CHAPTER TWENTY
TROUBLE IN THE SYNDICATE
WHEN Chimp Twist left Tilbury House, he turned westward along the Embankment, for he had an appointment to meet his colleagues of the syndicate at the Lyons tea shop in Green Street, Leicester Square. The depression which had swept over him on hearing Sam’s dreadful edict had not lasted long. Men of Mr. Twist’s mode of life are generally resilient. They have to be.
After all, he felt, it would be churlish of him, in the face of this almost supernatural slice of luck, to grumble at the one crumpled rose leaf. Besides, it would only take him about a couple of days to get away with the treasure of Mon Repos, and then he could go into retirement and grow his moustache again. For there is this about moustaches, as about whiskers—though of these Mr. Twist, to do him justice, had never been guilty—that, like truth, though crushed to the earth, they will rise. A little patience and his moustache will rise on stepping-stones of its dead self to higher things. Yes, when the fields were white with daisies it would return. Pondering thus, Chimp Twist walked briskly to the end of the Embankment, turned up Northumberland Avenue, and reaching his destination, found Mr. and Mrs. Molloy waiting for him at a table in a far corner.
It was quiet in the tea shop at this hour, and the tryst had been arranged with that fact in mind. For this was in all essentials a board meeting of the syndicate, and business men and women do not like to have their talk interrupted by noisy strangers clamorous for food. With the exception of a woman in a black silk dress with bugles who, incredible as it may seem, had ordered cocoa and sparkling limado simultaneously and was washing down a meal of Cambridge sausages and pastry with alternate draughts of both liquids, the place was empty.
Soapy and his bride, Chimp perceived, were looking grave, even gloomy; and in the process of crossing the room he forced his own face into an expression in sympathy with theirs. It would not do, he realised, to allow his joyous excitement to become manifest at what was practically a post-mortem. For the meeting had been convened to sit upon the failure of his recent scheme and he suspected the possibility of a vote of censure. He therefore sat down with a heavy seriousness befitting the occasion; and having ordered a cup of coffee, replied to his companions’ questioning glances with a sorrowful shake of the head.
“Nothing stirring,” he said.
“You haven’t doped out another scheme,” said Dolly, bending her shapely brows in a frown.
“Not yet.”
“Then,” demanded the lady heatedly, “where does this sixty-five-thirty-five stuff come in? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“Me, too,” said Mr. Molloy with spirit. It occurred to Chimp that a little informal discussion must have been indulged in by his colleagues of the board previous to his arrival, for their unanimity was wonderful.
“You threw a lot of bull about being the brains of the concern,” said Dolly accusingly, “and said that, being the brains of the concern, you had ought to be paid highest. And now you blow in and admit that you haven’t any more ideas than a rabbit.”
“Not so many,” said Mr. Molloy, who liked rabbits and had kept them as a child.
Chimp stirred his coffee thoughtfully. He was meditating on what a difference a very brief time can make in the fortunes of man. But for that amazing incursion of Lord Tilbury, he would have been approaching this interview in an extremely less happy frame of mind. For it was plain that the temper of the shareholders was stormy.
“You’re quite right, Dolly,” he said humbly, “quite right. I’m not so good as I thought I was.”
This handsome admission should have had the effect proverbially attributed to soft words, but it served only to fan the flame.
“Then where do you get off with this sixty-five-thirty-five?”
“I don’t,” said Chimp. “I don’t, Dolly.” The man’s humility was touching. “That’s all cold. We split fifty-fifty, that’s what we do.”
Soft words may fail, but figures never. Dolly uttered a cry that caused the woman in the bugles to spill her cocoa, and Mr. Molloy shook as with a palsy.
“Now you’re talking,” said Dolly.
“Now,” said Mr. Molloy, “you are talking.”
“Well, that’s that,” said Chimp. “Now let’s get down to it and see what we can do.”
“I might go to the joint again and have another talk with that guy,” suggested Mr. Molloy.
“No sense in that,” said Chimp, somewhat perturbed. It did not at all suit his plans to have his old friend roaming about in the neighbourhood of Mon Repos while he was in residence.
“I don’t know so much,” said Mr. Molloy thoughtfully. “I didn’t seem to get going quite good that last time. The fellow had me out on the sidewalk before I could pull a real spiel. If I tried again——”
“It wouldn’t be any use,” said Chimp. “This guy Shotter told you himself he had a special reason for staying on.”
“You don’t think he’s wise to the stuff being there?” said Dolly, alarmed.
“No, no,” said Chimp. “Nothing like that. There’s a dame next door he’s kind of stuck on.”
“How do you know?”
Chimp gulped. He felt like a man who discovers himself on the brink of a precipice.
“I—I was snooping around down there and I saw ’em,” he said.
“What were you doing down there?” asked Dolly suspiciously.
“Just looking around, Dolly, just looking around.”
“Oh?”
The silence which followed was so embarrassing to a sensitive man that Chimp swallowed his coffee hastily and rose.
“Going?” said Mr. Molloy coldly.
