“Splendid!” roundly asserted Mr. Dobb. “I reg’lar ’ad to grip my chair.”
“And then at the very end, you know,” went on the other, with ready
enthusiasm, “when I come forward and say, ‘So, madam, we meet again—’”
“Don’t know when I’ve been more thrilled,” said Mr. Dobb; and turned to
frown his disapproval of a slight hissing noise Mr. Lock was making
behind his palm.
“Got a bit of a cold, sir,” explained Mr. Lock; and retired into his
handkerchief for some moments.
“A wonderful performance, sir,” said Mr. Dobb, addressing the stranger
again. “And that of your good lady, too—Miss Delafayne, I mean. Most—”
“Miss Delafayne is not my wife, sir. I appreciate the privilege of being
her business manager, but as for being her husband—. In short, her
temper! The artistic temperament, of course—the artistic temperament,
but— As a matter of fact, Miss Delafayne is indeed Miss Delafayne—she is
unmarried. However, you were kind enough to be talking of my humble
talents—”
“And marvellous indeed they are!” declared Mr. Dobb. “And I’m glad to
’ave ’ad the chance, sir, of thanking you for the pleasure your
performance give me. And I should be much honoured if you’d allow me to
offer you some refreshment on the strength of it.”
Very graciously did the other permit Mr. Dobb to achieve this
distinction, and Mr. Lock at once performed the necessary evolutions with
a tray.
“Your very good ’ealth, Mr.—er—” said Mr. Dobb. “Let me see, what is it?
I forgets the name, just for the minnit, but I remember the face. ’Oo
could ever forget it, after ’aving seen it once—on the stage, I mean?”
“Bellaby,” declaimed the gentleman in a fine, rolling voice—“Marmaduke
Bellaby, sir, at your service.”
Of the swift development that thereupon characterized the friendship thus
began, it is unnecessary to write in detail. Suffice it to say that
within thirty minutes Mr. Dobb was being addressed, with great frequency,
as “laddie.” And, as a pendant to this, it may be added that, at an hour
perilously close to that appointed for the raising of the curtain at the
theatre, Mr. Bellaby hurriedly emerged from the portal of the “Royal
William” and went up the road at a trot, already fumbling alarmedly among
his tie and collar-stud and waistcoat buttons as he ran. A cordial
invitation he had extended at the last moment to Mr. Dobb to witness the
performance again that evening as a guest was refused, regretfully but
very definitely, on the score of a previous engagement.
“Not likely!” said Mr. Dobb to Mr. Lock, when they were alone. “Once
bit, twice jolly, blessed careful! But I’m glad you sent for me, Peter.
I think ’e’ll be useful—when I can see my way to using ’im. Anyway, I’m
meeting ’im again to-morrow, and I shall take partic’lar good care to
meet ’im again and again for the next few days, and ’oo knows what’s
going to ’appen in this strange world?”
“You do!” answered Mr. Lock. “Very often, anyway!”
Superfluous is it to say that Mr. Dobb kept to his expressed intentions
with regard to the gifted Mr. Bellaby, for to beat along convivial paths
in quest of profitable quarry was ever the form of sportsmanship that
appealed most strongly to Mr. Dobb.
So that Mr. Dobb and Mr. Bellaby became the closest of intimates within a
very brief while, and there were few of his spare hours which Mr. Bellaby
did not pass in the company of Mr. Dobb. And this was a state of affairs
which naturally exercised a financial reaction upon the latter gentleman,
though he bore philosophically with the expenditure in expectation of the
reward it would bring him eventually.
For the moment, however, he had to admit to himself that the precise
means to secure this reward was a matter which obstinately eluded his
ingenuity, so that his boon companionship with Mr. Bellaby had in it
something of that same fatalistic force which impels the gambler to
continue to wager optimistically on the same unsuccessful racehorse.
And so, for several days, the friendship bloomed in profuse flower, and
behind Mr. Dobb’s artless joviality and pride in the companionship of the
gifted Mr. Bellaby there was no hint of the problem that obsessed his
mind. It was only when Mr. Dobb was alone that geniality dropped from
him and was succeeded by a morose calculativeness.
