Chapter VII: I (2)

He looked over his shoulder. An agitated crackling of branches announced that Emily had not yet worked clear, and Hugo had apparently stopped to render first aid. With a silent shudder Chimp stepped into the tank and, lowering himself into the depths, nestled behind a water lily.

Hugo was finding the task of extricating Emily more difficult than he had anticipated. The bush was one of those thorny, adhesive bushes, and it twined itself lovingly in Emily's hair. Bad feeling began to rise, and the conversation took on an acrimonious tone.

"Stand still!" growled Hugo. "Stand still, you blighter dog."

"Push," retorted Emily. "Push, I tell you! Push, not pull. Don't you realize that all the while we're wasting time here that fellow's getting away?"

"Don't wriggle, confound you. How can I get you out if you keep wriggling?"

"Try a lift in an upward direction. No, that's no good. Stop pushing and pull. Pull, I tell you. Pull not push. Now, when I say '_To_ you ...'"

Something gave. Hugo staggered back. Emily sprang from his grasp. The chase was on again.

But now all the zest had gone out of it. The operations in the bush had occupied only a bare couple of minutes, but they had been enough to allow the quarry to vanish. He had completely disappeared. Hugo, sitting on the wall of the tank and trying to recover his breath, watched Emily as she darted to and fro, inspecting paths and drawing shrubberies, and knew that he had failed. It was a bitter moment, and he sat and smoked moodily. Presently even Emily gave the thing up. She came back to where Hugo sat, her tongue lolling, and disgust written all over her expressive features. There was a silence. Emily thought it was all Hugo's fault, Hugo thought it was Emily's. A stiffness had crept into their relations once again, and when at length Hugo, feeling a little more benevolent after three cigarettes, reached down and scratched Emily's head, the latter drew away coldly.

"Damn fool!" she said.

Hugo started. Was it some sound, some distant stealthy footstep, that had caused his companion to speak? He stared into the night.

"Fat head!" said Emily. "Can't even pull somebody out of a bush."

She laughed mirthlessly, and Hugo, now keenly on the alert, rose from his seat and gazed this way and that. And then, moving softly away from him at the end of the path, he saw a dark figure.

Instantly, Hugo Carmody became once more the man of action. With a stern shout he dashed along the path. And he had not gone half a dozen feet when the ground seemed suddenly to give way under him.

This path, as he should have remembered, knowing the terrain as he did, was a terrace path, set high above the shrubberies below. It was a simple enough matter to negotiate it in daylight and at a gentle stroll, but to race successfully along it in the dark required a Blondin. Hugo's third stride took him well into the abyss. He clutched out desperately, grasped only cool Worcestershire night air, and then, rolling down the slope, struck his head with great violence against a tree which seemed to have been put there for the purpose.

When the sparks had cleared away and the firework exhibition was over, he rose painfully to his feet.

A voice was speaking from above--the voice of Ronald Overbury Fish.

"Hullo!" said the voice. "What's up?"

VI

Weighed down by the burden of his many sorrows, Ronnie Fish had come to this terrace path to be alone. Solitude was what he desired, and solitude was what he supposed he had got until, abruptly, without any warning but a wild shout, the companion of his school and university days had suddenly dashed out from empty space and apparently attempted to commit suicide. Ronnie was surprised. Naturally no fellow likes getting the bird at a village concert, but Hugo, he considered, in trying to kill himself was adopting extreme measures. He peered down, going so far in his natural emotion as to remove the cigarette holder from his mouth.

"What's up?" he asked again.

Hugo was struggling dazedly up the bank.

"Was that you, Ronnie?"

"Was what me?"

"That."

"Which?"

Hugo approached the matter from another angle.

"Did you see anyone?"

"When?"

"Just now. I thought I saw someone on the path. It must have been you."

"It was. Why?"

"I thought it was somebody else."

"Well, it wasn't."

"I know, but I thought it was."

"Who did you think it was?"

"A fellow called Twist."

"Twist?"

"Yes, Twist."

"Why?"

"I've been chasing him."

"Chasing Twist?"

"Yes. I caught him burgling the house."

They had been walking along, and now reached a spot where the light, freed from overhanging branches, was stronger. Mr. Fish became aware that his friend had sustained injuries.

"I say," he said, "you've hurt your head."

"I know I've hurt my head, you silly ass."

"It's bleeding, I mean."

"Bleeding?"

