. But what am I saying?” cried he, in terror. “I don’t believe that I’d speak of these things on my death-bed.”

“Be frank and open with me, Simeon. I am a true pal to the man that trusts me, and the very devil to him that plays me false.”

“I know it,” said the other, gloomily.

“Well, now for that other hitch, as you called it What is it?”

“It’s about an estate that was sold under the ‘Encumbered Court,’ and bought by the late Lord Lackington – at least in his name – and then resold at a profit – ” Here he stopped, and seemed as though he had already gone too far.

“I understand,” broke in Grog; “the purchase-money was never placed to the Viscount’s credit, and your friend Dunn wants an acquittance in full of the claim.”

“You’ve hit it!”

“What’s the figure, – how much?”

“Thirty-seven thousand six hundred pounds.”

“He ‘s no retail-dealer, this same Davenport Dunn,” said Grog, with a grin; “that much I will say of him.”

“He has a wonderful head,” said Hankes, admiringly.

“I ‘ll agree with you, if it save his neck!” said Davis-, and then added, after a moment, “He’s bringing up all these documents and papers with him, you said?”

“Yes; he intends to make some settlement or other of the matter before he marries. After that he bids farewell to business forever.”

“He’ll go abroad, I suppose?” said Davis, not attaching any strong signification to his remark; but suddenly perceiving an expression of anxiety in Hankes’s face, he said, “Mayhap it were all as well; he’d be out of the way for a year or so!”

The other nodded an assent.

“He has ‘realized’ largely, I take it?”

Another nod.

“Foreign funds and railways, eh?”

“Not railways, – no, scrip!” said Hankes, curtly.

“Won’t there be a Jolly smash!” said Davis, with a bitter laugh. “I take it there’s not been any one has ‘done the trick’ these fifty years like this fellow.”

“I suspect you ‘re right there,” murmured Hankes.

“I have never seen him but once, and then only for a few minutes, but I read him like a printed book. He had put on the grand integrity and British-mercantile-honesty frown to scowl me down, to remind Davis, ‘the leg,’ that he was in the presence of Dunn, the Unimpeachable, but I put one eye a little aslant, this way, and I just said, ‘Round the corner, old fellow, – round the corner!’ Oh, didn’t he look what the Yankees call ‘mean ugly’!”

“He ‘ll never forget it to you, that’s certain.”

“If he did, I ‘d try and brush up his memory a bit,” said Davis, curtly. “He must be a rare sharp one,” added he, after a pause.

“The cleverest man in England, I don’t care who the other is,” cried Hankes, with enthusiasm. “When the crash comes, – it will be in less than a month from this day, – the world will discover that they’re done to the tune of between three and four millions sterling, and I defy the best accountant that ever stepped to trace out where the frauds originated, – whether it was the Railways smashed the Mines, the Mines that ruined the Great Ossory, the Great Ossory that dipped the Drainage, or the Drainage that swamped the Glengariff, not to speak of all the incidental confusion about estates never paid for, and sums advanced on mock mortgage, together, with cancelled scrip reissued, preference shares circulated before the current ones, and dock warrants for goods that never existed. And that ain’t all” continued Hankes, to whom the attentive eagerness of Grog’s manner vouched for the interest his narrative excited, – “that ain’t all; but there isn’t a class nor condition in life, from the peer to the poorest laboring-man, that he has n’t in some way involved in his rogueries, and made him almost a partner in the success. Each speculation being dependent for its solvency on the ruin of some other, Ossory will hate Glengariff, Drainage detest Mines, Railways curse Patent Fuel, and so on. I ‘ll give the Equity Court and the Bankrupt Commissioners fifty years and they’ll not wind up the concern.”

Grog rubbed his hands gleefully, and laughed aloud.

“Then all the people that will be compromised!” said Hankes; “Glumthal himself is not too clean-handed; lords and fine ladies that lent their names to this or that company, chairmen of committees in the House that did n’t disdain to accept five hundred or a thousand shares as a mark of grateful recognition for pushing a bill through its second reading; ay, and great mercantile houses that discounted freely on forged acceptances, owning that they thought the best of all security was the sight of a convict-hulk and a felon’s jacket, and that no man was such prompt pay as he that took a loan of a friend’s signature. What a knockdown blow for all that lath-and-plaster edifice we dignify by the name of Credit, when the world sees that it is a loaf the rogue can take a slice out of as well as the honest man!”

