Mr Campion’s Conjuring Trick
The six young people went down to the big dining-hall with a certain
amount of trepidation. Jeanne clung to Prenderby, the other two girls
stuck together, and Abbershaw was able to have a word or two with Mr
Campion.
‘You don’t like the idea?’ he murmured.
The other shrugged his shoulders.
‘It’s the risk, my old bird,’ he said softly. ‘Our pugilistic friend
doesn’t realize that we’re not up against a gang of racecourse thugs.
I tried to point it out to him but I’m afraid he just thought I was
trying to be funny. People without humour always have curious ideas on
that subject. However, it may come off. It’ll be the last thing he’ll
expect us to do, anyway, and if you really have burnt that paper it’s
the best thing we could do.’
‘I suppose you think I’m a fool,’ said Abbershaw, a little defiantly.
Campion grinned.
‘On the contrary, young sir, I think you’re a humorist. A trifle
unconscious, perhaps, but none the worse for that.’
Their conversation ended abruptly, for they had reached the foot of
the staircase and were approaching the dining-room.
The door stood open, and they went in to find the table set for all
nine of them, and the two men who had acted as footmen during the
week-end awaiting their coming. They sat down at the table. ‘The
others won’t be a moment, but we’ll start, please,’ said Campion, and
the meal began.
For some minutes it seemed as if the funereal atmosphere which
surrounded the whole house was going to damp any attempt at bright
conversation that anyone might feel disposed to make, but Mr Campion
sailed nobly into the breach.
Abbershaw was inclined to wonder at him until he realized with
a little shock that considering the man’s profession the art of
talking rubbish in any circumstances might be one of his chief
stock-in-trades.
At the moment he was speaking of food. His high voice worked up to a
pitch of enthusiasm, and his pale eyes widened behind his horn-rimmed
spectacles.
‘It all depends what you mean by eating,’ he was saying. ‘I don’t
believe in stuffing myself, you know, but I’m not one of those people
who are against food altogether. I knew a woman once who didn’t
believe in food – thought it was bad for the figure – so she gave it
up altogether. Horrible results, of course; she got so thin that no
one noticed her around – husband got used to being alone –
estrangement, divorce – oh, I believe in food. I say, have you seen my
new trick with a napkin and a salt-cellar – rather natty, don’t you
think?’
He covered a salt-cellar with his napkin as he spoke, made several
passes over it, a solemn expression on his face, and then, whisking
the napery away, disclosed nothing but shining oak beneath.
His mind still on Mr Campion’s profession, Abbershaw was conscious of
a certain feeling of apprehension. The salt-cellar was antique,
probably worth a considerable sum.
Mr Campion’s trick was not yet over, however. A few more passes and
the salt-cellar was discovered issuing from the waistcoat of the
man-servant who happened to be attending to him at the time.
‘There!’ he said. ‘A pretty little piece of work, isn’t it? All done
by astrology. For my next I shall require two assistants, any live
fish, four aspidistras, and one small packet of Gold Flake.’ As he
uttered the last words he turned sharply to beam around the table, and
his elbow caught Meggie’s glass and sent it crashing to the floor.
A little breathless silence would have followed the smash had not he
bounded up from his chair immediately and bent down ostensibly to
gather up the fragments, jabbering the whole time. ‘What an idiot!
What an idiot! Have I splashed your dress, Miss Oliphant? All over the
floor! What a mess, what a mess! Come here, my man, here: bring a
dust-pan and broom with you.’ He was making such a fuss and such a
noise that no one had noticed the door open, and the somewhat
self-conscious entry of Chris Kennedy’s little band. No one, that is,
save Campion, who from his place of vantage half-way under the table
had an excellent view of the feet.
At the moment when Martin Watt leapt forward at the man by the carving
table, Campion threw his arms round the other man-servant’s legs just
below the knees, and jerked him back on to the flags with an almost
professional neatness. Within two seconds he was seated astride the
man’s chest, his knees driven into the fleshy part of his arms, whilst
he stuffed a handkerchief into his mouth. Abbershaw and Prenderby
hurried to his assistance and between them they strapped the man into
a chair, where he sat glaring at them, speechless and impotent.
Kennedy’s party, though less neat, had been quite as successful, and
Chris himself, flushed with excitement, now stood with his man’s
loaded revolver in his hand.
