conducting were swift and simple. Once he had ascertained by a survey
through the kitchen window that his enemy, Hash, was not on the
premises, all his nervousness had vanished. Possessing himself of the
chisel which he had placed in the drawer of the kitchen table in
readiness for just such an emergency, he went briskly upstairs. The
light was burning in the hall and also in the drawing-room; but the
absence of sounds encouraged him to believe that Sam, like Hash, was
out. This proved to be the case, and he went on his way completely
reassured. All he wanted was five minutes alone and undisturbed, for the
directions contained in Mr. Finglass’ letter had been specific; and once
he had broken through the door of the top back bedroom, he anticipated
no difficulty in unearthing the buried treasure. It was, Mr. Finglass
had definitely stated, a mere matter of lifting a board. Chimp Twist did
not sing as he climbed the stairs, for he was a prudent man, but he felt
like singing.
A sharp cracking noise came to Willoughby Braddock’s ears as he halted
snakily on the first landing. It sounded like the breaking open of a
door.
And so it was. Chimp, had the conditions been favourable, would have
preferred to insinuate himself into Hash’s boudoir in a manner involving
less noise; but in this enterprise of his time was of the essence and he
had no leisure for niggling at locks with a chisel. Arriving on the
threshold, he raised his boot and drove it like a battering-ram.
The doors of suburban villas are not constructed to stand rough
treatment. If they fit within an inch or two and do not fall down when
the cat rubs against them, the architect, builder and surveyor shake
hands and congratulate themselves on a good bit of work. And Chimp,
though a small man, had a large foot. The lock yielded before him and
the door swung open. He went in and lit the gas. Then he took a rapid
survey of his surroundings.
Half-way up the second flight of stairs, Willoughby Braddock stood
listening. His face was pink and determined. As far as he was concerned,
Aunt Julia might go and boil herself. Dinner or no dinner, he meant to
see this thing through.
Chimp wasted no time.
“The stuff,” his friend, the late Edward Finglass, had written, “is in
the top back bedroom. You’ve only to lift the third board from the
window and put your hand in, Chimpie, and there it is.” And after this
had come a lot of foolish stuff about sharing with Soapy Molloy. A
trifle maudlin old Finky had become on his deathbed, it seemed to Chimp.
And, hurried though he was, Chimp Twist had time to indulge in a brief
smile as he thought of Soapy Molloy. He also managed to fit in a brief
moment of complacent meditation, the trend of which was that when it
comes to a show-down brains will tell. He, Chimp Twist, was the guy with
the brains, and the result was that in about another half minute he
would be in possession of American-bearer securities to the value of
two million dollars. Whereas poor old Soapy, who had just about enough
intelligence to open his mouth when he wished to eat, would go through
life eking out a precarious existence, selling fictitious oil stock to
members of the public who were one degree more cloth-headed than
himself. There was a moral to be drawn from this, felt Chimp, but his
time was too valuable to permit him to stand there drawing it. He
gripped his chisel and got to work.
Mr. Braddock, peering in at the door with the caution of a red Indian
stalking a relative by marriage with a tomahawk, saw that the intruder
had lifted a board and was groping in the cavity. His heart beat like a
motor-bicycle. It gave him some little surprise that the fellow did not
hear it.
Presumably the fellow was too occupied. Certainly he seemed like a man
whose mind was on his job. Having groped for some moments, he now
uttered a sound that was half an oath and half a groan, and as if seized
with a frenzy, began tearing up other boards, first one, then another,
after that a third. It was as though this business of digging up boards
had begun to grip him like some drug. Starting in a modest way with a
single board he had been unable to check the craving, and it now
appeared to be his intention to excavate the entire floor.
But he was not allowed to proceed with this work uninterrupted. Possibly
this wholesale demolition of bedrooms jarred upon Mr. Braddock’s
sensibilities as a householder. At any rate, he chose this moment to
intervene.
“I say, look here!” he said.