“Won’t we have stunning leaders in the ‘Times’ about it!” cried Grog. “It will go deuced hard with the Ministry that have made this fellow a peer.”

“Yes, they’ll have to go out,” said Hanked, gravely; “a cabinet may defend a bad measure, – they ‘ll never fight for a bad man.”

“And they can’t hang this fellow?” said Grog, after a pause.

“Hang! I should think not, indeed.”

“Nor even transport him?”

“No, not touch a hair of his head. He’ll have to live abroad for a year or two, – in Paris or Rome, – no great hardship if it were Naples; he ‘ll make a surrender of his property, – an old house somewhere and some brick-fields, a mine of Daryamon coal, and a flax-mill on a river that has scarcely any water, together with a sheaf of bad bills and Guatemala bonds. They ‘ll want to examine him before the Court, and he’ll send them a sick-certificate, showing how agitation and his recent losses have almost made him imbecile; and even Mr. Linklater will talk feelingly about his great reverse of condition.”

“It’s as good as a play to hear about this,” said Grog; “it beats Newmarket all to sticks.”

“If it’s a play, it won’t be a benefit to a good many folk,” said Hankes, grinning.

“Well, he is a clever fellow, – far and away cleverer than I ever thought him,” said Grog. “Any man – I don’t care who he is – can do the world to a short extent, but to go in at them on this scale a fellow must be a genius.”

“He is a genius,” said Hankes, in a tone of decision. “Just think for a moment what a head it must have been that kept all that machinery at work for years back without a flaw or a crack to be detected, started companies, opened banks, worked mines, railroads, and telegraphs, built refuge harbors, drained whole counties, brought vast tracts of waste land into cultivation, equalizing the chances of all enterprises by making the success of this come to the aid of the failure of that: the grand secret of the whole being the dexterous application of what is called ‘Credit.’”

“All that wouldn’t do at Doncaster,” said Grog; “puff your horse as much as you like, back him up how you will in the betting-ring, if he has n’t the speed in him it won’t do. It’s only on ‘Change you can ‘brag out of a bad hand.’ Dunn would never cut any figure on the turf.”

“There you are all wrong; there never yet was the place, or the station, where that man would n’t have distinguished himself. Why, it was that marvellous power of his kept me with him for years back. I knew all that was going on. I knew that we hadn’t – so to say – coals for one boiler while we had forty engines in full stroke; but I could n’t get away. It was a sort of fascination; and when he ‘d strike out a new scheme, and say carelessly, ‘Call the capital one million, Hankes,’ he spoke like a man that had only to put his hand in a bag and produce the money. Nothing daunted, nothing deterred him. He’d smash a rival company as coolly as you ‘d crush a shell under your heel, and he ‘d turn out a Government with the same indifference he ‘d discharge a footman.”

“Well,” grumbled out Grog, at last, for he was getting irritable at the exaggerated estimate Hankes formed of his chief, “what has it all come to? Ain’t he smashed at last?”

“He smashed!” cried Hankes, in derision. “He smashed! You are smashed! I am smashed! any one else you like is smashed, but he is not! Mind my words, Davis, Davenport Dunn will be back here, in London, before two years are over, with the grandest house and the finest retinue in town. His dinners will be the best, and his balls the most splendid of the season. No club will rival his cook, no equipage beat his in the Park. When he rises in the Lords, – which he ‘ll do only seldom, – there will be a most courteous attention to his words; and, above all, you’ll never read one disparaging word about him in the papers. I give him two years, but it’s just as likely he ‘ll do it in less.”

“It may be all as you say,” said Grog, sullenly, “though I won’t say I believe it myself; but, at all events, it does n’t help me on my way to my own business with him. I want these papers of Lackington’s out of his hands! He may ‘walk into’ the whole world, for all that I care: but I want to secure my daughter as the Viscountess, – that’s how it stands.”

“How much ready money can you command? What sum can you lay your hand on?”

Grog drew his much-worn pocket-book from his breast, and, opening the leaves, began to count to himself.

“Something like fifty-seven pounds odd shillings,” said he, with a grin.

“If you could have said twelve or fourteen thousand down, it might be nearer the mark. Conway’s people are ready with about ten thousand.”

“How do you know?” asked Grog, savagely.

“Dunn told me as much. But he does n’t like to treat with them, because the difficulty about the Irish estate would still remain unsettled.”

“Then what am I to do? How shall I act?” asked Grog.

