He did the only possible thing, and he did it without delay.
"Sure!" he cried heartily, advancing with outstretched hand. "Sure he's a friend of mine. How are you, old pal?"
Chimp, though ignoring the hand, for the Twists resembled the Trumpers in that they did not easily forgive, replied that he was swell. He said Soapy was looking swell, and Soapy said he was feeling swell. Soapy said it was swell to see Chimp, and Chimp said it was swell to see Soapy. In short, to Mrs. Cork, who was not a mind-reader, the whole thing was so suggestive of an unexpected encounter between Damon and Pythias that it seemed no longer possible to doubt the authenticity of the story to which she had been listening.
"This is Mr. Adair, the private detective?" she asked, just to get the thing straight.
"That's who it is. J. Sheringham Adair, the smartest man in the business."
"Then who is the other one?"
"Ah," said Soapy. "That's what we'd all like to know."
"You was telling Mrs. Cork, I suppose," said Dolly, addressing Chimp, "how he strung the beads to I and Soapy about having bought the business."
"Sure."
"And we believed him," said Soapy. "Can you beat it!"
Dolly said that, anyone would have been took in, and Soapy agreed that the impostor was a smooth performer, as artful as a wagon-load of monkeys and cooler than a fish on a cake of ice.
Mrs. Cork's manner was now grimmer than ever.
"I shall go and see that young man," she said. "As for you, Mr. Adair, I hope that from now on you will refrain from hiding in wardrobes, however excellent your motives. You will, of course, take up your residence here. Where are you now? At the inn? Then you had better remain here, and I will have your things sent for. You will be just in time for a lecture on the Ugubu outlook, which I am giving in the drawing-room after dinner."
"If it's going to be any trouble," said Chimp, who had started slightly at this information, "I could easy string along at the inn till to-morrow."
"I will have arrangements made for giving you a room," continued Mrs. Cork, who was never a good listener, "Miss Benedick---"
She had been about to instruct Anne to see to it, but no charming voice replied "Yes, Mrs. Cork?" Anne had disappeared. She was at this moment hurrying up the stairs in quest of Jeff. Those words of her employer about going and seeing that young man had seemed to her charged with a fearful menace. What Mrs. Cork did when she went and saw young men who had got into her house pretending to be private detectives, she did not know, but she felt very strongly that he must be found and warned—possibly urged to escape down a water-pipe without his luggage while there was yet time.
Mrs. Cork clicked her tongue, annoyed, and strode out, Mr. Trumper trotting in her wake.
Only a very dull observer, entering the room on her departure and seeing Chimp Twist staring bleakly at Soapy Molloy, would have supposed himself in the presence of a modern Damon and Pythias. And, if he had, the impression would have vanished when the former started to give utterance to his thoughts, cleansing his bosom of the perilous stuff that weighed upon his soul. Chimp's opening speech touched a high level of eloquence, the passage in which he gave a character sketch of Mrs. Molloy, as seen through his eyes, being a singularly powerful one.
To Soapy and Dolly, however, the important section of his address was not this purple patch, but the more pedestrian sentences where, descending to the practical, he announced his intention of severing his connection with the Syndicate and opening up a rival business of his own.
"I wouldn't, Chimpie," urged Mr. Molloy. Such a move, he felt, could not but complicate further an already difficult position of affairs.
"Well, I'm going to," shrilled the injured man, his moustache quivering at the ends at the thought of his wrongs. "I'm in, aren't I? Then what do I want to go stringing along with you chisellers for?"
Mr. Molloy shook his head, plainly deploring this spirit.
"I wouldn't do nothing hasty, Chimpie. No sense in flying off the handle. That yarn I told you may not have been on the up-and-up from start to finish, but it's a fact that the madam has been getting mighty friendly with Lord Cakebread these last days. Aren't I right, sweetie?"
"I'll say you're right," said Dolly. "Him and me's just like that."
