“Yes,” said Sam; “yes, yes.”
“What about?” asked Mr. Wrenn patiently.
The directness and simplicity of the question seemed to clear Sam’s
head. He recalled now what it was that had brought him here.
“I’ve come over from America to join the staff of Pyke’s _Home
Companion_.”
“What?”
“Lord Tilbury wants me to.”
“Lord Tilbury?”
“Yes; I’ve just been seeing him.”
“But he has said nothing to me about this, Mr.----”
“----Shotter. No, we only arranged it a moment ago.”
Mr. Wrenn was a courteous man, and though he was under the impression
that his visitor was raving, he did not show it.
“Perhaps I had better see Lord Tilbury,” he suggested, rising. “By the
way, my niece, Miss Derrick. Kay, my dear, Mr. Shotter.”
The departure of the third party and the sudden institution of the
intimacies of a _tête-à-tête_ had the usual effect of producing a
momentary silence. Then Kay moved away from the window and came to the
desk.
“Did you say you had come from America?” she asked, fiddling with Mr.
Wrenn’s editorial pencil. She had no desire to know, but she supposed
she must engage this person in conversation.
“From America, yes. Yes, from America.”
“Is this your first visit to England?” asked Kay, stifling a yawn.
“Oh, no. I was at school in England.”
“Really? Where?”
“At Wrykyn.”
Kay’s attitude of stiff aloofness relaxed. She became interested.
“Good gracious! Of course!” She looked upon him quite benevolently. “A
friend of yours was talking to me about you only yesterday--Willoughby
Braddock.”
“Do you know the Bradder?” gulped Sam, astounded.
“I’ve known him all my life.”
A most extraordinary sensation flooded over Sam. It was hard to analyse,
but its effects were thoroughly definite. At the discovery that this
wonderful girl knew the old Bradder and that they could pave the way to
a beautiful friendship by talking about the old Bradder, the office of
Pyke’s _Home Companion_ became all at once flooded with brilliant
sunshine. Birds twittered from the ceiling, and blended with their notes
was the soft music of violins and harps.
“You really know the Bradder?”
“We were children together.”
“What a splendid chap!”
“Yes, he’s a dear.”
“What a corker!”
“Yes!”
“What an egg!”
“Yes. Tell me, Mr. Shotter,” said Kay wearying of this eulogy, “do you
remember a boy at your school named Bates?”
Sam’s face darkened. Time had softened the anguish of that moment
outside the Angry Cheese, but the sting still remained.
“Yes, I do.”
“Willoughby Braddock told me that you once beat Bates with a walking
stick.”
“Yes.”
“A large walking stick?”
“Yes.”
“Did you beat him hard?”
“Yes, as hard as ever I could lay it in.”
A little sigh of gratification escaped Kay.
“Ah!” she said.
In the course of the foregoing conversation the two had been diminishing
inch by inch the gap which had separated them at its outset, so that
they had come to be standing only a short distance apart; and now, as
she heard those beautiful words, Kay looked up into Sam’s face with a
cordial, congratulatory friendliness which caused him to quiver like a
smitten blanc-mange. Then, while he was still reeling, she smiled. And
it is at this point that the task of setting down the sequence of events
becomes difficult for the historian.
For, briefly, what happened next was that Sam, groping forward in a
bemused fashion and gathering her clumsily into his arms, kissed Kay.
§ 4
It might, of course, be possible to lay no stress upon this
occurrence--to ignore it and pass. In kissing, as kissing, there is
nothing fundamentally reprehensible. The early Christians used to do it
all the time to everyone they met. But the historian is too conscious of
the raised eyebrows of his audience to attempt this attitude. Some
explanation, he realises, some argument to show why Sam is not to be
condemned out of hand, is imperative.
In these circumstances the embarrassing nature of the historian’s
position is readily intelligible. Only a short while back he was
inviting the customers to shudder with loathing at the spectacle of
Claude Bates kissing this girl, and now, all in a flash, he finds
himself faced with the task of endeavouring to palliate the behaviour of
Sam Shotter in doing the very same thing.
Well, he must do the best he can. Let us marshal the facts.
In the first place, there stood on Mr. Wrenn’s desk, as on every other
editorial desk in Tilbury House, a large framed card bearing the words,
DO IT NOW! Who shall say whether this may not subconsciously have
influenced the young man?
In the second place, when you have been carrying about a girl’s
photograph in your breast pocket for four months and brooding over it
several times a day with a beating heart, it is difficult for you to
regard that girl, when you eventually meet her, as a perfect stranger.