It had been his intention, for he was an enthusiastic reader of
sensational fiction and knew the formulæ as well as anyone, to say
“Hands up!” But the words had slipped from him without his volition. He
hastily corrected himself.
“I mean, Hands up!” he said.
Then backing to the window, he flung it open and shouted into the night.
“Sam! Hi, Sam! Come quick!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE MISSING MILLIONS
Those captious critics who are always on the alert to catch the
historian napping and expose in his relation of events some damaging
flaw will no doubt have seized avidly on what appears to be a blunder in
the incident just recorded. Where, they will ask, did Willoughby
Braddock get the revolver, without which a man may say “Hands up!” till
he is hoarse and achieve no result? For of all the indispensable
articles of costume which the well-dressed man must wear if he wishes to
go about saying “Hands up!” to burglars, a revolver is the one which can
least easily be omitted.
We have no secrets from posterity. Willoughby Braddock possessed no
revolver. But he had four fingers on his right hand, and two of these he
was now thrusting earnestly against the inside of his coat pocket. Wax
to receive and marble to retain, Willoughby Braddock had not forgotten
the ingenious subterfuge by means of which Soapy Molloy had been enabled
to intimidate Lord Tilbury, and he employed it now upon Chimp Twist.
“You low blister!” said Mr. Braddock.
Whether this simple device would have been effective with a person of
ferocious and hard-boiled temperament, one cannot say; but fortunately
Chimp was not of this description. His strength was rather of the head
than of the heart. He was a man who shrank timidly from even the
appearance of violence; and though he may have had doubts as to the
genuineness of Mr. Braddock’s pistol, he had none concerning the
latter’s physique. Willoughby Braddock was no Hercules, but he was some
four inches taller and some sixty pounds heavier than Chimp, and it was
not in Mr. Twist’s character to embark upon a rough-and-tumble with such
odds against him.
Indeed, Chimp would not lightly have embarked on a rough-and-tumble with
anyone who was not an infant in arms or a member of the personnel of
Singer’s Troupe of Midgets.
He tottered against the wall and stood there, blinking. The sudden
materialisation of Willoughby Braddock, apparently out of thin air, had
given him a violent shock, from which he had not even begun to recover.
“You man of wrath!” said Mr. Braddock.
The footsteps of one leaping from stair to stair made themselves heard.
Sam charged in.
“What’s up?”
Mr. Braddock, with pardonable unction, directed his notice to the
captive.
“Another of the gang,” he said. “I caught him.”
Sam gazed at Chimp and looked away, disappointed.
“You poor idiot,” he said peevishly. “That’s my odd-job man.”
“What?”
“My odd-job man.”
Willoughby Braddock felt for an instant damped. Then his spirits rose
again. He knew little of the duties of odd-job men; but whatever they
were, this one, he felt, had surely exceeded them.
“Well, why was he digging up the floor?”
And Sam, glancing down, saw that this was what his eccentric employee
had, indeed, been doing; and suspicion blazed up within him.
“What’s the game?” he demanded, eying Chimp.
“Exactly,” said Mr. Braddock. “The game--what is it?”
Chimp’s nerves had recovered a little of their tone. His agile brain was
stirring once more.
“You can’t do anything,” he said. “It wasn’t breaking and entering. I
live here. I know the law.”
“Never mind about that. What were you up to?”
“Looking for something,” said Chimp sullenly. “And it wasn’t there.”
“Did you know Finglass?” asked Sam keenly.
Chimp gave a short laugh of intense bitterness.
“I thought I did. But I didn’t know he was so fond of a joke.”
“Bradder,” said Sam urgently, “a crook named Finglass used to live in
this house, and he buried a lot of his swag somewhere in it.”
“Good gosh!” exclaimed Mr. Braddock. “You don’t say so!”
“Did this fellow take anything from under the floor?”
