JUNE had a further moment of indecision while she thought
out what her line must be. She resolved to go direct to her room and
pack her box. Afterwards she must find William and enlist his help in
bringing it downstairs, and then she would get a taxi and drive off
with her things before Uncle Si discovered his loss. Otherwise...!
Her mind had not time to shape the grisly alternative, before the
immediate course of events shaped it for her. Suddenly she was aware
of a presence lurking in the dark shadows of the shop interior. It was
couchant, vengeful, hostile. Almost before June could guess what was
happening it had sprung upon her.
With astounding force her right wrist was grasped and twisted behind
her back. She gave a little yelp of pain. A second yelp followed, as
she struggled to free herself, only to find that she was locked in a
vice, and that to fight against it would be agony.
“Now, where is it?” The low voice hissing in her ear was surely that of
a maniac. “Where’s the picture?” The grip upon her had the strength of
ten. “Where is it--eh?” As the question was put, her captor shook her
fiercely. “Tell me.” He shook her again. “Oh, you won’t--won’t you?”
And then she realized that there was something in his hand.
She called wildly for William, but there was no response.
“No use lifting up your voice. The boy’s out.”
She fought to get free, but with a wrist still locked, she was at his
mercy. “Now then, where’s that picture? Won’t tell me--eh?” There was
madness in that depth of rage.
Quite suddenly there came a sickening crash upon her shoulders. She
let out with her heels and found the shin of the enemy, she fought and
screamed, yet pinned like that, she felt her wrist must break and her
arm be wrenched from its socket.
“Where is it--you thief?” The stick crashed again, this time in a
series of horrible blows. So severe was the pain that it seemed to
drive through her whole being. She began to fear that he meant to kill
her; and as the stick continued to descend she felt sure that he would.
She was a strong, determined girl, but her captor had her at a hopeless
disadvantage. His strength, besides, was that of one possessed. Her
cries and struggles merely added to his savagery.
“Tell me where it is or I’ll knock the life out of you.”
Utterly desperate, she contrived at last to break away; and though
with the force of a maniac he tried to prevent her escape, somehow
she managed to get into the street. He followed her as far as the
shop door, brandishing the stick, hurling imprecations upon her, and
threatening what he would do if she didn’t bring the picture back at
once.
Bruised and gasping, June reeled into the darkness. Feeling more dead
than alive, she lingered nearby after the old man had gone in, trying
to pull her battered self together. She badly wanted her box, yet the
only hope of getting it now was by means of the police. As things were,
however, it would not be wise to ask their help. The old wretch was so
clever he might be able to make her out a thief; besides, for the time
being she had had more than enough of this horrible affair.
Cruelly hurt she moved at last with slow pain towards the Strand.
By now she had decided that her most imperative need was a night’s
lodging. Before starting to look for one, however, the enticing doors
of a teashop gave her a renewed sense of weakness. Gratefully she went
in and sat down, ordering a pot of tea and a little bread and butter
which she felt too ill to eat.
Nearly half an hour she sat in the company of her thoughts. Hard,
unhappy thoughts they were. Without one friend to whom in this crisis
she could turn, the world which confronted her now was an abyss. The
feeling of loneliness was desolating, yet, after all, far less so than
it would have been were she not fortified by the memory of a certain
slip of paper in her purse.
A slow return of fighting power revived a spark of natural resolution
within her. After all, a potent weapon was in her hands. She must think
out a careful plan of turning it to full account. And at the worst she
was now beyond the reach of Uncle Si. Even if he kept her box and all
its contents, weighed in the scale of the picture’s fabulous worth, her
modest possessions amounted to very little.
Stimulated by this conclusion, she began to forget her aches. When a
waitress came June asked for her bill. It was sixpence. She put her
hand in the pocket of her coat. Her purse was not there.
With a little thrill of fear, she felt in the pocket on the other side.
The purse was not there either. She was stunned. This was a blow far
worse than those she had just received. She grew so dazed that as she
got up she swayed against the table, and had to hold on by it to save
herself from falling.
The waitress who had written out the bill caught a glimpse of scared
eyes set in a face of chalk.
“Aren’t you well?” she asked.
“I--I’ve lost my purse,” June stammered. “It’s fallen out of my pocket,
I think.” As with frantic futility she plunged her hand in again, she
was raked by the true meaning of such a fact in all its horror. Unless
her purse had been stolen on the Underground, and it was not very
likely, it had almost certainly fallen out of her pocket in the course
of the struggle with Uncle Si.
It was lying now on the shop floor unless the old wretch had found it
already. And if he had he would lose no time in examining its contents.
He had only to do so for the cloak-room ticket to tell him where
the Van Roon was deposited, and to provide him with a sure means of
obtaining it.
“You may have had your pocket picked.”
June did not think so. Yet, being unable to take the girl into her
confidence, she did not choose to disclose her doubts.
“Perhaps I have,” she gasped. And then face to face with the extreme
peril of the case, her overdriven nerves broke out in mutiny. She burst
into tears. “I don’t know what I’ll do,” she sobbed.
The waitress was full of sympathy. “Your bill is only sixpence. Come in
and pay to-morrow.”
Through her tears June thanked her.
“’Tisn’t my bill, although it’s very kind of you. There was something
very important in my purse.”
“Where did you have it last?”
“In the booking hall, when I took a ticket from Victoria to Charing
Cross.”