"Any minute now, he's liable to remember where he parked that ice, and when he does, I'm betting he'll spill the info' to the little woman. So, if I was you, Chimpie," said Mr. Molloy, "I wouldn't go and do nothing mutton-headed like what you say. Stick around and play ball. We're all working for the good of the show. And, as for handing you a raw deal, well, you know how these things happen. The madam's impulsive, and she gets carried away at times. But there's no sense in being sore and putting a crimp in your business prospects. That don't pay no dividends "
He had struck the right note. Those few manly, straight-from-the-shoulder words were just what the situation called for. Business to Chimp Twist was always business, and he rarely allowed sentiment to interfere with it. If Dolly really was likely to be the recipient of Lord Uffenham's confidences, and he wouldn't put it past her to be able to soften up the big stiff and get him talking, he wanted to be in on the ground floor.
"I guess you're about right," he said, after a pause for reflection. "Yes, there's sense in that. But, listen, lemme tell ya sump'n. From this on, no more of Dolly's cute cutting up. Tie a can to the funny stuff, see? If I want to laugh, I'll read the comic strip."
"Sure," said Mr. Molloy.
"Sure," said Mrs. Molloy, with equal heartiness.
"Okay, then," said Chimp.
The Syndicate was in being again—a little shaky about the foundations, perhaps, but once more a going concern.
CHAPTER XX
Anne, meanwhile, had reached Jeff's room and found it empty. Jeff, like Mrs. Cork, was a quick dresser and had long since dried and clothed himself and gone out into the garden to enjoy what to the connoisseur is the best part of a fine summer day. Purified by his great love, he had grown very fond of the twilight of late.
Anne, crediting him with less soulfulness, had the idea that he might have gone to her uncle's pantry for a quick port, to enable him to face with greater fortitude the dinner and lecture which lay before him. It was thither that she now hastened.
She found Lord Uffenham standing motionless in the middle of the floor. His eyes were closed, and he was holding between his hands a small forked stick.
"Hullo, my dear," he said. "I came on this in the hall the other day. Must have been there fifty years, I should think. It belonged to my old father. It's a thing water-diviners use. You hold it like this, and if there's water anywhere, it twists like a serpent. I remember experimenting with it as a boy, but whether it worked or not, I couldn't tell yer."
Anne was not interested in finding water. She wanted to find Jeff.
"Have you seen Mr. Adair?" she asked, breathlessly.
"No," said Lord Uffenham. "But if you run across him, send him to me. I've got a job for him. It's an odd thing, but as I was standing here just now with my eyes shut, thinking of water and waiting for this apparatus to wriggle, the word 'pond' suddenly flashed into my mind. The word 'pond,'" said Lord Uffenham, impressively. "I consider that dashed significant."
"Angel, I must find Mr. Adair."
"His name's not Adair."
"I know it isn't."
"It's ... No," said Lord Uffenham, after a pause, "I thought I had it, but I haven't. If you had asked me a minute ago, I could have told you. It's some name like Willard or Tiller. But I was saying about this word 'pond' suddenly flashing into my mind. There's only one pond at Shipley, as far as I know, and that's the one by the sunken garden. Nothing is more likely than that I put those dashed diamonds—in a biscuit tin or something, no doubt, with a string tied to it—in that. It's just the sort of place that might have suggested itself, because I was rather using them up towards the end. And I used to wander round there quite a lot in the old days. Sort of a favourite spot of mine. I con
sider this one of the most promising ideas I've had. Get hold of young Tiller and tell him to go and wade about there to-morrow morning, early. Save him having a bath."
"But he won't be here to-morrow morning."
"Hey?"
"A frightful thing has happened, darling. That's why I'm trying to find him. The real one has turned up."
"What d'yer mean, the real one?"
"The real Sheringham Adair. Mr. Trumper found him in his wardrobe. An awful little man with a waxed moustache."
"Good Lord! Is that who the rat was?"
"You haven't met him?"
"Of course, I've met him. Had a long talk with him about his moustache. You know how he gets the ends to stick up like that? Smears 'em with soap. Told me so himself. ' What d'yer put on the filthy thing?' I asked him. 'Beeswax?' And he said No, just ordinary wax or toilet soap or shaving cream. 'Lord-love-a-duck!' I said, thinking to myself that it takes all sorts to make a world, and then, just as I was going to break his neck, he skipped away like a cat on hot bricks. So he got into Trumper's wardrobe, did he? Wish I'd known."
