“NOT a bit o’ use, don’t I tell you.” The Clerk was growing angry.
June pretended not to hear. Her heart beating fast she went on with her search for the parcel; yet in the midst of it she grew aware that somebody was approaching the counter. She dare not pause to look who it was, for she knew only too well that it was almost bound to be Uncle Si.
The Clerk uttered another snarl of protest as he turned away to attend to the new comer. As he did so, June breathed a prayer that her eye might fall on the parcel in that instant, for her only hope now was to seize it and fly. That, however, was not to be. She had omitted to notice the place in which it had been put, and do as she would she could not find it now.
At this crucial moment, there emerged from the inner office her friend of the green corduroy. She simply leapt at what was now her one remaining chance.
“Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come,” cried June, in a voice that was a little frantic: “You remember my bringing a brown paper parcel here, don’t you—about two hours ago?”
The tone, tinged as it was with hysteria, caused Green Corduroy to look at June with mild astonishment. “I’ve lost the ticket you gave me for it, but I’m sure you remember my bringing it.” Her brain seemed on fire. “Don’t you remember my giving you a ten shilling note? And you had to go and get the change.”
Green Corduroy was a slow-brained youth, but a knitting of the brow seemed to induce a hazy recollection of the incident. But while the process was going on, June gave a glance over her shoulder, and behold there was Uncle Si the other side of the counter. A second glance told her, moreover, that Crusty Sides already had the fatal ticket in his hand.
What must she do? It was not a moment for half measures. While she was stirring the memory of Green Corduroy, the treasure would be gone. She did not hesitate. Observing Crusty Sides wheel, paper in hand, with the slow austerity of one of the Company’s oldest and most respected servants towards a luggage rack near by, June seized the clue. Of a sudden her eyes lit on the parcel at the top of the pile. Already the responsible fingers of Crusty Sides were straying upwards, yet before they could enclose the Van Roon, June made a dash for it, and managed to whisk it away from under his nose.
Her brain was like quicksilver now. She had a mad impulse to rush off with the treasure without further explanation; all the same she was able to resist it, for she realized that such a course would be too full of peril.
“Yes—this is it,” she said in an urgent whisper to Green Corduroy. And as she spoke, with a presence of mind, which in the circumstances was a little uncanny, she slipped behind a large pile of boxes out of view of Uncle Si.
“Surely you remember my bringing it?”
Green Corduroy seemed to think that he did remember. At this point Crusty Sides, with an air of outrage, sternly interposed. “But a pawty claims it. And here’s his ticket.”
“The ticket’s mine,” said June, in a fierce whisper. “It’s been taken from my purse.”
“Nothin’ to do with us, that ain’t,” said Crusty Sides.
“But you do remember my bringing it, don’t you?” Beseechingly June turned to Green Corduroy. And he, that nice-looking young man, with a frown of ever-deepening perplexity, slowly affirmed that he thought he did remember.
“The ticket’s what we’ve got to go by,” said Crusty Sides, sternly. “Nothin’ else matters to us.”
“If you’ll look at it,” said June to Green Corduroy, “you’ll see that it’s made out in your writing.”
Green Corduroy looked and saw that it was. As far as he was concerned, that seemed to clinch the argument. And even Crusty Sides, a born bureaucrat, was rather impressed by it. “You say this here ticket’s been taken off on you?” he asked.
“Yes,” said June in an excited whisper. “By my wicked thief of an uncle.”
Instantly she regretted the imprudence of her words.
“Uncle a thief, eh?” proclaimed Crusty Sides, in a voice of such carrying power that to June it seemed that the Old Crocodile could hardly fail to hear him.
“Anyhow, this gentleman knows that it was I who brought the parcel,” she said, determinedly to Green Corduroy.
That young man looked her straight in the eye, and then declared that he did know. Further, like many minds “slow in the uptake,” when once in motion they are prone to deep conclusions. “Seems to me, Nobby,” he weightily affirmed, under the stimulus no doubt of being addressed as a gentleman, in the Company’s time, by such a good-looking girl, “that as this lady has got the parcel, and we have got the ticket for it, she and Uncle had better fight it out between ’em.”
“I don’t know about that,” growled Nobby.
Green Corduroy, however, stimulated by the fiery anguish of June’s glance, and no doubt still in thrall to the fact that she considered him a gentleman, was not to be moved from the statesmanlike attitude he had taken up. “You let ’em fight it out, Nobby. This lady was the one as brought it here.”
“I gave you a ten shilling note, didn’t I?” The voice of June was as honeyed as the state of her feelings would permit.
“Yes, and I fetched the change for you, didn’t I?”
Crusty Sides shook a head of confirmed misogyny. “Very irregular, that’s all I’ve got to say about it.”
“Maybe it is, Nobby. But it’s nothing to do with you and me.”
Green Corduroy, with almost the air of a knight errant, took the all-important slip of paper from his colleague. Flaunting it in gallant fingers, he moved up slowly to the counter.
S. Gedge Antiques, buying spectacles on nose, knotted cudgel in hand, was impatiently waiting. “The parcel is claimed by the lady who brought it,” June heard Green Corduroy announce.
She waited for no more. Following close behind Crusty Sides, who also moved up to the counter, she slipped quietly through an adjacent door to the main line platform before Uncle Si grew fully alive to the situation.
Clasping the parcel to her bosom, she glided swiftly down the platform, and out by the booking hall, travelling as fast as her legs would take her, without breaking into a run, which would have looked like guilt, and might have attracted public notice. She did not dare to glance back, for she was possessed by a fear that the old man and his stick were at her heels.
Once clear of the station itself, she yielded to the need of putting as much distance between Uncle Si and herself as a start so short would permit. There was now hope of throwing him off the track. Thus, as soon as she reached the Victoria Street corner, she scrambled on to a bus that was in the act of moving away.
One seat only was vacant and, as in a state of imminent collapse she sank down upon it, she ventured for the first time to look behind her. She quite expected to find Uncle Si at her elbow already, but with a gasp of relief she learned that the old man was nowhere in sight.