JUNE had a further moment of indecision while she thought out what her line must be. She resolved to go direct to her room and pack her box. Afterwards she must find William and enlist his help in bringing it downstairs, and then she would get a taxi and drive off with her things before Uncle Si discovered his loss. Otherwise...!
Her mind had not time to shape the grisly alternative, before the immediate course of events shaped it for her. Suddenly she was aware of a presence lurking in the dark shadows of the shop interior. It was couchant, vengeful, hostile. Almost before June could guess what was happening it had sprung upon her.
With astounding force her right wrist was grasped and twisted behind her back. She gave a little yelp of pain. A second yelp followed, as she struggled to free herself, only to find that she was locked in a vice, and that to fight against it would be agony.
“Now, where is it?” The low voice hissing in her ear was surely that of a maniac. “Where’s the picture?” The grip upon her had the strength of ten. “Where is it—eh?” As the question was put, her captor shook her fiercely. “Tell me.” He shook her again. “Oh, you won’t—won’t you?” And then she realized that there was something in his hand.
She called wildly for William, but there was no response.
“No use lifting up your voice. The boy’s out.”
She fought to get free, but with a wrist still locked, she was at his mercy. “Now then, where’s that picture? Won’t tell me—eh?” There was madness in that depth of rage.
Quite suddenly there came a sickening crash upon her shoulders. She let out with her heels and found the shin of the enemy, she fought and screamed, yet pinned like that, she felt her wrist must break and her arm be wrenched from its socket.
“Where is it—you thief?” The stick crashed again, this time in a series of horrible blows. So severe was the pain that it seemed to drive through her whole being. She began to fear that he meant to kill her; and as the stick continued to descend she felt sure that he would.
She was a strong, determined girl, but her captor had her at a hopeless disadvantage. His strength, besides, was that of one possessed. Her cries and struggles merely added to his savagery.
“Tell me where it is or I’ll knock the life out of you.”
Utterly desperate, she contrived at last to break away; and though with the force of a maniac he tried to prevent her escape, somehow she managed to get into the street. He followed her as far as the shop door, brandishing the stick, hurling imprecations upon her, and threatening what he would do if she didn’t bring the picture back at once.
Bruised and gasping, June reeled into the darkness. Feeling more dead than alive, she lingered nearby after the old man had gone in, trying to pull her battered self together. She badly wanted her box, yet the only hope of getting it now was by means of the police. As things were, however, it would not be wise to ask their help. The old wretch was so clever he might be able to make her out a thief; besides, for the time being she had had more than enough of this horrible affair.
Cruelly hurt she moved at last with slow pain towards the Strand. By now she had decided that her most imperative need was a night’s lodging. Before starting to look for one, however, the enticing doors of a teashop gave her a renewed sense of weakness. Gratefully she went in and sat down, ordering a pot of tea and a little bread and butter which she felt too ill to eat.
Nearly half an hour she sat in the company of her thoughts. Hard, unhappy thoughts they were. Without one friend to whom in this crisis she could turn, the world which confronted her now was an abyss. The feeling of loneliness was desolating, yet, after all, far less so than it would have been were she not fortified by the memory of a certain slip of paper in her purse.
A slow return of fighting power revived a spark of natural resolution within her. After all, a potent weapon was in her hands. She must think out a careful plan of turning it to full account. And at the worst she was now beyond the reach of Uncle Si. Even if he kept her box and all its contents, weighed in the scale of the picture’s fabulous worth, her modest possessions amounted to very little.
Stimulated by this conclusion, she began to forget her aches. When a waitress came June asked for her bill. It was sixpence. She put her hand in the pocket of her coat. Her purse was not there.
With a little thrill of fear, she felt in the pocket on the other side. The purse was not there either. She was stunned. This was a blow far worse than those she had just received. She grew so dazed that as she got up she swayed against the table, and had to hold on by it to save herself from falling.
The waitress who had written out the bill caught a glimpse of scared eyes set in a face of chalk.
“Aren’t you well?” she asked.
“I—I’ve lost my purse,” June stammered. “It’s fallen out of my pocket, I think.” As with frantic futility she plunged her hand in again, she was raked by the true meaning of such a fact in all its horror. Unless her purse had been stolen on the Underground, and it was not very likely, it had almost certainly fallen out of her pocket in the course of the struggle with Uncle Si.
It was lying now on the shop floor unless the old wretch had found it already. And if he had he would lose no time in examining its contents. He had only to do so for the cloak-room ticket to tell him where the Van Roon was deposited, and to provide him with a sure means of obtaining it.
“You may have had your pocket picked.”
June did not think so. Yet, being unable to take the girl into her confidence, she did not choose to disclose her doubts.
“Perhaps I have,” she gasped. And then face to face with the extreme peril of the case, her overdriven nerves broke out in mutiny. She burst into tears. “I don’t know what I’ll do,” she sobbed.
The waitress was full of sympathy. “Your bill is only sixpence. Come in and pay to-morrow.”
Through her tears June thanked her.
“’Tisn’t my bill, although it’s very kind of you. There was something very important in my purse.”
“Where did you have it last?”
“In the booking hall, when I took a ticket from Victoria to Charing Cross.”
