“NOT a bit o’ use, don’t I tell you.” The Clerk was growing
angry.
June pretended not to hear. Her heart beating fast she went on with
her search for the parcel; yet in the midst of it she grew aware that
somebody was approaching the counter. She dare not pause to look who it
was, for she knew only too well that it was almost bound to be Uncle Si.
The Clerk uttered another snarl of protest as he turned away to attend
to the new comer. As he did so, June breathed a prayer that her eye
might fall on the parcel in that instant, for her only hope now was
to seize it and fly. That, however, was not to be. She had omitted to
notice the place in which it had been put, and do as she would she
could not find it now.
At this crucial moment, there emerged from the inner office her friend
of the green corduroy. She simply leapt at what was now her one
remaining chance.
“Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come,” cried June, in a voice that was a little
frantic: “You remember my bringing a brown paper parcel here, don’t
you--about two hours ago?”
The tone, tinged as it was with hysteria, caused Green Corduroy to look
at June with mild astonishment. “I’ve lost the ticket you gave me for
it, but I’m sure you remember my bringing it.” Her brain seemed on
fire. “Don’t you remember my giving you a ten shilling note? And you
had to go and get the change.”
Green Corduroy was a slow-brained youth, but a knitting of the brow
seemed to induce a hazy recollection of the incident. But while the
process was going on, June gave a glance over her shoulder, and behold
there was Uncle Si the other side of the counter. A second glance told
her, moreover, that Crusty Sides already had the fatal ticket in his
hand.
What must she do? It was not a moment for half measures. While she was
stirring the memory of Green Corduroy, the treasure would be gone. She
did not hesitate. Observing Crusty Sides wheel, paper in hand, with
the slow austerity of one of the Company’s oldest and most respected
servants towards a luggage rack near by, June seized the clue. Of a
sudden her eyes lit on the parcel at the top of the pile. Already the
responsible fingers of Crusty Sides were straying upwards, yet before
they could enclose the Van Roon, June made a dash for it, and managed
to whisk it away from under his nose.
Her brain was like quicksilver now. She had a mad impulse to rush off
with the treasure without further explanation; all the same she was
able to resist it, for she realized that such a course would be too
full of peril.
“Yes--this is it,” she said in an urgent whisper to Green Corduroy. And
as she spoke, with a presence of mind, which in the circumstances was a
little uncanny, she slipped behind a large pile of boxes out of view of
Uncle Si.
“Surely you remember my bringing it?”
Green Corduroy seemed to think that he did remember. At this point
Crusty Sides, with an air of outrage, sternly interposed. “But a pawty
claims it. And here’s his ticket.”
“The ticket’s mine,” said June, in a fierce whisper. “It’s been taken
from my purse.”
“Nothin’ to do with us, that ain’t,” said Crusty Sides.
“But you _do_ remember my bringing it, don’t you?” Beseechingly
June turned to Green Corduroy. And he, that nice-looking young man,
with a frown of ever-deepening perplexity, slowly affirmed that he
thought he did remember.
“The ticket’s what we’ve got to go by,” said Crusty Sides, sternly.
“Nothin’ else matters to us.”
“If you’ll look at it,” said June to Green Corduroy, “you’ll see that
it’s made out in your writing.”
Green Corduroy looked and saw that it was. As far as he was concerned,
that seemed to clinch the argument. And even Crusty Sides, a born
bureaucrat, was rather impressed by it. “You say this here ticket’s
been taken off on you?” he asked.
“Yes,” said June in an excited whisper. “By my wicked thief of an
uncle.”
Instantly she regretted the imprudence of her words.
“Uncle a thief, eh?” proclaimed Crusty Sides, in a voice of such
carrying power that to June it seemed that the Old Crocodile could
hardly fail to hear him.
“Anyhow, this gentleman knows that it was I who brought the parcel,”
she said, determinedly to Green Corduroy.
That young man looked her straight in the eye, and then declared that
he did know. Further, like many minds “slow in the uptake,” when once
in motion they are prone to deep conclusions. “Seems to me, Nobby,” he
weightily affirmed, under the stimulus no doubt of being addressed as
a gentleman, in the Company’s time, by such a good-looking girl, “that
as this lady has got the parcel, and we have got the ticket for it, she
and Uncle had better fight it out between ’em.”
“I don’t know about that,” growled Nobby.
Green Corduroy, however, stimulated by the fiery anguish of June’s
glance, and no doubt still in thrall to the fact that she considered
him a gentleman, was not to be moved from the statesmanlike attitude he
had taken up. “You let ’em fight it out, Nobby. This lady was the one
as brought it here.”
“I gave you a ten shilling note, didn’t I?” The voice of June was as
honeyed as the state of her feelings would permit.
“Yes, and I fetched the change for you, didn’t I?”
Crusty Sides shook a head of confirmed misogyny. “Very irregular,
that’s all I’ve got to say about it.”
“Maybe it is, Nobby. But it’s nothing to do with you and me.”
Green Corduroy, with almost the air of a knight errant, took the
all-important slip of paper from his colleague. Flaunting it in gallant
fingers, he moved up slowly to the counter.
S. Gedge Antiques, buying spectacles on nose, knotted cudgel in hand,
was impatiently waiting. “The parcel is claimed by the lady who brought
it,” June heard Green Corduroy announce.
She waited for no more. Following close behind Crusty Sides, who also
moved up to the counter, she slipped quietly through an adjacent door
to the main line platform before Uncle Si grew fully alive to the
situation.
Clasping the parcel to her bosom, she glided swiftly down the platform,
and out by the booking hall, travelling as fast as her legs would take
her, without breaking into a run, which would have looked like guilt,
and might have attracted public notice. She did not dare to glance
back, for she was possessed by a fear that the old man and his stick
were at her heels.
Once clear of the station itself, she yielded to the need of putting as
much distance between Uncle Si and herself as a start so short would
permit. There was now hope of throwing him off the track. Thus, as soon
as she reached the Victoria Street corner, she scrambled on to a bus
that was in the act of moving away.
One seat only was vacant and, as in a state of imminent collapse she
sank down upon it, she ventured for the first time to look behind her.
She quite expected to find Uncle Si at her elbow already, but with a
gasp of relief she learned that the old man was nowhere in sight.