And in the third place--and here we approach the very root of the
matter--there was the smile.
Girls as pretty as Kay Derrick, especially if their faces are by nature
a little grave, should be extremely careful how and when they smile.
There was that about Kay’s face when in repose which, even when she was
merely wondering what trimming to put on a hat, gave strangers the
impression that here was a pure white soul musing wistfully on life’s
sadness. The consequence was that when she smiled it was as if the sun
had suddenly shone out through clouds. Her smile seemed to make the
world on the instant a sweeter and a better place. Policemen, when she
flashed it on them after being told the way somewhere, became of a
sudden gayer, happier policemen and sang as they directed the traffic.
Beggars, receiving it as a supplement to a small donation, perked up
like magic and started to bite the ears of the passers-by with an
abandon that made all the difference. And when they saw that smile, even
babies in their perambulators stopped looking like peevish poached eggs
and became almost human.
And it was this smile that she had bestowed upon Sam. And Sam, it will
be remembered, had been waiting months and months for it.
We have made out, we fancy, a pretty good case for Samuel Shotter; and
it was a pity that some kindly person was not present in Mr. Wrenn’s
office at that moment to place these arguments before Kay. For not one
of them occurred to her independently. She could see no excuse whatever
for Sam’s conduct. She had wrenched herself from his grasp and moved to
the other side of the desk, and across this she now regarded him with a
blazing eye. Her fists were clenched and she was breathing quickly. She
had the air of a girl who would have given a year’s pocket money for a
copy of the Rev. Aubrey Jerningham’s _Is There a Hell?_
Gone was that delightful spirit of comradeship which, when he had been
telling of his boyish dealings with Claude, had made him seem almost a
kindred soul. Gone was that soft sensation of gratitude which had come
to her on his assurance that he had not risked spoiling that repulsive
youth by sparing the rod. All she felt now was that her first
impressions of this young man had been right, and that she had been
mauled and insulted by a black-hearted bounder whose very clothes should
have warned her of his innate despicableness. It seems almost incredible
that anyone should think such a thing of anybody, but it is a fact that
in that instant Kay Derrick looked upon Sam as something even lower in
the graduated scale of human subspecies than Claude Winnington-Bates.
As for Sam, he was still under the ether.
Nothing is more difficult for both parties concerned than to know what
to say immediately after an occurrence like this. An agitated silence
was brooding over the room, when the necessity for speech was removed by
the re-entry of Mr. Wrenn.
Mr. Wrenn was not an observant man. Nor was he sensitive to atmosphere.
He saw nothing unusual in his niece’s aspect, nothing out of the way in
Sam’s. The fact that the air inside the office of Pyke’s _Home
Companion_ was quivering with charged emotion escaped his notice
altogether. He addressed Sam genially.
“It is quite all right, Mr. Shotter. Lord Tilbury wishes you to start
work on the _Companion_ at once.”
Sam turned to him with the vague stare of the newly awakened
sleepwalker.
“It will be nice having you in the office,” added Mr. Wrenn amiably. “I
have been short-handed. By the way, Lord Tilbury asked me to send you
along to him at once. He is just going out to lunch.”
“Lunch?” said Sam.
“He said you were lunching with him.”
“Oh, yes,” said Sam dully.
Mr. Wrenn watched him shamble out of the room with a benevolent eye.
“We’ll go and have a bite to eat too, my dear,” he said, removing the
alpaca coat which it was his custom to wear in the office. “Haven’t had
lunch with you since I don’t know when.” He reached for the hook which
held his other coat. “I shall like having this young Shotter in the
office,” he said. “He seems a nice young fellow.”
“He is the most utterly loathsome creature I have ever met,” said Kay.
Mr. Wrenn, startled, dropped his hat.
“Eh? What do you mean?”
“Just what I say. He’s horrible.”
“But, my dear girl, you only met him five minutes ago.”
“I know.”
Mr. Wrenn stooped for his hat and smoothed it with some agitation.
“This is rather awkward,” he said.
“What is?”
“Your feeling like that about young Shotter.”
“I don’t see why. I don’t suppose I shall ever meet him again.”
“But you will. I don’t see how it can be prevented. Lord Tilbury tells
me that this young man has taken a lease on Mon Repos.”
“Mon Repos!” Kay clutched at the desk. “You don’t mean Mon Repos next
door to us?”
“Yes; and it is so difficult to avoid one’s next-door neighbours.”
