CHAPTER THIRTEEN
INTRODUCING A SYNDICATE
ACROSS the way from Tilbury House, next door to the massive annex containing the offices of Tiny Tots, Sabbath Jottings, British Girlhood, the Boys’ Adventure Weekly and others of the more recently established of the Mammoth Publishing Company’s periodicals, there stands a ramshackle four-storied building of an almost majestic dinginess, which Lord Tilbury, but for certain regulations having to do with ancient lights, would have swallowed up years ago, as he had swallowed the rest of the street.
The first three floors of this building are occupied by firms of the pathetic type which cannot conceivably be supposed to do any business, and yet hang on with dull persistency for decade after decade. Their windows are dirty and forlorn and most of the lettering outside has been worn away, so that on the second floor it would appear that trade is being carried by the Ja—& Sum—r—Rub—Co., while just above, Messrs. Smith, R-bi-s-n & G——, that mystic firm, are dealing in something curtly described as c——. It is not until we reach the fourth and final floor that we find the modern note struck.
Here the writing is not only clear and golden but, when read, stimulating to the imagination. It runs:
THE TILBURY DETECTIVE AGENCY, LTD.
J. Sheringham Adair, Mgr.
Large and Efficient Staff
and conjures up visions of a suite of rooms filled with hawk-faced men examining bloodstains through microscopes or poring tensely over the papers connected with the singular affair of the theft of the maharajah’s ruby.
On the morning, however, on which Sam Shotter paid his visit to Tilbury House, only one man was sitting in the office of the detective agency. He was a small and weedy individual, clad in a suit brighter even than the one which Sam had purchased from the Brothers Cohen. And when it is stated in addition that he wore a waxed moustache and that his handkerchief, which was of colored silk, filled the air with a noisome perfume, further evidence is scarcely required to convince the reader that he is being introduced to a most undesirable character. Nevertheless, the final damning fact may as well be revealed. It is this—the man was not looking out of a window.
Tilbury Street is very narrow and the fourth-floor windows of this ramshackle building are immediately opposite those of the fourth floor of Tilbury House. Alexander Twist therefore was in a position, if he pleased, to gaze through into the private sanctum of the proprietor of the Mammoth Publishing Company and obtain the spiritual uplift which could hardly fail to result from the spectacle of that great man at work. Alone of London’s millions of inhabitants, he had it in his power to watch Lord Tilbury pacing up and down, writing at his desk or speaking into the dictating device who knows what terrific thoughts.
Yet he preferred to sit at a table playing solitaire—and, one is prepared to bet, cheating. One need not, one fancies, say more.
So absorbed was Mr. Twist in his foolish game that the fact that someone was knocking on the door did not at first penetrate his senses. It was only when the person outside, growing impatient, rapped the panel with some hard object which might have been the handle of a lady’s parasol that he raised his head with a start. He swept the cards into a drawer, gave his coat a settling tug and rose alertly. The knock sounded like business, and Mr. Twist, who was not only J. Sheringham Adair, Mgr., but the large and efficient staff as well, was not the man to be caught unprepared.
“Come in,” he shouted.
With a quick flick of his hand he scattered a top dressing of important-looking papers about the table and was bending over these with a thoughtful frown when the door opened.
At the sight of his visitor he relaxed the preoccupied austerity of his demeanour. The new-comer was a girl in the middle twenties, of bold but at the moment rather sullen good looks. She had the bright hazel eyes which seldom go with a meek and contrite heart. Her colouring was vivid, and in the light from the window her hair gleamed with a sheen that was slightly metallic.
“Why, hello, Dolly,” said Mr. Twist.
“Hello,” said the girl moodily.
“Haven’t seen you for a year, Dolly. Never knew you were this side at all. Take a seat.”
The visitor took a seat.
“For the love of pop, Chimp,” she said, eying him with a languid curiosity, “where did you get the fungus?”
Mr. Twist moved in candid circles, and the soubriquet Chimp—short for Chimpanzee—by which he was known not only to his intimates but to police officials in America who would have liked to become more intimate than they were, had been bestowed upon him at an early stage of his career in recognition of a certain simian trend which critics affected to see in the arrangement of his features.
“Looks good, don’t you think?” he said, stroking his moustache fondly. It and money were the only things he loved.