"But how did you come to meet him?"
"That sweet little woman, Mrs. Molloy, told me he was going to search my room, of all dashed impertinence, so I lay in wait for him and pounced out at him, and he told me all about his moustache. He's a spy in the pay of Trumper."
"He's got nothing to do with Mr. Trumper."
"Yes, he has. Trumper has bought him with his gold. She told me so. Mrs. Molloy."
"Well, never mind. I haven't time to argue about it. I must find Jeff. Where can he have got to?"
"Jeff?"
"Mr. Willard or Tiller, or whatever his name is."
"It might be Spiller."
"It might be anything. The point is that I've got to find him. I can't let him receive the full impact of Mrs. Cork without warning. It would be too awful."
Lord Uffenham appeared to be musing.
"His name's Jeff, is it?"
"So he told me."
"Do you call him Jeff?"
"When I call him anything."
"It hasn't taken you long to get to Christian names. Just as I foresaw. You've fallen in love with the feller."
"Oh, angel, don’t gibber. Not now. Things are too tense. You should have seen Mrs. Cork. Boadicea, bristling with pistols. I must tell Jeff to fly before she gets hold of him. Where do you think he can be?"
Lord Uffenham was a difficult man to sidetrack, once he had embarked on a train of thought.
"Christian names," he said musingly. "The infallible test. If it happens soon enough, of course. I remember when I was a young man, noticing that if a woman called me 'Georgie' after we'd had a couple of lunches and a spin in a hansom cab together, it was always the beginning of the end. You call him 'Jeff,' do yer? And all this fuss and bustle and running around wringing your hands and crying 'Oh, where is he? I must save him, I must save him!' You're potty about the chap."
"I'm not!"
"And a very good thing, too. I'm delighted. Just the right young feller for you. He'll keep yer bright and interested. That plumber of yours would have bored you stiff in a week. It's going to be embarrassing for you, by the way, having to tell him you've changed your mind."
"I haven't changed my mind."
"But you've only yourself to blame," said Lord Uffenham, more in sorrow than anger. "Did I or did I not repeatedly warn yer that you were crazy to suppose for an instant that you could marry that perisher? But you would stick to it that he was the blue-eyed boy. That," he concluded, becoming profound, "is the whole trouble with fellers like Lionel Green. If you see one without actually wanting to kick him, you think, 'This must be love.'"
"'Darling, will you stop!"
"Stop what?"
"Talking this absolute nonsense. I do love Lionel."
"What, still? Even though this splendid young Spiller has come along? I don't understand it," said Lord Uffenham, wagging his ponderous head. "He can't have been playing his cards right. In spite of what I told him. 'The obvious course for you to pursue, Spiller,' I said to him, 'is to reach out and grab her and fold her in a dashed close embrace. That'll work it.' I don't see how I could have put it plainer."
Anne was conscious of a warmth about the cheeks. Only an hour or two had elapsed since Jeff actually had folded her in an embrace almost close enough to satisfy even her uncle's exacting standards. And though she had comported herself on that occasion with a maidenly dignity which would have pleased Emily Post, she was guiltily aware of not having been as shocked and repelled as she should have been. For an instant, indeed, until she had thought of Lionel Green and how devoted she was to him, she had had a distinct illusion that she was passing through an experience not wholly without its pleasurable aspect.
Lord Uffenham had fallen into a silence. He had the air of a man who is trying to probe a mystery to its depths. Pie came out of his thoughts, to put a question.
"Has he kissed yer yet?"
"No, he has not."
"Well, I'm dashed."
"Did you tell him to?"
"Of course I did. I look on that young feller as a son—don't know when I've met a young feller I've taken more of a fancy to—and I considered it my duty to promote his interests."
Anne drew a deep breath. She regarded her uncle fixedly. A weaker uncle might have wilted beneath the look.
