"I'll bet it did. It must have scared the daylights out of you."
"Oh, no," said Anne. "It just made me jump. Please don't worry about it. I must go in. Mrs. Cork may be wanting me."
She disappeared abruptly, still pink, and Dolly, turning to Jeff, became aware of his stern, set face. "Ha!" said Jeff.
Dolly laughed. She had rather an attractive laugh, lilting and musical, but Jeff found it lacking in appeal.
"You saffron-headed little blighter!" he said.
There was no mistaking the displeasure in his voice, but Dolly continued to seem amused.
"How's your packing coming along, big boy?" she enquired. "Better get it started. I can't always miss, you know. Sooner or later, you're going to stop one."
"Tchah!" said Jeff, and turned on his heel and left her. He was aware that the remark was far from being an adequate one, but he could think of nothing better on the spur of the moment. He was regretting that a gentle and chivalrous upbringing, with its insistence on the fact that the man who lays a hand upon a woman, save in the way of kindness, is a man who ought to be ashamed of himself, rendered it impossible for him to give this blot on the Kentish scene the slosh in the eye for which her whole scheme of behaviour seemed to clamour. In the life of every man there come times when he wishes he was James Cagney, and one of these had come to him now.
Dolly made her way back to the terrace. She had left her Soapy there, dozing over a detective story, and was surprised to find his chair empty. She applied for enlightenment to Mrs. Barlow, the woman with the chins, who was doing deep breathing exercises on the lawn.
"Seen my husband anywheres, Mrs. Barlow?"
"I think he was called to the telephone, Mrs. Molloy."
It was at this moment that the missing man appeared in the french window. There was agitation in his demeanour. He hurried to where Dolly stood, plainly disturbed.
"Honey!"
"'Smatter, sweetness?"
Mr. Molloy shot a glance at Mrs. Barlow. She was once more doing deep breathing exercises, but even deep breathers have ears. He drew his wife aside to the far corner of the terrace.
"I've just been talking to Chimp on the phone."
"Oh, was that who it was? I suppose he's been thinking it over and wants to put up a squawk about the terms?"
Mr. Molloy shook his head. He paused for a moment. He hated to be the bearer of bad news.
"No, it isn't that," he said. "I'm afraid there's a nasty jolt coming to you, pettie. He's down here at the inn, and talks of clocking in at the house to-morrow morning."
CHAPTER XIV
Dolly gaped at her husband incredulously. As he had foretold, the news had shaken her severely. On the lawn, Mrs. Barlow had begun to try out some steps of a tribal dance. It was a spectacle which at any other moment would have gripped and arrested, but now she lumbered to and fro disregarded.
"What!"
"That's right."
"He's coming to the joint?"
"To-morrow, first thing."
"But what about the hay-haired guy?"
Mr. Molloy's gloom deepened.
"It begins to look like this isn't one of our lucky deals, sugar. We're standing behind the eight-ball. The hay-haired bozo means nothing in Chimp's life now. Of all the darned things that had to happen, he wrote Chimp a letter, and it seems Chimp was all wrong where he thought the bird had it in for him. It's a long story, and I couldn't follow all of it, but, according to Chimp, this bimbo didn't throw bricks at him—he threw some kind of cakes, which he wanted to get rid of on account he didn't like to hurt the cook's feelings by leaving them lay. And when Chimp saw him helling up the stairs, he was just coming to apologise. It sounds cock-eyed, but that's what he told Chimp in this letter."
"Oh, gosh!"
"That's how I feel, too. It was bad enough being up against the straw-haired guy. If we've got to worry all the time about Chimp gumshoeing around and watching us to see we don't pull any quick stuff, I don't see as we can get anywheres. You know what Chimp's like. Eyes at the back of his head."
Dolly mused. Her momentary weakness had passed. She had ceased to totter beneath the blows of Fate, and was locking to the future, framing schemes, formulating plans of action.
"We'll have to ease Chimp out, that's all."
"Yes, but how?"
"I'll find a way. You go take a walk around the block, and leave me think a while."