“Anything you say. And I suppose, when you know you may be in the coop any moment, you like to have all the hair you can while you can.”
Mr. Twist felt a little wounded. He did not like badinage about his moustache. He did not like tactless allusions to the coop. And he was puzzled by the unwonted brusqueness of the girl’s manner. The Dora Gunn he had known had been a cheery soul, quite unlike this tight-lipped, sombre-eyed person now before him.
The girl was looking about her. She seemed perplexed.
“What’s all this?” she asked, pointing her parasol at the writing on the window.
Mr. Twist smiled indulgently and with a certain pride. He was, he flattered himself, a man of ideas, and this of presenting himself to the world as a private investigator he considered one of his happiest.
“Just camouflage,” he said. “Darned useful to have a label. Keeps people from asking questions.”
“It won’t keep me from asking questions. That’s what I’ve come for. Say, Chimp, can you tell the truth without straining a muscle?”
“You know me, Dolly.”
“Yes, that’s why I asked. Well, I’ve come to get you to tell me something. Nobody listening?”
“Not a soul.”
“How about the office boy?”
“I haven’t got an office boy. Who do you think I am—Pierpont Morgan?”
Thus reassured, the girl produced a delicate handkerchief, formerly the property of Harrod’s Stores and parted from unwittingly by that establishment.
“Chimp,” she said, brushing away a tear, “I’m sim’ly miserable.”
Chimp Twist was not the man to stand idly by while beauty in distress wept before him. He slid up and was placing a tender arm about her shoulder, when she jerked herself away.
“You can tie a can to that stuff,” she said with womanly dignity. “I’d like you to know I’m married.”
“Married?”
“Sure. Day before yesterday—to Soapy Molloy.”
“Soapy!” Mr. Twist started. “What in the world did you want to marry that slab of Gorgonzola for?”
“I’ll ask you kindly, if you wouldn’t mind,” said the girl in a cold voice, “not to go alluding to my husband as slabs of Gorgonzola.”
“He is a slab of Gorgonzola.”
“He is not. Well, anyway, I’m hoping he’s not. It’s what I come here to find out.”
Mr. Twist’s mind had returned to the perplexing matter of the marriage.
“I don’t get this,” he said. “I saw Soapy a couple of weeks back and he didn’t say he’d even met you.”
“He hadn’t then. We only run into each other ten days ago. I was walking up the Haymarket and I catch sight of a feller behind me out of the corner of my eye, so I faint on him, see?”
“You’re still in that line, eh?”
“Well, it’s what I do best, isn’t it?”
Chimp nodded. Dora Molloy—Fainting Dolly to her friends—was unquestionably an artist in her particular branch of industry. It was her practice to swoon in the arms of rich-looking strangers in the public streets and pick their pockets as they bent to render her assistance. It takes all sorts to do the world’s work.
“Well, then I seen it was Soapy, and so we go to lunch and have a nice chat. I always was strong for that boy, and we were both feeling kind of lonesome over here in London, so we fix it up. And now I’m sim’ly miserable.”
“What,” inquired Mr. Twist, “is biting you?”
“Well, I’ll tell you. This is what’s happened: Last night this bird Soapy goes out after supper and doesn’t blow in again till four in the morning. Four in the morning, I’ll trouble you, and us only married two days. Well, if he thinks a young bride’s going to stand for that sort of conduct right plumb spang in the middle of what you might call the honeymoon, he’s got a second guess due him.”
“What did you do?” asked Mr. Twist sympathetically, but with a touch of that rather unctuous complacency which bachelors display at moments like this.
“I did plenty. And he tried to alibi himself by pulling a story. That story the grand jury is now going to investigate and investigate good.... Chimp, did you ever hear of a man named Finglass?”
There was that in Mr. Twist’s manner that seemed to suggest that he was a reluctant witness, but he answered after a brief hesitation.
“Sure!”
“Oh, you did, eh? Well, who was he then?”
“He was big,” said Chimp, and there was a note of reverence in his voice. “One of the very biggest, old Finky was.”
“How was he big? What did he ever do?”
“Well, it was before your time and it happened over here, so I guess you may not have heard of it; but he took a couple of million dollars away from the New Asiatic Bank.”
Mrs. Molloy was undeniably impressed. The formidable severity of her manner seemed to waver.
“Were you and Soapy mixed up with him?”
