"No!" said Mrs. Molloy.
It would have been difficult to say which spoke with the greater emphasis, and the effect was to create a rather embarrassing silence.
"It isn't that we don't trust you, Chimpie," said Mr. Molloy, when this silence had lasted some little time.
"Oh?" said Mr. Twist, rather distantly.
"It's simply that this bimbo Carmody naturally don't want the stuff to go out of the house. He wants it where he can keep an eye on it."
"How are you going to pinch it without taking it out of the house?"
"That's all been fixed. I was talking to him about it this morning after I 'phoned you. Here's the idea. You get the stuff and pack it away in a suitcase...."
"Stuff that there's only enough of so's you can put it all in a suitcase is a hell of a lot of use to anyone," commented Mr. Twist disparagingly.
Dolly clutched her temples. Mr. Molloy brushed his hair back from his forehead with a despairing gesture.
"Sweet potatoes!" moaned Dolly. "Use your bean, you poor sap, use your bean. If you had another brain you'd just have one. A thing hasn't got to be the size of the Singer Building to be valuable, has it? I suppose if someone offered you a diamond you'd turn it down because it wasn't no bigger than a hen's egg."
"Diamond?" Chimp brightened. "Are there diamonds?"
"No, there aren't. But there's pictures and things, any one of them worth a packet. Go on, Soapy. Tell him."
Mr. Molloy smoothed his hair and addressed himself to his task once more.
"Well, it's like this, Chimpie," he said. "You put the stuff in a suitcase and you take it down into the hall where there's a closet under the stairs...."
"We'll show you the closet," interjected Dolly.
"Sure we'll show you the closet," said Mr. Molloy generously. "Well, you put the suitcase in this closet and you leave it lay there. The idea is that later on I give old man Carmody my cheque and he hands it over and we take it away."
"He thinks Soapy owns a museum in America," explained Dolly. "He thinks Soapy's got all the money in the world."
"Of course, long before the time comes for giving any cheques, we'll have got the stuff away."
Mr. Chimp digested this.
"Who's going to buy it when you do get it away?" he asked.
"Oh, gee!" said Dolly. "You know as well as I do there's dozens of people on the other side who'll buy it."
"And how are you going to get it away? If it's in a closet in Carmody's house and Carmody has the key...?"
"Now there," said Mr. Molloy, with a deferential glance at his wife, as if requesting her permission to re-open a delicate subject, "the madam and I had a kind of an argument. I wanted to wait till a chance came along sort of natural, but Dolly's all for quick action. You know what women are. Impetuous."
"If you'd care to know what we're going to do," said Mrs. Molloy definitely, "we're not going to hang around waiting for any chances to come along sort of natural. We're going to slip a couple of knock-out drops in old man Carmody's port one night after dinner and clear out with the stuff while...."
"Knock-out drops?" said Chimp, impressed. "Have you got any knock-out drops?"
"Sure we've got knock-out drops. Soapy never travels without them."
"The madam always packs them in their little bottle first thing before even my clean collars," said Mr. Molloy proudly. "So you see, everything's all arranged, Chimpie."
"Yeah?" said Mr. Twist, "and how about me?"
"How do you mean, how about you?"
"It seems to me," pointed out Mr. Twist, eyeing his business partner in rather an unpleasant manner with his beady little eyes, "that you're asking me to take a pretty big chance. While you're doping the old man I'll be twenty miles away at Healthward Ho. How am I to know you won't go off with the stuff and leave me to whistle for my share?"
It is only occasionally that one sees a man who cannot believe his ears, but anybody who had been in Mr. Carmody's study at this moment would have been able to enjoy that interesting experience. A long moment of stunned and horrified amazement passed before Mr. Molloy was able to decide that he really had heard correctly.
"Chimpie! You don't suppose we'd double-cross you?"
"Ee-magine!" said Mrs. Molloy.
"Well, mind you don't," said Mr. Twist coldly. "But you can't say I'm not taking a chance. And now, talking turkey for a moment, how do we share?"
"Equal shares, of course, Chimpie."
"You mean half for me and half for you and Dolly?"
Mr. Molloy winced as if the mere suggestion had touched an exposed nerve.
"No, no, no, Chimpie! You get a third, I get a third, and the madam gets a third."
"Not on your life!"
"What!"
"Not on your life. What do you think I am?"
"I don't know," said Mrs. Molloy acidly. "But, whatever it is, you're the only one of it."
"Is that so?"
"Yes, that is so."
"Now, now, now," said Mr. Molloy, intervening. "Let's not get personal. I can't figure this thing out, Chimpie. I can't see where your kick comes in. You surely aren't suggesting that you should ought to have as much as I and the wife put together?"
"No, I'm not. I'm suggesting I ought to have more."
"What!"
"Sixty-forty's my terms."
A feverish cry rang through the room, a cry that came straight from a suffering heart. The temperamental Mrs. Molloy was very near the point past which a sensitive woman cannot be pushed.
"Every time we get together on one of these jobs," she said, with deep emotion, "we always have this same fuss about the divvying up. Just when everything looks nice and settled you start this thing of trying to hand I and Soapy the nub end of the deal. What's the matter with you that you always want the earth? Be human, why can't you, you poor lump of Camembert."
"I'm human all right."
"You've got to prove it to me."
"What makes you say I'm not human?"
"Well, look in the glass and see for yourself," said Mrs. Molloy offensively.
The pacific Mr. Molloy felt it time to call the meeting to order once more.
"Now, now, now! All this isn't getting us anywheres. Let's stick to business. Where do you get that sixty-forty stuff, Chimp?"
"I'll tell you where I get it. I'm going into this thing as a favour, aren't I? There's no need for me to sit in at this game at all, is there? I've got a good, flourishing, respectable business of my own, haven't I? A business that's on the level. Well, then."
Dolly sniffed. Her husband's soothing intervention had failed signally to diminish her animosity.
"I don't know what your idea was in starting that Healthward Ho joint," she said, "but I'll bet my diamond sunburst it isn't on the level."
"Certainly it's on the level. A man with brains can always make a good living without descending to anything low and crooked. That's why I say that if I go into this thing it will simply be because I want to do a favour to two old friends."
"Old what?"