Kay’s teeth met with a little click.
“It can be done,” she said.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
INTRODUCING A SYNDICATE
Across the way from Tilbury House, next door to the massive annex
containing the offices of _Tiny Tots_, _Sabbath Jottings_, _British
Girlhood_, the _Boys’ Adventure Weekly_ and others of the more recently
established of the Mammoth Publishing Company’s periodicals, there
stands a ramshackle four-storied building of an almost majestic
dinginess, which Lord Tilbury, but for certain regulations having to do
with ancient lights, would have swallowed up years ago, as he had
swallowed the rest of the street.
The first three floors of this building are occupied by firms of the
pathetic type which cannot conceivably be supposed to do any business,
and yet hang on with dull persistency for decade after decade. Their
windows are dirty and forlorn and most of the lettering outside has been
worn away, so that on the second floor it would appear that trade is
being carried by the Ja--& Sum--r--Rub--Co., while just above, Messrs.
Smith, R-bi-s-n & G----, that mystic firm, are dealing in something
curtly described as c----. It is not until we reach the fourth and final
floor that we find the modern note struck.
Here the writing is not only clear and golden but, when read,
stimulating to the imagination. It runs:
THE TILBURY DETECTIVE AGENCY, LTD.
J. Sheringham Adair, Mgr.
Large and Efficient Staff
and conjures up visions of a suite of rooms filled with hawk-faced men
examining bloodstains through microscopes or poring tensely over the
papers connected with the singular affair of the theft of the
maharajah’s ruby.
On the morning, however, on which Sam Shotter paid his visit to Tilbury
House, only one man was sitting in the office of the detective agency.
He was a small and weedy individual, clad in a suit brighter even than
the one which Sam had purchased from the Brothers Cohen. And when it is
stated in addition that he wore a waxed moustache and that his
handkerchief, which was of colored silk, filled the air with a noisome
perfume, further evidence is scarcely required to convince the reader
that he is being introduced to a most undesirable character.
Nevertheless, the final damning fact may as well be revealed. It is
this--the man was not looking out of a window.
Tilbury Street is very narrow and the fourth-floor windows of this
ramshackle building are immediately opposite those of the fourth floor
of Tilbury House. Alexander Twist therefore was in a position, if he
pleased, to gaze through into the private sanctum of the proprietor of
the Mammoth Publishing Company and obtain the spiritual uplift which
could hardly fail to result from the spectacle of that great man at
work. Alone of London’s millions of inhabitants, he had it in his power
to watch Lord Tilbury pacing up and down, writing at his desk or
speaking into the dictating device who knows what terrific thoughts.
Yet he preferred to sit at a table playing solitaire--and, one is
prepared to bet, cheating. One need not, one fancies, say more.
So absorbed was Mr. Twist in his foolish game that the fact that someone
was knocking on the door did not at first penetrate his senses. It was
only when the person outside, growing impatient, rapped the panel with
some hard object which might have been the handle of a lady’s parasol
that he raised his head with a start. He swept the cards into a drawer,
gave his coat a settling tug and rose alertly. The knock sounded like
business, and Mr. Twist, who was not only J. Sheringham Adair, Mgr., but
the large and efficient staff as well, was not the man to be caught
unprepared.
“Come in,” he shouted.
With a quick flick of his hand he scattered a top dressing of
important-looking papers about the table and was bending over these with
a thoughtful frown when the door opened.
At the sight of his visitor he relaxed the preoccupied austerity of his
demeanour. The new-comer was a girl in the middle twenties, of bold but
at the moment rather sullen good looks. She had the bright hazel eyes
which seldom go with a meek and contrite heart. Her colouring was vivid,
and in the light from the window her hair gleamed with a sheen that was
slightly metallic.
“Why, hello, Dolly,” said Mr. Twist.
“Hello,” said the girl moodily.
“Haven’t seen you for a year, Dolly. Never knew you were this side at
all. Take a seat.”
The visitor took a seat.
“For the love of pop, Chimp,” she said, eying him with a languid
curiosity, “where did you get the fungus?”
Mr. Twist moved in candid circles, and the soubriquet Chimp--short for
Chimpanzee--by which he was known not only to his intimates but to
police officials in America who would have liked to become more intimate
than they were, had been bestowed upon him at an early stage of his
career in recognition of a certain simian trend which critics affected
to see in the arrangement of his features.
“Looks good, don’t you think?” he said, stroking his moustache fondly.
It and money were the only things he loved.