And this was his mood one evening when, parting from Mr. Bellaby at the
very stage-door with the expressed intention of attending to certain
neglected business, he encountered the lovesick Mr. Samuel Clark.
Dull and vacant was the look in Mr. Clark’s eyes, dejected was the hump
of his shoulders. Had not Mr. Dobb accosted him he would have passed
straight on, so apathetic was the stout ferryman towards his
surroundings.
“’Ullo, Misery!” greeted Mr. Dobb.
“’Ullo, ’Orace,” returned Mr. Clark, in slow, unhappy tones.
“When’s the wedding coming off?” bantered Mr. Dobb.
Mr. Clark started violently and said something reprehensible about Mr.
Dobb’s inquisitiveness.
“What—is it all off, Sam?” teased Mr. Dobb.
“It are! Not that there was any real chance of it ever being on,
but—but—”
He shook his head dolefully and added an unkind aspiration with regard to
Mr. Joseph Bindley’s future state.
“Why, what’s ’e to do with it?”
“Heverything! Mind you, I was never fool enough to think that a girl
like ’er—well a woman like ’er, then,” he amended, in deference to Mr.
Dobb’s startled exclamation—“that a woman like ’er would ever take to a
old chap like me. I admit I was romantical, but—but one never knows, do
one?”
“You might ’ave been ’er ideal, Sam,” conceded Mr. Dobb. “As you says,
one can’t ever know for sure.”
“Of course, if ever I’d got to know ’er properly—” said Mr. Clark. “I
did once fetch a cab for ’er,” he went on, smiling pathetically at the
happy memory. “And she thanked me and give me thrippence. At least, she
sent it out to me with ’er thanks. I ain’t ever spoke to ’er, reely.
And now that ’ere Bindley—”
He stopped emotionally, and then again voiced an uncharitable interest in
Mr. Bindley’s eventual destination.
“Yes; but what’s Bindley to do with it?” asked Mr. Dobb. “This is a free
country, ain’t it?”
“Bindley’s a-carrying on with ’er!” stated Mr. Clark, passionately.
“I’ve been keeping my heye on ’er, so I know. This last day or two I’ve
stood ’elpless at the corner of ’er road and seen ’im call for ’er and
take ’er out time and time again. Good as hengaged to each other, they
are, so ’er landlady’s ’usband’s brother told me—and learning _that_ cost
me one and seven. Yes; and this very hafternoon I see ’em side by side
on a seat on the cliffs, where I’d followed ’em, and they was playing
slap ’ands, if you please. What do you make of that?”
“You’ll ’ave to promise to be nothing more than a brother to ’er, after
all, Sam,” said Mr. Dobb, with an unsympathetic levity which caused his
companion to stare at him in a wounded way and then stalk offendedly on.
Mr. Dobb, resuming his way, reached his abode, and sat down in an
arm-chair to indulge in meditation. At the end of twenty minutes he
leaped to his feet.
“Good enough!” he cried, joyously.
Mr. Marmaduke Bellaby, sauntering abroad on the morrow, found himself met
by Mr. Dobb. In this there was no novelty, nor was there in their
consequent adjournment to the “Royal William.”
“And ’ow did the show go last night?” asked Mr. Dobb.
“Great, laddie, great!” returned the other, though not entirely
convincingly.
“’Ave a crowded haudience?”
Mr. Bellaby regarded Mr. Dobb quizzically. “Well, we didn’t exactly have
to turn them away from the doors,” he confessed.
“I know,” said Mr. Dobb. “I ’appened to look in later on.”
“What for?”
“To make certain,” replied Mr. Dobb. “You see, between you and me, it’s
no secret that business is rotten at the theayter, is it? And it
certainly was rotten last night—not half it wasn’t, was it?”
“Been like that all the week,” gloomily said Mr. Bellaby.
“Well, that could be haltered,” observed Mr. Dobb sagely. “I got a idea.
Do us both good, it will.”
“What’s the scheme?”
“Lose ’er jewels,” whispered Mr. Dobb, mysteriously.
