'What was that?' he gasped.
'What did you think it was?' said Dolly. She spoke with an asperity understandable in the circumstances. No girl cares to be asked foolish questions at a moment when she is trying to make certain that the top of her head has not come off.
'Someone's at the front door.'
'Yay.'
'I'll bet it's a cop.'
Dolly had shaken off the passing feeling of having been the victim of one of those gas explosions in a London street which slay six. She was herself again and, as always when she was herself, was able to reason clearly.
'No, not a cop. Want my guess, I'd say it was Chimp, wanting to find out if there's anyone home before he busts in. It's a thing he'd like to know.'
She had guessed correctly. Chimp Twist, as she had said, was a cautious man. He thought ahead, and preferred, before making any move, to be sure that there were no pitfalls in his path. Being in a hurry to get to her car and start shaking the dust of Valley Fields from its tyres, Leila Yorke had made their telephone conversation a brief one, and in it had not mentioned whether or not she was being accompanied in her exodus by the secretary who had called at his office. It was quite possible that the girl had been left behind to do the packing.
This provided food for thought. Nothing is more embarrassing for a man who has entered an empty house through a broken window and is anxious for privacy than to find, when he has settled in and it is too late to withdraw, that the house is not empty, after all. This is especially so if he knows there to be shot-guns on the premises. Soapy had told Chimp all about Leila Yorke's shot-gun, and he shrank from being brought in contact with such a weapon, even if only in the hands of a secretary. So he rang the door bell.
When he had rung it twice and nothing had happened, he felt he might legitimately conclude that all was well. He left the front door steps and began to sidle round the house, and was delighted to find that the very first window he came to had been carelessly left a few inches open at the bottom. It obviated the necessity of breaking the glass, a task to which, for his policy was to be as silent as possible and to avoid doing anything to arouse comment and curiosity in the neighbours, he had not been looking forward. To raise the window was with him the work of an instant, to slide over the sill that of another, and, well pleased, he was just saying to himself that this was the life, when a sudden blaze of light dazzled him. It also made him bite his tongue rather painfully, and gave him the momentary illusion that he was in Sing Sing, being electrocuted.
The mists cleared away, and he saw Dolly. Her face was wearing the smug expression of a female juvenile delinquent who has just played a successful practical joke on another member of her age group, and her sunny smile, which Soapy admired so much, seemed to gash him like a knife. Not for the first time he was wishing that, if it could be done without incurring any unpleasant after-effects for himself, he could introduce a pinch of some little-known Asiatic poison into this woman's morning cup of coffee or stab her in several vital spots with a dagger of Oriental design. A vision rose before his eyes of Mrs. Thomas G. Molloy sinking for the third time in some lake or mere and himself, with a sneer on his lips, throwing her an anvil.
It is never easy at times like this to think of the right thing to say. What Chimp said was:
'Oh, there you are,' which he himself recognized as weak.
'Yes, we're here,' said Dolly. 'What are you doing in these parts?'
A lifetime spent in keeping one jump ahead of the law had given Chimp the ability to think quickly and to recover with a minimum of delay from sudden shocks.
‘I came here,' he said, with a good deal of dignity, 'to get that ice for Soapy, like I promised him I would.'
'Oh, yeah?'
'Yeah.'
'You was going to pick it up and hand it over to Soapy?'
'Yeah.'
'For ten per cent of the gross?'
'That was the arrangement.'
'Sort of a gentlemen's agreement, was there? Well, that's too bad.'
'What's too bad?'
'That you should have had all this trouble for nothing. We've got that ice ourselves. It's over there on that table. And,' said Dolly, packing a wealth of meaning into her words as she produced her blackjack from its bag and gave it a tentative swing, 'you take one step in its direction, and you're going to get the headache of a lifetime.'
Observations like this always cause a silence to fall on a conference. If a Foreign Secretary at a meeting of Foreign Secretaries at Geneva were to use such words to another Foreign Secretary, the other Foreign Secretary would for a moment not know what to say. Chimp did not. He fondled his waxed moustache in the manner of a baffled villain in old-time melodrama, and cast a glance at Soapy, as if hoping for support from him. But Soapy's face showed that he was in full accord with the remarks of the last speaker.
