It is a fascinating occupation to watch a powerful human brain at work
upon some great problems--the face alive with mind, the tension of the
muscles, the frowning eyes; and to feel behind it all that driving,
compelling power of the intelligence wherein man is God-like.
But no one would have seen this sight in the case of Mr. Collop had he
remained. What he would have seen was a hand pouring out whiskey for
itself over and over again and adding smaller and smaller splashes of
soda; and at last an obese body attempting sleep in the lounge chair
which it filled.
He had comfortably made up his mind. He was going to stay in the West
Room and sleep as he could, leaving his bed untouched by way of giving
the impression of a long night's intellectual wrestling. Next morning he
would take every one of the three in turn, tell each separately that he
was from the Yard, tax them brutally with the theft, and terrify and
bully the culprit, whichever of the three it might turn out to be, into
confession. So decided, he chose a good chair among the mutilated
victims, wheeled it close to the electric switches by the fire, settled
himself down, turned off the light and shut his eyes for sleep.
Now it is paradoxically true of the substantial more than it is of the
insufficient, that they must shift and turn to find that posture in
which their persons can best repose, especially in chairs. Nor could Mr.
Collop at once and easily fall into the arms of Morpheus. He shifted and
turned, and wedged in and re-wedged in and out, and moved again and
replaced those various muscles and anatomical names of which escape
me--or rather I never knew them, though the things themselves I know
well enough--when all of a sudden he gave a loud and piercing cry and
leapt up broad awake. Something had stuck into him--something abominably
sharp. His reaction had been instantaneous. He struck a match. He
switched on the light.
He groped in the offending tail-coat pocket and--not the first to do
so!--stared at what he found in his hand--the emerald! Its brooch
setting was unclasped, the wicked steel pin of it was pointing at a
challenging angle in the air. He glared viciously at the offending point
which had wounded his innocent person; then his eyebrows relaxed into a
stupefied stare at the stone itself.
"Great God!" he said three times, "Great God! Great God!"
[Illustration: _Birds of the Empire.
I.--The Parrot Attaboy, in action._]
There is a current impression, taken I think from the great spate of
detective stories upon which we are all fed, that your professional
detective has no brains whatsoever and would be no match for the sloth
of the Andes, or the sluggish waddle-duck of Australian and Imperial
fame. It is an error. They are men as we are and their intelligences,
such as they are, work more or less under the spur of prospective
advantage. Within three minutes Mr. Collop had grasped the fact that
fame, security, promotion, a permanent, good, appreciated, livelihood
lay in his outstretched palm. Had he not found the emerald? _How_ he had
found it, why it was there at all, he knew not. But he had quickly seen
how its possession might be used.
"There you are, you great blighter," he murmured, addressing the
charming gem. "Damn your green eyes! I'll make you work, I will!
William, my boy, here's something that's got to be thought out!"
For the first time for many months, Mr. Collop thought, really thought;
"concentrated" as he would have put it.
He would have done it better perhaps if he had not been so full of
whiskey. But shock is a powerful stimulus. And he was already
three-quarters sober and coming to conclusions.
For a long time the effect of this unusual exercise was a blank and a
confusion of mind; then there broke in upon the silence a sound which
startled him horribly. A voice, somewhat muffled, uncertain, had spoken
in that silence where none but him could be. He had heard it! Or was he
mad?
"Attaboy!"
Was it a divine command? Had some dear wraith of the dead--his sainted
mother perhaps, who could tell--come to comfort him in this dread hour
of his fate? All was dead still. His hand trembled a little as he pulled
out his watch. It was a quarter past two, and the silence was enormous.
Most awfully it came again.
"Attaboy!"
He hardly dared to look around. Look round he did and there he saw what
he had not before grasped--that the dome of black cloth, suspended,
covered a cage; thence it was that once again, but this time in a
failing, drowsy manner, came the unearthly summons:
"Attaboy!"
A revelation burst upon his mind. It was a revelation indeed! The whole
scheme blazed suddenly before him.
