man simply asked for it—— It was not his fault if the winning of a hand
should have given the fellow the impression that he knew all that there
was to be known about piquet. Of course, piquet was a game where skill
was practically bound to win. But—— After all, Hargate probably had
plenty of money. He could afford it.
“All right,” said his lordship again. “How much?”
“Something fairly moderate. Ten bob a hundred?”
There is no doubt that his lordship ought, at this suggestion, to have
corrected the novice’s notion that ten shillings a hundred was fairly
moderate. He knew that it was possible for a poor player to lose four
hundred points in a twenty minutes’ game, and usual for him to lose two
hundred. But he let the thing go.
“Very well,” he said.
Twenty minutes later Hargate was looking somewhat ruefully at the
score-sheet. “I owe you eighteen shillings,” he said. “Shall I pay you
now, or shall we settle up in a lump after we’ve finished?”
“What about stopping now?” said Lord Dreever. “It’s quite fine out.”
“No; let’s go on. I’ve nothing to do till dinner, and I don’t suppose
you have.”
His lordship’s conscience made one last effort.
“You’d much better stop, you know, Hargate, really,” he said. “You can
lose a frightful lot at this game.”
“My dear Dreever,” said Hargate stiffly, “I can look after myself,
thanks. Of course, if you think you are risking too much, by all
means——”
“Oh, if you don’t mind,” said his lordship, outraged, “I’m only too
frightfully pleased. Only remember I warned you.”
“I’ll bear it in mind. By the way, before we start, care to make it a
sovereign a hundred?”
Lord Dreever could not afford to play piquet for a sovereign a hundred,
or, indeed, to play piquet for money at all; but after his adversary’s
innuendo it was impossible for a young gentleman of spirit to admit the
humiliating fact. He nodded.
“About time, I fancy,” said Hargate, looking at his watch an hour later,
“that we were going in to dress for dinner.”
His lordship made no reply. He was wrapped in thought.
“Let’s see, that’s twenty pounds you owe me, isn’t it?” continued
Hargate. “Shocking bad luck you had.”
They went out into the rose-garden.
“Jolly everything smells after the rain,” said Hargate, who seemed to
have struck a conversational patch. “Freshened everything up.”
His lordship did not appear to have noticed it. He seemed to be thinking
of something else. His air was pensive and abstracted.
“There’s just time,” said Hargate, looking at his watch again, “for a
short stroll. I want to have a talk with you.”
“Oh!” said Lord Dreever.
His air did not belie his feelings. He looked pensive, and he was
pensive. It was deuced awkward, this twenty pounds business.
Hargate was watching him covertly. It was his business to know other
people’s business, and he knew that Lord Dreever was impecunious, and
depended for supplies entirely on a prehensile uncle. For the success of
the proposal he was about to make he relied on this fact.
“Who’s this man Pitt?” asked Hargate.
“Oh, pal of mine,” said his lordship. “Why?”
“I can’t stand the fellow.”
“I think he’s a good chap,” said his lordship. “In fact,” remembering
Jimmy’s Good Samaritanism, “I know he is. Why don’t you like him?”
“I don’t know. I don’t.”
“Oh!” said his lordship indifferently. He was in no mood to listen to
the likes and dislikes of other men.
“Look here, Dreever,” said Hargate, “I want you to do something for me—I
want you to get Pitt out of the place.”
Lord Dreever eyed him curiously.
“Eh?” he said. Hargate repeated his remark.
“You seem to have mapped out quite a programme for me,” said Lord
Dreever.
“Get him out of it,” continued Hargate vehemently. Jimmy’s prohibition
against billiards had hit him hard. He was suffering the torments of
Tantalus. The castle was full of young men of the kind to whom he most
resorted—easy marks, every one—and here he was, simply through Jimmy,
careened like a disabled battleship. It was maddening. “Make him go. You
invited him here. He doesn’t expect to stop indefinitely, I suppose? If
you left, he’d have to, too. What you must do is to go back to London
to-morrow. You can easily make some excuse. He’ll have to go with you.
