# The Four Philanthropists/Chapter 2
### CHAPTER II THE GENERAL PHILANTHROPIC REMOVAL COMPANY MAKES A BEGINNING

We had the excellent dinner our careful thought in choosing it deserved, and some bottles of excellent wine, which we drank to the success of our effort to further human progress. The next morning I found my mind dreamy and musing, hardly in condition for the hard thinking needful to proceed fittingly with so august an enterprise. But I made shift to go to Lincoln's Inn Fields about eleven, assured that a short contact with the practical Morton would brace my wandering mind to its normal power of concentration. A long intimacy with him had taught me how good he was for it. He was an old friend of mine; we had been at Oxford together; to him I owed most of my briefs; and they would have been many more had he not been only a junior partner in a firm which affected old counsel.
But even before I reached his wholesome presence I was stirred from my dreaminess. As I drew near his door, there passed me a young girl—a very pretty young girl indeed. In any case she ​would have attracted my admiring attention, but she made a singularly vivid impression on my mind in its receptive condition. I saw with that clearness of vision which sometimes comes of nerves a little irritated, that her large eyes were bright with hardly-restrained tears, that her lips were pressed together out of their natural fulness to check their quivering, that her slender, pliant figure drooped and that she walked with a heaviness out of keeping with her years. Indeed, my plastic mind received an amazingly full and intimate picture of her, one likely to abide in it for a long while. I stood on the steps of Morton's office and looked after her. She went into the gardens and sat down.
I went into the office and sent in my name to Morton. A clerk ushered me quickly into his room, and I saw at once that his usual placidity had been ruffled, and that he was in a bad temper.
We exchanged greetings. I sat down and said, "I have come to talk to you about Mr. Albert Amsted Pudleigh."
"You have, have you? I've just been talking about him, hang him!" said Morton, with pleasing but unprofessional warmth.
"If you once come across a man like Pudleigh, you're always coming across him. What has he been doing now?"
"It's still that Pavis business, the Quorley ​Granite Company. There's nothing to be done in it; it's in his pocket, and there it must stay. But the present bother is that Miss Pavis won't let us try to recover from the estate of her late trustee; and do what I will, I can't persuade the obstinate little mule to change her mind. She says that his family are poor; and he thought that he was acting for the best; and if she can't have her own money she won't have theirs. I'm a good deal worried about her, for I'm sure she must be at the end of her resources. Well, well; what do you want to know about Pudleigh?"
"I want the name of his richest enemy."
"I don't suppose he's got a rich enemy. He only robs the poor; he hasn't the pluck to rob anyone else," said Morton thoughtfully.
"The poor are no use. I want his rich enemies. I suppose I shall have to try his friends, the men he works with. I know he's a confederate of some of our choicest Kings of Finance. Do you happen to know his present accomplices?"
"At present he is foisting a Fertilizer Company on the idiot British speculator; and Gutermann and John Driver are his confederates. Gutermann is a very timid native of Hamburg and John Driver is one of the bluffest rascals in the city of London. Indeed, they call him Honest John Driver, on the lucus a non lucendo principle."
"He sounds like the man I want," I said thoughtfully.
​"What are you going to do? What do you want with Pudleigh? He's a most dangerous man; you'd much better keep out of his way," said Morton, with some anxiety.
"I have in my mind a little deal I might do with him."
"A little deal he will do you with!" said Morton sharply.
"I think not. I have a great belief in honesty," I said quickly. "Even the astute Albert Amsted Pudleigh must bump his head against it—sometimes."
"You'd much better let him bump his head against some one else's honesty. He doesn't bump it often."
"My honesty is harder than most people's. It will hurt him more."
"You're such an obstinate beggar. But I do wish you'd listen to me just this once, and leave Pudleigh alone," said Morton, almost fretfully.
"It's very good of you to be so anxious about me, but I'll be careful," I said, rising.
"Much better let it alone. But there, he can't do you much harm. You haven't enough to lose for him."
"What I have is very precious to me," I said. "Good-by, old chap, many thanks for your information."
"I wish it had been a couple of briefs," said ​Morton. "I keep dinning into the ears of my poor old men that you do your work better and cheaper than their old fossils; but they are set in their groove."
"Oh, that's all right, my dear fellow. Wait till you're a senior partner; I shall wallow in work. Good-by." And I left him.
When I came out of the house I went through the gardens in the hope of seeing my pretty vision once more; but she had gone. I went back to the Temple and into the chambers of a friend who supplemented his briefs by incursions into the city. He chanced to know all about the new Fertilizer Company, and told me the very thing I wanted to hear—that it had been floated with such success that even now the directors must be on the point of dividing the spoil. He could not give me an introduction to Driver.
