I
It was only after many hours of thought that it had flashed upon
me that the simplest and safest way of removing the Little Nugget
was to induce him to remove himself. Once the idea had come, the
rest was simple. The negotiations which had taken place that
morning in the stable-yard had been brief. I suppose a boy in
Ogden's position, with his record of narrow escapes from the
kidnapper, comes to take things as a matter of course which would
startle the ordinary boy. He assumed, I imagine, that I was the
accredited agent of his mother, and that the money which I gave
him for travelling expenses came from her. Perhaps he had been
expecting something of the sort. At any rate, he grasped the
essential points of the scheme with amazing promptitude. His
little hand was extended to receive the cash almost before I had
finished speaking.
The main outline of my plan was that he should slip away to
London, during the afternoon, go to my rooms, where he would find
Smith, and with Smith travel to his mother at Monaco. I had
written to Smith, bidding him be in readiness for the expedition.
There was no flaw in the scheme as I had mapped it out, and though
Ogden had complicated it a little by gratuitously luring away
Augustus Beckford to bear him company, he had not endangered its
success.
But now an utterly unforeseen complication had arisen. My one
desire now was to undo everything for which I had been plotting.
I stood there, looking at her dumbly, hating myself for being the
cause of the anxiety in her eyes. If I had struck her, I could not
have felt more despicable. In my misery I cursed Cynthia for
leading me into this tangle.
I heard my name spoken, and turned to find White at my elbow.
'Mr Abney would like to see you, sir.'
I went upstairs, glad to escape. The tension of the situation had
begun to tear at my nerves.
'Cub id, Bister Burds,' said my employer, swallowing a lozenge.
His aspect was more dazed than ever. 'White has just bade
an--ah--extraordinary cobbudicatiod to me. It seebs he is in
reality a detective, an employee of Pidkertod's Agedcy, of which
you have, of course--ah--heard.'
So White had revealed himself. On the whole, I was not surprised.
Certainly his motive for concealment, the fear of making Mr Abney
nervous, was removed. An inrush of Red Indians with tomahawks
could hardly have added greatly to Mr Abney's nervousness at the
present juncture.
'Sent here by Mr Ford, I suppose?' I said. I had to say something.
'Exactly. Ah--precisely.' He sneezed. 'Bister Ford, without
codsulting me--I do not cobbedt on the good taste or wisdob of his
actiod--dispatched White to apply for the post of butler at
this--ah--house, his predecessor having left at a bobedt's dotice,
bribed to do so, I strodgly suspect, by Bister Ford himself. I bay
be wrodging Bister Ford, but do dot thig so.'
I thought the reasoning sound.
'All thad, however,' resumed Mr Abney, removing his face from a
jug of menthol at which he had been sniffing with the tense
concentration of a dog at a rabbit-hole, 'is beside the poidt. I
berely bedtiod it to explaid why White will accompady you to
London.'
'What!'
The exclamation was forced from me by my dismay. This was
appalling. If this infernal detective was to accompany me, my
chance of bringing Ogden back was gone. It had been my intention
to go straight to my rooms, in the hope of finding him not yet
departed. But how was I to explain his presence there to White?
'I don't think it's necessary, Mr Abney,' I protested. 'I am sure
I can manage this affair by myself.'
'Two heads are better thad wud,' said the invalid sententiously,
burying his features in the jug once more.
'Too many cooks spoil the broth,' I replied. If the conversation
was to consist of copybook maxims, I could match him as long as he
pleased.
He did not keep up the intellectual level of the discussion.
'Dodseds!' he snapped, with the irritation of a man whose proverb
has been capped by another. I had seldom heard him speak so
sharply. White's revelation had evidently impressed him. He had
all the ordinary peaceful man's reverence for the professional
detective.
'White will accompany you, Bister Burds,' he said doggedly.
'Very well,' I said.
After all, it might be that I should get an opportunity of giving
him the slip. London is a large city.
A few minutes later the cab arrived, and White and I set forth on
our mission.
We did not talk much in the cab. I was too busy with my thoughts
to volunteer remarks, and White, apparently, had meditations of
his own to occupy him.
It was when we had settled ourselves in an empty compartment and
the train had started that he found speech. I had provided myself
with a book as a barrier against conversation, and began at once
to make a pretence of reading, but he broke through my defences.
'Interesting book, Mr Burns?'
'Very,' I said.
'Life's more interesting than books.'
I made no comment on this profound observation. He was not
discouraged.