Then you can drop him in London and come back. That’s what you must do.”
A delicate pink flush might have been seen to spread itself over Lord
Dreever’s face. He began to look like an angry rabbit. He had not a
great deal of pride in his composition, but the thought of the
ignominious _role_ which Hargate was sketching out for him stirred what
he had to its shallow bottom.
Talking on, Hargate managed to add the last straw.
“Of course,” he said, “that money you lost to me at piquet—what was it?
Twenty? Twenty pounds, wasn’t it? Well, we would look on that as
cancelled, of course. That will be all right.”
His lordship exploded.
“Will it?” he cried, pink to the ears. “Will it, by George? I’ll pay you
every frightful penny of it to-morrow—and then you can clear out,
instead of Pitt. What do you take me for, I should like to know?”
“A fool, if you refuse my offer.”
“I’ve a jolly good mind to give you a most frightful kicking.”
“I shouldn’t try if I were you. It’s not the sort of game you’d shine
at. Better stick to piquet.”
“If you think I can’t pay you your rotten money—”
“I do. But if you can, so much the better. Money is always useful.”
“I may be a fool in some ways——”
“You understate it, my dear man.”
“But I’m not a cad.”
“You’re getting quite rosy, Dreever. Wrath is good for the complexion.”
“And if you think you can bribe me, you never made a bigger mistake in
your life.”
“Yes, I did,” said Hargate, “when I thought you had some glimmerings of
intelligence. But if it gives you any pleasure to behave like the
juvenile lead in a melodrama, by all means do. Personally, I shouldn’t
have thought the game would be worth the candle. But if your keen sense
of honour compels you to pay the twenty pounds, all right. You mentioned
to-morrow? That’ll suit me. So we’ll let it go at that.”
He walked off, leaving Lord Dreever filled with that comfortable glow
which comes to the weak man who for once has displayed determination. He
felt that he must not go back from his dignified stand-point. That money
would have to be paid, and on the morrow. Hargate was the sort of man
who could, and would, make it exceedingly unpleasant for him if he
failed. A debt of honour was not a thing to be trifled with.
But he felt quite safe. He knew he could get the money when he pleased.
It showed, he reflected philosophically, how out of evil cometh good.
His greater misfortune, the engagement, would, as it were, neutralise
the loss, for it was ridiculous to suppose that Sir Thomas, having seen
his ends accomplished, and being presumably in a spacious mood in
consequence, would not be amenable to a request for a mere twenty
pounds.
He went on into the hall. He felt strong and capable. He had shown
Hargate the stuff there was in him. He was Spennie Dreever, the man of
blood and iron, the man with whom it was best not to trifle. But it was
really, come to think of it, uncommonly lucky that he was engaged to
Molly. He recoiled from the idea of attempting, unfortified by that
fact, to extract twenty pounds from Sir Thomas for a card debt.
In the hall he met Saunders.
“I have been looking for your lordship,” said the butler.
“Eh? Well, here I am.”
“Just so, your lordship. Miss McEachern entrusted me with this note to
deliver to you in the event of her not being able to see you before
dinner personally, your lordship.”
“Right-O. Thanks.”
He started to go upstairs, opening the envelope as he went. What could
the girl be writing to him about? Surely she wasn’t going to start
sending him love-letters or any of that frightful rot? Deuced difficult
it would be to play up to that sort of thing.
He stopped on the landing to read the note, and at the first line his
jaw fell. The envelope fluttered to the ground.
“Oh, my sainted aunt!” he moaned, clutching at the banisters. “Now I am
in the soup!”
★ 21 ★
_Loathsome Gifts_
There are doubtless men so constructed that they can find themselves
accepted suitors without any particular whirl of emotion. King Solomon
probably belonged to this class, and even Henry VIII must have become a
trifle blasé in time. But to the average man the sensations are complex
and overwhelming. A certain stunned feeling is perhaps predominant.
Blended with this is relief—the relief of a general who has brought a
difficult campaign to a successful end, or a member of a forlorn hope
who finds that the danger is over and that he is still alive. To this
must be added a newly-born sense of magnificence. Our suspicion that we
were something rather out of the ordinary run of men is suddenly
confirmed. Our bosom heaves with complacency, and the world has nothing
more to offer.