I took a hansom to the city and tried my stockbroker, and after him I tried a West African director of my acquaintance. Neither of them could give me the introduction I needed, so I took another hansom and drove to Chelubai's rooms in Jermyn Street.
I told him what I had learned about Pudleigh and the Fertilizer Company, that the Directors were on the point of dividing the spoil. He, too, was somewhat slack; and before discussing the matter he mixed a couple of brandies and sodas.
​We drank them, thoughtfully, and then he said: "I see how it is; when your friends talk of the directors dividing the spoil, they mean that they are going to unload their holdings and sell the shares they have in the Company."
"I suppose that's it."
"And, of course, the fewer who unload, the better the price they will get."
"That's so."
"Well, you have shown excellent reasons why John Driver should be willing to pay handsomely for the removal of Pudleigh."
"Yes; but the nuisance of it is, I can't get an introduction to Honest John Driver. I've tried the three likeliest people I know."
"You've a poor idea of business, Roger," said Chelubai sadly. "You don't need an introduction to a man you can do something for. You can go to him straight and make your offer. If he likes it, he accepts; if he doesn't, he refuses, and no harm is done."
"It's a curious offer to make, you know."
"I don't see it. In business no offers are curious. They are good or bad. This is a good one; and if Driver is really a first-class King of Finance, he will see it at once."
"But I should put myself in his power a good bit I don't want him going about and saying that a rising young barrister came and offered to ​remove one of his financial accomplices for a consideration. I wanted to sound him first."
"H'm. You hit a weak point there," said Chelubai thoughtfully. "It certainly would do you no good professionally, except in financial circles. It seems to me that I, an independent American gentleman with a good knowledge of business, could make the offer much better. We Americans have the reputation for being fresher in our methods. What's our customer's address?"
"209B Old Jewry."
Chelubai pulled out his watch, and said: "Ten minutes to one. I'll be off at once; I may catch him, and get him to lunch with me. If the gang are on the point of unloading, there is no time to lose. He will probably want the business done quickly. He might even want Pudleigh removed to-night. While I'm making the proposition to Driver, will you try and get some information about Pudleigh, his habits and customs?"
"Very good," I said.
We hurried down into a hansom. Chelubai dropped me at the beginning of Fleet Street and went on to the city.
I went into the Bodega, and, as I had expected, found there the man I wanted—Gregson, a financial journalist, who always knew the swindles of the moment, and their workers. He was willing ​enough to forego the liquid lunch of the Bodega for the cooking of the Savoy; and we strolled down the Strand to it. The mere ordering of the lunch expanded him; and my close and flattering attention to his latest stories, and to the personal reminiscences awakened by each, expanded him yet more. He was in the full flood of talk, and we had just finished our fish, when, to my surprise,. Chelubai came in, bringing with him a very large, flabby, clean-shaven man, whose face wore an expression of frank honesty so ostentatious as to be almost brazen. I knew that he must be Honest John Driver himself. They went to a table at the far end of the room out of my sight.
Oregson was by now in the proper relaxed mood; and, carelessly enough, I drew him on to talk of Albert Amsted Pudleigh. His eyes brightened at the name, and he related many incidents in that worthy's financial career with no little enjoyment. It seemed that it had been his practice for many years to promote companies, wreck them, put the fragments in his pocket, and reproduce them in a very lively, flourishing condition. The Quorley Granite Company was one of a dozen. Slowly he had risen to the rank of two hundred thousand pounds, and might be expected to figure as a knight in one of the earliest lists of Honors. For he not only occupied a prominent position among the gentry of East Surbiton, but was a good ​subscribing imperialist, like his friend, Honest John Driver.
"Oh, he's a friend of that great financier, is he?" I said.
"He is, indeed," said Gregson. "They are working that gorgeous plant Amalgamated Fertilizers."
He drank some wine with a thoughtful air, and went on: "But there is a darker side to the picture, alas! Our Albert Amsted is by way of being a gay dog. He is not always off with the old love before he is on with the new. At present he is riding hard for a breach of promise case; he is carrying on with an East Surbiton widow and also with a young lady, very much a young lady, of Stoneleigh Street, Vauxhall. Consequently, he is no longer the regular attendant at his snug East Surbiton home he used to be. He is no longer domesticated."
I was deeply shocked to hear this—the least one expects from a financier is domesticity; and I felt that Albert Amsted Pudleigh had established yet another claim on the stern offices of the philanthropists.