'Mr Burns,' he said, after the silence had lasted a few moments.
'Yes?'
'Let's talk for a spell. These train-journeys are pretty slow.'
Again I seemed to detect that curious undercurrent of meaning in
his voice which I had noticed in the course of our brief exchange
of remarks in the hall. I glanced up and met his eye. He was
looking at me in a way that struck me as curious. There was
something in those bright brown eyes of his which had the effect
of making me vaguely uneasy. Something seemed to tell me that he
had a definite motive in forcing his conversation on me.
'I guess I can interest you a heap more than that book, even if
it's the darndest best seller that was ever hatched.'
'Oh!'
He lit a cigarette.
'You didn't want me around on this trip, did you?'
'It seemed rather unnecessary for both of us to go,' I said
indifferently. 'Still, perhaps two heads are better than one, as
Mr Abney remarked. What do you propose to do when you get to
London?'
He bent forward and tapped me on the knee.
'I propose to stick to you like a label on a bottle, sonny,' he
said. 'That's what I propose to do.'
'What do you mean?'
I was finding it difficult, such is the effect of a guilty
conscience, to meet his eye, and the fact irritated me.
'I want to find out that address you gave the Ford kid this
morning out in the stable-yard.'
It is strange how really literal figurative expressions are. I had
read stories in which some astonished character's heart leaped
into his mouth. For an instant I could have supposed that mine had
actually done so. The illusion of some solid object blocking up my
throat was extraordinarily vivid, and there certainly seemed to be
a vacuum in the spot where my heart should have been. Not for a
substantial reward could I have uttered a word at that moment. I
could not even breathe. The horrible unexpectedness of the blow
had paralysed me.
White, however, was apparently prepared to continue the chat
without my assistance.
'I guess you didn't know I was around, or you wouldn't have talked
that way. Well, I was, and I heard every word you said. Here was
the money, you said, and he was to take it and break for London,
and go to the address on this card, and your pal Smith would look
after him. I guess there had been some talk before that, but I
didn't arrive in time to hear it. But I heard all I wanted, except
that address. And that's what I'm going to find out when we get to
London.'
He gave out this appalling information in a rich and soothing
voice, as if it were some ordinary commonplace. To me it seemed to
end everything. I imagined I was already as good as under arrest.
What a fool I had been to discuss such a matter in a place like a
stable yard, however apparently empty. I might have known that at
a school there are no empty places.
'I must say it jarred me when I heard you pulling that stuff,'
continued White. 'I haven't what you might call a childlike faith
in my fellow-man as a rule, but it had never occurred to me for a
moment that you could be playing that game. It only shows,' he
added philosophically, 'that you've got to suspect everybody when
it comes to a gilt-edged proposition like the Little Nugget.'
The train rattled on. I tried to reduce my mind to working order,
to formulate some plan, but could not.
Beyond the realization that I was in the tightest corner of my
life, I seemed to have lost the power of thought.
White resumed his monologue.
'You had me guessing,' he admitted. 'I couldn't figure you out.
First thing, of course, I thought you must be working in with Buck
MacGinnis and his crowd. Then all that happened tonight, and I saw
that, whoever you might be working in with, it wasn't Buck. And
now I've placed you. You're not in with any one. You're just
playing it by yourself. I shouldn't mind betting this was your
first job, and that you saw your chance of making a pile by
holding up old man Ford, and thought it was better than
schoolmastering, and grabbed it.'
He leaned forward and tapped me on the knee again. There was
something indescribably irritating in the action. As one who has
had experience, I can state that, while to be arrested at all is
bad, to be arrested by a detective with a fatherly manner is
maddening.
'See here,' he said, 'we must get together over this business.'
I suppose it was the recollection of the same words in the mouth
of Buck MacGinnis that made me sit up with a jerk and stare at
him.
'We'll make a great team,' he said, still in that same cosy voice.
'If ever there was a case of fifty-fifty, this is it. You've got
the kid, and I've got you. I can't get away with him without your
help, and you can't get away with him unless you square me. It's a
stand-off. The only thing is to sit in at the game together and
share out. Does it go?'
He beamed kindly on my bewilderment during the space of time it
takes to select a cigarette and light a match. Then, blowing a
contented puff of smoke, he crossed his legs and leaned back.
'When I told you I was a Pinkerton's man, sonny,' he said, 'I
missed the cold truth by about a mile. But you caught me shooting
off guns in the grounds, and it was up to me to say something.'
He blew a smoke-ring and watched it dreamily till it melted in the
draught from the ventilator.
