CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
THE MISSING MILLIONS
THOSE captious critics who are always on the alert to catch the historian napping and expose in his relation of events some damaging flaw will no doubt have seized avidly on what appears to be a blunder in the incident just recorded. Where, they will ask, did Willoughby Braddock get the revolver, without which a man may say “Hands up!” till he is hoarse and achieve no result? For of all the indispensable articles of costume which the well-dressed man must wear if he wishes to go about saying “Hands up!” to burglars, a revolver is the one which can least easily be omitted.
We have no secrets from posterity. Willoughby Braddock possessed no revolver. But he had four fingers on his right hand, and two of these he was now thrusting earnestly against the inside of his coat pocket. Wax to receive and marble to retain, Willoughby Braddock had not forgotten the ingenious subterfuge by means of which Soapy Molloy had been enabled to intimidate Lord Tilbury, and he employed it now upon Chimp Twist.
“You low blister!” said Mr. Braddock.
Whether this simple device would have been effective with a person of ferocious and hard-boiled temperament, one cannot say; but fortunately Chimp was not of this description. His strength was rather of the head than of the heart. He was a man who shrank timidly from even the appearance of violence; and though he may have had doubts as to the genuineness of Mr. Braddock’s pistol, he had none concerning the latter’s physique. Willoughby Braddock was no Hercules, but he was some four inches taller and some sixty pounds heavier than Chimp, and it was not in Mr. Twist’s character to embark upon a rough-and-tumble with such odds against him.
Indeed, Chimp would not lightly have embarked on a rough-and-tumble with anyone who was not an infant in arms or a member of the personnel of Singer’s Troupe of Midgets.
He tottered against the wall and stood there, blinking. The sudden materialisation of Willoughby Braddock, apparently out of thin air, had given him a violent shock, from which he had not even begun to recover.
“You man of wrath!” said Mr. Braddock.
The footsteps of one leaping from stair to stair made themselves heard. Sam charged in.
“What’s up?”
Mr. Braddock, with pardonable unction, directed his notice to the captive.
“Another of the gang,” he said. “I caught him.”
Sam gazed at Chimp and looked away, disappointed.
“You poor idiot,” he said peevishly. “That’s my odd-job man.”
“What?”
Willoughby Braddock felt for an instant damped. Then his spirits rose again. He knew little of the duties of odd-job men; but whatever they were, this one, he felt, had surely exceeded them.
“Well, why was he digging up the floor?”
And Sam, glancing down, saw that this was what his eccentric employee had, indeed, been doing; and suspicion blazed up within him.
“What’s the game?” he demanded, eying Chimp.
“Exactly,” said Mr. Braddock. “The game—what is it?”
Chimp’s nerves had recovered a little of their tone. His agile brain was stirring once more.
“You can’t do anything,” he said. “It wasn’t breaking and entering. I live here. I know the law.”
“Never mind about that. What were you up to?”
“Looking for something,” said Chimp sullenly. “And it wasn’t there.”
“Did you know Finglass?” asked Sam keenly.
Chimp gave a short laugh of intense bitterness.
“I thought I did. But I didn’t know he was so fond of a joke.”
“Bradder,” said Sam urgently, “a crook named Finglass used to live in this house, and he buried a lot of his swag somewhere in it.”
“Good gosh!” exclaimed Mr. Braddock. “You don’t say so!”
“Did this fellow take anything from under the floor?”
“You bet your sweet life I didn’t,” said Chimp with feeling. “It wasn’t there. You seem to know all about it, so I don’t mind telling you that Finky wrote me that the stuff was under the third board from the window in this room. Whether he was off his damned head or was just stringing me, I don’t know. But I do know it isn’t there. And now I’m going.”
“Oh, no, you aren’t, by Jove!” said Mr. Braddock.
“Oh, let him go,” said Sam wearily. “What’s the use of keeping him hanging round?” He turned to Chimp. His own disappointment was so keen that he could almost sympathise with him. “So you think Finglass really got away with the stuff, after all?”