He walked boldly to the cage, took off the cover and saw what may very
properly be called the blinking bird, for the sudden light had dazzled
it.
"Attaboy!" croaked the parrot again in a rather peevish fashion.
"I'll Attaboy you!" hissed Mr. Collop through his teeth.
He made his preparations to capture that innocent accomplice; his scheme
was now fully developed.
He had heard that this kind of fowl was of a very fierce and dangerous
sort; but the plan must be pursued at all risks. He took his
handkerchief from his pocket--a large bandanna of the noblest--and with
a decision worthy of a better cause, whipped it round the gaudy coloured
neck after the fashion of a cravat. A muffled protest proceeded from
that insulted organ.
"You wait!" muttered Mr. Collop vindictively, as though the poor bird
were his enemy. He looked about him. There was a large square of black
cloth on his host's writing-table. With that he made a second deadener,
hoodlike, entirely covering the animal's head, and tied it securely on;
all that now penetrated from within was a faint, varying sound which one
had to be in the closest neighbourhood to hear. Next he cut off a piece
of tape from the coil neatly disposed by the side of the official
papers, and bound the fierce talons securely. Then with infinite
precaution he slipped off the chain from its ring, and held the exotic
biped firmly in both hands.
The clipped wings fluttered a little, but they were contained by strong
hands. Mr. Collop made for the window. He laid his living parcel down,
where it struggled in vain; opened the shutters with infinite
precautions for avoiding sound--above, Aunt Amelia, happily deaf, was
deep in slumber; pulled up the sash so slowly that it seemed an age;
went back on tiptoe, extinguished the light and--a stroke of
genius--went noisily upstairs, bearing the parrot, to give full warning
to anyone who might be still awake that he had gone to bed, after all.
He tumbled his bed about. He returned.
He came down gingerly in shoeless feet, and stepped out into the night.
The stillness was awful, but all propitious to his plan. The thin snow
lay even and spotless on the grass on either side of the avenue. The
nearer trees were clear in the half light. The gravel walk, though well
swept and clear of snow, leaving no trace of his passage, was bitterly
cold to his thinly clad feet--for his socks were of silk, I am glad to
say.
There was a wintry mist and beyond it the white suffused radiance of the
moon.
He looked up cautiously. There was not a chink of light in any window.
All slept, and the Holy One presided in the heavens above, beyond the
fog in her blurred aureole of light. It was the hour for great deeds.
And a great deed was done.
Mr. Collop, with infinite precautions, lifted up his captive and planted
its two talons firmly upon the snow to the side of the swept alleyway
and pointing at a small, most aged and somewhat stunted oak about thirty
yards ahead of him on the edge of the swept path. He himself kept
crouching on the swept gravel and holding poor Attaboy to the side above
the snow. Then, still creeping noiselessly along, he planted the bird's
claws down again about six inches further. And so on, hop by hop.
It was merciful in Providence to have spared that tropical exile any too
sensitive nerves in its claws; but it protested. It thought the march an
indignity, and it was abominably cold. The parrot squirmed. The parrot
resisted. But the parrot was for it.
Six inches by six inches the double imprint of the claws appeared in a
lengthening chain upon the thin snow until they had come to within ten
feet of the oak. Then did Mr. Collop most cautiously rise from his stoop
and, taking the bird under his left arm and standing upon tiptoe,
stretch his right hand up to a small hollow in the stump of a branch
that had decayed long ago: he felt its concavity. It would do. He
carefully felt for the emerald in (now) his waistcoat pocket. It was
safe. He turned back swiftly towards the great dark house in the
moonlight.
The thing was accomplished.
As stealthily as he had come, but far more rapidly, thanking Heaven that
still no light showed through any cranny of the mansion, he loped back,
shut the window down again with infinite precautions and even then
dreaded a slight sound, put his dumb confederate back, released it of
its bandages, slipped on the cover of the cage, and crept up to bed.
* * * * * * *
So true it is that once in every man's life comes an opportunity and
that in every man some talent, however unsuspected, lurks.