'I'm Smooth Sam Fisher,' he said.
II
When two emotions clash, the weaker goes to the wall. Any surprise
I might have felt was swallowed up in my relief. If I had been at
liberty to be astonished, my companion's information would no
doubt have astonished me. But I was not. I was so relieved that he
was not a Pinkerton's man that I did not really care what else he
might be.
'It's always been a habit of mine, in these little matters,' he
went on, 'to let other folks do the rough work, and chip in myself
when they've cleared the way. It saves trouble and expense. I
don't travel with a gang, like that bone-headed Buck. What's the
use of a gang? They only get tumbling over each other and spoiling
everything. Look at Buck! Where is he? Down and out. While I--'
He smiled complacently. His manner annoyed me. I objected to being
looked upon as a humble cat's paw by this bland scoundrel.
'While you--what?' I said.
He looked at me in mild surprise.
'Why, I come in with you, sonny, and take my share like a
gentleman.'
'Do you!'
'Well, don't I?'
He looked at me in the half-reproachful half-affectionate manner
of the kind old uncle who reasons with a headstrong nephew.
'Young man,' he said, 'you surely aren't thinking you can put one
over on me in this business? Tell me, you don't take me for that
sort of ivory-skulled boob? Do you imagine for one instant, sonny,
that I'm not next to every move in this game? Are you deluding
yourself with the idea that this thing isn't a perfect cinch for
me? Let's hear what's troubling you. You seem to have gotten some
foolish ideas in your head. Let's talk it over quietly.'
'If you have no objection,' I said, 'no. I don't want to talk to
you, Mr Fisher. I don't like you, and I don't like your way of
earning your living. Buck MacGinnis was bad enough, but at least
he was a straightforward tough. There's no excuse for you.'
'Surely we are unusually righteous this p.m., are we not?' said
Sam suavely.
I did not answer.
'Is this not mere professional jealousy?'
This was too much for me.
'Do you imagine for a moment that I'm doing this for money?'
'I did have that impression. Was I wrong? Do you kidnap the sons
of millionaires for your health?'
'I promised that I would get this boy back to his mother. That is
why I gave him the money to go to London. And that is why my valet
was to have taken him to--to where Mrs Ford is.'
He did not reply in words, but if ever eyebrows spoke, his said,
'My dear sir, really!' I could not remain silent under their
patent disbelief.
'That's the simple truth,' I said.
He shrugged his shoulders, as who would say, 'Have it your own
way. Let us change the subject.'
'You say "was to have taken". Have you changed your plans?'
'Yes, I'm going to take the boy back to the school.'
He laughed--a rich, rolling laugh. His double chin shook
comfortably.
'It won't do,' he said, shaking his head with humorous reproach.
'It won't do.'
'You don't believe me?'
'Frankly, I do not.'
'Very well,' I said, and began to read my book.
'If you want to give me the slip,' he chuckled, 'you must do
better than that. I can see you bringing the Nugget back to the
school.'
'You will, if you wait,' I said.
'I wonder what that address was that you gave him,' he mused.
'Well, I shall soon know.'
He lapsed into silence. The train rolled on. I looked at my watch.
London was not far off now.
'The present arrangement of equal division,' said Sam, breaking a
long silence, 'holds good, of course, only in the event of your
quitting this fool game and doing the square thing by me. Let me
put it plainly. We are either partners or competitors. It is for
you to decide. If you will be sensible and tell me that address, I
will pledge my word--'
'Your word!' I said scornfully.
'Honour among thieves!' replied Sam, with unruffled geniality. 'I
wouldn't double-cross you for worlds. If, however, you think you
can manage without my assistance, it will then be my melancholy
duty to beat you to the kid, and collect him and the money
entirely on my own account. Am I to take it,' he said, as I was
silent, 'that you prefer war to an alliance?'
I turned a page of my book and went on reading.
'If Youth but knew!' he sighed. 'Young man, I am nearly twice your
age, and I have, at a modest estimate, about ten times as much
sense. Yet, in your overweening self-confidence, with your
ungovernable gall, you fancy you can hand me a lemon. _Me!_ I
should smile!'
'Do,' I said. 'Do, while you can.'
He shook his head reprovingly.
'You will not be so fresh, sonny, in a few hours. You will be
biting pieces out of yourself, I fear. And later on, when my
automobile splashes you with mud in Piccadilly, you will taste the
full bitterness of remorse. Well, Youth must buy its experience, I
suppose!'