“You bet your sweet life I didn’t,” said Chimp with feeling. “It wasn’t
there. You seem to know all about it, so I don’t mind telling you that
Finky wrote me that the stuff was under the third board from the window
in this room. Whether he was off his damned head or was just stringing
me, I don’t know. But I do know it isn’t there. And now I’m going.”
“Oh, no, you aren’t, by Jove!” said Mr. Braddock.
“Oh, let him go,” said Sam wearily. “What’s the use of keeping him
hanging round?” He turned to Chimp. His own disappointment was so keen
that he could almost sympathise with him. “So you think Finglass really
got away with the stuff, after all?”
“Looks like it.”
“Then why on earth did he write to you?”
Chimp shrugged his shoulders.
“Off his nut, I guess. He always was a loony sort of bird, outside of
business.”
“You don’t think the other chap found the stuff, Sam?” suggested Mr.
Braddock.
Sam shook his head.
“I doubt it. It’s much more likely it was never here at all. We had a
friend of yours here this evening,” he said to Chimp. “At least, I
suppose he was a friend of yours. Thomas G. Gunn he called himself.”
“I know who you mean--that poor dumb brick, Soapy. He wouldn’t have
found anything. If it isn’t here it isn’t anywhere. And now I’m going.”
Mr. Braddock eyed him a little wistfully as he slouched through the
doorway. It was galling to see the only burglar he had ever caught
walking out as if he had finished paying a friendly call. However, he
supposed there was nothing to be done about it. Sam had gone to the
window and was leaning out, looking into the night.
“I must go and see Kay,” he said at length, turning.
“I must get up to town,” said Mr. Braddock. “By Jove, I shall be most
frightfully late if I don’t rush. I’m dining with my Aunt Julia.”
“This is going to be bad news for her.”
“Oh, no, she’ll be most awfully interested. She’s a very sporting old
party.”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
“My Aunt Julia.”
“Oh? Well, good-bye.”
Sam left the room, and Willoughby Braddock, following him at some little
distance, for his old friend seemed disinclined for company and
conversation, heard the front door bang. He sat down on the stairs and
began to put on his shoes, which he had cached on the first landing.
While he was engaged in this task, the front doorbell rang. He went down
to open it, one shoe off and one shoe on, and found on the steps an aged
gentleman with a white beard.
“Is Mr. Shotter here?” asked the aged gentleman.
“Just gone round next door. Mr. Cornelius, isn’t it? I expect you’ve
forgotten me--Willoughby Braddock. I met you for a minute or two when I
was staying with Mr. Wrenn.”
“Ah, yes. And how is the world using you, Mr. Braddock?”
Willoughby was only too glad to tell him. A confidant was precisely what
in his exalted frame of mind he most desired.
“Everything’s absolutely topping, thanks. What with burglars floating in
every two minutes and Lord Tilbury getting de-bagged and all that,
life’s just about right. And my housekeeper is leaving me.”
“I am sorry to hear that.”
“I wasn’t. What it means is that now I shall at last be able to buzz off
and see life. Have all sorts of adventures, you know. I’m frightfully
keen on adventure.”
“You should come and live in Valley Fields, Mr. Braddock. There is
always some excitement going on here.”
“Yes, you’re not far wrong. Still, what I meant was more the biffing off
on the out-trail stuff. I’m going to see the world. I’m going to be one
of those fellows Kipling writes about. I was talking to a chap of that
sort at the club the other day. He said he could remember Uganda when
there wasn’t a white man there.”
“I can remember Valley Fields when it had not a single cinema house.”
“This fellow was once treed by a rhinoceros for six hours.”
“A similar thing happened to a Mr. Walkinshaw, who lived at Balmoral, in
Acacia Road. He came back from London one Saturday afternoon in a new
tweed suit, and his dog, failing to recognise him, chased him on to the
roof of the summer house.... Well, I must be getting along, Mr.
Braddock. I promised to read extracts from my history of Valley Fields
to Mr. Shotter. Perhaps you would care to hear them too.”
