Chapter 1

Mr. William Spedding, of the firm of Spedding, Mortimer and Larach,
Solicitors, bought the site in Lombard Street in the conventional way.
The property came into the market on the death of an old lady who lived
at Market Harborough, who has nothing to do with this story, and it was
put up to auction in the orthodox fashion.

Mr. William Spedding secured the site at £106,000, a sum sufficiently
large to excite the interest of all the evening papers and a great
number of the morning journals as well.

As a matter of exact detail, I may add that plans were produced
and approved by the city surveyor for the erection of a building
of a peculiar type. The city surveyor was a little puzzled by the
interior arrangement of the new edifice, but as it fulfilled all
the requirements of the regulations governing buildings in the City
of London, and no fault could be found either with the external
appearance--its façade had been so artfully designed that you might
pass a dozen times a day without the thought occurring that this new
building was anything out of the common ruck--and as the systems of
ventilation and light were beyond reproach, he passed the plans with a
shrug of his shoulders.

“I cannot understand, Mr. Spedding,” he said, laying his forefinger on
the blue print, “how your client intends securing privacy. There is a
lobby and one big hall. Where are the private offices, and what is the
idea of this huge safe in the middle of the hall, and where are the
clerks to sit? I suppose he will have clerks? Why, man, he won’t have a
minute’s peace!”

Mr. Spedding smiled grimly.

“He will have all the peace he wants,” he said.

“And the vaults--I should have thought that vaults would be the very
thing you wanted for this.” He tapped the corner of the sheet where was
inscribed decorously: “Plan for the erection of a New Safe Deposit.”

“There is the safe,” said Mr. Spedding, and smiled again.

This William Spedding, now unhappily no longer with us--he died
suddenly, as I will relate--was a large, smooth man with a suave
manner. He smoked good cigars, the ends of which he snipped off with a
gold cigar-cutter, and his smile came readily, as from a man who had no
fault to find with life.

To continue the possibly unnecessary details, I may add further that
whilst tenders were requested for the erection of the New Safe Deposit,
the provision of the advertisement that the lowest tender would not
necessarily be accepted was justified by the fact that the offer of
Potham and Holloway was approved, and it is an open secret that their
tender was the highest of all.

“My client requires the very best work; he desires a building that will
stand shocks.” Mr. Spedding shot a swift glance at the contractor, who
sat at the other side of the desk. “Something that a footling little
dynamite explosion would not scatter to the four winds.”

The contractor nodded.

“You have read the specification,” the solicitor went on--he was
cutting a new cigar, “and in regard to the pedestal--ah--the pedestal,
you know----?”

He stopped and looked at the contractor.

“It seems all very clear,” said the great builder. He took a bundle of
papers from an open bag by his side and read, “The foundation to be of
concrete to the depth of twenty feet.... The pedestal to be alternate
layers of dressed granite and steel ... in the center a steel-lined
compartment, ten inches by five, and half the depth of the pedestal
itself.”

The solicitor inclined his head.

“That pedestal is to be the most important thing in the whole
structure. The steel-lined recess--I don’t know the technical
phrase--which one of these days your men will have to fill in, is the
second most important; but the safe that is to stand fifty feet above
the floor of the building is to be--but the safe is arranged for.”

An army of workmen, if the hackneyed phrase be permitted, descended
upon Lombard Street and pulled down the old buildings. They pulled them
down, and broke them down, and levered them down, and Lombard Street
grew gray with dust. The interiors of quaint old rooms with grimy oak
paneling were indecently exposed to a passing public. Clumsy, earthy
carts blocked Lombard Street, and by night flaring Wells’ lights roared
amidst the chaos.

And bare-armed men sweated and delved by night and by day; and one
morning Mr. Spedding stood in a drizzle of rain, with a silk umbrella
over his head, and expressed, on behalf of his client, his intense
satisfaction at the progress made. He stood on a slippery plank that
formed a barrow road, and workmen, roused to unusual activity by the
presence of “The Firm”--Mr. Spedding’s cicerone--moved to and fro at a
feverish rate of speed.

“They don’t mind the rain,” said the lawyer, sticking out his chin in
the direction of the toiling gangs.

“The Firm” shook his head.

“Extra pay,” he said laconically, “we provided for that in the tender,”
he hastened to add in justification of his munificence.

So in rain and sunshine, by day and by night, the New Safe Deposit came
into existence.

Once--it was during a night shift, a brougham drove up the deserted
city street, and a footman helped from the dark interior of the
carriage a shivering old man with a white, drawn face. He showed a
written order to the foreman, and was allowed inside the unpainted gate
of the “works.”

He walked gingerly amidst the debris of construction, asked no
questions, made no replies to the explanations of the bewildered
foreman, who wondered what fascination there was in a building job
to bring an old man from his bed at three o’clock on a chill spring
morning.

Only once the old man spoke.

“Where will that there pedestal be?” he asked in a harsh, cracked
cockney voice; and when the foreman pointed out the spot, and the men
even then busily filling in the foundation, the old man’s lips curled
back in an ugly smile that showed teeth too white and regular for a man
of his age. He said no more, but pulled the collar of his fur coat the
tighter about his lean neck and walked wearily back to his carriage.

The building saw Mr. Spedding’s client no more--if, indeed, it was
Mr. Spedding’s client. So far as is known, he did not again visit
Lombard Street before its completion--even when the last pane of glass
had been fixed in the high gilded dome, when the last slab of marble
had been placed in the ornate walls of the great hall, even when the
solicitor came and stood in silent contemplation before the great
granite pedestal that rose amidst a scaffolding of slim steel girders
supporting a staircase that wound upward to the gigantic mid-air safe.

Not quite alone, for with him was the contractor, awed to silence by
the immensity of his creation.

“Finished!” said the contractor, and his voice came echoing back from
the dim spaces of the building.

The solicitor did not answer.

“Your client may commence business to-morrow if he wishes.”

The solicitor turned from the pedestal.

“He is not ready yet,” he said softly, as though afraid of the echoes.

He walked to where the big steel doors of the hall stood ajar, the
contractor following.

In the vestibule he took two keys from his pocket. The heavy doors
swung noiselessly across the entrance, and Mr. Spedding locked them.
Through the vestibule and out into the busy street the two men walked,
and the solicitor fastened behind him the outer doors.

“My client asks me to convey his thanks to you for your expedition,”
the lawyer said.

The builder rubbed his hands with some satisfaction.

“You have taken two days less than we expected,” Mr. Spedding went on.

The builder was a man of few ideas outside his trade. He said again--

“Yes, your client may start business to-morrow.”

The solicitor smiled.

“My client, Mr. Potham, may not--er--start business--for ten years,” he
said. “In fact, until--well, until he dies, Mr. Potham.”