‘Have you got his gun?’ he said, in a voice which sounded hoarse even
to himself, as he indicated Campion’s captive.
‘No,’ said Abbershaw, and began his search. Two minutes later he
looked up, disappointed.
‘He hasn’t one,’ he said at last, and even the man himself seemed
surprised.
Kennedy swore softly and handed the gun which he held to Martin.
‘You’d better have it,’ he said. ‘I’m hopeless with my right arm gone.
Now, then, Campion, will you go upstairs with the girls? Abbershaw,
you’d better go with them. As soon as you’ve seen them safely locked
in the room, come back to us. We’re making for the servants’
quarters.’
They obeyed in silence, and Abbershaw led Campion and the three girls
quietly out of the room, across the hall, and up the wide staircase.
On the first landing they paused abruptly. Two figures were looming
towards them through the dimness ahead. It was Jesse Gideon and the
heavy, red-faced man whom Abbershaw had encountered outside Dawlish’s
door in his search for Meggie. They would have passed in silence had
not Gideon spoken suspiciously in his smooth silken voice.
‘Dinner is over early?’ he said, fixing his narrow glittering eyes on
Meggie.
She replied coldly that it was, and made as if to pass on up the
stairs, but Gideon evidently intended to prolong the conversation, for
he glided in front of her so that he and the surly ruffian beside him
barred her progress up the stairs from the step above the one on which
she was standing.
‘You are all so eager,’ Gideon continued softly, ‘that it almost looks
like an expedition to me. Or perhaps it is one of your charming games
of hide-and-seek which you play so adroitly,’ he added, and the sneer
on his unpleasant face was very obvious. ‘You will forgive me saying
so I am sure,’ he went on, still in the same soothing obsequious
voice, ‘but don’t you think you are trying Mr Dawlish’s patience a
little too much by being so foolish in your escapades? If you are wise
you will take my advice and keep very quiet until it pleases him to
release you.’
He spoke banteringly, but there was no mistaking the warning behind
his words, and it was with some eagerness that Abbershaw took Meggie’s
arm and piloted her between the two men. His one aim at the moment was
to get the girl safely to her room.
‘We understand you perfectly, Mr Gideon,’ he murmured. Gideon’s sneer
deepened into a contemptuous smile and he moved aside a little to let
them pass. Abbershaw deliberately ignored his attitude. He wanted no
arguments till the girls were safe. They were passing silently,
therefore, when suddenly from somewhere beneath them there sounded,
ugly and unmistakable, a revolver shot.
Instantly Gideon’s smiling contempt turned to a snarl of anger as all
his suspicions returned – verified.
‘So it is an expedition, is it?’ he said softly. ‘A little
explanation, if you please.’
Abbershaw realized that once again they were caught, and a feeling of
utter dejection passed over him.
Suddenly from the darkness behind him a high, rather foolish voice
that yet had a certain quality of sternness in it said quickly, ‘Don’t
talk so much. Put ’em up!’
While Abbershaw stood looking at them, Gideon and his burly companion,
with mingled expressions of rage and amazement on their faces, raised
their hands slowly above their heads.
‘Quick, man, get their guns!’
The words were uttered in Abbershaw’s ear by a voice that was still
vaguely foolish. He obeyed it instantly, removing a small, wicked
little weapon from Gideon’s hip pocket and a heavy service revolver
from the thug’s.
‘Now then, turn round. Quick march. Keep ’em right up. I’m a dangerous
man and I shoot like hell.’
Abbershaw glanced round involuntarily, and saw what Gideon and his
companions must have done some minutes before – Albert Campion’s
pleasant, vacuous face, pale and curiously in earnest in the faint
light, as he peered at them from behind the gleaming barrel of a heavy
Webley.
‘Shove the girls in their room. Give Miss Oliphant the little pistol,
and then come with me,’ he murmured to Abbershaw, as the strange
procession set off up the stairs.
‘Steady,’ he went on in a louder voice to the two men in front of him.
‘No fancy work. Any noise either of you makes will be voluntary
suicide for the good of the cause. It’ll mean one man less to tie up,
anyway. I’m taking them up to my room,’ he murmured to Abbershaw.
‘Follow me there. They’re slippery beggars and two guns are better
than one.’
Abbershaw handed Gideon’s little revolver to Meggie, which she took
eagerly.
