RGL e-Book Cover©
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.
RGL e-Book Cover©
"FOR anybody who is apt to run to neck," mused Mr. Smiler Bunn aloud one morning to his friend and partner, Lord Fortworth, "these Peter Pan collars are a godsend. And when a man goes eighteen and a half round his shirtband it's up to him to study his neck pretty carefully."
"Yes." Fortworth looked thoughtfully at the big muscular pillar upon which the square head of his partner was set. "Yes—you certainly ain't in the swan class. You've got a neck like a buffalo."
Mr. Bunn looked a little irritated.
"I know it," he said briefly. "And yours ain't any lily stem, if it comes to that. I notice you don't decline to wear soft collars when you're taking it easy."
Fortworth laughed.
"Certainly not. I like 'em. If anybody mistakes me for little Lord Fauntleroy they're welcome to—" He broke off suddenly, eyeing the safety-pin which held the ends of Mr. Bunn's soft silk collar together. "That's a pretty hot emerald you've got there," he said.
Smiler took off the brooch—a big emerald mounted on an ordinary gold safety-pin—and handed it to his partner.
"Well, it's not a bit of broken ginger-beer bottle, certainly," he agreed.
Fortworth looked at the jewel carefully. He was a judge of such things.
"Yes, it's a very fine stone. Where did you get it?"
"I got it some years ago from a miser named Amberfold—Colonel Amberfold—who lived in a lonely house in Sussex. He was a queer old bird. Used to keep two fighting baboons instead of house dogs, and had a searchlight rigged up on top of the house, so that he could signal to the local police if burglars came. He was shot at by some burglars, but was only stunned. They thought they'd killed him, and cleared out. I went through the safe while the Colonel was coming round and got a fistful of stones. I didn't get the best he had, though. I've got an idea they were hidden somewhere else. But I did pretty well—yes."
He smiled like a good-hearted and contented old crocodile, and lit a cigar.
But Fortworth looked thoughtful as he handed the emerald back.
"If he's got any better stones than that it's a scandalous thing for them to be hidden away in a safe," he said. "They ought to be flashing out green fire on some woman's chest—some woman who could afford to illuminate herself that way, I mean."
"True—that's true," said Smiler thoughtfully.
"A fistful of stones like that would fetch from eight to ten thousand of anybody's money," resumed Fortworth. "The fact is you never finished your job at that house."
"No—to tell the truth, I was in a bit of a hurry," confessed Mr. Bunn.
Lord Fortworth rose ponderously.
"Well, we'd better finish it, I consider," he said.
"As you wish," agreed Smiler humorously. "I can always do with a few diamonds." He touched a bell on the garden table beside him. The two crooks were sitting in the sunshine on the very secluded, timber-encircled lawn at their country retreat near Purdston, a remote village on the Surrey-Hants border.
"There's no reason why we shouldn't start work at once," said Smiler. "We've had a very good rest since we took that fat cure at Harromouth. When you make up your mind to start work on a thing, I believe in taking off your coat and slugging in at it without wasting time."
Fortworth carefully selected his third cigar since breakfast, lighted it, and restfully lay back in his chair.
"So do I," he agreed.
Sing Song, the Chinese "Old Reliable," as Mr. Bunn occasionally described their capable, albeit somewhat criminal, manservant, appeared in answer to the ring, and came across the lawn bearing a tray with bottles, decanters and glasses upon it.
The two partners brightened up considerably at sight of the saffron villain.
"That's a good lad," said Mr. Bunn benevolently. "I had an idea somewhere inside me that it was time for a sherry and bitters, Put the tray on the table and mix 'em, Sing Song. Peach for me. Gently, now, my lad—gently, I say. Easy with the bitters—easy, you melon-headed jackass! D'you want to poison me? Half that—half of it! I don't want all bitters!" he roared. "Damme, there are times when you don't seem to have the brains of a Chinese lantern. That's better—that's better. Fill her up with sherry, my lad—that's it."
Their apéritifs prepared, Mr. Bunn fixed Sing Song with his eye and bade him listen.
"Take the two-seater, Sing Song, and get away to a place called Southwater, near Horsham in Sussex—got it? Southwater, near Horsham in Sussex. A man called Colonel Amberfold lives there, in a house called The Tower—only there's no tower there worth speaking of. Find out about him. Understand? Find out about him."
