Money in the Bank (15 page)

"That's right. Make fun of Uncle George's feet."

"Thanks awfully. I'd love to. Let's both make fun of them. The old fathead, subjecting you to a fearful ordeal like that."

"Do you feel you know me well enough to call my uncle an old fathead?"

"I feel as if I had known you all my life. I'm sure you will find, when you look into it, that we have been married for years, without knowing it."

The operative word "married" had a sobering effect on Anne. She had temporarily thrust from her mind Lord Uffenham's statement in the car that this agreeable young man was in love with her, and had given herself up wholeheartedly to the pleasant give and take of this conversation. It was not often nowadays that she was able to enjoy the lighter type of conversational exchange. The male residents of Shipley Hall were solid, earnest men, too conscious of their mission to allow themselves to indulge in badinage.   And Lionel, though he looked like a Greek god, had always been a little heavy in hand.

It had been wrong of her, she now saw, to lower quite so completely the barriers between herself and Jeff. It was what censorious critics of an earlier age would have stigmatised as "encouraging" one for whom there was, of course, no hope.

She gave a little shiver.

"Cold?" asked Jeff, as she had expected him to do. "I am, rather."

"Then let us go in. I can talk just as well indoors. Some people say better."

They walked towards the sunken garden. Above the wall which separated it from the lawn there were visible the head and shoulders of Mrs. Molloy. She seemed to be engaged in toying with the tendrils of some trailing shrub which had been planted in a stone vase of antique appearance. And it occurred to Jeff that here was an excellent opportunity of delivering that veiled warning, which in his opinion was so highly necessary.

"There's Mrs. Molloy."

"Yes."

"Don't look now." said Jeff, "but what do you think of her?"

" She seems quite nice."

"She doesn't strike you as sinister?"

"Not a bit. Does she you?"

"Very much so."

"I suppose almost everybody seems sinister to a detective."

"Well,  one's trained instinct enables one to probe beneath the surface, of course.   There's not much you can hide from the bloodstain and magnifying-glass boys. I have a feeling that these Molloys will bear watching They may be crooks."

"That's what Mr. Trumper thinks."

"Does he, the shrewd little half-portion?"

"He came to me the other day, and asked me to use my influence with Mrs. Cork to prevent her buying oil stock from Mr. Molloy. Unfortunately, I have no influence with Mrs. Cork. But go on. I don't see what harm they can do to us, even if they are as crooked as corkscrews."

"How about those diamonds?"

"What do you mean?"

"Suppose they get after them?"

"But they don't know they exist."

"They may get to know at any moment. Mrs. Molloy often goes and hobnobs with your uncle in his pantry. He might easily let slip something."

"He wouldn't."

"He might."

" Of course, he wouldn't. He's not crazy."

"Who told you that?"

It seemed to Anne that the moment had arrived to crush this young man. She liked him. Indeed, she could not remember ever having liked anyone so much on such short acquaintance. But she felt that he needed the firm, repressive hand. She walked on a few paces, then stopped and, facing him coldly, prepared to speak.

It was at this point in the proceedings that the antique vase, suddenly becoming a thing of movement, fell with a crash on the pavement at her side, and she gave a little scream and postponed her observations.

Jeff was blaming himself bitterly. He should have known better, he
was
telling himself, than to have come within a hundred yards of Mrs. Molloy and an antique vase, one of the most dangerous combinations in existence, especially when in the company of Anne Benedick. His sentiments towards Anne were now so clearly defined that he would have felt uneasy if he had seen a rose petal fluttering down upon her precious head. Her narrow escape from receiving an antique vase on the back of the neck shook him to his foundations, so that the world seemed to swim about him and he scarcely knew what he was doing.

A cold voice spoke through the mists.

"Would you mind letting me go, please?" He discovered what he was doing. He was clasping Anne protectively to his bosom.

" Oh, sorry," he said, and released her. Anne, who had been white, was pink. "Thank you," she said.

A silence followed. Jeff was feeling oddly breathless. For the first time, he found himself swinging over towards the school of thought represented by Lord Uffenham, wondering whether, after all, there might not be something in the latter's crudely expressed but not unintelligent counsel. There had unquestionably been something about the feel of Anne's slender body in his arms that had seemed to satisfy some deep hunger in his soul.

Mrs. Molloy came hurrying through the door in the wall, concern on every feature of her piquant face.

"Gee!" she cried. "It didn't hit you, did it? I wouldn't have had a thing like that happen for a million dollars."

Nothing could have been more admirably in keeping with the solemnity of the moment than her pretty solicitude, yet Jeff eyed her with something of the repulsion which he would have bestowed upon a cobra di capella, a reptile of which he had never been fond.

"I happened to kind of lean against it, and it suddenly sort of toppled over. Gosh, I am sorry!"

"It's quite all right," said Anne. "It only gave me rather a start."

"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 there'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."