“Anything you say. And I suppose, when you know you may be in the coop
any moment, you like to have all the hair you can while you can.”
Mr. Twist felt a little wounded. He did not like badinage about his
moustache. He did not like tactless allusions to the coop. And he was
puzzled by the unwonted brusqueness of the girl’s manner. The Dora Gunn
he had known had been a cheery soul, quite unlike this tight-lipped,
sombre-eyed person now before him.
The girl was looking about her. She seemed perplexed.
“What’s all this?” she asked, pointing her parasol at the writing on the
window.
Mr. Twist smiled indulgently and with a certain pride. He was, he
flattered himself, a man of ideas, and this of presenting himself to the
world as a private investigator he considered one of his happiest.
“Just camouflage,” he said. “Darned useful to have a label. Keeps people
from asking questions.”
“It won’t keep me from asking questions. That’s what I’ve come for. Say,
Chimp, can you tell the truth without straining a muscle?”
“You know me, Dolly.”
“Yes, that’s why I asked. Well, I’ve come to get you to tell me
something. Nobody listening?”
“Not a soul.”
“How about the office boy?”
“I haven’t got an office boy. Who do you think I am--Pierpont Morgan?”
Thus reassured, the girl produced a delicate handkerchief, formerly the
property of Harrod’s Stores and parted from unwittingly by that
establishment.
“Chimp,” she said, brushing away a tear, “I’m sim’ly miserable.”
Chimp Twist was not the man to stand idly by while beauty in distress
wept before him. He slid up and was placing a tender arm about her
shoulder, when she jerked herself away.
“You can tie a can to that stuff,” she said with womanly dignity. “I’d
like you to know I’m married.”
“Married?”
“Sure. Day before yesterday--to Soapy Molloy.”
“Soapy!” Mr. Twist started. “What in the world did you want to marry
that slab of Gorgonzola for?”
“I’ll ask you kindly, if you wouldn’t mind,” said the girl in a cold
voice, “not to go alluding to my husband as slabs of Gorgonzola.”
“He is a slab of Gorgonzola.”
“He is not. Well, anyway, I’m hoping he’s not. It’s what I come here to
find out.”
Mr. Twist’s mind had returned to the perplexing matter of the marriage.
“I don’t get this,” he said. “I saw Soapy a couple of weeks back and he
didn’t say he’d even met you.”
“He hadn’t then. We only run into each other ten days ago. I was walking
up the Haymarket and I catch sight of a feller behind me out of the
corner of my eye, so I faint on him, see?”
“You’re still in that line, eh?”
“Well, it’s what I do best, isn’t it?”
Chimp nodded. Dora Molloy--Fainting Dolly to her friends--was
unquestionably an artist in her particular branch of industry. It was
her practice to swoon in the arms of rich-looking strangers in the
public streets and pick their pockets as they bent to render her
assistance. It takes all sorts to do the world’s work.
“Well, then I seen it was Soapy, and so we go to lunch and have a nice
chat. I always was strong for that boy, and we were both feeling kind of
lonesome over here in London, so we fix it up. And now I’m sim’ly
miserable.”
“What,” inquired Mr. Twist, “is biting you?”
“Well, I’ll tell you. This is what’s happened: Last night this bird
Soapy goes out after supper and doesn’t blow in again till four in the
morning. Four in the morning, I’ll trouble you, and us only married two
days. Well, if he thinks a young bride’s going to stand for that sort of
conduct right plumb spang in the middle of what you might call the
honeymoon, he’s got a second guess due him.”
“What did you do?” asked Mr. Twist sympathetically, but with a touch of
that rather unctuous complacency which bachelors display at moments like
this.
“I did plenty. And he tried to alibi himself by pulling a story. That
story the grand jury is now going to investigate and investigate
good.... Chimp, did you ever hear of a man named Finglass?”
There was that in Mr. Twist’s manner that seemed to suggest that he was
a reluctant witness, but he answered after a brief hesitation.
“Sure!”
“Oh, you did, eh? Well, who was he then?”
“He was big,” said Chimp, and there was a note of reverence in his
voice. “One of the very biggest, old Finky was.”
“How was he big? What did he ever do?”
“Well, it was before your time and it happened over here, so I guess you
may not have heard of it; but he took a couple of million dollars away
from the New Asiatic Bank.”
Mrs. Molloy was undeniably impressed. The formidable severity of her
manner seemed to waver.
“Were you and Soapy mixed up with him?”
“Sure! We were the best pals he had.”
“Is he alive?”