“Your pocket’s been picked,” said the waitress with conviction. “There’s a warning in all the Tubes.”
The comfort was cold, yet comfort it was of a kind. June saw a wan ray of hope. After all, there was a bare possibility that inexorable Fate was not the thief.
“I’d go to Scotland Yard if I were you,” said the waitress. “The police often get back stolen property. Last year my sister’s house was burgled, and they recovered nearly everything for her.”
June began to pull herself together. It was not hope, however, that braced her faculties, but an effort of will. Hope there was none of recovering the purse, but she was now faced by the stern necessity of getting back the picture. In the light of this tragedy it was in most serious peril. Delay might be fatal, if indeed it had not already proved to be so. She must go at once and get possession of the treasure lest it be too late.
The waitress was a good Samaritan. Not only could the bill wait until the next day, but she went even further: “Is your home far from here?” she asked.
“My home—far?” said June, dazedly. For the moment she did not understand all that was implied by the question.
“If you live on the District, and you haven’t a season, I don’t mind lending you a shilling to get you home.”
June accepted a shilling with earnest thanks. In the circumstances, it might be worth untold gold: “You can give it me back any time you are passing,” said the waitress, as June thanked her again and made her way unsteadily out into the street.
The chill air of the Strand revived her a little. She had decided already that she must go at once to Victoria. Every minute would count, and it now occurred to her that if she took the Underground, several might be saved.
To the Underground in Trafalgar Square she went. It was the hour of the evening rush. Queues were lining up at all the booking office windows. And at the first window she came to, some three persons or so ahead of her, was a figure oddly familiar, which, however, in her present state of disintegration she did not recognize at once. It was clad in a sombre tail coat of prehistoric design, jemima boots, frayed shepherd’s plaid trousers braced high and a hard square felt hat which gave a crowning touch of oppressive respectability. Moreover, its progress was assisted by a heavy knotted walking stick, at the sight of which June gave an involuntary shiver.
An instant later the shiver had developed into a long and paralyzing shudder. Uncle Si was just ahead of her; in fact she was near enough to hear a harsh voice demand almost with menace a ticket to Victoria.
June’s worst fears were realized. The purse had fallen from her pocket to the shop floor in the struggle; the old wretch had found it, deciphered the precious ticket, put two and two together, and was now on his way to claim the parcel. All this was crystal clear to her swift mind. She felt a strong desire to faint, but she fought her weakness. She must go on. Everything was as good as lost—but she must go on.
She took her ticket. And then in the long subway to the platform she raced on ahead of Uncle Si. He was so near-sighted that even had he been less absorbed in his own affairs he would not have been likely to notice her.
June reached the platform well in front of the old man. But the train to Victoria was not in. It arrived two minutes later; by then, Uncle Si had appeared, and they boarded it together. She was careful, however, not to enter the same compartment as the enemy.
Short as the journey was, June had ample time to appreciate that the odds were heavily against her. The mere fact that the cloak-room receipt for the parcel was in the custody of Uncle Si would confer possession upon him; it had only to be presented for the Van Roon to be handed over without a question.
The one chance she had now was to get on well ahead of the old beast, and convince the clerk that in spite of the absence of the ticket the parcel was hers. She knew, however, only too well that the hope of being able to do this was frail indeed—at all events before the holder of the ticket arrived on the scene to claim it.
At Victoria, June dashed out of the train even before it stopped. Running past the ticket collector at the barrier and along the subway she reached the escalator yards in front of Uncle Si, and, in spite of being unused to this trap for the unwary, for Blackhampton’s more primitive civilization knew escalators not, she ascended to the street at a pace far beyond the powers of the Old Crocodile. By this means, indeed, she counted on gaining an advantage of several minutes, since it was hardly likely that Uncle Si would trust himself to such a contrivance, and in ignorance of the fact that she was just ahead, would choose the dignified safety of the lift.
So far as it went the thought was reassuring. Alas, it did not go far. As June ran through the long station to the cloak-room at its farthest end, she had but a very slender hope of being able to recover the parcel. She had no intention, however, of submitting tamely to fate. In this predicament, whatever the cost, she must make one last and final effort to get back her treasure.
At the cloak-room counter she took her courage in both hands. A man sour and elderly had replaced the wearer of the green corduroy, who was nowhere to be seen. This was a piece of bad luck, for she had hoped that the nice-looking young man might remember her. Happily, no other passengers besieged the counter at the moment, so that without loss of time June was able to describe the parcel and to announce the fact that the ticket she had received for it was missing.
Exactly as she had foreseen the clerk raised an objection. Without a ticket she couldn’t have the parcel. “But I simply must have it,” said June. And spurred by the knowledge that there was not one moment to lose in arguing the case, she boldly lifted the flap of the counter and entered the cloak-room itself.
“No use coming in here,” said the Clerk, crustily. “You can’t take nothing away without a ticket.”
“But my purse has been stolen, I tell you,” said June.
“Then I should advise you to go and see the station-master.”
“I can’t wait to do that.” And with the defiance of despair, expecting each moment to hear the voice of Uncle Si at her back, June ignored the Clerk, and proceeded to gaze up and down the numerous and heavily burdened luggage racks for her property.