Mr. Molloy did as he was bidden. From time to time, as he circled the lawn, he cast a hopeful glance at his pensive helpmeet, wondering how she was making out. It might be, he felt, that even this outstanding crisis in their affairs would find her equal to it. Dolly had always been the brains of the firm. He himself, he was aware, had his limitations. Give him a sympathetic listener, preferably one who in his formative years had been kicked on the head by a mule, a clear half-hour in which to talk Oil and plenty of room to wave his hands, and he could accomplish wonders. But apart from this one talent he was not a very gifted man, and he knew it.
It was as he was half-way through his sixth lap that he saw that Dolly had left the terrace and was crossing the lawn towards him. And his heart leaped up when he beheld the shining light of inspiration on that loved face. It told him that her brilliant intellect had found the way. And, as so often, he was conscious of a feeling almost of awe at the thought that it had been given to him to win the love of such a woman—a woman who with her educated fingers could keep herself in gloves, handkerchiefs, scent, vanity bags and even jewellery free of expense and, in addition, was able to solve all the vexing little domestic problems which came up from time to time in their lives.
"Don't tell me you've doped something out already?" he said, reverently.
"Sure. It just needed mulling over."
"Honey," said Mr. Molloy, "they don't make 'em like you nowadays. They've lost the secret. Spill it, pettie. I'm here to listen."
A gratified flush crept into Dolly's cheek. She loved this man, and his words were music to her ears.
" Well, look," she said. "You say Chimp's at the inn?"
"Right there at the inn, sugar."
"Then you go there and see him. You'll just have time. And when you see him, be all worked up, like as if you'd had a shock. Agitated, sort of. See? Can you make yourself tremble?"
"Like this?"
"No, not like that. You don't want to make him think you've got St. Vitus's Dance or sump'n. Just be all of a doodah, like what you'd natch'ally be if you'd heard that old Lord Cakebread had located that ice and had gotten it in his room and was planning to hand in his portfolio to-morrow morning and mosey out of here with the stuff in his jeans."
"Is that the spiel I'm to hand Chimp?"
"That's right."
"But where does that get us, honeybunch?"
"Well, use your bean. If Lord Cakebread really had gotten the stuff and was aiming to quit the joint to-morrow, it would mean that we'd have to lay our hooks on it to-day, wouldn't it?"
"No argument about that."
"And that would mean that one of us would have to sneak into his room and go through it."
"Sure."
"Well, it can't be you, because you're weak in the nerves and would be scared cross-eyed at the mere idea of doing such a thing."
"What!"
"That's only what you say to Chimp."
"Oh, it's part of the spiel?"
"That's right. Well, then, maybe, he wonders why I don't do it."
"No use trying to kid him that you're weak in the nerves."
"No. So you tell him you're planning to slip one over on me. You say that Lord Cakebread told me he'd got the stuff, and I told you, and you immediately seen where this was where you salted away a nice little private balance in the bank, without me knowing nothing about it. Let's you and me, you say to Chimp, collect this ice and tell Dolly we couldn't find it."
Mr. Molloy nodded.
"Yes, he'd fall for that. If there's one thing Chimp'll always fall for, it's if he feels the
re's double-crossing going on. It's like catnip to a cat. And then what?"
"Why, then you tell him he's got to do it."
"Bust into Lord Cakebread's room?"
"Yay. Only there won't be no question of busting. Tell him he can just walk in. Say there's a time, when it's getting along for dinner, when a butler's busy around the house, so there won't be no chance of Lord Cakebread muscling in and gumming the game. That's when he must sneak in, you tell him. And then you tell him where the room is."
"But where is it?"
"On the ground floor, back of the joint, looking out on where the tradesmen's carts drive up and all like that. He can't miss it. There's a water barrel outside the window, tell him, and just to one side a tombstone with 'To Ponto, Ever A Faithful Friend' on it. Where they buried a dog, I guess," said Dolly, thinking it improbable that the remains of members of the family would be distributed about the grounds in this casual fashion.
Mr. Molloy was surprised at this omniscience.
"How do you know all that?"