“Your pocket’s been picked,” said the waitress with conviction.
“There’s a warning in all the Tubes.”
The comfort was cold, yet comfort it was of a kind. June saw a wan ray
of hope. After all, there was a bare possibility that inexorable Fate
was not the thief.
“I’d go to Scotland Yard if I were you,” said the waitress. “The
police often get back stolen property. Last year my sister’s house was
burgled, and they recovered nearly everything for her.”
June began to pull herself together. It was not hope, however, that
braced her faculties, but an effort of will. Hope there was none of
recovering the purse, but she was now faced by the stern necessity
of getting back the picture. In the light of this tragedy it was in
most serious peril. Delay might be fatal, if indeed it had not already
proved to be so. She must go at once and get possession of the treasure
lest it be too late.
The waitress was a good Samaritan. Not only could the bill wait until
the next day, but she went even further: “Is your home far from here?”
she asked.
“My home--far?” said June, dazedly. For the moment she did not
understand all that was implied by the question.
“If you live on the District, and you haven’t a season, I don’t mind
lending you a shilling to get you home.”
June accepted a shilling with earnest thanks. In the circumstances, it
might be worth untold gold: “You can give it me back any time you are
passing,” said the waitress, as June thanked her again and made her
way unsteadily out into the street.
The chill air of the Strand revived her a little. She had decided
already that she must go at once to Victoria. Every minute would count,
and it now occurred to her that if she took the Underground, several
might be saved.
To the Underground in Trafalgar Square she went. It was the hour of the
evening rush. Queues were lining up at all the booking office windows.
And at the first window she came to, some three persons or so ahead
of her, was a figure oddly familiar, which, however, in her present
state of disintegration she did not recognize at once. It was clad in a
sombre tail coat of prehistoric design, jemima boots, frayed shepherd’s
plaid trousers braced high and a hard square felt hat which gave a
crowning touch of oppressive respectability. Moreover, its progress was
assisted by a heavy knotted walking stick, at the sight of which June
gave an involuntary shiver.
An instant later the shiver had developed into a long and paralyzing
shudder. Uncle Si was just ahead of her; in fact she was near enough to
hear a harsh voice demand almost with menace a ticket to Victoria.
June’s worst fears were realized. The purse had fallen from her pocket
to the shop floor in the struggle; the old wretch had found it,
deciphered the precious ticket, put two and two together, and was now
on his way to claim the parcel. All this was crystal clear to her swift
mind. She felt a strong desire to faint, but she fought her weakness.
She must go on. Everything was as good as lost--but she must go on.
She took her ticket. And then in the long subway to the platform she
raced on ahead of Uncle Si. He was so near-sighted that even had he
been less absorbed in his own affairs he would not have been likely to
notice her.
June reached the platform well in front of the old man. But the train
to Victoria was not in. It arrived two minutes later; by then, Uncle Si
had appeared, and they boarded it together. She was careful, however,
not to enter the same compartment as the enemy.
Short as the journey was, June had ample time to appreciate that the
odds were heavily against her. The mere fact that the cloak-room
receipt for the parcel was in the custody of Uncle Si would confer
possession upon him; it had only to be presented for the Van Roon to be
handed over without a question.
The one chance she had now was to get on well ahead of the old beast,
and convince the clerk that in spite of the absence of the ticket the
parcel was hers. She knew, however, only too well that the hope of
being able to do this was frail indeed--at all events before the holder
of the ticket arrived on the scene to claim it.
At Victoria, June dashed out of the train even before it stopped.
Running past the ticket collector at the barrier and along the subway
she reached the escalator yards in front of Uncle Si, and, in spite
of being unused to this trap for the unwary, for Blackhampton’s more
primitive civilization knew escalators not, she ascended to the street
at a pace far beyond the powers of the Old Crocodile. By this means,
indeed, she counted on gaining an advantage of several minutes, since
it was hardly likely that Uncle Si would trust himself to such a
contrivance, and in ignorance of the fact that she was just ahead,
would choose the dignified safety of the lift.
So far as it went the thought was reassuring. Alas, it did not go far.
As June ran through the long station to the cloak-room at its farthest
end, she had but a very slender hope of being able to recover the
parcel. She had no intention, however, of submitting tamely to fate. In
this predicament, whatever the cost, she must make one last and final
effort to get back her treasure.
At the cloak-room counter she took her courage in both hands. A man
sour and elderly had replaced the wearer of the green corduroy, who was
nowhere to be seen. This was a piece of bad luck, for she had hoped
that the nice-looking young man might remember her. Happily, no other
passengers besieged the counter at the moment, so that without loss of
time June was able to describe the parcel and to announce the fact that
the ticket she had received for it was missing.
Exactly as she had foreseen the clerk raised an objection. Without a
ticket she couldn’t have the parcel. “But I simply must have it,” said
June. And spurred by the knowledge that there was not one moment to
lose in arguing the case, she boldly lifted the flap of the counter and
entered the cloak-room itself.
“No use coming in here,” said the Clerk, crustily. “You can’t take
nothing away without a ticket.”
“But my purse has been stolen, I tell you,” said June.
“Then I should advise you to go and see the station-master.”
“I can’t wait to do that.” And with the defiance of despair, expecting
each moment to hear the voice of Uncle Si at her back, June ignored
the Clerk, and proceeded to gaze up and down the numerous and heavily
burdened luggage racks for her property.