The Hangman's Knot

Chapter I.—“Sowing the Wind.”-3

He laughed slyly. “It may surprise you to learn that I have been occupied for the best part of two years in finding out all I could about you three, and it is only after long and patient inquiries, and the expenditure of considerable sums of money that I feel at last justified in risking my safety in your hands.” He sighed. “There should, indeed, have been a fourth guest with us to-day, but, unhappily, last week he passed away with great suddenness, in fact, to make no mystery of it,”——his eyes twinkled—“he was hanged at the Old Bailey.”

One of his audience, the one he had pointed to as Mr. B., a square-jawed man with heavy features and small, suspicious-looking eyes, here ejaculated hoarsely and as if involuntarily “Clive Belgian! You had approached him?”

“No,” replied Mr. X., smilingly, “but I was upon the point of doing so, when three months ago he was unfortunate enough to get apprehended after he had shot that caretaker in Hume Buildings. I had had my eye upon him for some time, for I was sure he would prove a most valuable addition to our party. He was very capable, absolutely unscrupulous, and without a grain of pity in him.” He laughed again. “You have had considerable dealings with him, have you not, Mr. B.?” Then as the man addressed apparently showed no intention of making any reply, he went on quickly. “But to return to the purpose for which we are assembled here.” He spoke most impressively. “Now, straightaway, you can take it for granted, you are all three quite secured against the treachery of one another, for you are all engaged in unlawful undertakings, and it would be dangerous to the last degree for any one of you to——”

“What about yourself?” broke in a third man sharply, an uncommon-looking man with a high forehead and good facial angle, but most unprepossessing appearance, because the bony construction of his face was so pronounced, it seemed to be stretching the livid skin that covered it, almost to breaking point. “What about yourself? We know nothing about you?”

Mr. X. smiled. “But you soon shall do, my friend,” he replied, “for when I proceed to chapter and verse about the law-breaking proclivities of you three, I shall be equally open regarding my own.” He went on. “Now within the last few weeks I have approached each of you in turn recalling to you, firstly, that you have each suffered at the hands of this so-called society, under whose laws we live—as a matter of fact only one of us here has not served a term of imprisonment, and that individual is not I—and, secondly, that you all should have vengeances to exact. Accordingly, I have suggested that you should join with me to mete out—not only to the particular people concerned, but to the community generally—the punishments that are undoubtedly deserved.” He looked from one to the other. “Now that is the sole line I have taken, is it not, vengeance upon our particular enemies, and, in a broad way, making the community suffer as we have suffered?”

A short silence followed, and he received a nod of decisive, if sullen, agreement from each one before he resumed. “Well, before I approached any of you, I made sure that your temperaments were such that you would be willing to exact your vengeances if you could, and also, would be wholly callous to any suffering that you inflicted.” He laughed softly again. “Ah Chung's entertainments were a good school in which to try you out.”

“Come to the point,” growled the man with the face of tightly-drawn skin. “We are not going to stop here for ever.”

“Patience, my friend,” retorted the stout man. “I am coming to it now.” He spoke most impressively. “The exact position then is this. We are none of us, by any means, poor men and I——am a very rich one. If all of you were paupers, I have yet ample means to finance the whole project.” He struck the table lightly with his hand. “So, all I want is comrades. Men of sufficient strength of character to help me carry out my vengeance, along with their own. Then we shall enjoy together the punishments we inflict.” He threw out his hands. “What pleasure is there in drinking alone, and how much greater enjoyment then will be——”

“But how are we to know you have the means you say you have?” asked the fourth man brusquely. “It may be that this is only a trap you are setting for us, and you may be only out for common blackmail. That diamond in your ring, even, may be spurious and——”

The stout man instantly plucked the ring from his finger and handed it across the table to Mr. B. “He'll tell you,” he laughed in great good humour, “for he is the biggest buyer of stolen gems in London, and the police have been looking for him for years.”

Mr. B. with no expression upon his face took the ring and examined it. “Worth £200,” he remarked laconically. He half smiled. “I should give you £30 cash if it came to me on the way of business.”

“And how could I have found out all about you that I have,” asked the stout man, “unless I had been able to spend, and spend freely.” He shook his fat forefinger playfully at the man who had questioned his financial stability. “Why, to find out what I have found out about you alone, has cost me more than £1000, for I had to send a private inquiry agent expressly over to Shanghai, and all the time I was having you watched, day by day, by other agents over here.” He looked round upon them all. “But I'll soon convince you on the score of what means I possess. Listen, I'll tell you a story—a story with a sequel to it.”