Mr. Bellaby, with a superior smile, stigmatized the suggestion as both
stale and threadbare. To this Mr. Dobb replied that, elaborated
according to the notion he had in mind, the artifice would none the less
prove successful.
“Mind you, it’s quite time we did something,” frankly conceded Mr.
Bellaby. “Talk about frosts! She was saying to me only yesterday that
if things didn’t improve— Of course for my own sake, I’d like things to
improve, but what can one do? We’d all like to hit on something good.
But as for losing her jewels, my dear old boy—oh, my dear old boy!”
“Never mind if they did start the idea in the year dot,” retorted Mr.
Dobb. “The Shore’aven public ain’t too used to the idea to sit up and
take notice, anyway. She’s got plenty of jew’l’ry to lose, ain’t she?
For myself, I never ’eard anyone rattle quite so much on the stage as she
do. Of course, _we_ knows it ain’t real, but—”
“It’s such an old, old scheme, though, laddie,” objected Mr. Bellaby.
“You wait and listen to me. I tell you candid that I want this idea
worked because it’s bound to be a good hadvertisement for me as well as
for ’er. She’ll get most good out of it. People’ll talk about it, and
they’ll flock to see ’er at the theayter. But they’ll ’ear about my
business, too, and that’s what I want.”
“Well, let’s hear, anyway,” said Mr. Bellaby.
“It begins with ’er ’aving ’er jew’l’ry stole. That’s to say, you
arrange things with ’er, and brings the whole lot down to me secret.
Well, next thing, you plasters all over the town a full list of the
missing jewels, except, of course, there’s no need to use the word
’himitation.’”
“Of course not,” agreed Mr. Bellaby.
“You ’eads the bill ‘One ’Undred Pounds Reward,’ promising that to anyone
assisting in the recovery of ’er jewels. And you lets the town study
that ’ere bill for a day or two. And then a chap brings the jewels to my
shop and tries to get me to buy ’em.”
“Eh?”
“’E can’t read print,” explained Mr. Dobb, with a wink, “so ’e don’t know
about them bills. I charges ’im with ’aving stolen ’em, and am just
going to send for the police, when ’e clears out in a ’urry, leaving the
jewels with me.”
“Ah, now I see!” observed the other.
“Hexactly. _I’ve_ ’ad ’em all the time. Well, I now applies for the
reward. The affair ’as got into the papers, and every one’s talking
about it. There’s a special performance, where she wears all ’er
recovered jew’l’ry, and you ’ave me up on the stage and ’and over the
reward to me—simply a bit of blank paper in a henvelope, of course, but I
get a little publicity and _she_ gets a lot of publicity, and—”
“Not at all bad,” commended Mr. Bellaby. “You being a local man, it
looks much more genuine.”
“In course it do. That’s just the idea.”
“’Pon my word, it’s worth doing. Come to think of it, though, there’s no
need for the jewels to leave her possession really. As long as they’re
hidden—”
“Why, that’s just where you miss the best part of it!” urged Mr. Dobb.
“When that chap runs out of my shop, the jewels is spilled all over the
place. If you like, ’e ’alf stuns me too, to prevent persoot. I know
one or two safe chaps what can be passing a minute or two after it’s
supposed to ’ave ’appened, and they can ’elp gather up the jewels and
bathe my fore’ead and so on. ’Ow’s that for a yarn for the ‘Shore’aven
Gazette,’ eh? Why, it’s as good as a play in itself.”
Mr. Bellaby, critically examining the project in all its facets, came at
last to the warmest agreement as to its merits, and there followed a
period of undertones. Then, to demonstrate his zeal in her cause, Miss
Delafayne’s manager straightway departed to set the scheme before her,
and Mr. Dobb ordered himself a drink, which, before he consumed it, he
waved at his reflection in a mirror.
In a short while Mr. Bellaby buoyantly returned. He told Mr. Dobb that
Miss Delafayne had been suffering very severely indeed from her artistic
temperament when first he had broached the subject to her, but he had
left her in the sunniest and most compliant of moods. Mr. Joseph
Bindley, too, it seemed, was thoroughly convinced of the merits of the
scheme, and had directed that his name, as proprietor of the theatre,
should figure in conjunction with Miss Delafayne’s as offerers of the
reward.