“I should love it, but I’ve got to dash off and dine with my Aunt
Julia.”
“Some other time perhaps?”
“Absolutely.... By the way, that man I was telling you about. He was as
near as a toucher bitten by a shark once.”
“Nothing to what happens in Valley Fields,” said Mr. Cornelius
patriotically. “The occupant of the Firs at the corner of Buller Street
and Myrtle Avenue--a Mr. Phillimore--perhaps you have heard of him?”
“No.”
“Mr. Edwin Phillimore. Connected with the firm of Birkett, Birkett,
Birkett, Son, Podmarsh, Podmarsh & Birkett, the solicitors.”
“What about him?”
“Last summer,” said Mr. Cornelius, “he was bitten by a guinea pig.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
MR. CORNELIUS READS HIS HISTORY
§ 1
It is a curious fact, and one frequently noted by philosophers, that
every woman in this world cherishes within herself a deep-rooted belief,
from which nothing can shake her, that the particular man to whom she
has plighted her love is to be held personally blameworthy for
practically all of the untoward happenings of life. The vapid and
irreflective would call these things accidents, but she knows better. If
she arrives at a station at five minutes past nine to catch a train
which has already left at nine minutes past five, she knows that it is
her Henry who is responsible, just as he was responsible the day before
for a shower of rain coming on when she was wearing her new hat.
But there was sterling stuff in Kay Derrick. Although no doubt she felt
in her secret heart that the omission of the late Mr. Edward Finglass to
deposit his ill-gotten gains beneath the floor of the top back bedroom
of Mon Repos could somehow have been avoided if Sam had shown a little
enterprise and common sense, she uttered no word of reproach. Her
reception of the bad news, indeed, when, coming out into the garden, he
saw her waiting for him on the lawn of San Rafael and climbed the fence
to deliver it, was such as to confirm once and for all his enthusiastic
view of her splendid qualities. Where others would have blamed, she
sympathised. And not content with mere sympathy, she went on to minimise
the disaster with soothing argument.
“What does it matter?” she said. “We have each other.”
The mind of man, no less than that of woman, works strangely. When, a
few days before, Sam had read that identical sentiment, couched in
almost exactly the same words, as part of the speech addressed by Leslie
Mordyke to the girl of his choice in the third galley of Cordelia
Blair’s gripping serial, _Hearts Aflame_, he had actually gone so far as
to write in the margin the words, “Silly fool!” Now he felt that he had
never heard anything not merely so beautiful but so thoroughly sensible,
practical and inspired.
“That’s right!” he cried.
If he had been standing by a table he would have banged it with his
fist. Situated as he was, in the middle of a garden, all he could do was
to kiss Kay. This he did.
“Of course,” he said, when the first paroxysm of enthusiasm had passed,
“there’s just this one point to be taken into consideration. I’ve lost
my job, and I don’t know how I’m to get another.”
“Of course you’ll get another!”
“Why, so I will!” said Sam, astounded by the clearness of her reasoning.
The idea that the female intelligence was inferior to the male seemed to
him a gross fallacy. How few men could have thought a thing all out in
a flash like that.
“It may not be a big job, but that will be all the more fun.”
“So it will.”
“I always think that people who marry on practically nothing have a
wonderful time.”
“Terrific!”
“So exciting.”
“Yes.”
“I can cook a bit.”
“I can wash dishes.”
“If you’re poor, you enjoy occasional treats. If you’re rich, you just
get bored with pleasure.”
“Bored stiff.”
“And probably drift apart.”
Sam could not follow her here. Loth as he was to disagree with her
lightest word, this was going too far.
“No,” he said firmly, “if I had a million I wouldn’t drift apart from
you.”
“You might.”
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“I’m only saying you might.”
“But I shouldn’t.”