"Friends was what I said," repeated Mr. Twist. "If you don't like my terms, say so and we'll call the deal off. It'll be all right by me. I'll simply get along back to Healthward Ho and go on running my good, flourishing, respectable business. Come to think of it, I'm not any too solid on this thing, anyway. I was walking in my garden this morning and a magpie come up to me as close as that."
Mrs. Molloy expressed the view that this was tough on the magpie, but wanted to know what the bird's misfortune in finding itself so close to Mr. Twist that it could not avoid taking a good, square look at him had to do with the case.
"Well, I'm superstitious, same as everyone else. I saw the new moon through the glass, what's more."
"Oh, stop stringing the beads and talk sense," said Dolly wearily.
"I'm talking sense all right. Sixty per cent. or I don't come in. You wouldn't have asked me to come in if you could have done without me. Think I don't know that? Sixty's moderate. I'm doing all the hard work, aren't I?"
"Hard work?" Dolly laughed bitterly. "Where do you get the idea it's going to be hard work? Everybody'll be out of the house on the night of this concert thing they're having down in the village, there'll be a window left open, and you'll just walk in and pack up the stuff. If that's hard, what's easy? We're simply handing you slathers of money for practically doing nothing."
"Sixty," said Mr. Twist. "And that's my last word."
"But, Chimpie ..." pleaded Mr. Molloy.
"Sixty."
"Have a heart!"
"Sixty."
"It isn't as though ..."
"Sixty."
Dolly threw up her hands despairingly.
"Oh, give it him," she said. "He won't be happy if you don't. If a guy's middle name is Shylock, where's the use wasting time trying to do anything about it?"
III
Mrs. Molloy's prediction that on the night of Rudge's annual dramatic and musical entertainment the Hall would be completely emptied of its occupants was not, as it happened, literally fulfilled. A wanderer through the stable yard at about the hour of ten would have perceived a light in an upper window: and had he taken the trouble to get a ladder and climb up and look in would have beheld John Carroll seated at his table, busy with a pile of accounts.
In an age so notoriously avid of pleasure as the one in which we live it is rare to find a young man of such sterling character that he voluntarily absents himself from a village concert in order to sit at home and work: and, contemplating John, one feels quite a glow. It was not as if he had been unaware of what he was missing. The vicar, he knew, was to open the proceedings with a short address: the choir would sing old English glees: the Misses Vivien and Alice Pond-Pond were down on the programme for refined coon songs: and, in addition to other items too numerous and fascinating to mention, Hugo Carmody and his friend Mr. Fish would positively appear in person and render that noble example of Shakespeare's genius, the Quarrel Scene fromJulius Cæsar. Yet John Carroll sat in his room, working. England's future cannot be so dubious as the pessimists would have us believe while her younger generation is made of stuff like this.
John was finding in his work these days a good deal of consolation. There is probably no better corrective of the pangs of hopeless love than real, steady application to the prosaic details of an estate. The heart finds it difficult to ache its hardest while the mind is busy with such items as Sixty-one pounds, eight shillings and fivepence, due to Messrs. Truby and Gaunt for Fixing Gas Engine, or the claim of the Country Gentlemen's Association for eight pounds eight and fourpence for seeds. Add drains, manure, and feed of pigs, and you find yourself immediately in an atmosphere where Romeo himself would have let his mind wander. John, as he worked, was conscious of a distinct easing of the strain which had been on him since his return to the Hall. And if at intervals he allowed his eyes to stray to the photograph of Pat on the mantelpiece, that was the sort of thing that might happen to any young man, and could not be helped.
It was seldom that visitors penetrated to this room of his—indeed, he had chosen to live above the stables in preference to inside the house for this very reason, and on Rudge's big night he had looked forward to an unbroken solitude. He was surprised, therefore, as he checked the account of the Messrs. Vanderschoot & Son for bulbs, to hear footsteps on the stairs. A moment later, the door had opened and Hugo walked in.
John's first impulse, as always when his cousin paid him a visit, was to tell him to get out. People who, when they saw Hugo, immediately told him to get out generally had the comfortable feeling that they were doing the right and sensible thing. But to-night there was in his demeanour something so crushed and forlorn that John had not the heart to pursue this admirable policy.
"Hullo," he said. "I thought you were down at the concert."
Hugo uttered a short, bitter laugh, and, sinking into a chair, stared bleakly before him. His eyelids, like those of the Mona Lisa, were a little weary. He looked like the hero of a Russian novel debating the advisability of murdering a few near relations before hanging himself in the barn.
"I was," he said. "Oh yes, I was down at the concert all right."
"Have you done your bit already?"
"I have. They put Ronnie and me on just after the Vicar's Short Address."
"Wanted to get the worst over quick, eh?"
Hugo raised a protesting hand. There was infinite sadness in the gesture.
"Don't mock, John. Don't jeer. Don't jibe and scoff. I'm a broken man."
"Only cracked, I should have said."
Hugo was not attuned to cousinly badinage. He frowned austerely.
"Less back-chat," he begged. "I came here for sympathy. And a drink. Have you got anything to drink?"
"There's some whisky in that cupboard."
Hugo heaved himself from the chair, looking more Russian than ever. John watched his operations with some concern.
"Aren't you mixing it pretty strong?"
"I need it strong." The unhappy man emptied his glass, refilled it, and returned to the chair. "In fact, it's a point verging very much on the moot whether I ought to have put any water in it at all."
"What's the trouble?"
"This isn't bad whisky," said Hugo, becoming a little brighter.
"I know it isn't. What's the matter?"
The momentary flicker of cheerfulness died out. Gloom once more claimed Hugo for its own.
"John, old man," he said. "We got the bird."
"Yes?"
"Don't say 'Yes?' like that, as if you had expected it," said Hugo, hurt. "The thing came on me as a stunning blow. I was amazed. Astounded. Absolutely nonplussed."
"Could I have knocked you down with a feather?"
"I thought we were going to be a riot. Of course, mind you, we came on much too early. It was criminal to bill us next to opening. An audience needs careful warming up for an intellectual act like ours!"
"What happened?"
Hugo rose and renewed the contents of his glass.
"There is a spirit creeping into the life of Rudge-in-the-Vale," he said, "which I don't like to see. A spirit of lawlessness and licence. Disruptive influences are at work. Bolshevik propaganda, I shouldn't wonder. Would a Rudge audience have given me the bird a few years ago? Not a chance!"
"But you've never tried them with the Quarrel Scene fromJulius Cæsarbefore. Everybody has a breaking point."