The beady eyes of the Chink lighted up.
"Yes, master," he said simply.
He understood Mr. Bunn as well as Smiler understood him.
"Here's five—now hook it."
Smiler handed him five pounds for expenses, and Sing Song, with a yellowish smile, departed.
The partners lay back in their chairs smoking dreamily.
"That lemon will be back in a couple of days with all the news about the Colonel," said Smiler, "He's a wonder to work."
Long before their cigars were finished a low moaning of gears and the fussy splutter of a motor exhaust that sounded from the shady drive advised them that the "lemon" was on his way to Southwater.
As Smiler Bunn had said, they believed in "slugging in without waste of time"—providing Sing Song was there to do the slugging.
Then a plump, egg-shaped gentleman in black, with a hard face and semi-bloodshot eyes, floated out of the house towards them—Mr. Ferdinand Bloom, an ex-actor-crook, who, with his wife, looked after the Purdston establishment—announcing that lunch was waiting their attention.
They "slugged" in—as usual.
FOUR afternoons later they were sitting in precisely the same place. It was tea-time, and they were reinvigorating themselves body and soul with whisky-and-soda after a leisurely round on the nine-hole mantrap just outside the village. An invincible drought was just yielding to the efforts of Fortworth, who manned the decanter, and Smiler, who wielded the syphon pump, when the harsh bray of an electric horn from far down the lane that ran to the house from the main road stiffened them where they sat.
"Here's the Chink!" said Smiler. Fortworth nodded.
A curious change had come over their faces, such a change as might suddenly come over two tigers that, basking and purring in sunshine just outside their lair, hear the faint tread of the leather-shod foot of a sahib—which, in turn, usually means a rifle.
They had become taut, tense, watchful. Their lips had thinned and hardened, and a cold light had sprung to their eyes.
"Sing Song—sure," Lord Fortworth.
A motor rushed up the lane, turned into the drive, and stopped outside the house.
They waited a moment, and then the Chinaman came through the shrubbery. He looked worn. There were hard lines down his face—it looked like a face carved out of very old ivory—and his left hand was bandaged from the knuckles upwards.
Mr. Bunn poured out a dazing dose of whisky, insulted it with a sensation of soda, and handed it to the Chink.
"Here's a snort for you, my lad. Hide it!"
Sing Song grinned a bleak grin, and "hid" it with perfect efficiency.
"Now give us the news," commanded Mr. Bunn. "Hurt your arm?" He indicated the bandage.
Sing Song nodded ruefully.
"Spotte dog—allee same leppald. Cheetah. Catchee me climee wall. No blakee bones, only bitee flesh. Too plenty painful fo' sleepee. You gimme 'nothel wiskisoda, please, mastel?"
He blinked wearily at the partners, who gave him the stimulant—and took another themselves out of sheer sympathy.
Then Sing Song reeled off his report.
It appeared that Colonel Amberfold had left the Sussex village some two years before, and had moved to a remote house on Salisbury Plain. It had taken the Chink a day to ferret out from a firm of furniture removers at Horsham the address of the Colonel, and even then he had used up a considerable time in locating the house on the enormous windswept expanse of desolate, rolling, West Country downland.
But he had found and, with his customary enterprise, thoroughly reconnoitred the house, escaping with a slight mauling from one of a half-dozen cheetahs, the easily tameable dog-like hunting-leopards of India, which the Colonel kept about the place.
"He always was a bit of a Barnum," grumbled Smiler, remembering the baboons which had acted as watchdogs at the Southwater house in the old days. "How did you get away from the animal?"
"Blowee him blains out," said Sing Song promptly, with a reminiscent smile. "Blowee blains out—chasee me all acloss the downs, but when we lun out of sight of housee I blowee him headee off—scrapee hole—belly him deep down, yes. He no bitee again."
"All right. He's dead now—don't gloat over him. Get on, with the report."
They gathered that Colonel Amberfold no longer lived alone, as in the days when Smiler had come down upon him like a wolf on the fold, but that he had installed a housekeeper—"plitty lady, tall, glaceful, blave eyes," said the Chink—and her husband, a "powelful, stlong man," to look after the cheetahs, a pony, and presumably to do the odd work.
The house itself was situated in one of those vast, deep, bowl-like depressions which are to be found all over the great plain, and the nearest village was four miles away. The place was approached by a rough cart track across the downs.