“Well, anyhow,” said Kay, yielding the point, “all I’m saying is that it
will be much more fun being awfully hard up and watching the pennies and
going out to the Palais de Dance at Hammersmith on Saturday night, or if
it was my birthday or something, and cooking our own dinner and making
my own clothes, than--than----”
“----living in a gilded cage, watching love stifle,” said Sam,
remembering Leslie Mordyke’s remarks on the subject.
“Yes. So, honestly, I’m very glad it was all a fairy story about that
money being in Mon Repos.”
“So am I. Darned glad.”
“I’d have hated to have it.”
“So would I.”
“And I think it’s jolly, your uncle disinheriting you.”
“Absolutely corking.”
“It would have spoiled everything, having a big allowance from him.”
“Everything.”
“I mean, we should have missed all the fun we’re going to have, and we
shouldn’t have felt so close together and----”
“Exactly. Do you know, I knew a wretched devil in America who came into
about twenty million dollars when his father died, and he went and
married a girl with about double that in her own right.”
“What became of him?” asked Kay, shocked.
“I don’t know. We lost touch. But just imagine that marriage!”
“Awful!”
“What possible fun could they have had?”
“None. What was his name?”
“Blenkiron,” said Sam in a hushed voice. “And hers was Poskitt.”
For some moments, deeply affected by the tragedy of these two poor bits
of human wreckage, they stood in silence. Sam felt near to tears, and he
thought Kay was bearing up only with some difficulty.
The door leading into the garden opened. Light from the house flashed
upon them.
“Somebody’s coming out,” said Kay, giving a little start as though she
had been awakened from a dream.
“Curse them!” said Sam. “Or rather, no,” he corrected himself. “I think
it’s your uncle.”
Even at such a moment as this, he could harbour no harsh thought toward
any relative of hers.
It was Mr. Wrenn. He stood on the steps, peering out.
“Kay!” he called.
“Yes?”
“Oh, you’re there. Is Shotter with you?”
“Yes.”
“Could you both come in for a minute?” inquired Mr. Wrenn, his
voice--for he was a man of feeling--conveying a touch of apology.
“Cornelius is here. He wants to read you that chapter from his history
of Valley Fields.”
Sam groaned in spirit. On such a night as this young Troilus had climbed
the walls of Troy and stood gazing at the Grecian tents where lay his
Cressida, and he himself had got to go into a stuffy house and listen to
a bore with a white beard drooling on about the mouldy past of a London
suburb.
“Well, yes, I know; but----” he began doubtfully.
Kay laid a hand upon his arm.
“We can’t disappoint the poor old man,” she whispered. “He would take it
to heart so.”
“Yes, but I mean----”
“No.”
“Just as you say,” said Sam.
He was going to make a good husband.
Mr. Cornelius was in the drawing-room. From under his thick white brows
he peered at them, as they entered, with the welcoming eyes of a man
who, loving the sound of his own voice, sees a docile audience
assembling. He took from the floor a large brown paper parcel and,
having carefully unfastened the string which tied it, revealed a second
and lighter wrapping of brown paper. Removing this, he disclosed a layer
of newspaper, then another, and finally a formidable typescript bound
about with lilac ribbon.
“The matter having to do with the man Finglass occurs in Chapter Seven
of my book,” he said.
“Just one chapter?” said Sam, with a touch of hope.
“That chapter describes the man’s first visit to my office, my early
impressions of him, his words as nearly as I can remember them, and a
few other preliminary details. In Chapter Nine----”
“Chapter Nine!” echoed Sam, aghast. “You know, as a matter of fact,
there really isn’t any need to read all that, because it turns out that
Finglass never----”
“In Chapter Nine,” proceeded Mr. Cornelius, adjusting a large pair of
horn-rimmed spectacles, “I show him accepted perfectly unsuspiciously by
the residents of the suburb, and I have described at some length,
because it is important as indicating how completely his outward
respectability deceived those with whom he came in contact, a garden
party given by Mrs. Bellamy-North, of Beau Rivage, in Burberry Road, at
which he appeared and spoke a few words on the subject of the
forthcoming election for the district council.”