“Sure! We were the best pals he had.”
“Is he alive?”
“No; he died in Buenos Aires the other day.”
Mrs. Molloy bit her lower lip thoughtfully.
“Say, it’s beginning to look to me like that story of Soapy’s was the goods after all. Listen, Chimp, I’d best tell you the whole thing. When I give Soapy the razz for staying out all night like the way he done, he pulled this long spiel about having had a letter from a guy he used to know named Finglass, written on his deathbed, saying that this guy Finglass hadn’t been able to get away with the money he’d swiped from this New Asiatic Bank on account the bulls being after him, and he’d had to leave the whole entire lot of it behind, hidden in some house down in the suburbs somewheres. And he told Soapy where the house was, and Soapy claims that what kep’ him out so late was he’d been searching the house, trying to locate the stuff. And what I want to know is, was he telling the truth or was he off somewheres at one of these here now gilded night-clubs, cutting up with a bunch of janes and doing me wrong?”
Again Mr. Twist seemed to resent the necessity of acting as a favourable witness for a man he obviously disliked. He struggled with his feelings for a space.
“Yes, it’s true,” he said at length.
“But listen here. This don’t seem to me to gee up. If this guy Finglass wanted Soapy to have the money, why did he wait all this time before telling him about it?”
“Thought he might find a chance of sneaking back and getting it himself, of course. But he got into trouble in Argentina almost as soon as he hit the place, and they stowed him away in the cooler; and he only got out in time to write the letters and then make his finish.”
“Finky wrote to me too.”
“Oh, did he? Well, then, here’s another thing that don’t seem to make sense: When he did finally get round to telling Soap about this money, why couldn’t he let him know where it was? I mean, why didn’t he say it’s under the mat or poked up the chimney or something, ’stead of leaving him hunt for it like he was playing button, button, where’s the button—or something?”
“Because,” said Mr. Twist bitterly, “Soapy and me were both pals of his, and he wanted us to share. And to make sure we should get together he told Soapy where the house was and me where the stuff was hidden in the house.”
“So you’ve only to pool your info’ to bring home the bacon?” cried Dolly, wide-eyed.
“That’s all.”
“Then why in time haven’t you done it?”
Mr. Twist snorted. It is not easy to classify snorts, but this was one which would have been recognised immediately by any expert as the snort despairing, caused by the contemplation of the depths to which human nature can sink.
“Because,” he said, “Soapy, the pig-headed stiff, thinks he can double-cross me and get it alone.”
“What?” Mrs. Molloy uttered a cry of wifely pride. “Well, isn’t that bright of my sweet old pieface! I’d never of thought the dear boy would have had the sense to think up anything like that.”
Mr. Twist was unable to share her pretty enthusiasm.
“A lot it’s going to get him!” he said sourly.
“Two million smackers it’s going to get him,” retorted Dolly.
“Two million smackers nothing! The stuff’s hidden in a place where he’d never think of looking in two million years.”
“You can’t bluff me, Chimp Twist,” said Dolly, gazing at him with the cold disdain of a princess confronted with a boll weevil. “If he keeps on looking, it stands to reason——”
She broke off. The door had opened and a man was entering. He was a fine, handsome, open-faced man of early middle age. At the sight of this person Chimp Twist’s eyes narrowed militantly, but Dolly flung herself into his arms with a remorseful cry.
“Oh, Soapy, darling! How I misjudged you!”
The new-comer had had the air of a man weighed down with the maximum amount of sorrow which a human being can bear. This demonstration, however, seemed to remove something of the burden.
“’S all right, sweetness,” he said, clasping her to his swelling bosom.
“Was I mean to my angel-face?”
“There, there, honey lamb!”
Chimp Twist looked sourly upon this nauseating scene of marital reconciliation.
“Ah, cut it out!” he growled.
“Chimp’s told me everything, baby doll,” proceeded Mrs. Molloy. “I know all about that money, and you just keep right along, precious, hunting for it by yourself. I don’t mind how often you stay out nights or how late you stay out.”
It was a generous dispensation, for which many husbands would have been grateful, but Soapy Molloy merely smiled a twisted, tortured smile of ineffable sadness. He looked like an unsuccessful candidate hearing the result of a presidential election.