“Looks like it.”
“Then why on earth did he write to you?”
Chimp shrugged his shoulders.
“Off his nut, I guess. He always was a loony sort of bird, outside of business.”
“You don’t think the other chap found the stuff, Sam?” suggested Mr. Braddock.
Sam shook his head.
“I doubt it. It’s much more likely it was never here at all. We had a friend of yours here this evening,” he said to Chimp. “At least, I suppose he was a friend of yours. Thomas G. Gunn he called himself.”
“I know who you mean—that poor dumb brick, Soapy. He wouldn’t have found anything. If it isn’t here it isn’t anywhere. And now I’m going.”
Mr. Braddock eyed him a little wistfully as he slouched through the doorway. It was galling to see the only burglar he had ever caught walking out as if he had finished paying a friendly call. However, he supposed there was nothing to be done about it. Sam had gone to the window and was leaning out, looking into the night.
“I must go and see Kay,” he said at length, turning.
“I must get up to town,” said Mr. Braddock. “By Jove, I shall be most frightfully late if I don’t rush. I’m dining with my Aunt Julia.”
“This is going to be bad news for her.”
“Oh, no, she’ll be most awfully interested. She’s a very sporting old party.”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
“My Aunt Julia.”
“Oh? Well, good-bye.”
Sam left the room, and Willoughby Braddock, following him at some little distance, for his old friend seemed disinclined for company and conversation, heard the front door bang. He sat down on the stairs and began to put on his shoes, which he had cached on the first landing. While he was engaged in this task, the front doorbell rang. He went down to open it, one shoe off and one shoe on, and found on the steps an aged gentleman with a white beard.
“Is Mr. Shotter here?” asked the aged gentleman.
“Just gone round next door. Mr. Cornelius, isn’t it? I expect you’ve forgotten me—Willoughby Braddock. I met you for a minute or two when I was staying with Mr. Wrenn.”
“Ah, yes. And how is the world using you, Mr. Braddock?”
Willoughby was only too glad to tell him. A confidant was precisely what in his exalted frame of mind he most desired.
“Everything’s absolutely topping, thanks. What with burglars floating in every two minutes and Lord Tilbury getting de-bagged and all that, life’s just about right. And my housekeeper is leaving me.”
“I am sorry to hear that.”
“I wasn’t. What it means is that now I shall at last be able to buzz off and see life. Have all sorts of adventures, you know. I’m frightfully keen on adventure.”
“You should come and live in Valley Fields, Mr. Braddock. There is always some excitement going on here.”
“Yes, you’re not far wrong. Still, what I meant was more the biffing off on the out-trail stuff. I’m going to see the world. I’m going to be one of those fellows Kipling writes about. I was talking to a chap of that sort at the club the other day. He said he could remember Uganda when there wasn’t a white man there.”
“I can remember Valley Fields when it had not a single cinema house.”
“This fellow was once treed by a rhinoceros for six hours.”
“A similar thing happened to a Mr. Walkinshaw, who lived at Balmoral, in Acacia Road. He came back from London one Saturday afternoon in a new tweed suit, and his dog, failing to recognise him, chased him on to the roof of the summer house.... Well, I must be getting along, Mr. Braddock. I promised to read extracts from my history of Valley Fields to Mr. Shotter. Perhaps you would care to hear them too.”
“I should love it, but I’ve got to dash off and dine with my Aunt Julia.”
“Absolutely.... By the way, that man I was telling you about. He was as near as a toucher bitten by a shark once.”
“Nothing to what happens in Valley Fields,” said Mr. Cornelius patriotically. “The occupant of the Firs at the corner of Buller Street and Myrtle Avenue—a Mr. Phillimore—perhaps you have heard of him?”
“No.”
“Mr. Edwin Phillimore. Connected with the firm of Birkett, Birkett, Birkett, Son, Podmarsh, Podmarsh & Birkett, the solicitors.”
“What about him?”
“Last summer,” said Mr. Cornelius, “he was bitten by a guinea pig.”