"I was up early a coupla days ago, you remember the morning, and I strolled around there, and I seen the old bird at the window, doing his daily dozen. He was in his pants, and nothing else except suspenders," said Dolly, involuntarily dropping her voice to a whisper, for the spectacle of Lord Uffenham stripped to the waist, with a pair of mauve braces draped over his massive shoulders, had made a deep impression on her. "He looked like King Kong. Well, that's the set-up. You tell Chimp the old bozo has gotten the ice somewheres in his room, you put him wise where the room is and when it's sure to be empty, and you tell him he's got to handle the searching of it because you haven't the nerve. All straight?"
Mr. Molloy hesitated. He was reluctant to reply in the negative, for he felt that in some way not at the moment obvious to him it would place him in the unpleasant position of looking like a Dumb Isaac. He had had this experience before, on occasions when he had questioned the soundness of his wife's inspirations.
On the other hand, he could not see where the thing made sense.
"Well, I'll tell you, sugar," he said. "It's straight enough, far as that goes. But it seems to me as if nothing's going to happen. He sneaks in, hunts around, doesn't find the ice, because it's not there, and comes away. Where's the percentage? Aside from just making a monkey out of Chimp, of course. It don't seem to get us anywheres. I thought you were going to come across with something that would keep him from visiting at the house."
"So I have."
"I don't see it."
It occurred to Dolly to reply that he wouldn't see the Woolworth Building if he was standing across the street with a telescope, but she refrained, partly because she loved her mate and shrank from paining him, and partly because this was no time for cracks.
"Well, look," she said. "What happens when Lord Cakebread comes in and catches him?"
"But he won't. You said he'd be busy around the joint.
“I didn't say any such thing. I said that was what you was to tell Chimp. The moment you phone me that he's bit, I go to Lord Cakebread and warn him to watch out, because I happen to know there's a low-life coming to hunt around in his room this evening. So then what? He lies in wait, and catches Chimp. Maybe he beats him up. Maybe he just chases him out. But, anyway, whichever he does, Chimp'll have a swell chance of horning in next morning, saying he's a millionaire that's interested in these here new Ugubus and wants to join the gang. If he tries it, out steps Lord Cakebread and says to Mrs. Cork 'The hell he's a millionaire! He's just a porch climber,' and Mrs. Cork reaches for her gun and tells Chimp he's got two minutes to beat it away from here before he gets an ounce of lead in his pants and has the dogs set on him. Now, do you get it?"
Mr. Molloy did not actually lay his head in the dust, but he felt a strong inclination to do so. Never again, he was telling himself, would he lack faith in this woman's schemes, even if their true worth was not immediately apparent to his slower masculine intelligence. His fine, candid eyes lit up.
"Honey', it's a pip!"
"I'll say it is."
"It can't miss."
"I'll say it can't."
"You won't be able to see Chimp for dust."
"I'll say you won't."
"Then I'd best be getting along to the inn and contacting him."
"Yay. And make it snappy. Call me from the post office, if everything's jake, and then I can go ahead. We don't want to lose no time."
Mr. Molloy set off at a capital pace, enthusiasm lending wings to a pair of legs not normally planned for swift pedestrianism. And so excellent were his speed and staying power that it was scarcely half an hour later that Dolly, having been informed over the telephone by her second in command that Mr. Twist had swallowed the whole setup, hook, line and sinker, and might be expected at the tryst any minute now, made her way to Lord Uffenham's pantry.
The glazed look in the latter's eyes—he had been giving his brain a rest at the moment of her entry—disappeared as he saw one whom, from her evident taste for his society, he had come to look upon as an old friend. He lumbered to his feet like a bison leaving a waterhole, and was about to offer her a courtly glass of port, when he saw that her fists were clenched and her eyes glittering. Plainly, something had occurred to disturb the dear little woman, and his generous heart ached for her. Dolly always aroused the protective instinct in him. She seemed so weak, so fragile, so unfitted to cope with the problems of life.
"Is something the matter, Madam?" he asked, solicitously, in his most artistic Cakebread manner.
Dolly gulped.