He decided to make an appeal to their better feelings, though long association with the Molloys, Mr. and Mrs., particularly Mrs., should have told him that he was merely chasing rainbows.
'Is this nice?' he asked.
'I like it,' Dolly assured him.
'Me, too,' said Soapy.
'Yessir,' said Dolly, 'if there's one thing that gives me that warm glow, it's getting my hooks on a chunk of ice like this Prosser stuff. Must be worth fifty thousand dollars, wouldn't you say, Soapy?'
'More, pettie.'
'Yay, prob'ly more. When we've sold it to our financial associates, I and Soapy thought we'd go to Paris for a while and walk along the Bois de Boulong with an independent air, like the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo. We can afford it.'
Chimp writhed. His fingers fell from his moustache. Usually, when he let them stray over it, he felt heartened, for he loved the unsightly little growth, but now no twiddling of its spiky ends could cheer him. He was blaming himself bitterly for not having had the sense to come to this house earlier, instead of lingering over his dinner. It had all seemed so smooth to him as he sipped his coffee and liqueur, never dreaming that time was of the essence, and now this had happened.
Although it was already abundantly clear to him that if Soapy and his helpmeet had any better feelings, they were in abeyance tonight, he persevered in appealing to them.
'I want a square deal. ‘I’m entitled to my ten per.'
'Oh, yeah? Why?'
'Because I'm Soapy's accredited agent, that's why. You coming down here ahead of me and getting the stuff has nothing to do with it. It's like the Yorke dame and her hooks. Do you suppose if she went and sold one of them herself, she could collar all the dough and not pay her accredited agent his commish? Sure she couldn't. He'd want his. Same here. And there's another thing. It was entirely owing to me that the Yorke dame lit out. She wanted to stay on, said she liked cats and couldn't have too many around the place, but I made her go. I told her there was a dangerous gang trying to get her out of the joint for some reason and she'd look silly if she woke up one night and found her throat cut. So if there's any justice in the world, if you've one spark of fairness in your…What did you call me?'
Dolly, who had called him a chiselling, double-crossing little hydrophobic skunk, repeated her critique.
‘I wouldn't let you in on this for so much as a red cent,' she said, coldly, 'not even if the Archbishop of Canterbury was to come and beg me with tears in his eyes. You know as well as I do that you was planning to slip a quick one over on I and Soapy, and it was only because we got off to a fast start that you didn't do it. Ten per cent, my left eyeball! We'll give you sixpence to buy wax to put on your moustache, but that's our limit.'
Chimp drew himself up. He had never really hoped. What you need when trying to soften the heart of a Dolly Molloy is someone next door starting to play some song on the gramophone that reminds her of her childhood. Either that or a good, stout club.
'Okay,' he said. 'If that's the way you feel, I have nothing more to say. Except this. What's to stop me walking out that door and calling a cop - and slipping him the lo
w-down about finding you here with the Prosser ice?'
“I’ll tell you,' said Dolly in her obliging way. 'The moment you made a move, I'd bean you. Matter of fact,’ she went on after a moment's thought, 'it wouldn't be a bad idea to do it anyways.'
'Now, pettie,' said Soapy, always the pacifist, 'there's no need for rough stuff,' and Chimp said No; he liked women to be feminine.
'There'd be the satisfaction,' Dolly pointed out. 'Every time I see this little horror from outer space, I want to sock him with sump'n, and now seems as good a time as any.'
Chimp backed an uneasy step. He had not forgotten the occasion when the butt end of a pistol in this woman's capable hands had connected with the back of his head, and left him knowing no more, as the expression was. The swelling had subsided, but the memory lingered on.
'Hey, listen!' he cried.
But Soapy and Dolly were listening to the slithery sound which had attracted their attention earlier. It had come again, and this time it was no longer a disembodied rustling. A large green snake was making its way across the carpet.