“Just remembered I’ve got a date.”
“When do we meet again?”
“No sense in meeting for the next day or two.”
“Why not?”
“Well, a fellow wants time to think. I’ll give you a ring.”
“You’ll be at your office to-morrow?”
“Not to-morrow.”
“Day after?”
“Maybe not the day after. I’m moving around some.”
“Where?”
“Oh, all around.”
“Doing what?”
Chimp’s self-control gave way.
“Say, what’s eating you?” he demanded. “Where do you get this stuff of prying and poking into a man’s affairs? Can’t a fellow have a little privacy sometimes?”
“Sure!” said Mr. Molloy. “Sure!”
“Sure!” said Mrs. Molloy. “Sure!”
“Well, good-bye,” said Chimp.
“Good-bye,” said Mr. Molloy.
“God bless you,” said Mrs. Molloy, with a little click of her teeth.
Chimp left the tea shop. It was not a dignified exit, and he was aware of it with every step that he took. He was also aware of the eyes of his two colleagues boring into his retreating back. Still, what did it matter, argued Chimp Twist, even if that stiff, Soapy, and his wife had suspicions of him? They could not know. And all he needed was a clear day or two and they could suspect all they pleased. Nevertheless, he regretted that unfortunate slip.
The door had hardly closed behind him when Dolly put her suspicions into words.
“Soapy!”
“Yes, petty?”
“That bird is aiming to double-cross us.”
“You said it!”
“I wondered why he switched to that fifty-fifty proposition so smooth. And when he let it out that he’d been snooping around down there, I knew. He’s got some little game of his own on, that’s what he’s got. He’s planning to try and scoop that stuff by himself and leave us flat.”
“The low hound!” said Mr. Molloy virtuously.
“We got to get action, Soapy, or we’ll be left. To think of that little Chimp doing us dirt just goes against my better nature. How would it be if you was to go down to-night and do some more porch climbing? Once you were in, you could get the stuff easily. It wouldn’t be a case of hunting around same as last time.”
“Well, sweetie,” said Mr. Molloy frankly, “I’ll tell you. I’m not so strong for that burgling stuff. It’s not my line and I don’t like it. It’s awful dark and lonesome in that joint at three o’clock in the morning. All the time I was there I kep’ looking over my shoulder, expecting old Finky’s ghost to sneak up on me and breathe down the back of my neck.”
“Be a man, honey!”
“I’m a man all right, petty, but I’m temperamental.”
“Well, then——” said Dolly, and breaking off abruptly, plunged into thought.
Mr. Molloy watched her fondly and hopefully. He had a great respect for her woman’s resourcefulness, and it seemed to him from the occasional gleam in her vivid eyes that something was doing.
“I’ve got it!”
“You have?”
“Yes, sir!”
“There is none like her, none,” Mr. Molloy’s glistening eye seemed to say. “Give us an earful, baby,” he begged emotionally.
Dolly bent closer and lowered her voice to a whisper. The woman in the bugles, torpid with much limado, was out of ear-shot, but a waitress was hovering not far away.
“Listen! We got to wait till the guy Shotter is out of the house.”
“But he’s got a man. You told me that yourself.”
“Sure he’s got a man, but if you’ll only listen I’ll tell you. We wait till this fellow Shotter is out——”
“How do we know he’s out?”
“We ask at the front door, of course. Say, listen, Soapy, for the love of Pete don’t keep interrupting! We go to the house. You go round to the back door.”
“Why?”
“I’ll soak you one in a minute,” exclaimed Dolly despairingly.
“All right, sweetness. Sorry. Didn’t mean to butt in. Keep talking. You have the floor.”
“You go round to the back door and wait, keeping your eye on the front steps, where I’ll be. I ring the bell and the hired man comes. I say, ‘Is Mr. Shotter at home?’ If he says yes, I’ll go in and make some sort of spiel about something. But if he’s not, I’ll give you the high sign and you slip in at the back door; and then when the man comes down into the kitchen again you’re waiting and you bean him one with a sandbag. Then you tie him up and come along to the front door and let me in and we go up and grab that stuff. How about it?”
“I bean him one?” said Mr. Molloy doubtfully.
“Cert’nly you bean him one.”
“I couldn’t do it, petty,” said Mr. Molloy. “I’ve never beaned anyone in my life.”
Dolly exhibited the impatience which all wives, from Lady Macbeth downward through the ages, have felt when their schemes appear in danger of being thwarted by the pusillanimity of a husband.
The words, “Infirm of purpose, give me the sandbag!” seemed to be trembling on her lips.
“You poor cake eater!” she cried with justifiable vigour. “You talk as if it needed a college education to lean a stuffed eelskin on a guy’s head. Of course you can do it. You’re behind the kitchen door, see?—and he comes in, see?—and you sim’ly bust him one, see? A feller with one arm and no legs could do it. And, say, if you want something to brace you up, think of all that money lying in the cistern, just waiting for us to come and dip for it!”
“Ah!” said Mr. Molloy, brightening.