"I see. So if I suddenly find Mr. Spiller treating me as if I were a sack of coals, I shall have von to thank for it.'
"I don't want any thanks. Only too glad to help. Bring the young folks together, that's what I say. My knowledge of life told me what ought to be done, and I handed the tip on to young Miller."
"Is his name Miller or Spiller?"
"Miller. I've just remembered."
"But how do you know?"
"I found out."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I forgot."
"How did you find out?"
"It was the day he arrived here. I was taking a look round his room, just to see if they had made him comfortable, and there was a book on the table by the bed, with his name written in the fly leaf. Oddly enough, it was a name I had an idea I'd heard somewhere. J. G. Miller."
"What!"
Anne was aware of something that felt like a powerful electric shock passing through her.
"Yerss. J. G. Miller."
Anne was still tingling. J. G. Miller! ... It was possible, of course, that this was another and a blameless J. G. Miller, but it seemed to her highly improbable. The surname Miller is not an uncommon one, but the juxtaposition of the initials was surely damning.
"Are you certain?"
"Of course, I'm certain. Why the name should have seemed familiar, I can't tell you. I've a memory like a steel trap, but it doesn't always work as it should. Now that I think back, I believe it was the cook who was saying something about a feller called J. G. Miller, who had done something or other. And I seem to recollect a conversation on the same subject with that little squirt, Trumper."
"Oh!"
Anne had given a little jump. Her memory, working with more accuracy than her uncle's, had told her where it was that she had seen Jeff before. And now she knew, beyond further possibility of doubt, that he was the man whom Mrs. Cork wanted to strangle with her bare hands, and for whom she herself, ever since she had read of Lionel Green's dark hour in the witness box, had been feeling so violent an animosity.
Her eyes flashed. Her teeth clenched. She quivered from head to foot. Mrs. Molloy, had she been present, would have had no hesitation in describing her as mad as a wet hen. She was asking herself how she could ever have been deceived by his superficial charm into imagining for an instant that she had liked Jeff. She strode to the door, a figure of almost Cork-like menace.
"You off?" said Lord Uffenham.
"Yes. I want a word with Mr. J. G. Miller."
"Of course. Going to tell him Mrs. Cork is after him with her hatchet."
"That and other things."
/>
"Well, don't forget about the pond."
"I'll get Lionel to look there to-morrow."
"Lionel?" said Lord Uffenham, aghast. "What's the use of Lionel? He'd be afraid to get his feet wet. For God's sake, don't put your trust in that poop. If you want my frank opinion of Lionel Green---"
It appeared that Anne did not. She went out without waiting for it. It had just occurred to her as a possibility that Jeff might be in the garden.
Lord Uffenham stared at her in his solid, unblinking way. Then, feeling that he had done his duty as an uncle, he took up the forked stick and closed his eyes again.
CHAPTER XXI
It had been Jeff's original intention, on leaving his room, to go and smoke a cigarette on the lawn. But the sudden appearance there of Mr. Shepperson, the man with the double-jointed hips, had caused him to alter his plans. It might be, of course, that Mr. Shepperson would not say "Nice evening" and engage him in conversation, but the risk was a grave one and not to be taken by a lover who wished to be alone with his thoughts. He sheered away, accordingly, like an antelope that had caught sight of Mrs. Cork, and was enabled by this prompt action to nip the menace in the bud. For some minutes, he had been strolling up and down the rhododendron walk in a deep reverie.
The solitary meditations of the Jeff Miller of pre-Anne days would have had to do with far different themes than those which now engrossed him. Love had tapped a deep vein of poetry in him and he was trying to remember how that "Come into the garden, Maud" thing went. Not a thought of mysterious Malays, screams in lonely houses and Inspector Purvis drawing in his breath sharply and saying "This is human blood!" had so much as entered his mind.
He was still in difficulties with the second and fourth lines, when Anne came out of the house, breathing flame softly through the nose and looking to left and right like a lioness seeking her prey. In her passage from Lord Uffenham's pantry to the lawn, she had lost none of her desire to have a word with Mr. J. G. Miller.