The argument was specious, but Hugo shook his head.
"In the good old days I could have done Hamlet's Soliloquy, and the hall would have rung with hearty cheers. It's just this modern lawlessness and Bolshevism. There was a very tough collection of the Budd Street element standing at the back, who should never have been let in. They started straight away chi-yiking the vicar during his short address. I didn't think anything of it at the time. I merely supposed that they wanted him to cheese it and let the entertainment start. I thought that directly Ronnie and I came on we should grip them. But we were barely a third of the way through when there were loud cries of 'Tripe!' and 'Get off!'"
"I see what that meant. You hadn't gripped them."
"I was never so surprised in my life. Mark you, I'll admit that Ronnie was perfectly rotten. He kept foozling his lines and saying 'Oh, sorry!' and going back and repeating them. You can't get the best out of Shakespeare that way. The fact is, poor old Ronnie is feeling a little low just now. He got a letter this morning from his man, Bessemer, in London, a fellow who has been with him for years and has few equals as a trouser presser, springing the news out of an absolutely clear sky that he's been secretly engaged for weeks and is just going to get married and leave Ronnie. Naturally, it has upset the poor chap badly. With a thing like that on his mind, he should never have attempted an exacting part like Brutus in the Quarrel Scene."
"Just what the audience thought, apparently. What happened after that?"
"Well, we buzzed along as well as we could, and we had just got to that bit about digesting the venom of your spleen though it do split you, when the proletariat suddenly started bunging vegetables."
"Vegetables?"
"Turnips, mostly, as far as I could gather. Now, do you see the significance of that, John?"
"How do you mean, the significance?"
"Well, obviously these blighters had come prepared. They had meant to make trouble right along. If not, why would they have come to a concert with their pockets bulging with turnips?"
"They probably knew by instinct that they would need them."
"No! It was simply this bally Bolshevism one reads so much about."
"You think these men were in the pay of Moscow?"
"I shouldn't wonder. Well, that took us off. Ronnie got rather a beefy whack on the side of the head and exited rapidly. And I wasn't going to stand out there doing the Quarrel Scene by myself, so I exited, too. The last I saw, Chas. Bywater had gone on and was telling Irish dialect stories with a Swedish accent."
"Did they throw turnips at him?"
"Not one. That's the sinister part of it. That's what makes me so sure the thing was an organized outbreak and all part of this Class War you hear about. Chas. Bywater, in spite of the fact that his material was blue round the edges, goes like a breeze, and gets off without a single turnip, whereas Ronnie and I ... well," said Hugo, a hideous grimness in his voice, "this has settled one thing. I've performed for the last time for Rudge-in-the-Vale. Next year when they may come to me, and plead with me to help out with the programme, I shall reply, 'Not after what has occurred!' Well, thanks for the drink. I'll be buzzing along." Hugo rose and wandered somnambulistically to the table. "What are you doing?"
"Working."
"Working?"
"Yes, working."
"What at?"
"Accounts. Stop fiddling with those papers, curse you."
"What's this thing?"
"That," said John, removing it from his listless grasp and putting it out of reach in a drawer, "is the diagram of a thing called an Alpha Separator. It works by centrifugal force and can separate two thousand seven hundred and twenty-four quarts of milk in an hour. It has also a Holstein butter-churner attachment, and a boiler which at seventy degrees centigrade destroys the obligatory and optional bacteria."
"Yes?
"Positively."
"Oh? Well, damn it, anyway," said Hugo.
IV
Hugo crossed the strip of gravel which lay between the stable yard and the house, and, having found in his trouser pocket the key of the back door, proceeded to let himself in. His objective was the dining room. He was feeling so much better after the refreshment of which he had just partaken that reason told him he had found the right treatment for his complaint. A few more swift ones from the cellarette in the dining room and the depression caused by the despicable behaviour of the Budd Street Bolshevists might possibly leave him altogether.
The passage leading to his goal was in darkness, but he moved steadily forward. Occasionally a chair would dart from its place to crack him over the shin, but he was not to be kept from the cellarette by trifles like that. Soon his fingers were on the handle of the door, and he flung it open and entered. And it was at this moment that there came to his ears an odd noise.
It was not the noise itself that was odd. Feet scraping on gravel always make that unmistakable sound. What impressed itself on Hugo as curious was the fact that on the gravel outside the dining-room window, feet at this hour should be scraping at all. His hand had been outstretched to switch on the light, but now he paused. He waited, listening. And presently in the oblong of the middle of the three large windows he saw dimly against the lesser darkness outside a human body. It was insinuating itself through the opening and what Hugo felt about it was that he liked its dashed nerve.
Hugo Carmody was no poltroon. Both physically and morally he possessed more than the normal store of courage. At Cambridge he had boxed for his university in the light-weight division and once, in London, the petty cash having run short, he had tipped a hat-check boy with an aspirin tablet. Moreover, although it was his impression that the few drops of whisky which he had drunk in John's room had but scratched the surface, their effect in reality had been rather pronounced. "In some diatheses," an eminent physician has laid down, "whisky is not immediately pathogenic. In other cases the spirit in question produces marked cachexia." Hugo's cachexia was very marked indeed. He would have resented keenly the suggestion that he was fried, boiled, or even sozzled, but he was unquestionably in a definite condition of cachexia.
In a situation, accordingly, in which many householders might have quailed, he was filled with gay exhilaration. He felt able and willing to chew the head off any burglar that ever packed a centrebit. Glowing with cachexia and the spirit of adventure, he switched on the light and found himself standing face to face with a small, weedy man beneath whose snub nose there nestled a waxed moustache.
"Stand ho!" said Hugo jubilantly, falling at once into the vein of the Quarrel Scene.
In the bosom of the intruder many emotions were competing for precedence, but jubilation was not one of them. If Mr. Twist had had a weak heart, he would by now have been lying on the floor breathing his last, for few people can ever have had a nastier shock. He stood congealed, blinking at Hugo.
Hugo, meanwhile, had made the interesting discovery that it was no stranger who stood before him but an old acquaintance.