Things being thus satisfactorily in trim, Mr. Bellaby departed again to
compile an imaginative list of the jewellery to be lost by the
world-famous actress. This done, he left the catalogue with a printer
for immediate attention, and repaired once more to the “Royal William,”
where he handed to Mr. Dobb an undistinguished-looking parcel.
Mr. Dobb, returning home a little later with this packet under his arm,
was hailed by Mr. Tridge from the latter’s doorway.
“What you got there, ’Orace?” asked Mr. Tridge, curiously.
“A order for a glass shandyleary,” replied Mr. Dobb and passed on with
lightsome step.
That same evening the town of Shorehaven found itself furnished with
material for thrilling gossip, for scarce a thoroughfare was there that
did not exhibit somewhere adown its length the tally of the jewels that
the talented lady temporarily living in their midst had had the
misfortune to lose. In front of every printed handbill, with its
fascinating heading of “£100 Reward,” there lingered an absorbed group,
reading amazedly of ropes of pearls, and large and small diamond
brooches, of valuable rubies, and rare metals. The manner of their
disappearance, and the scene whence they had vanished, were details
tactfully left vague, so that the ends of publicity were further served
by this opportunity to speculate whether the noted absent-mindedness of
genius or mere criminal avarice were responsible for the lady’s loss.
For two full days the town theorized and clicked its tongue, and spoke
either sympathetically or sneeringly of the affair. Attendance at the
theatre suddenly improved, and appreciation which had been denied to Miss
Delafayne as a performer was now showered on her as a lady who was
supporting material loss with great dignity. Sceptics there certainly
were, but these were in a minority, and their number would have been even
less had that perfervid admirer, Mr. Samuel Clark, had the physical
powers to convert those disbelievers he happened to encounter.
And then one afternoon Mr. Horace Dobb sent a dictatorial and even
arrogant message to Mr. Joseph Bindley, demanding that gentleman’s
attendance at the little shop in Fore Street at once. Mr. Bindley, a
gentleman plain of speech and blunt of manner, went immediately to Mr.
Dobb to ask him what he meant by such a message.
“I got a glass shandyleary what belongs by rights to the ceiling of your
theayter,” returned Mr. Dobb, equably, “and I want to sell it to you.”
Mr. Bindley, as became a man who had attained the position of theatrical
proprietor, heatedly gave his opinion of such impertinence and strode to
the door.
“Ain’t you rather mixed up with me to act so ’aughty?” asked Mr. Dobb, in
civil accents.
Mr. Bindley halted and swung round to stare at Mr. Dobb.
“Don’t you get trying to play any tricks with me!” he warned Mr. Dobb.
“We’ve got a understanding, and you stick to it, and I stick to it, and
there’s an end of it! I don’t want no ’anky-panky!”
“Thirty-five quid—that was what I was going to ask for that shandyleary,”
mentioned Mr. Dobb. “Only I’ve ’ad a lot of hincidental expenses with it
lately, so I’m asking thirty-eight now. And it’s worth it—well worth it.
You ’ave a look at it, and you’ll say so, too. It’s a bargain.”
“What’s the game?” said Mr. Bindley, aggressively. “What are you trying
on—a sort of blackmail?”
“Well, yes, that’s what it really is,” acquiesced Mr. Dobb, very
smoothly. “Only you call it that again, and up goes the price a quid a
time! See?”
Mr. Bindley, snorting, laid his palm on the handle of the door.
“They tells me Miss Delafayne ’as got a dooce of a temper,” observed Mr.
Dobb, irrelevantly.
Mr. Bindley plucked open the door and marched out. Five yards away he
halted and came back again to the threshold.
“What’s that got to do with it?” he demanded.
“It’s a lovely shandyleary,” declared Mr. Dobb.
“To blazes with your shandyleary, and you too!” bawled the choleric Mr.
Bindley. “Why don’t you speak straight out?”