With some there is an alloy of apprehension in the metal of their
happiness, and the strain of an engagement sometimes brings with it even
a faint shadow of regret. “She makes me buy things,” one swain, in the
third quarter of his engagement, was overhead to moan to a friend. “Two
new ties only yesterday.” He seemed to be debating within himself
whether human nature could stand the strain.
But, whatever tragedies may cloud the end of the period, its beginning
at least is bathed in sunshine.
Jimmy, regarding his lathered face in the glass as he dressed for dinner
that night, marvelled at the excellence of this best of all possible
worlds.
No doubts disturbed him. That the relations between Mr. McEachern and
himself offered a permanent bar to his prospects he did not believe. For
the moment he declined to consider the existence of the ex-constable at
all. In a world that contained Molly there was no room for other people.
They were not in the picture. They did not exist.
To him, musing contentedly over the goodness of life, there entered, in
the furtive manner habitual to that unreclaimed buccaneer, Spike
Mullins. It may have been that Jimmy read his own satisfaction and
happiness into the faces of others, but it certainly seemed to him that
there was a sort of restrained joyfulness about Spike’s demeanour. The
Bowery boy’s shuffles on the carpet were almost a dance. His face seemed
to glow beneath his crimson hair.
“Well,” said Jimmy, “and how goes the world with young Lord FitzMullins?
Spike, have you ever been best man?”
“What’s dat, boss?”
“Best man at a wedding—chap who stands by the bridegroom with a hand on
the scruff of his neck to see that he goes through with it. Fellow who
looks after everything, crowds the money on to the minister at the end
of the ceremony, and then goes off and marries the first bridesmaid and
lives happily ever after.”
Spike shook his head.
“I ain’t got no use for gettin’ married, boss.”
“Spike the misogynist! You wait, Spike. Some day love will awake in your
heart, and you’ll start writing poetry.”
“I’se not dat kind of mug, boss,” protested the Bowery boy. “I ain’t got
no use for goils. It’s a mutt’s game.”
This was rank heresy. Jimmy laid down the razor from motives of
prudence, and proceeded to lighten Spike’s reprehensible darkness.
“Spike, you’re an ass,” he said. “You don’t know anything about it. If
you had any sense at all, you’d understand that the only thing worth
doing in life is to get married. You bone-headed bachelors make me ill.
Think what it would mean to you, having a wife. Think of going out on a
cold winter’s night to crack a crib, knowing that there would be a cup
of hot soup waiting for you when you got back, and your slippers all
warmed and comfortable. And then she’d sit on your knee, and you’d tell
her how you shot the policeman, and you’d examine the swag together!
Why, I can’t imagine anything cosier. Perhaps there would be little
Spikes running about the house. Can’t you see them jumping with joy as
you slid in through the window and told the great news? ‘Fahzer’s killed
a pleeceman!’ cry the tiny, eager voices. Sweets are served out all
round in honour of the event. Golden haired little Jimmy Mullins, my
godson, gets sixpence for having thrown a stone at a plain clothes
detective that afternoon. All is joy and wholesome revelry. Take my word
for it, Spike, there’s nothing like domesticity.”
“Dere was a goil once,” said Spike, meditatively. “Only I was never her
steady. She married a cop.”
“She wasn’t worthy of you, Spike,” said Jimmy sympathetically. “A girl
capable of going to the bad like that would never have done for you. You
must pick up some nice, sympathetic girl with a romantic admiration for
your line of business. Meanwhile, let me finish shaving, or I shall be
late for dinner. Great doings on to-night, Spike.”
Spike became animated.
“Sure, boss! Dat’s just what——”
“If you could collect all the blue blood that will be under this roof
to-night, Spike, into one vat, you’d be able to start a dyeing works.
Don’t try, though. They mightn’t like it. By the way, have you seen
anything more—of course you have. What I mean is, have you talked at all
with that valet man—the one you think is a detective?”
