Children of the rich -- Fiction; England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction
"We're going to call at Bloomsbury Mansions to begin with; that's to
be the first move in our plan of campaign." Herbert Nash looking a
note of interrogation, Mr. Morgan condescended to explain. "How many
times am I to tell you that Bloomsbury Mansions was where Mr. Joseph
Oldfield lived when he was in town? When he was there he was Peter
Piper's Popular Pills; when he wasn't there if you'd talked to him
about pills I dare say he wouldn't have known what you meant."
"But why should we go to Bloomsbury Mansions?"
"Doesn't your own common-sense tell you, my dear Nash, that the more a
man knows about the game he's going to play the better chance he has
of winning? Certainly it does, because you're one of the cleverest men
I know. Very well then; if you and I can manage to be alone together
in that flat for, say, half-an-hour, there's very little about Joseph
Oldfield which, at the end of that time, we shan't know. Unless I'm
mistaken, that's where the key to the situation is; it must be
somewhere, and I tell you it's there. That's where all his business
papers are, which you and Baynard couldn't find at Cloverlea; his
books, his accounts, the lists of his securities; perhaps some of the
securities themselves; and, what's more, the whole financial history
of those immortal pills. We shall be able to find out what exactly Mr.
Frank Clifford's position is, and how we shall best be able to get at
him. I'm no gamester; I object to gambling on principle; yet I'm
willing to bet a trifle that after I've been there half-an-hour I'll
be in a position--with the aid of what I know already--to squash Mr.
Frank Clifford between my finger and thumb; and between us, my boy,
we'll have Peter Piper's Popular Pills, and the pile they represent,
lying at our feet."
"I tell you again, Morgan, what I've told you before, that I think you
pitch your anticipations too high; there are all sorts of difficulties
in the way which you don't seem to appreciate. Anyhow how do you
intend to get into this flat? do you propose to commit burglary?"
"Am I a criminal? a felon? I've been an honest man all my life, and I
mean to die an honest man. No, my dear Nash, we're going in through
the front door, in broad daylight, before the eyes of the whole staff
of the Mansions, if the whole staff chooses to look on, and, as about
flats they're mostly a prying lot, they may do; we're going to let
ourselves in with Mr. Joseph Oldfield's own private and particular
latch-key, and a very private and particular latch-key it is. I
lay--betting again! you see, Nash, how a bad habit, once indulged in,
grows on one--that, knowing what kind of people they are about flats,
he had both lock and key specially made for him; and here that key
is."
He held out a small and curious-looking key, of the Bramah type. Mr.
Nash eyed it dubiously, as if it were something which he would rather
leave alone.
"How do you know it is the key? and where did you get it from?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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