“It’s all off, honey bunch,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s cold, petty. We’ll have to let Chimp in on it after all, sweetie-pie. I came here to put my cards on the table and have a show-down.”
A quivering silence fell upon the room. Mrs. Molloy was staring at her husband, aghast. As for Chimp, he was completely bewildered. The theory that his old comrade had had a change of heart—that his conscience, putting in some rapid work after getting off to a bad start, had caused him to regret his intention of double-crossing a friend, was too bizarre to be tenable. Soapy Molloy was not the sort of man to have changes of heart. Chimp, in his studies of the motion-picture drama, had once seen a film where a tough egg had been converted by hearing a church organ, but he knew Mr. Molloy well enough to be aware that all the organs in all the churches in London might play in his ear simultaneously without causing him to do anything more than grumble at the noise.
“The house has been taken,” said Soapy despondently.
“Taken? What do you mean?”
“Rented.”
“Rented? When?”
“I heard this morning. I was in a saloon down Fleet Street way, and two fellows come in and one of them was telling the other how he’d just rented this joint.”
Chimp Twist uttered a discordant laugh.
“So that’s what’s come of your darned smooth double-crossing act!” he said nastily. “Yes, I guess you better had let Chimp in on it. You want a man with brains now, not a guy that never thought up anything smarter than gypping suckers with a phony oil stock.”
Mr. Molloy bowed his head meekly before the blast. His wife was made of sterner stuff.
“You talk a lot, don’t you?” she said coldly.
“And I can do a lot,” retorted Mr. Twist, fingering his waxed moustache. “So you’d best come clean, Soapy, and have a show-down, like you say. Where is this joint?”
“Don’t you dare tell him before he tells you where the stuff is!” cried Mrs. Molloy.
“Just as you say,” said Chimp carelessly. He scribbled a few words on a piece of paper and covered them with his hand. “There! Now you write down your end of it and Dolly can read them both out.”
“Have you really thought up a scheme?” asked Mr. Molloy humbly.
“I’ve thought up a dozen.”
Mr. Molloy wrote in his turn and Dolly picked up the two papers.
“In the cistern!” she read.
“And the rest of it?” inquired Mr. Twist pressingly.
“Mon Repos, Burberry Road,” said Mr. Molloy.
“Ah!” said Chimp. “And if I’d known that a week ago, we’d have been worth a million dollars apiece by now.”
“Say, listen,” said Dolly, who was pensive and had begun to eye Mr. Twist in rather an unpleasant manner. “This stuff old Finglass swiped from the bank, what is it?”
“American bearer securities, sweetie,” said her husband, rolling the words round his tongue as if they were vintage port. “As good as dollar bills. What’s the dope you’ve thought up, Chimpie?” he asked, deferentially removing a piece of fluff from his ally’s coat sleeve.
“Just a minute!” said Dolly sharply. “If that’s so, how can this stuff be in any cistern? It would have melted, being all that time in the water.”
“It’s in a waterproof case, of course,” said Chimp.
“Oh, it is, is it?”
“What’s the matter, petty?” inquired Mr. Molloy. “You’re acting strange.”
“Am I? Well, if you want to know, I’m wondering if this guy is putting one over on us. How are we to know he’s telling us the right place?”
“Dolly!” said Mr. Twist, deeply pained.
“Dolly!” said Mr. Molloy, not so much pained as apprehensive. He had a very modest opinion of his own chances of thinking of any way for coping with the situation which had arisen, and everything, it seemed to him, depended upon being polite to Chimp Twist, who was admittedly a man of infinite resource and sagacity.
“If you think that of me——” began Mr. Twist.
“We don’t, Chimpie, we don’t,” interrupted Mr. Molloy hastily. “The madam is a little upset. Don’t listen to her. What is this scheme of yours, Chimpie?”
Perhaps Mrs. Molloy’s estimate of her husband’s talents as a strategist resembled his own. At any rate, she choked down certain words that had presented themselves to her militant mind and stood eying Chimp inquiringly.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Chimp. “But first let’s get the business end straight. How do we divvy?”
“Why, fifty-fifty, Chimp,” stammered Mr. Molloy, stunned at the suggestion implied in his words that any other arrangement could be contemplated. “Me and the madam counting as one, of course.”
Chimp laughed sardonically.