Smiler nodded as the Chink finished.
"Yes, as I thought—as I expected. I never made anything like a clean sweep of the place that time," he said. "But it taught the Colonel a lesson. He's been spending money. This will be a harder nut to crack than the old place. But he's certainly got something worth keeping if he's imported six cheetahs and two servants to help him take care of it."
Fortworth frowned.
"You can never tell just what these military guys who have lived in India in the old days are worth," he said. "We'd better have a look at this house. But we must go slow. This chap has been bit once—by you, and yours ain't any miniature mouth, old man—and he'll be pretty wide awake."
"Ah, well, these wide-awake sports are the easiest sometimes—if you approach 'em from the correct angle," said Smiler gaily.
Then they began leisurely to discuss the various methods of "doping it out" to cheetahs—with a view to finding the most efficient and practical one to apply to what they termed the Amberfold herd.
THE Bunn—Fortworth Combine had taken to canvas—without enthusiasm, for camping out is apt to be unsettling to people who are in the habit of facing and defeating four square meals per diem.
They had pitched their roving tent in a tiny bramble and scrubgrown gully just at the back of the big crater-like hollow in which was the Amberfold residence. A climb of about thirty yards from their camp would bring them to the summit of the hill, where, taking cover behind a clump of the down scrub that flourishes sparsely over the whole of the plain, they could comfortably watch the house and the people of the house. So near were they that, with the aid of the powerful binoculars with which they were provided, they could see into the rooms at the front of the house when the windows were open.
A morning's quiet reconnoitring, alleviated by cigars, corroborated Sing Song's account of the inmates of the big bleak-looking house. Colonel Amberfold, whom they saw pottering about the shabby verandah, was a little, withered-looking, bald old man, who appeared to live in a worn black-and-yellow dressing-gown. The housekeeper, they decided, seemed to be of a very superior kind of housekeeper indeed, and the odd-job man, her husband, looked like a person who had spent some little time in barracks—in a professional capacity.
Mr. Bunn, after prolonged study of the three people as, engaged on their duties or pleasures, they appeared and disappeared in and out of the house, shook his head.
"Those two aren't ordinary servants," he said. "Sing Song made a mistake when he placed them. They may do servants' work, but it ain't their line. I never saw a cook or a housekeeper carry herself like that dame down there."
Fortworth agreed, and they backed carefully over the ridge and down to their camp, where Sing Song was selecting a choice cold lunch from the bushel or so of provisions packed at the back of the big touring car.
"Well, as far as I can make it out from the Chink's report, Odd-Jobs goes into the village every evening for supplies and things, immediately after he's let the cheetahs loose. The Colonel and Mrs. Housekeeper are probably indoors then, and that seems to me the time to fix the animals," said Mr. Bunn.
Fortworth carved himself a man's slice of ham.
"The trouble about fixing the brutes permanently is that it shortens our time. If we fix 'em early in the evening it gives us just one night to hunt up these jewels—with three people sleeping in the house. Next morning they discover that the cheetahs are dead or missing, and that will put them wise to the game. They'll sit up with Gatling guns next night waiting for us rather than take any chances."
"You're right, Fortworth," said Smiler, signing to Sing Song to pour him out some more Madeira. "It won't do to put the brutes to sleep. We've got to make friends with 'em—get past 'em without hurting 'em. We must think this out."
But soon after lunch it was settled for them. Sing Song, having cleared away the things, had taken two fistfuls of food up to the ridge to eat while he watched the house. But the partners had not enjoyed more than forty hundred winks before the Chink aroused them.
"Policee coming acloss downs—two policee," he said excitedly. "Policee" might have been a magic word, so swiftly did the partners wake.
"How police?" Bunn sourly,
"Policee coming housee; bling cart with dead sheepee."
The partners hurried up the ridge to their reconnoitring point.
Comfortably hidden away behind the scrub, they saw an interesting little procession wending its way across the cart track to the house, a procession comprising two police constables, an excited bob-tailed sheep-dog, an even more excited farmer, two shepherds, and a boy leading a horse which drew a farm cart containing a heavy load of dead sheep. 'Through their glasses they saw that the fleeces of the sheep were shockingly torn and liberally flecked and bedabbled with blood.
The farmer was swearing angrily—his language was borne to the watchers on the hill by the wind.