I looked across at him as he sat, plump and rosy and complacent,
puffing at his cigarette, and my heart warmed to the old ruffian.
It was impossible to maintain an attitude of righteous iciness
with him. I might loathe his mode of life, and hate him as a
representative--and a leading representative--of one of the most
contemptible trades on earth, but there was a sunny charm about
the man himself which made it hard to feel hostile to him as an
individual.
I closed my book with a bang and burst out laughing.
'You're a wonder!' I said.
He beamed at what he took to be evidence that I was coming round
to the friendly and sensible view of the matter.
'Then you think, on consideration--' he said. 'Excellent! Now, my
dear young man, all joking aside, you will take me with you to
that address, will you not? You observe that I do not ask you to
give it to me. Let there be not so much as the faintest odour of
the double-cross about this business. All I ask is that you allow
me to accompany you to where the Nugget is hidden, and then rely
on my wider experience of this sort of game to get him safely away
and open negotiations with the dad.'
'I suppose your experience has been wide?' I said.
'Quite tolerably--quite tolerably.'
'Doesn't it ever worry you the anxiety and misery you cause?'
'Purely temporary, both. And then, look at it in another way.
Think of the joy and relief of the bereaved parents when sonny
comes toddling home again! Surely it is worth some temporary
distress to taste that supreme happiness? In a sense, you might
call me a human benefactor. I teach parents to appreciate their
children. You know what parents are. Father gets caught short in
steel rails one morning. When he reaches home, what does he do? He
eases his mind by snapping at little Willie. Mrs Van First-Family
forgets to invite mother to her freak-dinner. What happens? Mother
takes it out of William. They love him, maybe, but they are too
used to him. They do not realize all he is to them. And then, one
afternoon, he disappears. The agony! The remorse! "How could I
ever have told our lost angel to stop his darned noise!" moans
father. "I struck him!" sobs mother. "With this jewelled hand I
spanked our vanished darling!" "We were not worthy to have him,"
they wail together. "But oh, if we could but get him back!" Well
they do. They get him back as soon as ever they care to come
across in unmarked hundred-dollar bills. And after that they think
twice before working off their grouches on the poor kid. So I
bring universal happiness into the home. I don't say father
doesn't get a twinge every now and then when he catches sight of
the hole in his bank balance, but, darn it, what's money for if
it's not to spend?'
He snorted with altruistic fervour.
'What makes you so set on kidnapping Ogden Ford?' I asked. 'I know
he is valuable, but you must have made your pile by this time. I
gather that you have been practising your particular brand of
philanthropy for a good many years. Why don't you retire?'
He sighed.
'It is the dream of my life to retire, young man. You may not
believe me, but my instincts are thoroughly domestic. When I have
the leisure to weave day-dreams, they centre around a cosy little
home with a nice porch and stationary washtubs.'
He regarded me closely, as if to decide whether I was worthy of
these confidences. There was something wistful in his brown eyes.
I suppose the inspection must have been favourable, or he was in a
mood when a man must unbosom himself to someone, for he proceeded
to open his heart to me. A man in his particular line of business,
I imagine, finds few confidants, and the strain probably becomes
intolerable at times.
'Have you ever experienced the love of a good woman, sonny? It's a
wonderful thing.' He brooded sentimentally for a moment, then
continued, and--to my mind--somewhat spoiled the impressiveness of
his opening words. 'The love of a good woman,' he said, 'is about
the darnedest wonderful lay-out that ever came down the pike. I
know. I've had some.'
A spark from his cigarette fell on his hand. He swore a startled
oath.
'We came from the same old town,' he resumed, having recovered
from this interlude. 'Used to be kids at the same school ...
Walked to school together ... me carrying her luncheon-basket and
helping her over the fences ... Ah! ... Just the same when we grew
up. Still pals. And that was twenty years ago ... The arrangement
was that I should go out and make the money to buy the home, and
then come back and marry her.'
'Then why the devil haven't you done it?' I said severely.
He shook his head.
'If you know anything about crooks, young man,' he said, 'you'll
know that outside of their own line they are the easiest marks that
ever happened. They fall for anything. At least, it's always been
that way with me. No sooner did I get together a sort of pile and
start out for the old town, when some smooth stranger would come
along and steer me up against some skin-game, and back I'd have to
go to work. That happened a few times, and when I did manage at
last to get home with the dough I found she had married another
guy. It's hard on women, you see,' he explained chivalrously. 'They
get lonesome and Roving Rupert doesn't show up, so they have to
marry Stay-at-Home Henry just to keep from getting the horrors.'