“We shall love to hear that,” said Kay brightly. Her eye, wandering
aside, met Sam’s. Sam, who had opened his mouth, closed it again.
“I remember that day very distinctly,” said Mr. Cornelius. “It was a
beautiful afternoon in June, and the garden of Beau Rivage was looking
extraordinarily attractive. It was larger, of course, in those days. The
house which I call Beau Rivage in my history has since been converted
into two semi-detached houses, known as Beau Rivage and Sans Souci. That
is a change which has taken place in a great number of cases in this
neighbourhood. Five years ago Burberry Road was a more fashionable
quarter, and the majority of the houses were detached. This house where
we are now sitting, for example, and its neighbour, Mon Repos, were a
single residence when Edward Finglass came to Valley Fields. Its name
was then Mon Repos, and it was only some eighteen months later that San
Rafael came into existence as a separate----”
He broke off; and breaking off, bit his tongue, for that had occurred
which had startled him considerably. One unit in his audience, until
that moment apparently as quiet and well-behaved as the other units, had
suddenly, to all appearances, gone off his head. The young man Shotter,
uttering a piercing cry, had leaped to his feet and was exhibiting
strange emotion.
“What’s that?” cried Sam. “What did you say?”
Mr. Cornelius regarded him through a mist of tears. His tongue was
giving him considerable pain.
“Did you say,” demanded Sam, “that in Finglass’ time San Rafael was part
of Mon Repos?”
“Yeh,” said Mr. Cornelius, rubbing the wound tenderly against the roof
of his mouth.
“Give me a chisel!” bellowed Sam. “Where’s a chisel? I want a chisel!”
§ 2
“Bleck my soul!” said Mr. Cornelius. He spoke a little thickly, for his
tongue was still painful. But its anguish was forgotten under the spell
of a stronger emotion. Five minutes had passed since Sam’s remarkable
outburst in the drawing-room; and now, with Mr. Wrenn and Kay, he was
standing in the top back bedroom of San Rafael, watching the young man
as he drew up from the chasm in which he had been groping a very
yellowed, very dusty package which crackled and crumbled in his fingers.
“Bleck my soul!” said Mr. Cornelius.
“Good heavens!” said Mr. Wrenn.
“Sam!” cried Kay.
Sam did not hear their voices. With the look of a mother bending over
her sleeping babe, he was staring at the parcel.
“Two million!” said Sam, choking. “Two million--count ’em--two million!”
A light of pure avarice shone in his eyes. He looked like a man who had
never heard of the unhappy fate of Dwight Blenkiron, of Chicago,
Illinois, and Genevieve, his bride, _née_ Poskitt; or who, having heard,
did not give a whoop.
“What’s ten per cent on two million?” asked Sam.
§ 3
Valley Fields lay asleep. Clocks had been wound, cats put out of back
doors, front doors bolted and chained. In a thousand homes a thousand
good householders were restoring their tissues against the labours of
another day. The silver-voiced clock on the big tower over the college
struck the hour of two.
But though most of its inhabitants were prudently getting their eight
hours and insuring that schoolgirl complexion, footsteps still made
themselves heard in the silence of Burberry Road. They were those of Sam
Shotter of Mon Repos, pacing up and down outside the gate of San Rafael.
Long since had Mr. Wrenn, who slept in the front of that house, begun to
wish Sam Shotter in bed or dead; but he was a mild and kindly man, loth
to shout winged words out of windows. So Sam paced, unrebuked, until
presently other footsteps joined in chorus with his and he perceived
that he was no longer alone.
A lantern shone upon him.
“Out late, sir,” said the sleepless guardian of the peace behind him.
“Late?” said Sam. Trifles like time meant nothing to him. “Is it late?”
“Just gone two, sir.”
“Oh? Then perhaps I had better be going to bed.”
“Suit yourself, sir. Resident here, sir?”
“Yes.”