E Phillips Oppenheim

The Golden Beast E Phillips Oppenheim

Israel, first Baron Honerton, famous in commercial circles as chairman of the directors of Fernham & Company, Ltd., the great wholesale chemists, Lord of the Manor of Honerton Chase, in Norfolk, sat at the head of the long black oak table in the banqueting hall of the ancient and historic mansion which he had bought, as the auctioneer described it, "lock, stock and barrel", two years ago. One of the shrewdest financiers in England, a multimillionaire, in all the ordinary affairs of life a grim materialist, he was liable at odd moments to strange fits of abstraction, to mental wanderings almost akin to those of the visionary, during which the appearance of the man himself seemed to become transformed. Of his type he was a person of fine presence. He was tall and slim, even to lankiness. He had still a wealth of grey hair, fine, though harshly cut features, overhanging eyebrows, a pitiless mouth, eyes generally keen and hard, but filled at such times as the present with a curious, unearthly light. Even his attire seemed part of the man. He wore conventional dinner clothes, but cut after some ancient and unrecognisable pattern, the waistcoat high, the coat loose and double breasted like a smoking jacket. His collar was of the fashion of a hundred years ago; his black tie little more than a wisp. Yet, although his father had been a small master tailor, and his mother had served in a fish shop, he alone amongst that company had the air of having come to the place which was his in life.