“Why, boss, dat’s just——”
“I hope, for his own sake, he’s a better performer than my old friend
Galer. That man is getting on my nerves, Spike. He pursues me like a
smell dog. I expect he’s lurking out in the passage now. Did you see
him?”
“Did I! Boss! Why——”
Jimmy inspected Spike gravely.
“Spike,” he said, “there’s something on your mind. You’re trying to say
something. What is it? Out with it.”
Spike’s excitement vented itself in a rush of words.
“Gee, boss! There’s bin doin’s to-night for fair. Me coco’s still
buzzin’. Sure t’ing! Why, say, when I was to Sir Tummas’s dressing-room
dis afternoon——”
“What!”
“Surest t’ing, you know. Just before de storm come on, when it was all
as dark as could be. Well, I was——”
Jimmy interrupted.
“In Sir Thomas’s dressing-room! What——”
Spike looked somewhat embarrassed. He grinned apologetically and
shuffled his feet.
“I’ve got dem, boss,” he said, with a smirk.
“Got them? Got what?”
“Dese.”
He plunged his hand in his pocket and drew forth, in a glittering mass,
Lady Julia Blunt’s rope of diamonds.
★ 22 ★
_How Two of a Trade did not Agree_
“One hundred t’ousand plunks,” murmured Spike, gazing lovingly at them.
“I says to meself, ‘De boss ain’t got no time to be gettin’ after dem
himself. He’s too busy dese days wit jollyin’ along de swells. So it’s
up to me,’ I says, ‘’cos de boss’ll be tickled to deat’, all right, all
right, if we can git away wit dem.’ So I——”
Jimmy gave tongue with an energy which amazed his faithful follower. The
nightmare horror of the situation had affected him much as a sudden blow
in the parts about the waistcoat might have done. But now, as Spike
would have said, he caught up with his breath. The smirk faded slowly
from the other’s face as he listened. Not even in the Bowery, full as it
was of candid friends, had he listened to such a trenchant summing-up of
his mental and moral deficiencies.
“Boss!” he protested.
“That’s just a sketchy outline,” said Jimmy, pausing for breath. “I
can’t do you justice impromptu like this. You’re too vast and
overwhelming.”
“But, boss, what’s eatin’ you? Ain’t youse tickled?”
“Tickled!” Jimmy sawed the air. “Tickled! You lunatic! Can’t you see
what you’ve done?”
“I’ve got dem,” said Spike, whose mind was not readily receptive of new
ideas. It seemed to him that Jimmy missed the main point.
“Didn’t I tell you there was nothing doing when you wanted to take those
things the other day?”
Spike’s face cleared. As he had suspected, Jimmy had missed the point.
“Why, say, boss, yes—sure. But dose was little dinky t’ings. Of course,
youse wouldn’t stand for swipin’ chicken-feed like dem. But dese is
different. Dese di’monds is boids. It’s one hundred thousand plunks fer
dese.”
“Spike!” said Jimmy, with painful calm.
“Huh?”
“Will you listen for a moment?”
“Sure.”
“I know it’s practically hopeless. To get an idea into your head one
wants a proper outfit—drills, blasting-powder, and so on. But there’s
just a chance, perhaps, if I talk slowly. Has it occurred to you,
Spike—my bonny, blue-eyed Spike—that every other man, more or less, in
this stately home of England is a detective who has probably received
instructions to watch you like a lynx? Do you imagine that your
blameless past is a sufficient safeguard? I suppose you think that these
detectives will say to themselves, ‘Now, whom shall we suspect? We must
leave out Spike Mullins, of course, because he naturally wouldn’t dream
of doing such a thing. It can’t be dear old Spike who’s got the stuff.’”
“But, boss,” interposed Spike brightly. “I ain’t! Dat’s right—I ain’t
got it. Youse has!”
Jimmy looked at him with reluctant admiration. After all, there was a
breezy delirium about Spike’s methods of thought which was rather
stimulating when you got used to it. The worst of it was that it did not
fit in with practical, everyday life. Under different conditions—say,
during convivial evenings at Colney Hatch—he could imagine the Bowery
boy being a charming companion. How pleasantly, for instance, such
remarks as that last would while away the monotony of a padded cell!