"Blank the blank cheeters!" they heard him yell to the policemen. "This is the third blank time they worried my blank flock ... they ain't ... proper control ... blank wild beasts ... runnin' the blank downs every double-blank night... take the three-starred law in my own blank hands next time ... Heavy blank damages..."
The wind lulled, and the rest of it was lost. But they had heard enough. It sounded as though the night prowling of the cheetahs was about to be restricted.
They looked at each other in a congratulatory manner.
"We couldn't have picked a better time," breathed Mr. Bunn. Fortworth nodded behind his "cover," and again turned his glasses on the scene in the valley below.
The procession pulled up outside the house, and the parties thereto, with the exception of the small boy and the sheep-dog, entered the house. The snarling of the cheetahs, disturbed by the influx of strangers and the smell of blood from the carcasses in the cart, was plainly audible from their den at the side of the house.
Half-an-hour afterwards the sheep brigade came out again, accompanied by Miser Amberfold, a weird, shrunken little grasshopper of a man, with his black and yellow dressing-gown flapping about him.
He appeared to inspect the dead sheep.
Presently he nodded, handed a slip of paper to the farmer—it looked like a cheque—and the men began to unload the mutton cart and carry the carcasses into the back of the cheetahs' outhouse.
"And mind, Mr. Colonel Amberfold," came the robust voice of the farmer, "I've got your undertakin' in the presence of the police that these here wild beasts of your'n ain't allowed to run wild o' nights no more—me agreeing to send you five long chains and posts."
The Combine saw the jewel miser nod, and then the procession proceeded to wend its weary way home.
"This is a case for a bottle—a big 'un, no less," said Smiler Bunn, worming his way back over the brow of the hill, "These cheetahs are going to be kept shut up to-night, and chained up every night after the posts are made. I tell you, Fortworth, nothing can stand against us and our luck."
And they drank a beaker or two—or three—to their luck. Four beakers it might have been ... at any rate, there was nothing left for Sing Song out of a quart and a half of Mumm.
AT eight o'clock that evening they sent the hardy Chink over the hill-top with instructions to watch the house until the lights went from the ground floor to the first, and then to report the movements of the inmates to them, they meantime settling down to a tolerably nifty bout at poker—"freeze-outs"—in the snug shelter of the hood of the car, A cold rain had begun to fall at sunset, and the wind was rising, but this vagary of the elements was welcome, The greater the noise of the wind the less chance of their being overheard presently. As for Sing Song, the scout, is yellow hide was waterproof, anyway, as Fortworth commented. He was a good watchman, faithful, like a reliable house-dog, continued the ex-Baron, and by proving it tonight he stood an excellent chance of making money—perhaps.
Sing Song grinned and went.
At ten o'clock he prowled back to the camp.
"One lightee gone upstails—one lightee left downstails," he reported.
"Make a note of the upstairs room which is occupied, and come back when the other light's gone," muttered Smiler, intent on three kings and a pair of aces with which he was on the point of scientifically cannibalising his partner's whole available supply of ready money.
Sing Song merged with the darkness again.
An hour later he was back.
"Upstails lightee out long time," he said. "Downstails lightee velly funny. Him dim—low down. Movee all ovel house. Like people huntee—movee flom loom to loom lookee for findee somet'ing. You coming now, please, mastels."
The partners followed him, a little puzzled, and for the next twenty minutes they stood watching the eccentric behaviour of the light carried by the person or persons downstairs. From the manner in which it showed dimly through the streaming rain, first at one window, then another, then another, then returned to gleam at the first window, it was obvious that someone in the house was moving quickly from room to room, as though they were "lookee for findee somet'ing," as Sing Song put it.
"I bet a dinner that so-called housekeeper and her husband are down there prospecting for jewels," said Smiler suddenly. "I knew they weren't any ordinary menial sports when I saw 'em first through my glasses. It looks to me that the sooner we weigh in down there the better—hey, Fortworth?"
"Sure!" muttered the ex-millionaire. "Come on!"
They started down the hill in teeth of the gale.
It was pitch dark, and the rain did not help to make the going any easier. Twice a rabbit-hole laid Lord Fortworth low, and once a mole-hill performed the same kind office for Mr. Bunn. The fretful, vicious snarling of the cheetahs broke intermittently on their ears; but it was not more fretful than the language which the partners ejected with the grass that they had quite involuntarily taken into their mouths as they fell.