No one made any comment, and after a few moments he went on. “Now cast your minds back to 15 years ago when the Cosmopolitan Investment Company came into the boom. A new star in finance had appeared, Oscar Bascoigne, a man in the early thirties, and I am sure you will all remember him. Good! Well, he floated that company with a capital of £2,000,000 and attracted the investments of people all over the English-speaking world. He was a dear personal friend of mine, and when he crashed and was sent down for seven years for fraudulent company promoting, I was perhaps the only person who grieved for him. He served more than five years of his sentence and then was released upon ticket of leave. He——”

“Ought to have been a lifer,” broke in the man with the tightly drawn skin. “He deserved nothing less.”

The stout man ignored the interruption. “——he went over to Santiago and there, with some thousands of pounds that he had secreted before the crash came, made a huge fortune out of nitrates, more than £1,000,000. Then he died, leaving everything to me, with the injunction, however, that in return I should avenge the wrong that had been done him, for he had been convicted under the direction of a servile and unjust Judge, urged on by the lies and calumnies of the prosecution for the Crown. This last fellow handed out the usual flap-doodle that every one who had rushed in for the gamble were innocent and confiding creatures, and that Bascoigne had robbed the widows and the fatherless and brought ruin upon countless homes.” He thumped again upon the table. “Now do you understand my motives and believe that I have ample means?”

The man with the death-mask face smiled coldly. “Yes, I believe you,” he said, “for you are Bascoigne himself, I should not have recognised you, but I have heard you at the company's meetings and remember now that oily voice.” He spoke quite passionlessly. “Curse you! I lost £2000 that I could ill spare at the time, and you ruined my poor old mother when your company failed. You are a great scoundrel.”

The stout man was by no means abashed, instead, he laughed as if he were very amused. “And when you add to that,” he said, “the fact that in leaving England I broke my ticket-of-leave, and in consequence there is still a warrant out for my apprehension, you will appreciate how thoroughly I am one of you—an outcast from society, and the prey of the Law if it can lay its hands upon me.”

“But you are not being open with us, as you made out you were,” said the square-jawed man angrily. “This confession that you are Bascoigne has been forced upon you.”

“Not at all,” replied Bascoigne warmly. “I could have denied it, and our friend here had no proof. Besides, did I not commence my little story by telling you that it had a sequel? And if you had waited for that sequel you would have learnt at the end that if Bascoigne, the financier, had died”—he looked very grim—“yet as Mr. X. he has now risen from the dead to wreak vengeance upon his enemies.”

Then with a quick movement he thrust his hand into the pocket of his jacket and drew out a long packet, wrapped in brown paper. “And now for this last proof,” he said sharply, as he proceeded to draw off the wrapping. “Ten one-thousand pounds Government bonds-to-bearer. Exactly 49 numbers between each one of them, and I possess the lot, locked securely in my safe.” His smile was proud and arrogant. “Half a million pounds, gentlemen, and that by no means represents the whole of my possessions. So now will you throw in your fortunes with mine and obtain the revenges for which I know you crave?”

A long silence followed, and then the man with the bony face nodded. “Yes, I will,” he said. “My liver is cirrhosed, and I know I have not long to live. I should like to settle a few accounts before I go.”

“I'm willing, too,” said the square-jawed man savagely. “I'd swing happily if I could obtain all the revenge I want, first.”

“Agreed,” said the third man, quietly. “Life is humdrum, and it will be an adventure to punish the man who ruined me.”

“Yes, yes, as you say, life is humdrum,” exclaimed Bascoigne, excitedly, and speaking with intense passion, “and we will not stop only at the gratification of our private vengeances, but will wage relentless war upon the society that has hounded us down. We will bring a chilling fear into its smug and hypocritical heart, and from a hundred bloody deeds it shall learn that an avenger stalks the land. We will——” but overcome by the vehemence of his emotion, he paused to get his breath, and then before he could resume the boney-faced man broke in.

“A drug-taker, eh? No! well you look like one to me, anyhow!” He shrugged his shoulders. “I take chloral myself.” He laughed grimly. “Really, we shall be dangerous maniacs let loose among the community, if we are going to act as you suggest.”

Bascoigne pulled himself together, and his voice dropped into crisp and business-like tones. “But now,” he announced, “I'll make all the necessary introductions.”

Uneasy looks came at once into the faces of the other men, but he went on emphatically. “Yes, it is absolutely necessary that we should know all about one another, so that there may be perfect confidence between us all, and the full realisation that any treachery among us—and we all fall together.”

“Well, go on,” said the man who had just admitted he took chloral, testily, “and get it over, quick. You are not addressing the Cosmopolitan Investment Company now. You have been too verbose all along.”