"Bleeding."

Blood is always interesting. Hugo put a hand to his wound, took it away again, inspected it.

"By Jove! I'm bleeding."

"Yes, bleeding. You'd better go in and have it seen to."

"Yes," Hugo reflected. "I'll go and get old John to fix it. He once put six stitches in a cow."

"What cow?"

"One of the cows. I forget its name."

"Where do we find this John?"

"He's in his room over the stables."

"Can you walk it all right?"

"Oh yes, rather,"

Ronnie, relieved, lighted a cigarette, and approached an aspect of the affair which had been giving him food for thought.

"I say, Hugo, have you been having a few drinks or anything?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, buzzing about the place after non-existent burglars."

"They weren't non-existent. I tell you I caught this man Twist...."

"How do you know it was Twist?"

"I've met him."

"Who? Twist?"

"Yes."

"Where?"

"He runs a place called Healthward Ho near here."

"What's Healthward Ho?"

"It's a place where fellows go to get fit. My uncle was there."

"And Twist runs it?"

"Yes."

"And you think this--dash it, this pillar of society was burgling the house?"

"I caught him, I tell you."

"Who? Twist?"

"Yes."

"Well, where is he, then?"

"I don't know."

"Listen, old man," said Ronnie gently. "I think you'd better be pushing along and getting that bulb of yours repaired."

He remained gazing after his friend, as he disappeared in the direction of the stable yard, with much concern. He hated to think of good old Hugo getting into a mental state like this, though, of course, it was only what you could expect if a man lived in the country all the time. He was still brooding when he heard footsteps behind him and looked round and saw Mr. Lester Carmody approaching.

Mr. Carmody was in a condition which in a slimmer man might have been called fluttering. He, like John, had absented himself from the festivities in the village, wishing to be on the spot when Mr. Twist made his entry into the house. He had seen Chimp get through the dining-room window and had instantly made his way to the front hall, proposing to wait there and see the precious suitcase duly deposited in the cupboard under the stairs. He had waited, but no Chimp had appeared. And then there had come to his ears barkings and shoutings and uproar in the night. Mr. Carmody, like Othello, was perplexed in the extreme.

"Ah, Carmody," said Mr. Fish.

He waved a kindly cigarette holder at his host. The latter regarded him with tense apprehension. Was his guest about to announce that Mr. Twist, caught in the act, was now under lock and key? For some reason or other, it was plain, Hugo and this unspeakable friend of his had returned at an unexpectedly early hour from the village, and Mr. Carmody feared the worst.

"I've got a bit of bad news for you, Carmody," said Mr. Fish. "Brace up, my dear fellow."

Mr. Carmody gulped.

"What--what--what...."

"Poor old Hugo. Gone clean off his mental axis."

"What! What do you mean?"

"I found him just now running round in circles and dashing his head against trees. He said he was chasing a burglar. Of course there wasn't anything of the sort on the premises. For, mark this, my dear Carmody: according to his statement, which I carefully checked, the burglar was a most respectable fellow named Twist, who runs a sort of health place near here. You know him, I believe?"

"Slightly," said Mr. Carmody. "Slightly."

"Well, would a man in that position go about burgling houses? Pure delusion, of course."

Mr. Carmody breathed a deep sigh. Relief had made him feel a little faint.

"Undoubtedly," he said. "Hugo was always weak-minded from a boy."

"By the way," said Mr. Fish, "did you by any chance get up at five in the morning the other day and climb a ladder to look for swallows' nests?"

"Certainly not."

"I thought as much. Hugo said he saw you. Delusion again. The whole truth of the matter is, my dear Carmody, living in the country has begun to soften poor old Hugo's brain. You must act swiftly. You don't want a gibbering nephew about the place. Take my tip and send him away to London at the earliest possible moment."

It was rare for Lester Carmody to feel gratitude for the advice which this young man gave him so freely, but he was grateful now. He perceived clearly that a venture like the one on which he and his colleagues had embarked should never have been undertaken while the house was full of infernal, interfering young men. Such was his emotion that for an instant he almost liked Mr. Fish.

"Hugo was saying that you wished him to become your partner in some commercial enterprise," he said.

"A night club. The Hot Spot. Situated just off Bond Street, in the heart of London's pleasure-seeking area."

"You were going to give him a half share for five hundred pounds, I believe?"

"Five hundred was the figure."