“Just what I’m going to,” answered Mr. Dobb; and abruptly abandoned his
pose of suavity. “Look ’ere, Bindley, I’ve got you tied up tight! See?
’Ere, glance at that little notice on the wall there. ‘Strictly
Business!’ that says, don’t it? Well, that’s my motter. I’ve been
planning to sell you that shandyleary, and I’m going to.”
“Huh!” scornfully returned Mr. Bindley.
“Huh-ing or no huh-ing, I’m going to! You can’t ’elp yourself. You’ve
been trying a bit of artfulness with the public over them lost jewels, so
you can’t squeal if some one else tries ’is artfulness on you. Fust of
all, you don’t mind admitting I’ve got that parcel of coloured beads and
brass, do you? Suppose I goes and calls in the first ten chaps I meet
outside and tells ’em ’ow that jew’l’ry come into my ’ands? That would
make you look pretty foolish, wouldn’t it?”
“I could say you stole them.”
“Not good enough. I can prove any amount of alleybys. I could prove
there couldn’t be no other way they _could_ ’ave got into my ’ands except
through Bellaby.”
“I could say he stole them, and you were the receiver.”
“Yes, so you could,” agreed Mr. Dobb; “and we wouldn’t ’alf ’ave a chatty
time in the dock explaining ’ow it all really came about. They wouldn’t
overlook your trying to deceive ’em, as you ’ave done, in a ’urry.”
“So, I’m to buy the shandyleary to prevent the truth coming out, am I?”
said Mr. Bindley, not without admiration. “It’s pretty smart, but not
smart enough.”
“You’ve been smart enough in your time, from what they tells me about
you,” returned Mr. Dobb. “You ought to be smart enough now to see you’re
cornered. Why, I’ve got you any number of ways. I could sue you for the
reward, for example, if I went about the thing carefully.”
“Well, couldn’t I deny they were the jewels? They won’t agree exact with
the description, you know.”
“Ah, I thought you might say that! That’s my trump card. You say they
ain’t ’er jewels? Very well, I hexibits the ’ole jolly collection in the
very front of my window, and pastes the reward bill over ’em, and writes
a paper beside ’em what says: ‘These jewels ’ave been found and ’ave not
been claimed by anyone. They are all false, and Miss Margureety
Delafayne says they ain’t ’ers.’ That’ll start people putting two and
two together, won’t it?”
“Let ’em!” cried Mr. Bindley, forcefully. “Before ever I’ll be
blackmailed out of—”
“Easy enough to talk like that,” said Mr. Dobb, reproachfully. “But
’aven’t you any consideration for _’er_? Why soon as ever the story gets
round the town, she’ll be the laughing-stock of the place. ’Er and ’er
false jewellery will be ’eld up to ridicule wherever she goes. Besides,
a little bird ’as told me that you and ’er are doing a bit of courting.
Well, if what I’ve ’eard of ’er temper is true, she’ll ’ave something to
say to you for allowing ’er to be made ridic’lous like that, when you
could ’ave prevented it. Straight, if I was you, Bindley, I wouldn’t
lose a fiancy like that and a bargain of a shandyleary for thirty-nine
paltry quid!”
Mr. Bindley, his complexion of a fine purple hue, stood staring at Mr.
Dobb.
“It’s a dirty trick!” he gasped at last.
“Dessay,” said Mr. Dobb. “We’ve all got to live.”
“And if—if I was fool enough to buy your confounded shandyleary, how do I
know you wouldn’t diddle me again? You might keep some of them jewels
back and—”
“Not a bit of it,” said Mr. Dobb, quite eagerly. “I’d be glad to ’ave
finished with such trickery on the public. You give me a cheque for that
shandyleary, and you can take the jew’l’ry away with you when you go, if
you like. You’ll know it ain’t safe to stop the cheque, because that
would lead to all sorts of hinquiries, and—”
“I shouldn’t dream of giving you a cheque. You’d blackmail me again over
that, some’ow. But I’ve got some notes on me—”
“Forty quid?” asked Mr. Dobb, urbanely. “That’s the price up-to-date,
you know.”