“It’s not an easy matter to advise upon,” said Hankes, thoughtfully, “for Dunn holds to one maxim with invariable tenacity, which is never to open any negotiation with a stranger which cannot be completed in one interview. If you couldn’t begin by showing the bank-notes, he’d not discuss the question at all.”

Grog arose and walked the room with hasty steps: he tried to seem calm, but in the impatient gesture with which he threw his cigar into the fire might be read the agitation he could not conquer nor conceal.

“What could you yourself do with him, Hankes?” said he, at last.

“Nothing, – absolutely nothing,” said the other. “He never in his life permitted a subordinate to treat, except on his own behalf; that was a fixed law with him.”

“Curse the fellow!” burst out Davis, “he made rules and laws as if the world was all his own.”

“Well, he managed to have it pretty much his own way, it must be confessed,” said Hankes, with a half-smile.

“He is to be in town to-morrow, you said,” muttered Grog, half aloud. “Where does he stop?”

“This time it will be at Calvert’s, Upper Brook Street. His house in Piccadilly is ready, but he ‘ll not go there at present.”

“He makes a mystery of everything, so far as I can see,” said Grog, angrily. “He comes up by the express-train, does n’t he?” grumbled he, after a pause.

“If he has n’t a special engine,” said Hankes. “He always, however, has his own coupé furnished and fitted up for himself and never, by any chance, given to any one else. There ‘s a capital bed in it, and a desk, where he writes generally the whole night through, and a small cooking-apparatus, where he makes his coffee, so that no servant ever interrupts him at his work. Indeed, except from some interruption, or accident on the line, the guard would not dare to open his door. Of course his orders are very strictly obeyed. I remember one night Lord Jedburg sent in his name, and Dunn returned for answer, ‘I can’t see him.’”

“And did the Prime Minister put up with that?” asked Davis.

“What could he do?” said the other, with a shrug of the shoulder.

“If I were Lord Jedburg, I’d have unkennelled him, I promise you that, Simmy. But here, it’s nigh twelve o’clock, and I have a mass of things to do. I say, Hankes, could you contrive to look in here to-morrow evening, after nightfall? I may have something to tell you.”

“We were strictly confidential, – all on honor, this morning, Kit,” said the other, whispering.

“I think you know me, Mister Simmy,” was all Grog’s reply. “I don’t think my worst enemy could say that I ever ‘split’ on the fellow that trusted me.”

A hearty shake-hands followed, and they parted.

CHAPTER XXXIV. THE TRAIN

The up-train from Holyhead was a few minutes behind time at Chester, and the travellers who awaited its arrival manifested that mixture of impatience and anxiety which in our railroad age is inseparable from all delay. One stranger, however, displayed a more than ordinary eagerness for its coming, and compared the time of his watch repeatedly with the clock of the station.

At length from the far-away distance the wild scream of the engine was heard, and with many a cranking clash and many a heavy sob the vast machine swept smoothly in beneath the vaulted roof. As the stranger moved forward to take his place, he stopped to hear a few words that met his ear. It was a railroad official said: “Mr. Davenport Dunn delayed us about a quarter of an hour; he wanted to give a look at the new pier, but we have nearly made it up already.” “All right!” replied the station-master. The stranger now moved on till he came in front of a coupé carriage, whose window-blinds rigidly drawn down excluded all view from without. For an instant he seemed to fumble at the door, in an endeavor to open it, but was speedily interrupted by a guard calling out, “Not there, sir, – that’s a private carriage;” and thus warned, the traveller entered another lower down the line. There were two other travellers in the same compartment, apparently strangers to each other. As the stranger with whom we are immediately concerned took his place, he slipped into his pocket a small latch-key, of which, in the very brief attempt to try the door of the private carriage, he had successfully proved the utility, and, drawing his rug across his knees, lay calmly back.

“Here we are, detained again,” grumbled out one of the travellers. “I say, guard, what is it now?”

“Waiting for a telegram for Mr. Davenport Dunn, sir. There it comes! all right” A low bell rings out, a wild screech following, and with many a clank and shock the dusky monster sets out once more.

“Public convenience should scarcely be sacrificed in this manner,” grumbled out the former speaker. “What is this Mr. Dunn to you or to me that we should be delayed for his good pleasure?”

“I am afraid, sir,” replied the other, whose dress and manner bespoke a clergyman, “that we live in an age when wealth is all-powerful, and its possessors dictate the law to all poorer than themselves.”