"Great Scot!" he exclaimed. "Old Doc. Twist! The beautiful, tranquil-thoughts bird!" He chuckled joyously. His was a retentive memory, and he could never forget that this man had once come within an ace of ruining that big deal in cigarettes over at Healthward Ho, and had also callously refused to lend him a tenner. Of such a man he could believe anything, even that he combined with the duties of a physical culture expert a little housebreaking and burglary on the side. "Well, well, well!" said Hugo. "Remember March, the Ides of March remember! Did not great Julius bleed for justice' sake? What villain touched his body that did stab and not for justice? Answer me that, you blighter, yes or no."
Chimp Twist licked his lips nervously. He was a little uncertain as to the exact import of his companion's last words, but almost any words would have found in him at this moment a distrait listener.
"Oh, I could weep my spirit from my eyes!" said Hugo.
Chimp could have done the same. With an intense bitterness he was regretting that he had ever allowed Mr. Molloy to persuade him into this rash venture. But he was a man of resource. He made an effort to mend matters. Soapy, in a similar situation, would have done it better, but Chimp, though not possessing his old friend's glib tongue and insinuating manners, did the best he could. "You startled me," he said, smiling a sickly smile.
"I bet I did," agreed Hugo cordially.
"I came to see your uncle."
"You what?"
"I came to see your uncle."
"Twist, you lie! And, what is more, you lie in your teeth."
"Now, see here...!" began Chimp, with a feeble attempt at belligerence.
Hugo checked him with a gesture.
"There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats, for I am armed so strong in honesty that they pass by me like the idle wind, which I respect not. Must I give way and room to your rash choler? Shall I be frightened when a madman stares? By the gods, you shall digest the venom of your spleen though it do split you. And what could be fairer than that?" said Hugo.
Mr. Twist was discouraged, but he persevered.
"I guess it looked funny to you, seeing me come in through a window. But, you see, I rang the front door bell and couldn't seem to make anyone hear."
"Away, slight man!"
"You want me to go away?" said Mr. Twist, with a gleam of hope.
"You stay where you are, unless you'd like me to lean a decanter of the best port up against your head," said Hugo. "And don't flicker," he added, awakening to another grievance against this unpleasant little man.
"Don't what?" inquired Mr. Twist, puzzled but anxious to oblige.
"Flicker. Your outline keeps wobbling, and I don't like it. And there's another thing about you that I don't like. I've forgotten what it is for the moment, but it'll come back to me soon."
He frowned darkly: and for the first time it was borne in upon Mr. Twist that his young host was not altogether himself. There was a gleam in his eyes which, in Mr. Twist's opinion, was far too wild to be agreeable.
"I know," said Hugo, having reflected. "It's your moustache."
"My moustache?"
"Or whatever it is that's broken out on your upper lip. I dislike it intensely. When Cæsar lived," said Hugo querulously, "he durst not thus have moved me. And the worst thing of all is that you should have taken a quiet, harmless country house and called it such a beastly, repulsive name as Healthward Ho. Great Scot!" exclaimed Hugo. "I knew there was something I was forgetting. All this while you ought to have been doing bending and stretching exercises!"
"Your uncle, I guess, is still down at the concert thing in the village?" said Mr. Twist, weakly endeavouring to change the conversation.
Hugo started. A look of the keenest suspicion flashed into his eyes.
"Were you at that concert?" he said sternly.
"Me? No."
"Are you sure, Twist? Look me in the face."
"I've never been near any concert."
"I strongly suspect you," said Hugo, "of being one of the ringleaders in that concerted plot to give me the bird. I think I recognized you."
"Not me."
"You're sure?"
"Sure."
"Oh? Well, that doesn't alter the cardinal fact that you are the bloke who makes poor, unfortunate fat men do bending and stretching exercises. So do a few now yourself."
"Eh?"
"Bend!" said Hugo. "Stretch!"
"Stretch?"
"And bend," said Hugo, insisting on full measure. "First bend, then stretch. Let me see your chest expand and hear the tinkle of buttons as you burst your waistcoat asunder."
Mr. Twist was now definitely of opinion that the gleam in the young man's eyes was one of the most unpleasant and menacing things he had ever encountered. Transferring his gaze from this gleam to the other's well-knit frame, he decided that he was in the presence of one who, whether his singular request was due to weakness of intellect or to alcohol, had best be humoured.
"Get on with it," said Hugo.
He settled himself in a chair and lighted a cigarette. His whole manner was suggestive of the blasé nonchalance of a sultan about to be entertained by the court acrobat. But, though his bearing was nonchalant, that gleam was still in his eyes, and Chimp Twist hesitated no longer. He bent, as requested—and then, having bent, stretched. For some moments he jerked his limbs painfully in this direction and in that, while Hugo, puffing smoke, surveyed him with languid appreciation.
"Now tie yourself into a reefer knot," said Hugo.
Chimp gritted his teeth. A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things, and there came back to him the recollection of mornings when he had stood at his window and laughed heartily at the spectacle of his patients at Healthward Ho being hounded on to these very movements by the vigilant Sergeant Flannery. How little he had supposed that there would ever come a time when he would be compelled himself to perform these exercises. And how little he had guessed at the hideous discomfort which they could cause to a man who had let his body muscles grow stiff.
"Wait," said Hugo, suddenly.
Mr. Twist was glad to do so. He straightened himself, breathing heavily.
"Are you thinking beautiful thoughts?"
Chimp Twist gulped. "Yes," he said, with a strong effort.
"Beautiful, tranquil thoughts?"
"Yes."
"Then carry on."
Chimp resumed his calisthenics. He was aching in every joint now, but into his discomfort there had shot a faint gleam of hope. Everything in this world has its drawbacks and its advantages. With the drawbacks to his present situation he had instantly become acquainted, but now at last one advantage presented itself to his notice—the fact, to wit, that the staggerings and totterings inseparable from a performance of the kind with which he was entertaining his limited but critical audience had brought him very near to the open window.
"How are the thoughts?" asked Hugo. "Still beautiful?"
Chimp said they were, and he spoke sincerely. He had contrived to put a space of several feet between himself and his persecutor, and the window gaped invitingly almost at his side.
"Yours," said Hugo, puffing smoke meditatively, "has been a very happy life, Twist. Day after day you have had the privilege of seeing my uncle Lester doing just what you're doing now, and it must have beaten a circus hollow. It's funny enough even when you do it, and you haven't anything like his personality and appeal. If you could see what a priceless ass you look it would keep you giggling for weeks. I know," said Hugo, receiving an inspiration; "do the one where you touch your toes without bending the knees."