“Fifty-fifty nothing! I’m the brains of this concern, and the brains of a concern always gets paid highest. Look at Henry Ford! Look at the Archbishop of Canterbury!”
“Do you mean to say,” demanded Dolly, “that if Soapy was sitting in with the Archbishop of Canterbury on a plan for skinning a sucker the archbish wouldn’t split Even Stephen?”
“It isn’t like that at all,” retorted Mr. Twist with spirit. “It’s more as if Soapy went to the Archbishop of Canterbury and asked him to slip him a scheme for skinning the mug.”
“Well, in that case,” said Mr. Molloy, “I venture to assert that the archbishop would simply say to me, ‘Molloy,’ he’d say——”
Dolly wearied of a discussion which seemed to her too academic for the waste of valuable moments.
“Sixty-forty,” she said brusquely.
“Seventy-thirty,” emended Chimp.
“Sixty-five-thirty-five,” said Mr. Molloy.
“Right!” said Chimp. “And now I’ll tell you what to do.” I’ll give you five minutes first to see if you can think of it for yourself, and if you can’t, I’ll ask you not to start beefing because it’s so simple and not worth the money.”
Five minutes’ concentrated meditation produced no brain wave in Mr. Molloy, who, outside his chosen profession of selling valueless oil stock to a trusting public, was not a very gifted man.
“Well, then,” said Chimp, “here you are: You go to that fellow who’s taken the joint and ask him to let you buy it off him.”
“Well, of all the fool propositions!” cried Dolly shrilly, and even Mr. Molloy came near to sneering.
“Not so good, you don’t think?” continued Chimp, uncrushed. “Well, then, listen here to the rest of it. Dolly calls on this fellow first. She acts surprised because her father hasn’t arrived yet.”
“Her what?”
“Her father. Then she starts in vamping this guy all she can. If she hasn’t lost her pep since she last tried that sort of thing, the guy ought to be in pretty good shape for Act Two by the time the curtain rings up. That’s when you blow in, Soapy.”
“Am I her father?” asked Mr. Molloy, a little blankly.
“Sure, you’re her father. Why not?”
Mr. Molloy, who was a little sensitive about the difference in age between his bride and himself, considered that Chimp was not displaying his usual tact, but muttered something about greying himself up some at the temples.
“Then,” said Chimp, “Soapy does a spiel.”
Mr. Molloy brightened. He knew himself to be at his best when it came to a spiel.
“Soapy says he was born in this joint—ages and ages ago.”
“What do you mean—ages and ages ago?” said Mr. Molloy, starting.
“Ages and ages ago,” repeated Chimp firmly, “before he had to emigrate to America and leave the dear old place to be sold. He has loving childhood recollections of the lawn where he played as a kiddy and worships every brick in the place. All his favourite relations pegged out in the rooms upstairs, and all like that. Well, I’m here to say,” concluded Chimp emphatically, “that if that guy has any sentiment in him and if Dolly has done the preliminary work properly, he’ll drop.”
There was a tense silence.
“It’ll work,” said Soapy.
“It might work,” said Dolly, more doubtfully.
“It will work,” said Soapy. “I shall be good. I will have that lobster weeping into his handkerchief inside three minutes.”
“A lot depends on Dolly,” Chimp reminded him.
“Don’t you worry about that,” said the lady stoutly. “I’ll be good too. But listen here; I’ve got to dress this act. This is where I have to have that hat with the bird-of-paradise feather that I see in Regent Street this morning.”
“How much?” inquired the rest of the syndicate in a single breath.
“Eighteen guineas!” said Chimp.
“Eighteen guineas!” said Soapy.
They looked at each other wanly, while Dolly, unheeded, spoke of ships and ha’porths of tar.
“And a new dress,” she continued, warming to her work. “And new shoes and a new parasol and new gloves and new——”
“Have a heart, petty,” pleaded Mr. Molloy. “Exercise a little discretion, sweetness.”
Dolly was firm.
“A girl,” she said, “can’t do herself justice in a tacky lid. You know that. And you know as well as I do that the first thing a gentleman does is to look at a dame’s hoofs. And as for gloves, I simply beg you to cast an eye on these old things I’ve got on now and ask yourselves——”
“Oh, all right, all right,” said Chimp.
“All right,” echoed Mr. Molloy.
Their faces were set grimly. These men were brave, but they were suffering.