At about half-past four we finished our lunch. I bade good-by to Gregson, and walked up into Holborn to buy the materials for my portable lethal chamber. For the purpose of collecting butterflies, should it ever become my hobby, I bought ​two small bottles of chloroform from different hemists. At a draper's I bought three yards of thick, strong cloth, a packet of large needles and some black thread. At an ironmonger's I bought ten yards of strong copper wire. Then I returned to the Temple, and set about the painful construction of my invention. I am no mechanic.
First of all, I made a noose of twisted wire large enough to slip easily over the normal human head. Then I made a bag of the cloth about two feet deep and sewed it on round the noose. I am no seamstress; so I sewed it on very firmly. Then I sewed a strip of the cloth round the noose inside the bag, so that the wire could not bruise the neck of the person whose head was in the bag. Then I worked and worked the noose until I could draw it tight very easily.
I had just finished, and was regarding my contrivance with a modest but not ill-founded pride, for, as I say, I have no natural mechanical genius, when I heard Chelubai's knock at my door.
I let him in, and, sitting down in an easy chair, he lighted a cigarette and lay back with the air of a man who has done a good day's work.
"Did you work it?" I said.
"I worked it. I have arranged our first operation. But I tell you that it will be a peculiarly sunless day on which Honest John Driver gets left. The idea of removing a financial accomplice ​was new to him; but he tumbled to it like a brick from a scaffolding. He saw his way to scooping up Pudleigh's share of the Fertilizer boodle before you could wink twice; and it was merely a matter of haggling about terms. I had a fight to get him to make it two thousand; and Pudleigh has to be removed before Monday."
"Two thousand seems a poor subscription towards the removal of a financier," said I. "But, by Jove, it will make things look up in Plaistow! Of course we're only starting in philanthropy; and I suppose we must be content with small beginnings."
"As long as we are doing the actual work ourselves we may make up our minds that we shan't be getting large subscriptions. You only obtain large sums when other people are doing work for you, and you are seeing that they do it. Still it's no good grumbling, though it is depressing to see brainy men like us doing our own philanthropic deeds, when there are so many people, in and out of gaol, ready and waiting to do them under our direction. Philanthropic labor is so cheap, too," said Chelubai, and he sighed.
"Never mind," I said. "We must have time. We can't expect to succeed in a great mission in a day. Let us be thankful that we have made such a good beginning."
"Don't be too hopeful about the beginning. ​We've not collected the subscription yet. You prefer to call it subscription, don't you! Honest John Driver has at present no more intention of subscribing towards the removal of his friend than he has of flying. We've got a double job, you may take my word for it—we've got to remove Pudleigh and scare the subscription out of John Driver."
"I expect you're right. These commercial men have no sense of decency. But didn't Driver kick at the idea of removal?"
"Not a kick. He was on to it like a knife. But what about Pudleigh? Have you found out his habits?"
I ran through Pudleigh's dossier as I had received it from Gregson. But when I came to the story of his flirtations, Chelubai's sense of propriety, which is so much keener in the inhabitants of the Great Republic than in us, was touched on the raw. He flushed with honest indignation, and broke in:
"This is disgraceful! I cannot stand immorality in a business man. It frets me every time."
"But there's no immorality. Gregson assured me that they were mere flirtations."
"It is immoral," said Chelubai firmly. "Any trifling with the affections of a woman is an attack on the sanctity of the home!"
"I didn't know you felt so strongly about it."
​"I do," said Chelubai. "And I tell you that any qualms I had about the poor time Pudleigh's spirit would have, because of the cutting short of this incarnation, have vanished—yes, sir, vanished utterly."
"This is very satisfactory, for, from my point of view, too, even if we were not bound to remove him for his financial crimes, it would be our duty to Humanity to remove him to discourage hypocrisy."
"That's true, too," said Chelubai. "But what's your idea for removing him? Since he's a man like this, I don't want to waste any time."
"A gentleman in the neighborhood of the Oval about midnight surely presents himself as subject for removal by the sand-bag, or perhaps by my portable lethal chamber."
"What's that?" said Chelubai.
I showed him my contrivance with all an inventor's pride, and explained to him that you poured a bottle of chloroform into the bag before slipping it over the subject's head, and after the operation left the bottle of chloroform by his or her side to produce the impression of suicide.
Chelubai examined it with grave attention, and worked the noose with thoughtful care. "Yes," he said. "This has points. It's an excellent idea—excellent." I flushed at the flattering verdict. "But I think it's more adapted to a removal in ​a quiet country neighborhood than in the great Metropolis; it would take time."
"Then," said I, "we will make it the sand-bag for our Albert Amsted Pudleigh."