In all human affairs the semblance of any given thing is bound to vary considerably with the point of view. To Chimp Twist, as he endeavoured to comply with this request, it seemed incredible that what he was doing could strike anyone as humorous. To Hugo, on the other hand, it appeared as if the entertainment had now reached its apex of wholesome fun. As Mr. Twist's purple face came up for the third time, he abandoned himself whole-heartedly to mirth. He rocked in his chair, and, rashly trying to inhale cigarette smoke at the same time, found himself suddenly overcome by a paroxysm of coughing.
It was the moment for which Chimp Twist had been waiting. There is, as Ronnie Fish would have observed in the village hall an hour or so earlier if the audience had had the self-restraint to let him get as far as that, a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Chimp did not neglect the opportunity which Fate had granted him. With an agile bound he was at the window, and, rendered supple, no doubt, by his recent exercises, leaped smartly through it.
He descended heavily on the dog Emily. Emily, wandering out for a last stroll before turning in, had just paused beneath the window to investigate a smell which had been called to her attention on the gravel. She was trying to make up her mind whether it was rats or the ghost of a long-lost bone when the skies suddenly started raining heavy bodies on her.
V
Emily was a dog who, as a rule, took things as they came, her guiding motto in life being the old Horatiannil admirari, but she could lose her poise. She lost it now. A startled oath escaped her, and for a brief instant she was completely unequal to the situation. In this instant, Chimp, equally startled but far too busy to stop, had disengaged himself and was vanishing into the darkness.
A moment later Hugo came through the window. His coughing fit had spent itself, and he was now in good voice again. He was shouting.
At once Emily became herself again. All her sporting blood stirred in answer to these shouts. She forgot her agony. Her sense of grievance left her. Recognizing Hugo, she saw all things clearly, and realized in a flash that here at last was the burglar for whom she had been waiting ever since her conversation with that wire-haired terrier over at Webleigh Manor.
John had taken her to lunch there one day and, fraternizing with the Webleigh dog under the table, she had immediately noticed in his manner something aloof and distinctly patronizing. It had then come out in conversation that they had had a burglary at the Manor a couple of nights ago, and the wire-haired terrier, according to his own story, had been the hero of the occasion. He spoke with an ill-assumed offhandedness of barking and bitings and chasings in the night, and, though he did not say it in so many words, gave Emily plainly to understand that it took an unusual dog to grapple with such a situation, and that in a similar crisis she herself would inevitably be found wanting. Ever since that day she had been longing for a chance to show her mettle, and now it had come. Calling instructions in a high voice, she raced for the bushes into which Chimp had disappeared. Hugo, a bad third, brought up the rear of the procession.
Chimp, meanwhile, had been combining with swift movement some very rapid thinking. Fortune had been with him in the first moments of this dash for safety, but now, he considered, it had abandoned him, and he must trust to his native intelligence to see him through. He had not anticipated dogs. Dogs altered the whole complexion of the affair. To a go-as-you-please race across country with Hugo he would have trusted himself, but Hugo in collaboration with a dog was another matter. It became now a question not of speed but of craft; and he looked about him, as he ran, for a hiding place, for some shelter from this canine and human storm which he had unwittingly aroused.
And Fortune, changing sides again, smiled upon him once more. Emily, who had been coming nicely, attempted very injudiciously at this moment to take a short cut and became involved in a bush. And Chimp, accelerating an always active brain, perceived a way out. There was a low stone wall immediately in front of him, and beyond it, as he came up, he saw the dull gleam of water.
It was not an ideal haven, but he was in no position to pick and choose. The interior of the tank from which the gardeners drew ammunition for their watering cans had, for one who from childhood had always disliked bathing, a singularly repellent air. Those dark, oily looking depths suggested the presence of frogs, newts, and other slimy things that work their way down a man's back and behave clammily around his spine. But it was most certainly a place of refuge.
He looked over his shoulder. An agitated crackling of branches announced that Emily had not yet worked clear, and Hugo had apparently stopped to render first aid. With a silent shudder Chimp stepped into the tank and, lowering himself into the depths, nestled behind a water lily.
Hugo was finding the task of extricating Emily more difficult than he had anticipated. The bush was one of those thorny, adhesive bushes, and it twined itself lovingly in Emily's hair. Bad feeling began to rise, and the conversation took on an acrimonious tone.
"Stand still!" growled Hugo. "Stand still, you blighter dog."
"Push," retorted Emily. "Push, I tell you! Push, not pull. Don't you realize that all the while we're wasting time here that fellow's getting away?"
"Don't wriggle, confound you. How can I get you out if you keep wriggling?"
"Try a lift in an upward direction. No, that's no good. Stop pushing and pull. Pull, I tell you. Pull not push. Now, when I say 'Toyou ...'"
Something gave. Hugo staggered back. Emily sprang from his grasp. The chase was on again.
But now all the zest had gone out of it. The operations in the bush had occupied only a bare couple of minutes, but they had been enough to allow the quarry to vanish. He had completely disappeared. Hugo, sitting on the wall of the tank and trying to recover his breath, watched Emily as she darted to and fro, inspecting paths and drawing shrubberies, and knew that he had failed. It was a bitter moment, and he sat and smoked moodily. Presently even Emily gave the thing up. She came back to where Hugo sat, her tongue lolling, and disgust written all over her expressive features. There was a silence. Emily thought it was all Hugo's fault, Hugo thought it was Emily's. A stiffness had crept into their relations once again, and when at length Hugo, feeling a little more benevolent after three cigarettes, reached down and scratched Emily's head, the latter drew away coldly.
"Damn fool!" she said.
Hugo started. Was it some sound, some distant stealthy footstep, that had caused his companion to speak? He stared into the night.
"Fat head!" said Emily. "Can't even pull somebody out of a bush."
She laughed mirthlessly, and Hugo, now keenly on the alert, rose from his seat and gazed this way and that. And then, moving softly away from him at the end of the path, he saw a dark figure.
Instantly, Hugo Carmody became once more the man of action. With a stern shout he dashed along the path. And he had not gone half a dozen feet when the ground seemed suddenly to give way under him.
This path, as he should have remembered, knowing the terrain as he did, was a terrace path, set high above the shrubberies below. It was a simple enough matter to negotiate it in daylight and at a gentle stroll, but to race successfully along it in the dark required a Blondin. Hugo's third stride took him well into the abyss. He clutched out desperately, grasped only cool Worcestershire night air, and then, rolling down the slope, struck his head with great violence against a tree which seemed to have been put there for the purpose.