‘We’ll be all right,’ she whispered. ‘Go on after him. They’re
terrible people.’
‘For God’s sake wait here till we come, then,’ he whispered back. She
nodded, and for a moment her steady brown eyes met his.
‘We will, old dear. Don’t worry about us. We’re all right.’
She disappeared into the room with Jeanne and Anne Edgeware, and
Abbershaw hurried after Campion considerably reassured. Meggie was a
wonderful girl.
He reached Campion just in time to get the bedroom door open and to
assist him to get the two into the room. ‘Now,’ said Campion, ‘it’s
getting infernally dark, so we’ll have to work fast. Abbershaw, will
you keep watch over these two gentlemen. I’m afraid you may have to
fire at the one on the right, he’s swearing so horribly – while I
attend to Mr Gideon’s immediate needs. That worthy enthusiast, Chris
Kennedy, has pinched all my straps, and though I hate to behave as no
guest should, I’m afraid there’s no help for it. The Black Dudley
linen will have to go.’
As he spoke he stripped the clothes from the great four-poster bed,
and began to tear the heavy linen sheets into wide strips. ‘If you
could persuade Mr Gideon to stand with his back against the post of
this bed,’ he remarked at length, ‘I think something might be done for
him. Hands still up, please.’
Ten minutes later, a silent mummy-like figure, stretched against the
bedpost, arms bandaged to the wood high above his head, an improvised
gag in his mouth, was all that remained of the cynical little
foreigner.
Mr Campion seemed to have a touch of the professional in all he did.
He stood back to survey his handiwork with some pride, then he glanced
at their other captive.
‘Heavy, unpleasant-looking bird,’ he remarked. ‘I’m afraid he’s too
heavy for the bed. Isn’t there something we can shove him into?’
He glanced round the room as he spoke, and their captive fancied that
Abbershaw’s eyes followed his, for he suddenly lunged forward and
caught the doctor, who was unused to such situations, round the
ankles, sending him sprawling. The heavy gun was thrown out of
Abbershaw’s hand and the thug reached out a great hairy fist for it.
He was quick, but Campion was before him. With a sudden cat-like
movement he snatched up the weapon, and as the other came for him,
lunging forward, all his ponderous weight behind his fist, Campion
stepped back lightly and then, raising his arm above his head, brought
down the butt of the pistol with all his strength upon the
close-shaven skull.
The man went down like a log as Abbershaw scrambled to his feet,
breathless and apologetic.
‘My dear old bird, don’t lose your Organizing Power, Directive
Ability, Self-Confidence, Driving Force, Salesmanship, and Business
Acumen,’ chattered Mr Campion cheerfully. ‘In other words, look on the
bright side of things. This fruity affair down here, for instance, has
solved his own problem. All we have to do now is to stuff him in a
cupboard and lock the door. He won’t wake up for a bit yet.’
Abbershaw, still apologetic, assisted him to lift the heavy figure
into a hanging cupboard, where they deposited him, shutting the door
and turning the key.
‘Well, now I suppose we’d better lend a hand with the devilry
downstairs,’ said Mr Campion, stretching himself. ‘I haven’t heard any
more shots, have you?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Abbershaw. ‘I fancied I heard something while you
were dealing with – er – that last customer. And I say, Campion, I
haven’t liked to ask you before now, but where the devil did you get
that gun from?’
Mr Campion grinned from behind his enormous spectacles. ‘Oh, that,’ he
said, ‘that was rather fortunate as it happened. I had a notion things
might be awkward, so I was naturally anxious that the guns, or at
least one of them, should fall into the hands of someone who knew
something about bluff at any rate.’
‘Where did you get it from?’ demanded Abbershaw. ‘I thought only one
of those men in the dining-room had a gun?’
‘Nor had they when we tackled ’em,’ agreed Mr Campion. ‘I relieved our
laddie of this one earlier on in the meal, while I was performing my
incredible act with the salt-cellar, in fact. It was the first
opportunity I’d had, and I couldn’t resist it.’
Abbershaw stared at him.
‘By Jove,’ he said, with some admiration, ‘while you were doing your
conjuring trick you picked his pocket.’
Mr Campion hesitated, and Abbershaw had the uncomfortable impression
that he reddened slightly.
‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘in a way, yes, but if you don’t mind – let’s
call it _léger de main_, shall we?’