"He shall have the cheque immediately," said Mr. Carmody. "I will go and write it now. And to-morrow you shall take him to London. The best trains are in the morning. I quite agree with you about his mental condition. I am very much obliged to you for drawing it to my notice."

"Don't mention it, Carmody," said Mr. Fish graciously. "Only too glad, my dear fellow. Always a pleasure, always a pleasure."

VII

John had returned to his work and was deep in it when Hugo and his wounded head crossed his threshold. He was startled and concerned.

"Good heavens!" he cried. "What's been happening?"

"Fell down a bank and bumped the old lemon against a tree," said Hugo, with the quiet pride of a man who has had an accident. "I looked in to see if you had got some glue or something to stick it up with."

John, as became one who thought nothing of putting stitches in cows, exhibited a cool efficiency. He bustled about, found water and cotton wool and iodine, and threw in sympathy as a make-weight. Only when the operation was completed did he give way to a natural curiosity.

"How did it happen?"

"Well, it started when I found that bounder Twist burgling the house."

"Twist?"

"Yes. Twist. The Healthward Ho bird."

"You found Doctor Twist burgling the house?"

"Yes, and I made him do bending and stretching exercises. And in the middle he legged it through the window, and Emily and I chivvied him about the garden. Then he disappeared, and I saw him again at the end of that path above the shrubberies, and I dashed after him and took a toss and it wasn't Twist at all, it was Ronnie."

John forbore to ask further questions. This incoherent tale satisfied him that his cousin, if not delirious, was certainly on the borderland. He remembered the whole-heartedness with which Hugo had drowned his sorrows only a short while back in this very room, and he was satisfied that what the other needed was rest.

"You'd better go to bed," he said. "I think I've fixed you up pretty well, but perhaps you had better see the doctor to-morrow."

"Doc. Twist?"

"No, not Doctor Twist," said John soothingly. "Doctor Bain, down in the village."

"Something ought to be done about the man Twist," argued Hugo. "Somebody ought to pop it across him."

"If I were you I'd just forget all about Twist. Put him right out of your mind."

"But are we going to sit still and let perishers with waxed moustaches burgle the house whenever they feel inclined and not do a thing to bring their gray hairs in sorrow to the grave?"

"I wouldn't worry about it, if I were you, I'd just go off and have a nice long sleep."

Hugo raised his eyebrows, and, finding that the process caused exquisite agony to his wounded head, quickly lowered them again. He looked at John with cold disapproval, pained at this evidence of supineness in a member of a proud family.

"Oh?" he said. "Well, bung--oh, then!"

"Good night."

"Give my love to the Alpha Separator and all the little Separators."

"I will," said John.

He accompanied his cousin down the stairs and out into the stable yard. Having watched him move away and feeling satisfied that he could reach the house without assistance, he felt in his pocket for the materials for the last smoke of the day, and was filling his pipe when Emily came round the corner.

Emily was in great spirits.

"Such larks!" said Emily. "One of those big nights. Burglars dashing to and fro, people falling over banks and butting their heads against trees, and everything bright and lively. But let me tell you something. A fellow like your cousin Hugo is no use whatever to a dog in any real emergency. He's not a force. A broken reed. You should have seen him. He...."

"Stop that noise and get to bed," said John.

"Right ho," said Emily. "You'll be coming soon, I suppose?"

She charged up the stairs, glad to get to her basket after a busy evening. John lighted his pipe, and began to meditate. Usually he smoked the last pipe of the day to the accompaniment of thoughts about Pat, but now he found his mind turning to this extraordinary delusion of Hugo's that he had caught Doctor Twist, of Healthward Ho, burgling the house.

John had never met Doctor Twist, but he knew that he was the proprietor of a flourishing health-cure establishment and assumed him to be a reputable citizen; and the idea that he had come all the way from Healthward Ho to burgle Rudge Hall was so bizarre that he could not imagine by what weird mental processes his cousin had been led to suppose that he had seen him. Why Doctor Twist, of all people? Why not the vicar or Chas. Bywater?

Footsteps sounded on the gravel, and he was aware of the subject of his thoughts returning. There was a dazed expression on Hugo's face, and in his hand there fluttered a small oblong slip of paper.

"John," said Hugo, "look at this and tell me if you see what I see. Is it a cheque?"

"Yes."

"For five hundred quid, made out to me and signed by Uncle Lester?"