“Where’s the shandyleary?” growled Mr. Bindley.
“Downstairs in my cellar. And ’ere’s the jew’l’ry.”
“All of it?”
Mr. Dobb, lifting a package from beneath his counter, opened the wrapping
and displayed a mass of personal ornament.
“You compare that with the list and you’ll find there ain’t a thing
missing,” he said, tying up the parcel again and returning it beneath the
counter.
“Well, let’s see the shandyleary,” grunted Mr. Bindley, with ill grace,
“and maybe I’ll offer you a price for it.”
“Spoke like a sensible man!” declared Mr. Dobb. “It’s in three parts.
I’ll carry ’em up.”
Elatedly he tripped down into his cellar. He was just about to pick up
the nearest portion of the chandelier, when a sudden anguish assailed
him. With an anxious cry he ran back up the stairway again. The shop
was empty. Mr. Dobb darted behind his counter. The parcel was gone. He
raced out into the roadway, and was rewarded with a view of Mr. Bindley,
the parcel tight-clutched beneath his arm, rapidly retiring down the
perspective.
Mr. Dobb opened his mouth to shout, then blinked and became thoughtful.
And, at long last, he made a helpless, fluttering gesture with his hands
and retired forlornly into his shop.
That same evening Mr. Clark, in a state of considerable jubilation, came
to see him.
“I’ve ’ad a bit of luck to-day!” babbled the stout ferryman. “I met ’er
face to face, and I’m cured! Why, close to, she’s nearly ’alf as old as
I am! Bindley was with ’er, and that’s what I come to see you about, to
see if you can hexplain the mystery. He saw me ’anging about the corner,
as usual, and ’e asked me if I’d do a little job for ’im, seeing as ’e
reckoned to ’ave a busy time before the hopening of the theayter.”
“Well?” sourly prompted Mr. Dobb.
“Well, first of all, ’e give me a bob, and then ’e give me a letter to
deliver by ’and, marked ‘Hurgent,’ to the heditor of the ‘Shore’aven
Gazette.’”
“Ah!” commented Mr. Dobb.
“But that ain’t the mystery. Then ’e give me another bob and a ’eavy
little parcel to be left at the stage-door. It was addressed to Miss
Margureety Delafayne, and on it was written in pencil, ‘_From one ’oo
repents_.’ Now, seeing ’e was with ’er at the time, what did ’e want to
send that there parcel to the theayter for? And what did that bit about
repenting mean? Can _you_ see any sense in it?”
“No,” said Mr. Dobb, churlishly and untruthfully.
_EPISODE IX_
THE GREEN EYES OF THE LITTLE BIRMINGHAM GOD
Mr. Horace Dobb sharply closed the tattered volume which had been
occupying his leisure, and looked up as if something were momentarily
dazzling him. And next he removed his slippered feet from the
mantelshelf and very slowly and carefully described an arc with his heels
until he was sitting erect in his chair, alertly yet contemplatively, and
also with a suggestion of breathlessness, in the manner of one who is
visited by an inspired idea.
For a full minute Mr. Dobb remained thus, and then he rose and shuffled
out into his shop. Here he opened a cupboard to take from it a small
metallic object. Returning to his parlour, he placed this object on the
table, and it stood revealed as a posturing figure of tarnished brass,
ostensibly Oriental in origin.
And now for a long, long while Mr. Dobb stared at this figure in deep
meditation, with his eyelids twitching and flickering impatiently when,
now and then, he found that his inventiveness had stampeded him into some
mental cul-de-sac. And then he began to pace the narrow confines of the
room, walking in a tense, rigid way, as though his thoughts were so
delicately balanced on each other that the slightest disturbance of their
equilibrium would send them scattering uselessly in all directions.
But at last he halted, nodded his head thrice with keen satisfaction at
the idol on the table, and then came to the greatest animation,
whistling, snapping his fingers, and even pirouetting a little.
“Green heyes and all, just like it says in the book,” he remarked,
enigmatically.
And with that he bundled the idol back into its cupboard, and set forth
to confabulate with Mr. Peter Lock at his place of employment.