In a few moments they had scaled the low stone wall and were under the lee of the house, where they paused a moment. The cheetahs' den was to the right of them and round a corner. Sing Song, who appeared to know his way blindfold, guided them across a wet lawn, and they halted noiselessly outside the window of the ground-floor room in which the dim light was burning.
They listened a moment, but whatever the person with the light was doing he was doing noiselessly. Then, quite suddenly, the light disappeared, leaving the whole of that side of the house in darkness.
"Run round and see if there are any other lights about, Sing," whispered Smiler, straining his eyes in an effort to see through the window and the half-opened slats of the Venetian-blind inside.
"Black as a tank," he muttered. "They've all gone to bed at last."
Sing Song appeared silently, his eyes gleaming. He had made a complete circuit of the house.
"Lightee allee gone," he reported.
"Good," said Smiler, and fell noiselessly to work on the catch of the window. Under his capable manipulation the catch was "caught" within a few seconds, and a moment later Mr. Bunn was in the room. The others followed.
They listened for awhile; then, reassured, were on the point of drawing out their electric torches when there broke upon the silent darkness a scream of agony, seeming to proceed from under their very feet. It shuddered up through the night, piercing, appalling, intolerable. And from the den of the cheetahs, as that wild note of pain reached them, burst an excited clamour of short coughing roars that, though not so dreadful, perhaps, as those of tigers, nevertheless were sufficient to string taut the nerves of the startled trio listening in the dark room. The scream died away in a sort of moaning wail, but was followed by a sound that was little less terrible—the deep sound of a strong man, mad with rage and pain, bellowing his wrath upon an enemy. 'The voice rumbled under their feet like the deep-throated snarling of some great beast.
"Hark to that—my God! What's going on in this house?" growled Fortworth, flashing a beam of light on his partner. Mr. Bunn's face was white and hard as marble, so that the lines about his mouth seemed to be painted there with black paint. The eyes of the Chinaman were narrow glinting slits like those of a wild cat.
"It came from the cellar," said Smiler. "It was a woman who screamed. We'd better go down there and see what's wrong."
"Sure!" Fortworth's teeth set with the snap of a rat-trap. "It sounds as though some woman was being tortured."
"Tortured! Oh, hell—I can't stand for that!" gritted Mr. Bunn. "Come on!"
The three torches blazed out like miniature searchlights, and for a second they paused in astonishment. The room was aflame with light; it flashed and flared and spurted from the walls in a myriad colours—hot reds and glaring greens, purples, blues, yellows—flickering, scintillating, dancing. It was as though the walls and ceiling were encrusted with huge diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, fire opal—an Aladdin's cave, the treasure-house of a Rajah.
"Gee!" said Fortworth.
But their wonder was momentarily quenched as another scream echoed through the house.
"Come on, quick!" Mr. Bunn, moving with the cat-like quietness that is characteristic of many big men, made for the door. Passing through, he caught out of the corer of his eye the glitter of a wicked-looking knife in Sing Song's hand. He wheeled on the Chink tigerishly.
"Put up that knife, you yellow snake, or I'll break you up. How many times have I told you we don't deal in murder. Take it, Fortworth."
Fortworth's finger clamped on the Chink's wrist.
"Give up!" he said in a growling whisper.
Sing Song gave up.
Hunting swiftly along a corridor, they came to an open door at the head of a flight of steps, up which shone a faint light. A hot blast of sulphurous air beat against their faces, as though a stove were burning in the cellar.
"Here!" whispered Smiler, and crept down the stone stairs.
But, despite their caution, they were overheard. A little figure, grotesquely arrayed in a loose dressing gown, shot suddenly into view at the bottom of the steps, a revolver in his hand.
He swung up the weapon and fired point-blank, even as Mr. Bunn jumped at him from the fifth step upwards.
It was the only shot fired, for Smiler blotted the little man out as a falling wall might blot out a dog.
They went down with a thud that shook the house. Fortworth and the Chink were beside them in an instant. But Smiler rose without assistance, looking a little dazed. His head had struck a glancing blow on the bottom step.
"It's—all ri'!" he gasped.
They bent over the unconscious form of the Colonel.
"Look after him, Sing—see if anything's broken. I'm no tiptoed ballet-dancer when I fall on folk," said Smiler. He lifted his hand, and it was scarlet. His left sleeve was drenched with blood.