"Yes."

"Then there _is_ a Santa Claus!" said Hugo reverently. "John, old man, it's absolutely uncanny. Directly I got into the house just now Uncle Lester called me to his study, handed me this cheque, and told me that I could go to London with Ronnie to-morrow and help him start that night club. You remember me telling you about Ronnie's night club, the Hot Spot, situated just off Bond Street in the heart of London's pleasure-seeking area? Or did I? Well, anyway, he is starting a night club there, and he offered me a half share if I'd put up five hundred. By the way, Uncle Lester wants you to go to London to-morrow, too."

"Me. Why?"

"I fancy he's got the wind up a bit about this burglary business to-night. He said something about wanting you to go and see the insurance people--to bump up the insurance a trifle, I suppose. He'll explain. But, listen, John. It really is the most extraordinary thing, this. Uncle Lester starting to unbelt, I mean, and scattering money all over the place. I was absolutely right when I told Pat this morning...."

"Have you seen Pat?"

"Met her this morning on the bridge. And I said to her ..."

"Did she--er--ask after me?"

"No."

"No?" said John hollowly.

"Not that I remember. I brought your name into the talk, and we had a few words about you, but I don't recollect her asking after you." Hugo laid a hand on his cousin's arm. "It's no use, John. Be a man! Forget her. Keep plugging away at that Molloy girl. I think you're beginning to make an impression. I think she's softening. I was watching her narrowly last night, and I fancied I saw a tender look in her eyes when they fell on you. I may have been mistaken, but that's what I fancied. A sort of shy, filmy look. I'll tell you what it is, John. You're much too modest. You underrate yourself. Keep steadily before you the fact that almost anybody can get married if they only plug away at it. Look at this man Bessemer, for instance, Ronnie's man that I told you about. As ugly a devil as you would wish to see outside the House of Commons, equipped with number sixteen feet and a face more like a walnut than anything. And yet he has clicked. The moral of which is that no one need ever lose hope. You may say to yourself that you have no chance with this Molloy girl, that she will not look at you. But consider the case of Bessemer. Compared with him, you are quite good looking. His ears alone...."

"Good night," said John.

He knocked out his pipe and turned to the stairs. Hugo thought his manner abrupt.

VIII

Sergeant-Major Flannery, that able and conscientious man, walked briskly up the main staircase of Healthward Ho. Outside a door off the second landing he stopped and knocked.

A loud sneeze sounded from within.

"Cub!" called a voice.

Chimp Twist, propped up with pillows, was sitting in bed, swathed in a woollen dressing gown. His face was flushed, and he regarded his visitor from under swollen eyelids with a moroseness which would have wounded a more sensitive man. Sergeant-Major Flannery stood six feet two in his boots: he had a round, shiny face at which it was agony for a sick man to look, and Chimp was aware that when he spoke it would be in a rolling, barrack-square bellow which would go clean through him like a red-hot bullet through butter. One has to be in rude health and at the top of one's form to bear up against the Sergeant-Major Flannerys of this world.

"Well?" he muttered thickly.

He broke off to sniff at a steaming jug which stood beside his bed, and the Sergeant-Major, gazing down at him with the offensive superiority of a robust man in the presence of an invalid, fingered his waxed moustache. The action intensified Chimp's dislike. From the first he had been jealous of that moustache. Until it had come into his life he had always thought highly of his own fungoid growth, but one look at this rival exhibit had taken all the heart out of him. The thing was long and blond and bushy, and it shot heavenward into two glorious needle-point ends, a shining zareba of hair quite beyond the scope of any mere civilian. Non-army men may grow moustaches and wax them and brood over them and be fond and proud of them, but to obtain a waxed moustache in the deepest and holiest sense of the words you have to be a sergeant-major.

"Oo-er!" said Mr. Flannery. "That's a nasty cold you've got."

Chimp, as if to endorse this opinion, sneezed again.

"A nasty, feverish cold," proceeded the Sergeant-Major in the tones in which he had once been wont to request squads of recruits to number off from the right. "You ought to do something about that cold."

"I ab dog sobthig about it," growled Chimp, having recourse to the jug once more.

"I don't mean sniffing at jugs, sir. You won't do yourself no good sniffing at jugs, Mr. Twist. You want to go to the root of the matter, if you understand the expression. You want to attack it from the stummick. The stummick is the seat of the trouble. Get the stummick right and the rest follows natural."