When the sparks had cleared away and the firework exhibition was over, he rose painfully to his feet.
A voice was speaking from above—the voice of Ronald Overbury Fish.
"Hullo!" said the voice. "What's up?"
VI
Weighed down by the burden of his many sorrows, Ronnie Fish had come to this terrace path to be alone. Solitude was what he desired, and solitude was what he supposed he had got until, abruptly, without any warning but a wild shout, the companion of his school and university days had suddenly dashed out from empty space and apparently attempted to commit suicide. Ronnie was surprised. Naturally no fellow likes getting the bird at a village concert, but Hugo, he considered, in trying to kill himself was adopting extreme measures. He peered down, going so far in his natural emotion as to remove the cigarette holder from his mouth.
"What's up?" he asked again.
Hugo was struggling dazedly up the bank.
"Was that you, Ronnie?"
"Was what me?"
"That."
"Which?"
Hugo approached the matter from another angle.
"Did you see anyone?"
"When?"
"Just now. I thought I saw someone on the path. It must have been you."
"It was. Why?"
"I thought it was somebody else."
"Well, it wasn't."
"I know, but I thought it was."
"Who did you think it was?"
"A fellow called Twist."
"Twist?"
"Yes, Twist."
"Why?"
"I've been chasing him."
"Chasing Twist?"
"Yes. I caught him burgling the house."
They had been walking along, and now reached a spot where the light, freed from overhanging branches, was stronger. Mr. Fish became aware that his friend had sustained injuries.
"I say," he said, "you've hurt your head."
"I know I've hurt my head, you silly ass."
"It's bleeding, I mean."
"Bleeding?"
"Bleeding."
Blood is always interesting. Hugo put a hand to his wound, took it away again, inspected it.
"By Jove! I'm bleeding."
"Yes, bleeding. You'd better go in and have it seen to."
"Yes," Hugo reflected. "I'll go and get old John to fix it. He once put six stitches in a cow."
"What cow?"
"One of the cows. I forget its name."
"Where do we find this John?"
"He's in his room over the stables."
"Can you walk it all right?"
"Oh yes, rather,"
Ronnie, relieved, lighted a cigarette, and approached an aspect of the affair which had been giving him food for thought.
"I say, Hugo, have you been having a few drinks or anything?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, buzzing about the place after non-existent burglars."
"They weren't non-existent. I tell you I caught this man Twist...."
"How do you know it was Twist?"
"I've met him."
"Who? Twist?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"He runs a place called Healthward Ho near here."
"What's Healthward Ho?"
"It's a place where fellows go to get fit. My uncle was there."
"And Twist runs it?"
"Yes."
"And you think this—dash it, this pillar of society was burgling the house?"
"I caught him, I tell you."
"Who? Twist?"
"Yes."
"Well, where is he, then?"
"I don't know."
"Listen, old man," said Ronnie gently. "I think you'd better be pushing along and getting that bulb of yours repaired."
He remained gazing after his friend, as he disappeared in the direction of the stable yard, with much concern. He hated to think of good old Hugo getting into a mental state like this, though, of course, it was only what you could expect if a man lived in the country all the time. He was still brooding when he heard footsteps behind him and looked round and saw Mr. Lester Carmody approaching.
Mr. Carmody was in a condition which in a slimmer man might have been called fluttering. He, like John, had absented himself from the festivities in the village, wishing to be on the spot when Mr. Twist made his entry into the house. He had seen Chimp get through the dining-room window and had instantly made his way to the front hall, proposing to wait there and see the precious suitcase duly deposited in the cupboard under the stairs. He had waited, but no Chimp had appeared. And then there had come to his ears barkings and shoutings and uproar in the night. Mr. Carmody, like Othello, was perplexed in the extreme.
"Ah, Carmody," said Mr. Fish.
He waved a kindly cigarette holder at his host. The latter regarded him with tense apprehension. Was his guest about to announce that Mr. Twist, caught in the act, was now under lock and key? For some reason or other, it was plain, Hugo and this unspeakable friend of his had returned at an unexpectedly early hour from the village, and Mr. Carmody feared the worst.
"I've got a bit of bad news for you, Carmody," said Mr. Fish. "Brace up, my dear fellow."
Mr. Carmody gulped.
"What—what—what...."
"Poor old Hugo. Gone clean off his mental axis."
"What! What do you mean?"
"I found him just now running round in circles and dashing his head against trees. He said he was chasing a burglar. Of course there wasn't anything of the sort on the premises. For, mark this, my dear Carmody: according to his statement, which I carefully checked, the burglar was a most respectable fellow named Twist, who runs a sort of health place near here. You know him, I believe?"
"Slightly," said Mr. Carmody. "Slightly."
"Well, would a man in that position go about burgling houses? Pure delusion, of course."
Mr. Carmody breathed a deep sigh. Relief had made him feel a little faint.
"Undoubtedly," he said. "Hugo was always weak-minded from a boy."
"By the way," said Mr. Fish, "did you by any chance get up at five in the morning the other day and climb a ladder to look for swallows' nests?"
"Certainly not."
"I thought as much. Hugo said he saw you. Delusion again. The whole truth of the matter is, my dear Carmody, living in the country has begun to soften poor old Hugo's brain. You must act swiftly. You don't want a gibbering nephew about the place. Take my tip and send him away to London at the earliest possible moment."
It was rare for Lester Carmody to feel gratitude for the advice which this young man gave him so freely, but he was grateful now. He perceived clearly that a venture like the one on which he and his colleagues had embarked should never have been undertaken while the house was full of infernal, interfering young men. Such was his emotion that for an instant he almost liked Mr. Fish.
"Hugo was saying that you wished him to become your partner in some commercial enterprise," he said.
"A night club. The Hot Spot. Situated just off Bond Street, in the heart of London's pleasure-seeking area."
"You were going to give him a half share for five hundred pounds, I believe?"
"Five hundred was the figure."
"He shall have the cheque immediately," said Mr. Carmody. "I will go and write it now. And to-morrow you shall take him to London. The best trains are in the morning. I quite agree with you about his mental condition. I am very much obliged to you for drawing it to my notice."
"Don't mention it, Carmody," said Mr. Fish graciously. "Only too glad, my dear fellow. Always a pleasure, always a pleasure."