“And can you tell me of any age when it was otherwise?” broke in the last arrival, with a half-rude chuckle. “It’s all very fine to lay the whole blame of this, that, and t’ other to the peculiar degeneracy of our own time; but my notion is, the world grows neither worse nor better.” There was that amount of defiance in the tone of the speaker that seemed to warn his companions, for they each of them maintained a strict silence. Not so with him; he talked away glibly about the influence of money, pretty plainly intimating that, as nobody ever met the man who was indifferent to its possession, the abuse showered upon riches was nothing but cant and humbug. “Look at the parsons,” said he; “they tell you it is all dross and rubbish, and yet they make it the test of your sincerity whenever they preach a charity sermon. Look at the lawyers, and they own that it is the only measure they know by which to recompense an injury; then take the doctors, and you ‘ll see that their humanity has its price, and the good Samaritan charges a guinea a visit.”

The individuals to whom these words were addressed made no reply; indeed, there was a tone of confident assumption in the speaker that was far from inviting converse, and now a silence ensued on all sides.

“Do either of you gentlemen object to tobacco?” said the last speaker, after a pause of some duration; and at the same time, without waiting for the reply, he produced a cigar-case from his pocket, and began deliberately to strike a light.

“I am sorry to say, sir,” responded the clergyman, “that smoking disagrees with me, and I cannot accustom myself to endure the smell of tobacco.”

“All habit,” rejoined the other, as he lighted his cigar. “I was that way myself for years, and might have remained so, too, but that I saw the distress and inconvenience I occasioned to many jolly fellows who loved their pipe; and so I overcame my foolish prejudices, and even took to the weed myself.”

The other travellers muttered some low words of dissatisfaction; and the clergyman, opening the window, looked out, apparently in search of the guard.

“It’s only a cheroot, and a prime one,” said the smoker, coolly; “and as you object, I ‘ll not light another.”

“A vast condescension on your part, sir, seeing that we have already signified our dislike to tobacco,” said the lay traveller.

“I did not remark that you gave any opinion at all,” said the smoker; “and my vast condescension, as you term it, is entirely in favor of this gentleman.”

There was no mistaking the provocation of this speech, rendered actually insulting by the mode in which it was delivered; and the traveller to whom it was addressed, enveloping himself in his cloak, sat moodily back, without a word. The train soon halted for a few seconds; and, brief as was the interval, this traveller employed it to spring from his place and seek a refuge elsewhere, – a dexterous manouvre which seemed to excite the envy of the parson, now left alone with his uncongenial companion. The man of peace, however, made the best of it, and, drawing his travelling-cap over his eyes, resolved himself to sleep. For a considerable while the other sat still, calmly watching him; and at last, when perfectly assured that the slumber was not counterfeited, he gently arose, and drew the curtain across the lamp in the roof of the carriage. A dim, half-lurid light succeeded, and by this uncertain glare the stranger proceeded to make various changes in his appearance. A large bushy wig of black hair was first discarded, with heavy eyebrows, and whiskers to match; an immense overcoat was taken off, so heavily padded and stuffed that when denuded of it the wearer seemed half his size; large heels were unscrewed from his boots, reducing his height by full a couple of inches; till, at length, in place of a large, unwieldy-looking man of sixty, lumbering and beetle-browed, there came forth a short, thick-set figure, with red hair and beard, twinkling eyes of a fierce gray, and a mouth the very type of unflinching resolution. Producing a small looking-glass, he combed and arranged his whiskers carefully, re-tied his cravat, and bestowed a most minute scrutiny on his appearance, muttering, as he finished, to himself, “Ay, Kit, you ‘re more like yourself now!” It is, perhaps, unnecessary to say this speech was addressed to our acquaintance Grog Davis, nor was it altogether what is called a “French compliment;” he did look terribly like himself. There was in his hard, stern face, his pinched-up eyes, and his puckered mouth, an amount of resolute vigor that showed he was on the eve of some hazardous enterprise. His toilet completed, he felt in his breastpocket, to assure himself that something there was not missing; and then, taking out his watch, he consulted the time. He had scarcely time to replace it in his pocket, when the train entered a deep cutting between two high banks of clay. It was, apparently, the spot he had waited for; and in an instant he had unfastened the door by his latch-key, and stood on the ledge outside. One more look within to assure himself that the other was still asleep, and he closed the door, and locked it.