Joe Bishop's misgivings had been well-founded. In saying that he had forgotten to pack Mabel, he had not erred. At the moment when he was gathering up his little flock, she had been overlooked, and for some time she had explored her new surroundings, broadening her mental outlook by taking in fresh objects of interest and finally falling into a light doze under an armchair. Waking now from this, she had started out on another sight-seeing tour. Dolly's foot engaged her notice, and she made for it at a speed highly creditable to a reptile with no feet, for she had begun to feel a little peckish. The foot might prove edible or it might not-time alone could settle the point - but it seemed to her worth investigation.
In the circles in which she moved Dolly Molloy was universally regarded as a tough baby who kept her chin up and both feet on the ground, and a good deal of envy was felt of Soapy for having acquired a mate on whom a man could rely. But there were weak spots in her armour, and at times she could be as feminine as even Chimp Twist could have wished. At the sight of Mabel all the woman in her awoke, and with a sharp cry she leaped for the sofa, the nearest object of furniture that seemed capable of raising her to an elevation promising temporary security. At the same moment Soapy, who shared her dislike of snakes, took to himself the wings of a dove and soared on to the top of the book-case. Mabel, a little taken aback, looked from one to the other with a puzzled expression, not quite, as Freddie's cousin George would have said, having got the gist. Nothing like this had ever happened in the days when Herpina the Snake Queen and her supporting cast had come on next to opening at Wigan, Blackpool and other centres of entertainment.
There is, as a brother author of the present historian has pointed out, a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. It is doubtful if Chimp Twist was familiar with the passage, for he confined his reading mainly to paperback thrillers and what are known as scratch sheets, but he acted now as if the words had for years been his constant inspiration. Dolly's bound had been lissom, and that of Soapy still more so, but neither could compare in agility with the one that took him to the table where the chamois leather bag of jewellery lay, and not even Freddie Widgeon and his friend Boddington, with their liking for the open spaces, could have hastened toward them with a greater zest. Not more than a few seconds had elapsed before he was at the front gate of Castlewood, fumbling at the latch.
He had passed through, and was about to proceed to spaces still more open, when something loomed up before him, and he found himself confronting a policeman so large that his bones turned to water and his heart fluttered within him like a caged bird. He was allergic to all policemen, but the last variety he would have wished to encounter at such a moment was the large.
His immediate thought was that he must get rid of the chamois leather bag before this towering rozzer asked him what it was. Reaching behind him, he dropped it over the gate into the Castlewood front garden.
24
FREDDIE’S cousin George, for the government employee who had manifested himself from the darkness was he, was glad to see Chimp. A chat with something human – even if, like Chimp, only on the borderline of the human - was just what he had been needing to break the monotony of his nocturnal footslogging. Walking a beat is a lonely task, and n man cannot be thinking of Jennifer Tibbett all the time. 'Nice evening,' he said.
Chimp might have replied that it had been one until this meeting, but the prudent man does not bandy words with the police, so he merely nodded.
'The moon,' said George, indicating it.
'Yay,' said Chimp, but he spoke without any real enthusiasm. He was, indeed, not giving the conversation his full attention, for his mind was occupied with thoughts of Soapy and Dolly. He could not believe that his departure had passed unnoticed by them, and he knew that 'ere long they must inevitably come leaping out in pursuit, modelling their movements on those of the well-known Assyrians who came down like a wolf on the fold. Their delay in doing so he attributed correctly to the magnetism of the snake Mabel but he doubted if any serpent, however powerful its personality, would be able to detain two such singleminded persons for so long. The result was that in the matter of moonlight chats he and George had different viewpoints. George liked them, he did not. He wanted to be up and away, to return for the chamois leather bag later, when conditions would be more favourable to the fulfilment of his ends and aims, and he was regarding George in much the same way as the wedding guest regarded the ancient mariner.
Something of his thoughts may have communicated itself to George, for he abandoned the subject of the moon, seeing that it had failed to grip.
'Been calling on Miss Yorke?' he said.
'That's right. Little business matter.'