VII
John had returned to his work and was deep in it when Hugo and his wounded head crossed his threshold. He was startled and concerned.
"Good heavens!" he cried. "What's been happening?"
"Fell down a bank and bumped the old lemon against a tree," said Hugo, with the quiet pride of a man who has had an accident. "I looked in to see if you had got some glue or something to stick it up with."
John, as became one who thought nothing of putting stitches in cows, exhibited a cool efficiency. He bustled about, found water and cotton wool and iodine, and threw in sympathy as a make-weight. Only when the operation was completed did he give way to a natural curiosity.
"How did it happen?"
"Well, it started when I found that bounder Twist burgling the house."
"Twist?"
"Yes. Twist. The Healthward Ho bird."
"You found Doctor Twist burgling the house?"
"Yes, and I made him do bending and stretching exercises. And in the middle he legged it through the window, and Emily and I chivvied him about the garden. Then he disappeared, and I saw him again at the end of that path above the shrubberies, and I dashed after him and took a toss and it wasn't Twist at all, it was Ronnie."
John forbore to ask further questions. This incoherent tale satisfied him that his cousin, if not delirious, was certainly on the borderland. He remembered the whole-heartedness with which Hugo had drowned his sorrows only a short while back in this very room, and he was satisfied that what the other needed was rest.
"You'd better go to bed," he said. "I think I've fixed you up pretty well, but perhaps you had better see the doctor to-morrow."
"Doc. Twist?"
"No, not Doctor Twist," said John soothingly. "Doctor Bain, down in the village."
"Something ought to be done about the man Twist," argued Hugo. "Somebody ought to pop it across him."
"If I were you I'd just forget all about Twist. Put him right out of your mind."
"But are we going to sit still and let perishers with waxed moustaches burgle the house whenever they feel inclined and not do a thing to bring their gray hairs in sorrow to the grave?"
"I wouldn't worry about it, if I were you, I'd just go off and have a nice long sleep."
Hugo raised his eyebrows, and, finding that the process caused exquisite agony to his wounded head, quickly lowered them again. He looked at John with cold disapproval, pained at this evidence of supineness in a member of a proud family.
"Oh?" he said. "Well, bung—oh, then!"
"Good night."
"Give my love to the Alpha Separator and all the little Separators."
"I will," said John.
He accompanied his cousin down the stairs and out into the stable yard. Having watched him move away and feeling satisfied that he could reach the house without assistance, he felt in his pocket for the materials for the last smoke of the day, and was filling his pipe when Emily came round the corner.
Emily was in great spirits.
"Such larks!" said Emily. "One of those big nights. Burglars dashing to and fro, people falling over banks and butting their heads against trees, and everything bright and lively. But let me tell you something. A fellow like your cousin Hugo is no use whatever to a dog in any real emergency. He's not a force. A broken reed. You should have seen him. He...."
"Stop that noise and get to bed," said John.
"Right ho," said Emily. "You'll be coming soon, I suppose?"
She charged up the stairs, glad to get to her basket after a busy evening. John lighted his pipe, and began to meditate. Usually he smoked the last pipe of the day to the accompaniment of thoughts about Pat, but now he found his mind turning to this extraordinary delusion of Hugo's that he had caught Doctor Twist, of Healthward Ho, burgling the house.
John had never met Doctor Twist, but he knew that he was the proprietor of a flourishing health-cure establishment and assumed him to be a reputable citizen; and the idea that he had come all the way from Healthward Ho to burgle Rudge Hall was so bizarre that he could not imagine by what weird mental processes his cousin had been led to suppose that he had seen him. Why Doctor Twist, of all people? Why not the vicar or Chas. Bywater?
Footsteps sounded on the gravel, and he was aware of the subject of his thoughts returning. There was a dazed expression on Hugo's face, and in his hand there fluttered a small oblong slip of paper.
"John," said Hugo, "look at this and tell me if you see what I see. Is it a cheque?"
"Yes."
"For five hundred quid, made out to me and signed by Uncle Lester?"
"Yes."
"Then thereisa Santa Claus!" said Hugo reverently. "John, old man, it's absolutely uncanny. Directly I got into the house just now Uncle Lester called me to his study, handed me this cheque, and told me that I could go to London with Ronnie to-morrow and help him start that night club. You remember me telling you about Ronnie's night club, the Hot Spot, situated just off Bond Street in the heart of London's pleasure-seeking area? Or did I? Well, anyway, he is starting a night club there, and he offered me a half share if I'd put up five hundred. By the way, Uncle Lester wants you to go to London to-morrow, too."
"Me. Why?"
"I fancy he's got the wind up a bit about this burglary business to-night. He said something about wanting you to go and see the insurance people—to bump up the insurance a trifle, I suppose. He'll explain. But, listen, John. It really is the most extraordinary thing, this. Uncle Lester starting to unbelt, I mean, and scattering money all over the place. I was absolutely right when I told Pat this morning...."
"Have you seen Pat?"
"Met her this morning on the bridge. And I said to her ..."
"Did she—er—ask after me?"
"No."
"No?" said John hollowly.
"Not that I remember. I brought your name into the talk, and we had a few words about you, but I don't recollect her asking after you." Hugo laid a hand on his cousin's arm. "It's no use, John. Be a man! Forget her. Keep plugging away at that Molloy girl. I think you're beginning to make an impression. I think she's softening. I was watching her narrowly last night, and I fancied I saw a tender look in her eyes when they fell on you. I may have been mistaken, but that's what I fancied. A sort of shy, filmy look. I'll tell you what it is, John. You're much too modest. You underrate yourself. Keep steadily before you the fact that almost anybody can get married if they only plug away at it. Look at this man Bessemer, for instance, Ronnie's man that I told you about. As ugly a devil as you would wish to see outside the House of Commons, equipped with number sixteen feet and a face more like a walnut than anything. And yet he has clicked. The moral of which is that no one need ever lose hope. You may say to yourself that you have no chance with this Molloy girl, that she will not look at you. But consider the case of Bessemer. Compared with him, you are quite good looking. His ears alone...."
"Good night," said John.
He knocked out his pipe and turned to the stairs. Hugo thought his manner abrupt.
VIII
Sergeant-Major Flannery, that able and conscientious man, walked briskly up the main staircase of Healthward Ho. Outside a door off the second landing he stopped and knocked.