"He shot me in the arm; nothing serious," he grumbled.
Fortworth helped him off with his coat, and, not unskilfully, bound up with a couple of handkerchiefs the ragged gash which the bullet had ploughed along the forearm.
Someone shouted hoarsely from the left wing of the cellar.
"For God's sake lend us a hand here, whoever you are!"
The partners went.
They found themselves in a dry, spacious, brick-lined vault, in the middle of which stood a brazier of red-hot coke, with two pokers thrust between the bars. Near the brazier, facing each other across it, were a man and a woman, each securely roped to one of the several barrels which stood along the walls of the cellar.
The head of the woman hung down laxly as though she had fainted. The man, a big, handsome fellow, had an enormous bruise on his temple, and on his left cheek was an angry red burn. His eyes glared.
Fortworth cut the woman loose and gently laid her on the floor, But Smiler hesitated a moment before he freed the man. He could guess what had happened.
"It's all right now, you know," he said quietly. "We're friends. I think I've half killed Colonel Amberfold. Jumped on him—"
The glare in the eyes of the bound man died down a little.
"You can afford to let him alone; he's got his gruel," continued Smiler.
The man nodded.
"Right. I understand. I'll be good. You can cut now," he said. Smiler cut the ropes, and the man swung forward—free.
He stood still, staring rather wildly for a moment, then hurried over to the unconscious woman, lifted her lightly as a feather pillow, and turned to the steps. On his way he kicked the brazier across the cellar with a savage fury that was almost terrifying. Then, stepping over the prostrate Colonel, whose eyes were open and looking up in a bewildered stare, he went on up the flight of steps.
"See to the old man, Sing Song," said Smiler sotto voce, and the partners followed the man with the burn on his cheek.
He lay the woman on a big shabby couch in the hall.
"He never touched her—thank God!" he said in a quivering voice, and bent over her as she drew a long, sighing breath, stirred restlessly and opened her eyes.
"Hush! my dear—don't worry—it's all right now, old lady. Quite. It's Jack..."
His head bent over hers, and he slipped an arm round her shoulder.
"Steady old girl—take it easy," he whispered. She sobbed strangely—on the edge of hysteria. There was a pause, and suddenly the man rose.
"Good!" he said, in a normal tone.
The woman sat up on the couch, with a rather tremulous laugh, her hands going instinctively to her disordered hair.
"It was horrible!" she said. "But I'm all right now. But your cheek—did it touch you, Jack?" She stood up quickly, and saw the red mark.
"Oh-h! I'll get some oil for it," she gasped, and hurried out, The man turned to the partners.
"My wife and I have a great regard for each other," he said simply. "I am sorry to keep you waiting. How, in the name of Good Luck, did you happen to appear at the exact psychological second?"
"Oh, we are motor-touring—lost our way—saw a light, came to inquire, and heard a scream," explained Smiler airily, "Our car is over the brow of the hill."
"I see—what marvellous luck!"
"My name is Huish—Coomber Huish—and this is my friend, Mr. Morris White," said Smiler introductorily. "The Chinaman's our chauffeur." The other nodded, smiling strangely.
"I do not deny it—naturally," he said. "But—forgive me—I suggest that perhaps we should save time by being frank. I happened to hear early this morning from a humble friend of mine—a hare poacher—that you were camping over the hillside. I guessed what you were after. As it happened, we were after the same thing. The jewels, of course. I'll explain. Colonel Amberfold is my uncle. When he came here to live he stopped an allowance he had been in the habit of making me—I was in the Army—and I was compelled to send in my papers. At my uncle's wish, we came here to live with him. He is enormously wealthy, and I am his heir. He invited us as guests, but made servants of us. I stood it as long as possible for my wife's sake—she has been accustomed to a better state of financial circumstances than mine, and—my uncle is very rich. But latterly he has become unendurable—he is a jewel miser, as no doubt you know—and I decided to take what I consider we have well earned and go. He surprised us hunting for the jewels which are hidden all over the house—surprised us"—he indicated the big bruise on his temple—"and managed to drag us down to the cellar, where he proposed to brand us as thieves. He would have done so—he's half-crazy, you know—but, fortunately, you arrived. That's all it is necessary to explain, I think. Naturally, I haven't the impudence to blame you for attempting to annex the jewels—I was doing the same, perhaps with more justification, though—and I shall be for ever indebted to you and that very capable-looking Celestial in the cellar. I suggest now that you quietly clear out, and leave me to handle things. Don't be afraid I shall hurt the old man. We shall patch it up. He is not mad enough to want to settle this thing in public. Leave him to me. We'll call it a family squabble. But I hope you will allow me to persuade you to take away a souvenir of—an interesting evening. I shall take it as a favour. You see, we had a little luck before we woke the old man."