"You betcher. Am I mortified! I'm as mad as a wet hen."
Such a statement, made to Lord Uffenham in other circumstances, would have plunged him into abstruse speculation as to how mad hens were, when wet—how you detected this dementia—and where such birds might be held to rank in eccentricity of outlook as compared, say, with hatters or the members of Mrs. Cork's Ugubu colony. But now his only thought was for her distress.
"What's the trouble?" he asked, adding a rather un-Cakebreadian "Hey?" It was not his practice, as we have seen, to step out of his role, but he was much moved.
"Listen while I tell you," said Dolly, much moved herself. "I've just heard they're sending a private dick this evening to search your room."
"A private what?"
"Dick."
"You mean a rozzer? A detective?"
"That's right. He's coming to search your room, on account they think you've got stolen property hid away there. That's what's made me so mad, feeling they're casting this what you might call slur on your honesty."
As Lord Uffenham had been informed by Anne that it was Mrs. Molloy who had been the first to cast this slur, and that it was she who was primarily responsible for the establishment of a detective on the premises of Shipley Hall, he might have replied with something calculated to reproach and wound. But he had long since forgiven his little friend for an action of which he was convinced that she would never have been guilty, had she had the privilege then of knowing him as well as she did now.
"You mean young Adair, as he calls himself?"
Dolly felt it advisable to start confusedly. She remembered that she was not supposed to know that her companion knew anything about the inwardness of young Adair.
"You know about that guy?"
Lord Uffenham chuckled fatly.
"Yes, I know all about him."
"Well, aren't you smart!"
"People have said so," said Lord Uffenham, though not naming them. " Lord-love-a-duck, I don't mind young Adair searching my room."
"Ah, but this isn't him," said Dolly. "This is another one. I've just been talking with that old bird, Trumper. It seems he isn't satisfied with Adair. Thinks him too young and frivolous. So, without saying a word to Mrs. Cork, he's gone and hired a dick on his own account, and he's coming to search your room."
Lord Uffenham's complacency had vanished.
"Is he, the rat? When?"
"I'm telling you. Th
is evening. Any minute now. He chose this time on account he thought you'd be busy around the joint. What you'd ought to do, seems to me-is hide and pop out and paste him one."
"I will, the slinking slug."
"Is there somewheres in your room where you can hide?"
"Behind the screen."
"At-a-baby!" cried Dolly, clapping her little hands with girlish enthusiasm. "Park yourself there, and don't shoot till you see the whites of his eyes."
It was some minutes later that Lord Uffenham, passing through the hall on his way back from the dining-room, whither he had been to see that everything was in order, so that he might go off duty for a while, encountered Mr. Trumper, on his way to practise billiards in the billiard-room. He fixed him with a stare so cold and penetrating that the little man sagged beneath it like a bird vis-a-vis with a serpent. This butler always gave Eustace Trumper a scared, guilty feeling, as if he had been caught wearing a made-up tie or had used, his fish fork for dealing with a soufflé.
CHAPTER XV
The hour of seven-fifteen found Chimp Twist at the main gates of Shipley Hall, humming a gay air beneath his breath and feeling that God was in His heaven and all right with the world. He surveyed the rolling parkland, and admired it enormously. He listened to the carolling of the birds, and thought how sweet their music was. Even an insect, which got entangled in his moustache, struck him as probably quite a decent insect, if one had only got to know it. His mood, in short, was one of saccharine benevolence. He was in the frame of mind when he would have patted a small boy on the head and given him sixpence, though it is probable that a moment later he would have tossed him for it and won it back again.
The letter which Jeff had sent round by district messenger boy that morning had brought to this monkey-faced little chevalier of industry a sensation of relief and bien etre which he could scarcely have obtained from a brimming beaker of the most widely advertised nerve tonic on the market. Ever since the Board Meeting which had ended in his being compelled to entrust the executive end of their venture to the Molloys, Chimp Twist had been tortured by the problem of how to prevent these old friends double-crossing him, as he had no doubt they would do, should the opportunity arise, with that blithe alacrity which he had so often noted in them.