A loud sneeze sounded from within.
"Cub!" called a voice.
Chimp Twist, propped up with pillows, was sitting in bed, swathed in a woollen dressing gown. His face was flushed, and he regarded his visitor from under swollen eyelids with a moroseness which would have wounded a more sensitive man. Sergeant-Major Flannery stood six feet two in his boots: he had a round, shiny face at which it was agony for a sick man to look, and Chimp was aware that when he spoke it would be in a rolling, barrack-square bellow which would go clean through him like a red-hot bullet through butter. One has to be in rude health and at the top of one's form to bear up against the Sergeant-Major Flannerys of this world.
"Well?" he muttered thickly.
He broke off to sniff at a steaming jug which stood beside his bed, and the Sergeant-Major, gazing down at him with the offensive superiority of a robust man in the presence of an invalid, fingered his waxed moustache. The action intensified Chimp's dislike. From the first he had been jealous of that moustache. Until it had come into his life he had always thought highly of his own fungoid growth, but one look at this rival exhibit had taken all the heart out of him. The thing was long and blond and bushy, and it shot heavenward into two glorious needle-point ends, a shining zareba of hair quite beyond the scope of any mere civilian. Non-army men may grow moustaches and wax them and brood over them and be fond and proud of them, but to obtain a waxed moustache in the deepest and holiest sense of the words you have to be a sergeant-major.
"Oo-er!" said Mr. Flannery. "That's a nasty cold you've got."
Chimp, as if to endorse this opinion, sneezed again.
"A nasty, feverish cold," proceeded the Sergeant-Major in the tones in which he had once been wont to request squads of recruits to number off from the right. "You ought to do something about that cold."
"I ab dog sobthig about it," growled Chimp, having recourse to the jug once more.
"I don't mean sniffing at jugs, sir. You won't do yourself no good sniffing at jugs, Mr. Twist. You want to go to the root of the matter, if you understand the expression. You want to attack it from the stummick. The stummick is the seat of the trouble. Get the stummick right and the rest follows natural."
"Wad do you wad?"
"There's some say quinine and some say a drop of camphor on a lump of sugar and some say cinnamon, but you can take it from me the best thing for a nasty feverish cold in the head is taraxacum and hops. There is no occasion to damn my eyes, Mr. Twist. I am only trying to be 'elpful. You send out for some taraxacum and hops, and before you know where you are...."
"Wad do you wad?"
"I'm telling you. There's a gentleman below—a gentleman who's called," said Sergeant-Major Flannery, making his meaning clear. "A gentleman," being still more precise, "who's called at the front door in a nortermobile. He wants to see you."
"Well, he can't."
"Says his name's Molloy."
"Molloy?"
"That's what hesaid," replied Mr. Flannery, as one declining to be quoted or to accept any responsibility.
"Oh? All right. Send him up."
"Taraxacum and hops," repeated the Sergeant-Major, pausing at the door.
He disappeared, and a few moments later returned, ushering in Soapy. He left the two old friends together, and Soapy approached the bed with rather an awe-struck air.
"You've got a cold," he said.
Chimp sniffed—twice. Once with annoyance and once at the jug.
"So would you have a code if you'd been sitting up to your neck in water for half an hour last night and had to ride home tweddy biles wriggig wet on a motorcycle."
"Says which?" exclaimed Soapy, astounded.
Chimp related the saga of the previous night, touching disparagingly on Hugo and saying some things about Emily which it was well she could not hear.
"And that leds me out," he concluded.
"No, no!"
"I'm through."
"Don't say that."
"I do say thad."
"But, Chimpie, we've got it all fixed for you to get away with the stuff to-night."
Chimp stared at him incredulously.
"To-night? You thig I'm going out to-night with this code of mine, to clibe through windows and be run off my legs by ..."
"But, Chimpie, there's no danger of that now. We've got everything set. That guy Hugo and his friend are going to London this morning, and so's the other fellow. You won't have a thing to do but walk in."
"Oh?" said Chimp.
He relapsed into silence, and took a thoughtful sniff at the jug. This information, he was bound to admit, did alter the complexion of affairs. But he was a business man.
"Well, if I do agree to go out and risk exposing this nasty, feverish code of mine to the night air, which is the worst thig a man can do—ask any doctor...."
"Chimpie!" cried Mr. Molloy in a stricken voice. His keen intuition told him what was coming.
"... I don't do it on any sigsdy-forty basis. Sigsdy-five—thirty-five is the figure."
Mr. Molloy had always been an eloquent man—without a natural turn for eloquence you cannot hope to traffic successfully in the baser varieties of oil stocks; but never had he touched the sublime heights of oratory to which he soared now. Even the first few words would have been enough to melt most people. Nevertheless when at the end of five minutes he paused for breath, he knew that he had failed to grip his audience.
"Sigsdy-five—thirty-five," said Chimp firmly. "You need me, or you wouldn't have brought me into this. If you could have worked the job by yourself, you'd never have tode me a word about it."
"I can't work it by myself. I've got to have an alibi. I and the wife are going to a theatre to-night in Birmingham."
"That's what I'm saying. You can't get alog without me. And that's why it's going to be sigsdy-five—thirty-five."
Mr. Molloy wandered to the window and looked hopelessly out over the garden.
"Think what Dolly will say when I tell her," he pleaded.
Chimp replied ungallantly that Dolly and what she might say meant little in his life. Mr. Molloy groaned hollowly.
"Well, I guess if that's the way you feel...."
Chimp assured him it was.
"Then I suppose that's the way we'll have to fix it."
"All right," said Chimp. "Then I'll be there somewheres about eleven, or a little later, maybe. And you needn't bother to leave any window opud this time. Just have a ladder laying around and I'll bust the window of the picture gallery, where the stuff is. It'll be more trouble, but I dode bide takid a bidder trouble to make thigs look more natural. You just see thad ladder's where I can fide it, and then you can leave all the difficud part of it to me."
"Difficult!"
"Difficud was what I said," returned Chimp. "Suppose I trip over somethig id the dark? Suppose I slip on the stairs? Suppose the ladder breaks? Suppose that dog gets after me again? That dog's not going to London, is it? Well, then! Besides, considering that I may quide ligely get pneumonia and pass in my checks.... What did you say?"
Mr. Molloy had not spoken. He had merely sighed wistfully.