"Wad do you wad?"

"There's some say quinine and some say a drop of camphor on a lump of sugar and some say cinnamon, but you can take it from me the best thing for a nasty feverish cold in the head is taraxacum and hops. There is no occasion to damn my eyes, Mr. Twist. I am only trying to be 'elpful. You send out for some taraxacum and hops, and before you know where you are...."

"Wad do you wad?"

"I'm telling you. There's a gentleman below--a gentleman who's called," said Sergeant-Major Flannery, making his meaning clear. "A gentleman," being still more precise, "who's called at the front door in a nortermobile. He wants to see you."

"Well, he can't."

"Says his name's Molloy."

"Molloy?"

"That's what he _said_," replied Mr. Flannery, as one declining to be quoted or to accept any responsibility.

"Oh? All right. Send him up."

"Taraxacum and hops," repeated the Sergeant-Major, pausing at the door.

He disappeared, and a few moments later returned, ushering in Soapy. He left the two old friends together, and Soapy approached the bed with rather an awe-struck air.

"You've got a cold," he said.

Chimp sniffed--twice. Once with annoyance and once at the jug.

"So would you have a code if you'd been sitting up to your neck in water for half an hour last night and had to ride home tweddy biles wriggig wet on a motorcycle."

"Says which?" exclaimed Soapy, astounded.

Chimp related the saga of the previous night, touching disparagingly on Hugo and saying some things about Emily which it was well she could not hear.

"And that leds me out," he concluded.

"No, no!"

"I'm through."

"Don't say that."

"I do say thad."

"But, Chimpie, we've got it all fixed for you to get away with the stuff to-night."

Chimp stared at him incredulously.

"To-night? You thig I'm going out to-night with this code of mine, to clibe through windows and be run off my legs by ..."

"But, Chimpie, there's no danger of that now. We've got everything set. That guy Hugo and his friend are going to London this morning, and so's the other fellow. You won't have a thing to do but walk in."

"Oh?" said Chimp.

He relapsed into silence, and took a thoughtful sniff at the jug. This information, he was bound to admit, did alter the complexion of affairs. But he was a business man.

"Well, if I do agree to go out and risk exposing this nasty, feverish code of mine to the night air, which is the worst thig a man can do--ask any doctor...."

"Chimpie!" cried Mr. Molloy in a stricken voice. His keen intuition told him what was coming.

"... I don't do it on any sigsdy-forty basis. Sigsdy-five--thirty-five is the figure."

Mr. Molloy had always been an eloquent man--without a natural turn for eloquence you cannot hope to traffic successfully in the baser varieties of oil stocks; but never had he touched the sublime heights of oratory to which he soared now. Even the first few words would have been enough to melt most people. Nevertheless when at the end of five minutes he paused for breath, he knew that he had failed to grip his audience.

"Sigsdy-five--thirty-five," said Chimp firmly. "You need me, or you wouldn't have brought me into this. If you could have worked the job by yourself, you'd never have tode me a word about it."

"I can't work it by myself. I've got to have an alibi. I and the wife are going to a theatre to-night in Birmingham."

"That's what I'm saying. You can't get alog without me. And that's why it's going to be sigsdy-five--thirty-five."

Mr. Molloy wandered to the window and looked hopelessly out over the garden.

"Think what Dolly will say when I tell her," he pleaded.

Chimp replied ungallantly that Dolly and what she might say meant little in his life. Mr. Molloy groaned hollowly.

"Well, I guess if that's the way you feel...."

Chimp assured him it was.

"Then I suppose that's the way we'll have to fix it."

"All right," said Chimp. "Then I'll be there somewheres about eleven, or a little later, maybe. And you needn't bother to leave any window opud this time. Just have a ladder laying around and I'll bust the window of the picture gallery, where the stuff is. It'll be more trouble, but I dode bide takid a bidder trouble to make thigs look more natural. You just see thad ladder's where I can fide it, and then you can leave all the difficud part of it to me."

"Difficult!"

"Difficud was what I said," returned Chimp. "Suppose I trip over somethig id the dark? Suppose I slip on the stairs? Suppose the ladder breaks? Suppose that dog gets after me again? That dog's not going to London, is it? Well, then! Besides, considering that I may quide ligely get pneumonia and pass in my checks.... What did you say?"

Mr. Molloy had not spoken. He had merely sighed wistfully.