'So she's Mrs Stay-at-Home Henry now?' I said sympathetically.
'She was till a year ago. She's a widow now. Deceased had a
misunderstanding with a hydrophobia skunk, so I'm informed. I
believe he was a good man. Outside of licking him at school I
didn't know him well. I saw her just before I left to come here.
She's as fond of me as ever. It's all settled, if only I can
connect with the mazuma. And she don't want much, either. Just
enough to keep the home together.'
'I wish you happiness,' I said.
'You can do better than that. You can take me with you to that
address.'
I avoided the subject.
'What does she say to your way of making money?' I asked.
'She doesn't know, and she ain't going to know. I don't see why a
man has got to tell his wife every little thing in his past. She
thinks I'm a drummer, travelling in England for a dry-goods firm.
She wouldn't stand for the other thing, not for a minute. She's
very particular. Always was. That's why I'm going to quit after
I've won out over this thing of the Little Nugget.' He looked at
me hopefully. 'So you _will_ take me along, sonny, won't you?'
I shook my head.
'You won't?'
'I'm sorry to spoil a romance, but I can't. You must look around
for some other home into which to bring happiness. The Fords' is
barred.'
'You are very obstinate, young man,' he said, sadly, but without
any apparent ill-feeling. 'I can't persuade you?'
'No.'
'Ah, well! So we are to be rivals, not allies. You will regret
this, sonny. I may say you will regret it very bitterly. When you
see me in my automo--'
'You mentioned your automobile before.'
'Ah! So I did.'
The train had stopped, as trains always do on English railways
before entering a terminus. Presently it began to move forward
hesitatingly, as if saying to itself, 'Now, am I really wanted
here? Shall I be welcome?' Eventually, after a second halt, it
glided slowly alongside the platform.
I sprang out and ran to the cab-rank. I was aboard a taxi, bowling
out of the station before the train had stopped.
Peeping out of the window at the back, I was unable to see Sam. My
adroit move, I took it, had baffled him. I had left him standing.
It was a quarter of an hour's drive to my rooms, but to me, in my
anxiety, it seemed more. This was going to be a close thing, and
success or failure a matter of minutes. If he followed my
instructions Smith would be starting for the Continental boat-train
tonight with his companion; and, working out the distances,
I saw that, by the time I could arrive, he might already have left
my rooms. Sam's supervision at Sanstead Station had made it
impossible for me to send a telegram. I had had to trust to
chance. Fortunately my train, by a miracle, had been up to time,
and at my present rate of progress I ought to catch Smith a few
minutes before he left the building.
The cab pulled up. I ran up the stairs and opened the door of my
apartment.
'Smith!' I called.
A chair scraped along the floor and a door opened at the end of
the passage. Smith came out.
'Thank goodness you have not started. I thought I should miss you.
Where is the boy?'
'The boy, sir?'
'The boy I wrote to you about.'
'He has not arrived, sir.'
'Not arrived?'
'No, sir.'
I stared at him blankly.
'How long have you been here?'
'All day, sir.'
'You have not been out?'
'Not since the hour of two, sir.'
'I can't understand it,' I said.
'Perhaps the young gentleman changed his mind and never started,
sir?'
'I know he started.'
Smith had no further suggestion to offer.
'Pending the young gentleman's arrival, sir, I remain in London?'
A fruity voice spoke at the door behind me.
'What! Hasn't he arrived?'
I turned. There, beaming and benevolent, stood Mr Fisher.
'It occurred to me to look your name out in the telephone
directory,' he explained. 'I might have thought of that before.'
'Come in here,' I said, opening the door of the sitting-room. I
did not want to discuss the thing with him before Smith.
He looked about the room admiringly.
'So these are your quarters,' he said. 'You do yourself pretty
well, young man. So I understand that the Nugget has gone wrong in
transit. He has altered his plans on the way?'
'I can't understand it.'
'I can! You gave him a certain amount of money?'
'Yes. Enough to get him to--where he was going.'
'Then, knowing the boy, I should say that he has found other uses
for it. He's whooping it up in London, and, I should fancy, having
the time of his young life.'
He got up.
'This of course,' he said, 'alters considerably any understanding
we may have come to, sonny. All idea of a partnership is now out
of the question. I wish you well, but I have no further use for
you. Somewhere in this great city the Little Nugget is hiding, and
I mean to find him--entirely on my own account. This is where our
paths divide, Mr Burns. Good night.'