“No; he died in Buenos Aires the other day.”
Mrs. Molloy bit her lower lip thoughtfully.
“Say, it’s beginning to look to me like that story of Soapy’s was the
goods after all. Listen, Chimp, I’d best tell you the whole thing. When
I give Soapy the razz for staying out all night like the way he done, he
pulled this long spiel about having had a letter from a guy he used to
know named Finglass, written on his deathbed, saying that this guy
Finglass hadn’t been able to get away with the money he’d swiped from
this New Asiatic Bank on account the bulls being after him, and he’d had
to leave the whole entire lot of it behind, hidden in some house down in
the suburbs somewheres. And he told Soapy where the house was, and Soapy
claims that what kep’ him out so late was he’d been searching the house,
trying to locate the stuff. And what I want to know is, was he telling
the truth or was he off somewheres at one of these here now gilded
night-clubs, cutting up with a bunch of janes and doing me wrong?”
Again Mr. Twist seemed to resent the necessity of acting as a favourable
witness for a man he obviously disliked. He struggled with his feelings
for a space.
“Yes, it’s true,” he said at length.
“But listen here. This don’t seem to me to gee up. If this guy Finglass
wanted Soapy to have the money, why did he wait all this time before
telling him about it?”
“Thought he might find a chance of sneaking back and getting it himself,
of course. But he got into trouble in Argentina almost as soon as he hit
the place, and they stowed him away in the cooler; and he only got out
in time to write the letters and then make his finish.”
“How do you know all that?”
“Finky wrote to me too.”
“Oh, did he? Well, then, here’s another thing that don’t seem to make
sense: When he did finally get round to telling Soap about this money,
why couldn’t he let him know where it was? I mean, why didn’t he say
it’s under the mat or poked up the chimney or something, ’stead of
leaving him hunt for it like he was playing button, button, where’s the
button--or something?”
“Because,” said Mr. Twist bitterly, “Soapy and me were both pals of his,
and he wanted us to share. And to make sure we should get together he
told Soapy where the house was and me where the stuff was hidden in the
house.”
“So you’ve only to pool your info’ to bring home the bacon?” cried
Dolly, wide-eyed.
“That’s all.”
“Then why in time haven’t you done it?”
Mr. Twist snorted. It is not easy to classify snorts, but this was one
which would have been recognised immediately by any expert as the snort
despairing, caused by the contemplation of the depths to which human
nature can sink.
“Because,” he said, “Soapy, the pig-headed stiff, thinks he can
double-cross me and get it alone.”
“What?” Mrs. Molloy uttered a cry of wifely pride. “Well, isn’t that
bright of my sweet old pieface! I’d never of thought the dear boy would
have had the sense to think up anything like that.”
Mr. Twist was unable to share her pretty enthusiasm.
“A lot it’s going to get him!” he said sourly.
“Two million smackers it’s going to get him,” retorted Dolly.
“Two million smackers nothing! The stuff’s hidden in a place where he’d
never think of looking in two million years.”
“You can’t bluff me, Chimp Twist,” said Dolly, gazing at him with the
cold disdain of a princess confronted with a boll weevil. “If he keeps
on looking, it stands to reason----”
She broke off. The door had opened and a man was entering. He was a
fine, handsome, open-faced man of early middle age. At the sight of this
person Chimp Twist’s eyes narrowed militantly, but Dolly flung herself
into his arms with a remorseful cry.
“Oh, Soapy, darling! How I misjudged you!”
The new-comer had had the air of a man weighed down with the maximum
amount of sorrow which a human being can bear. This demonstration,
however, seemed to remove something of the burden.
“’S all right, sweetness,” he said, clasping her to his swelling bosom.
“Was I mean to my angel-face?”
“There, there, honey lamb!”
Chimp Twist looked sourly upon this nauseating scene of marital
reconciliation.
“Ah, cut it out!” he growled.
“Chimp’s told me everything, baby doll,” proceeded Mrs. Molloy. “I know
all about that money, and you just keep right along, precious, hunting
for it by yourself. I don’t mind how often you stay out nights or how
late you stay out.”
It was a generous dispensation, for which many husbands would have been
grateful, but Soapy Molloy merely smiled a twisted, tortured smile of
ineffable sadness. He looked like an unsuccessful candidate hearing the
result of a presidential election.
“It’s all off, honey bunch,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s cold,
petty. We’ll have to let Chimp in on it after all, sweetie-pie. I came
here to put my cards on the table and have a show-down.”