“But, laddie,” he said, with steely affection, “listen once more.
Reflect! Ponder! Does it not seep into your consciousness that we are,
as it were, subtly connected in this house in the minds of certain bad
persons? Are we not imagined by Mr. McEachern, for instance, to be
working hand in hand like brothers? Do you fancy that Mr. McEachern,
chatting with his tame sleuth-hound over their cigars, will have been
reticent on this point? I think not. How do you propose to baffle that
gentlemanly sleuth, Spike, who, I may mention once again, has rarely
moved more than two yards away from me since his arrival?”
An involuntary chuckle escaped Spike.
“Sure, boss, dat’s all right!”
“All right, is it? Well, well! What makes you think it is all right?”
“Why, say, boss, dose sleuts is out of business.” A merry grin split his
face. “It’s funny, boss! Gee, it’s got a circus skinned! Listen! Deyse
bin an’ arrest each other.”
Jimmy moodily revised his former view. Even in Colney Hatch this sort of
thing would be coldly received. Genius must ever walk alone. Spike would
have to get along without any hope of meeting a kindred spirit, a
fellow-being in tune with his brain-processes.
“Dat’s right,” chuckled Spike. “Leastways, it ain’t.”
“No, no,” said Jimmy soothingly. “I quite understand.”
“It’s dis way, boss. One of dem has bin an’ arrest de odder mug. Dey had
a scrap, each t’inking de odder guy was after de jools, an’ not knowin’
dey was bote sleuts, an’ now one of dem’s bin an’ taken de odder off,
an’”—there were tears of innocent joy in his eyes—“an’ locked him into
de coal-cellar.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
Spike giggled helplessly.
“Listen, boss! It’s dis way. Gee, it beat de band. When it’s all dark,
’cos of de storm comin’ on, I’m in de dressin’-room chasin’ around for
de jool-box, and just as I gets a line on it—gee!— I hears a footstep
coming down de passage, very soft, straight for de door. Was I to de
bad? Dat’s right. I says to meself, ‘Here’s one of de sleut guys what’s
bin and got wise to me, an’ he’s comin’ in to put de grip on me,’ so I
gets up quick, an’ I hides behind a coitain. Dere’s a coitain at de side
of de room. Dere’s dude suits an t’ings hangin’ behind it. I chases
meself in dere, and stands waitin’ for de sleut to come in, ’cos den,
you see, I’m goin’ to try an’ get busy before he can see who I am—it’s
pretty dark ’cos of de storm—an’ jolt him one on de point of de jaw, an’
den, while he’s down an’ out, chase meself fer de soivants’ hall.”
“Yes?” said Jimmy.
“Well, dis guy, he gets to de door and opens it, and I’m just gettin’
ready for one sudden boist of speed when dere jumps out from de room on
de odder side de passage—you know de room—anodder guy, an’ gets de rapid
strangleholt on de foist mug. Say, wouldn’t dat make youse glad you
hadn’t gone to de circus? Honest, it was better dan Coney Island.”
“Go on. What happened then?”
“Day falls to scrappin’ good and hard. Dey couldn’t see me, an’ I
couldn’t see dem, but I could hear dem bumpin’ about and sluggin’ each
odder to beat de band. And by and by one of de mugs puts de odder mug to
de bad, so dat he goes down and takes de count; and den I hears a click.
And I know what dat is. It’s one of de gazebos has put de irons on de
odder gazebo.”
“Call them A and B,” suggested Jimmy.
“Den I hears him—de foist mug—strike a light, ’cos it’s dark dere ’cos
of de storm, an’ den he says, ‘Got youse, have I?’ he says. ‘I’ve had my
eye on you, t’inkin’ youse was up to somet’ing of dis kind. I’ve bin
watchin’ youse!’ I knew de voice. It’s dat mug what calls himself Sir
Tummas’s vally. And de odder——”
Jimmy burst into a roar of laughter.