He took his hand from his pocket, and opened it so that the contents fell upon the table—a fistful of superb rubies.
"These are nothing to what is hidden in the house, of course, but—I must reserve those for myself. Naturally." He smiled.
The partners reflected.
"You're a cool card," said Smiler at length. "Of course we only did for you what any gentleman would do for another. Still, after all, as you say, rubies are rubies."
"And these are no fake rubies either," added Fortworth, who had been examining them. Among other roles which the ex-millionaire had adopted in the past was that of ruby-prospector in Burma, and he knew about rubies.
"Very well, then, since you insist."
Smiler put the jewels in his pocket. Fortworth indicated the great clusters and knobs of glass that flashed and sparkled from the walls and angles of the room.
"Ornaments?" he queried.
Mr. John Amberfold laughed.
"My uncle's idea of artistic decoration. Glass and cheap paste and prisms. He thinks a diamond is the most artistic and beautiful thing on earth, and a good imitation the next best."
Smiler nodded thoughtfully.
"Not such a fool as he looks," he mused aloud. "He may be cracked and a miser, but he's got some sound ideas."
Mrs. Amberfold came in with some oil for application to her husband's face.
"While you are being put right, we'll fetch the old man up," volunteered Mr. Bunn, and they were on the point of doing so when the Colonel, rather white and shaky, entered, leaning on Sing Song's strong right arm. Evidently the fall had jarred him, but by a miracle nothing was broken.
The Colonel sat down.
"Jack," he said to his nephew, "we have not cut a very pretty figure to-night. I think the best thing we can do is to forget it all. Since my fall I seem to have seen things more clearly. I think I must have been partly insane for the last few years. Certainly I was to-night. We—we must change things..."
Messrs. Bunn and Fortworth looked at each other. Evidently, thanks to Smiler throwing his weight into the scale, as it were, some subtle psychological change had taken place in the old man. A blow on the head often has queer and unexpected effects. It was plain that a family reconciliation was about to take place, and since they could not claim to be members of the family, obviously there was little or nothing to be gained by remaining. On the other hand, it was even conceivable that much might be lost.
"I think that, on the whole, here is where we step off," said Smiler blandly.
John Amberfold smiled, and not less blandly replied:
"Perhaps it is better so."
They bowed and departed, climbing the hill to the music of the cheetahs.
"He'd have made a fine crook," said Fortworth thoughtfully, referring to John Amberfold, as they reached the car.
"Yes. Champagne, Sing Song."
The Chink stretched out his fist.
"What's this, my son?" asked Smiler.
"Takee flom old man's pocket."
He poured into his master's palm a selection of loose diamonds as big as hazel-nuts.
"So you had the presence of mind to go through his clothes, did you, my lad. Well, all the more credit to you. You're a very good lad, and I shall have to think about giving you a rise one of these days. Now open a bottle and look alive. We'd better be on the London road before dawn, You never know how long these family reconciliations are going to last," he added to Fortworth, who agreed.
The loot panned out at about nine thousand pounds. Some months later, out of sheer curiosity, they made inquiries about the Amberfolds. Evidently the Colonel's cure was permanent, for he had bought a lordly estate in Sussex, and when he was not employed in desperately striving to knock a stroke or so off a handicap of twenty-four, he seemed to spend his time chiefly in writing letters to the Press trying to institute a campaign against the wearing of jewellery. For his nephew, John Amberfold, and his wife, nothing appeared to be too good.
"On the whole," said Mr. Bunn, summing up one day after lunch, "on the whole, we seem to have been very good friends to that family. They owe a good deal to us, when you come to think of it."
Fortworth smiled his hard smile.
"Yes," he said, "they do. Perhaps the Colonel has remembered the fact in his will," he added humorously.
"Yes—perhaps," replied Mr. Bunn.
"Perhaps" was right!
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.