'She's left. Skinned out this evening.'
'So that's why nobody answered the bell. Too bad. I came all the way from London to see her.'
'You're not a resident of Valley Fields?'
'No.'
'In fact, live elsewhere?'
'Yes.'
'Still, you are a householder?'
'Oh, sure.'
'Then,' said George, falling easily into his stride, 'you will doubtless be willing and eager to support a charitable organisation which is not only deserving in itself, but is connected with a body of men to whom you will be the first to admit that you owe the safety of your person and the tranquillity of your home. Coming, then, to the point, may I have the pleasure of selling you for yourself and wife---'
'I'm not married.'
‘---for yourself and some near relative - as it might be a well-loved uncle or a favourite aunt - a brace of the five-bob tickets for the annual Concert in aid of the Policemen's Orphanage, to be held at the Oddfellows Hall in Ogilvy Street next month. There are cheaper seats - one cannot ignore the half-crown and the two-bob - but the five-bobbers are the ones I recommend, for they admit you to the first three rows. If you are in the first three rows, people point you out to their friends as a man of obvious substance, and your prestige soars to a new high. Money well spent,' said George, producing two of the five-bobbers from an inside pocket, for he was confident that his eloquence would not have been wasted.
He was right. Chimp Twist shared Dolly's rugged distaste for encouraging the police force and experienced a strong feeling of nausea at the thought of contributing to the upkeep of a bunch of orphans who would probably, when grown to man's estate, become policemen themselves, but he saw no alternative. Refusal would mean being rooted to the spot while this pestilential peeler renewed his sales talk, and if there was a spot to which he was reluctant to be rooted, with Soapy and Dolly due at any moment, it was the piece of stone paving outside the gate of the desirable villa Castlewood. He could not have been called, as Sally had called Leila Yorke, a cheerful giver, but he gave, and George beamed on him as on a public-minded citizen who had done the right and generous thing. He would have his reward, George told him, for only one adjective could
be applied to the forthcoming concert, the adjective slap-up.
'No pains are being spared to make the evening an outstanding success. If you knew the number of throat pastilles sucked daily in all the local police stations, you would be astounded,' said George, and with a courteous word of thanks, he moved off in an easterly direction, while Chimp, anxious to be as far away from him as possible, set a westerly course.
He had proceeded some half-dozen yards on this, when the door of Castlewood flew open and Dolly and Soapy emerged in the order named. A few moments earlier, observing that Mabel had turned in again under the armchair, they had felt at liberty to descend from their respective perches, and the hunt was up. But there was not much hope in their hearts. With the substantial start he had had, Chimp, they both felt, must by now have joined the ranks of those loved ones far away of whom the hymnal speaks.
Their surprise at seeing him only a short distance down the road was equalled by their elation. No two bloodhounds, even of championship class, could have produced a better turn of speed as they swooped upon him, and George, who was nearing the corner of the street and had started thinking of Jennifer Tibbett again, paused in mid-stride, one regulation boot poised in the air as if about to crush a beetle. In the hitherto silent night behind him there had broken out what, had it not been that in the decorous purlieus of Valley Fields such things did not happen, he would have diagnosed as a fracas, and for an instant there surged within him the hope that he was about to make the pinch he had yearned for so long. Then he felt that he must have been mistaken. It was, he told himself, merely the breeze sighing in the trees.
But, he asked himself a moment later, did breezes in trees sigh like that? A country-bred man, he had had the opportunity of hearing a good many breezes sigh in trees, but he had never heard one with a middle-western American accent calling somebody opprobrious names. He turned alertly, and having turned, stood gaping. Just as a gamester who has wagered his luck against a slot machine becomes momentarily spellbound on hitting the jackpot, so was he numbed by the spectacle that met his eyes. A large citizen appeared to be trying to strangle a small citizen, while in their vicinity there hovered a woman of shapely figure, who looked as if she would have liked to join in the fray, if she could have found room to insert herself. In other words, as clear and inviting an opportunity for a pinch as ever fell to the lot of a zealous constable.