“Don’t, Spike! This is more than man was meant to stand. Do you mean to
tell me that it is my bright, brainy, persevering friend Galer who has
been handcuffed and locked in the coal-cellar?”
“Sure, dat’s right,” he said.
“It’s a judgment,” said Jimmy delightedly—“that’s what it is. No man has
a right to be such a consummate ass as Galer. It isn’t decent.”
There had been moments when McEachern’s faithful employé had filled
Jimmy with an odd sort of fury, a kind of hurt pride, almost to the
extent of making him wish that he really could have been the desperado
McEachern fancied him. Never in his life before had he sat still under a
challenge, and this espionage had been one. Behind the clumsy watcher he
had seen always the self-satisfied figure of McEachern. If there had
been anything subtle about the man from Dodson’s he could have forgiven
him; but there was not. Years of practice had left Spike with a sort of
sixth sense as regarded representatives of the law. He could pierce the
most cunning disguise. But in the case of Galer even Jimmy could detect
the detective.
“Go on,” he said.
Spike proceeded.
“Well, de odder mug, de one down and out on de floor wit de irons on——”
“Galer, in fact,” said Jimmy. “Handsome, dashing Galer!”
“Sure. Well, he’s too busy catchin’ up wit his breat’ to shoot it back
swift, but after he’s bin doin’ de deep-breathin’ stunt for a while he
says, ‘You mutt,’ he says, ‘youse is to de bad. You’re made a break, you
have. Dat’s right. Surest t’ing you know.’ He puts it different, but
dat’s what he means. ‘I’m a sleut,’ he says. ‘Take dese t’ings
off!’—meanin’ de irons. Does de odder mug, de vally gazebo, give him de
glad eye? Not so’s you could notice it. He gives him de merry ha-ha. He
says dat dat’s de woist tale dat’s ever bin handed to him. ‘Tell it to
Sweeney!’ he says. ‘I knows youse. You woims yourself into de house as a
guest, when youse is really after de loidy’s jools.’ At dese crool woids
de odder mug, Galer, gits hot under de collar. ‘I’m a sure ’nough
sleut,’ he says. ‘I blows into dis house at de special request of Mr.
McEachern, de American gent.’ De odder mug hands him de lemon again.
‘Tell it to de King of Denmark,’ he says. ‘Dis cops de limit. Youse has
enough gall for ten strong men,’ he says. ‘Show me to Mr. McEachern,’
says Galer. ‘He’ll——crouch,’ is dat it?”
“Vouch?” suggested Jimmy. “Meaning give the glad hand to.”
“Dat’s right—vouch. I wondered what he meant at de time. ‘He’ll vouch
for me,’ he says. Dat puts him all right, he t’inks; but no, he’s still
in Dutch, ’cos de vally mug says, ‘Nix on dat! I ain’t goin’ to chase
around de house wit youse, lookin’ for Mr. McEachern. It’s youse for de
coal-cellar, me man, an’ we’ll see what youse has to say when I makes me
report to Sir Tummas.’ ‘Well, dat’s to de good,’ says Galer. ‘Tell Sir
Tummas. I’ll explain to him.’ ‘Not me!’ says de vally. ‘Sir Tummas has a
hard evening’s woik before him, jollyin’ along de swells what’s comin’
to see dis stoige-piece dey’re actin’. I ain’t goin’ to worry him till
he’s good and ready. To de coal-cellar for yours! G’wan!’ and off dey
goes! And I gets busy again, swipes de jools, and chases meself here.”
“Have you ever heard of poetic justice, Spike?” he asked. “This is it.
But in this hour of mirth and good will we must not forget——”
Spike interrupted.
Beaming with honest pleasure at the enthusiastic reception of his
narrative, he proceeded to point out the morals that were to be deduced
therefrom.
“So youse see, boss,” he said, “it’s all to de merry. When dey rubbers
for de jools and finds dem gone, dey’ll t’ink dis Galer guy swiped dem.
Dey won’t t’ink of us.”
Jimmy looked at him gravely.