The Man Who Bought London Read Free Page A

chance of obtaining foothold, and she was left behind with a score of others. ‘Time’s money,’ said the grey-haired stranger cheerfully. ‘Don’t be mean with it!’
    ‘I can’t afford to be anything else,’ said the girl, pardonably exasperated. ‘Possibly you haven’t to face the wrath of an employer with a watch in his hand and doom on his face.’
    She laughed a little in spite of her vexation.
    ‘I’m so sorry,’ she pleaded; ‘but I did not intend allowing myself the luxury of a grumble about my worries – you were saying you have bought a lunatic asylum.’
    He nodded, a twinkle in his eye.
    ‘And you were thinking I had just escaped from one,’ he said accusingly. ‘Yes, I’ve just bought the Coldharbour Asylum – lock, stock, and barrel –’
    She looked at him incredulously.
    ‘Do you mean that?’ she asked, and her scepticism was justified, for the Coldharbour Asylum is the largest in London, and the second largest in the world.
    ‘I mean it,’ he said. ‘I am going to build the cutest residential club in London on that site.’
    There was no time to say any more. Another train came in and, escorted by the grey-haired man, who in the shortest space of time had assumed a guardianship over her which was at once comforting and disconcerting, she found a seat in a smoking carriage. It was so easy to chat with him, so easy to confide hopes and fears which till that moment she had not put into words.
    She found herself at Oxford Circus all too soon, and oblivious of the fact that the hands of the station clock pointed to twenty minutes after nine. ‘A sheep as a lamb,’ said her footsteps hollowly, as she went leisurely along the vaulted passageway to the lift.
    ‘Were you going to Oxford Circus?’ she asked, suddenly seized with a fear that she had taken this purchaser of lunatic asylums out of his way.
    ‘Curiously enough, I was,’ he said. ‘I’m buying some shops in Oxford Street at half-past nine.’
    Again she shot a swift glance at him, and he chuckled as he saw her shrink back a little.
    ‘I am perfectly harmless,’ he said mockingly.
    They stepped out into Argyll Street together, and he offered his hand.
    ‘I hope to meet you again,’ he said, but did not tell her his name – it was King Kerry – though, he had read hers in the book she was carrying.
    She felt a little uncomfortable, but gave him a smiling farewell. He stood for some time looking after her.
    A man, unkempt, with a fixed, glassy look in his eye, had been watching the lift doors from the opposite side of the street. He started to cross as the grey-haired stranger made his appearance. Suddenly two shots rang out, and a bullet buzzed angrily past the grey man’s face.
    ‘That’s yours, Mister!’ howled a voice, and the next instant the owner was grabbed by two policemen.
    A slow smile gathered at the corners of the grey-haired man’s lips.
    ‘Horace,’ he said, and shook his head disapprovingly, ‘you’re a rotten shot!’
    On the opposite side of Oxford Street, a man watched the scene from the upper window of a block of offices.
    He saw the racing policemen, the huge crowd which gathered in a moment, and the swaying figures of the officers of the law and their half-mad prisoner. He saw, too, a grey-haired man, unharmed and calm, slowly moving away, talking with a sergeant of police who had arrived on the scene at the moment. The watcher shook a white fist in the direction of King Kerry.
    ‘Some day, my friend!’ he said between his clenched teeth, ‘I will find a bullet that goes to its mark – and the girl from Denver City will be free!’

CHAPTER III
    Mr Tack stood by the cashier’s desk in the ready-made department. He wore upon his face the pained look of one who had set himself the pleasant task of being disagreeable, and yet feared the absence of opportunity.
    ‘She won’t come; we’ll get a wire at eleven, saying she’s ill, or her mother has been taken to the infirmary,’ he said