Money in the Bank (2 page)

"Good. Well, you will have no excuse, if you don't win the case. Father says the defendant hasn't a leg to stand on."

"Awkward, if he wants to roller-skate."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"You said something about roller-skating."

"No, I didn't."

"Who has been roller-skating?"

"Let it go, let it go. Don't give the matter another thought. Yes, I shall win, all right. I anticipate a sensational triumph."

"Well, we must hope for the best."

"Exactly what your father said."

"I shall be very annoyed if you don't win. All you have to do is follow Father's instructions. Mind you are respectful to the judge. Don't mumble. Don't grin. Don't hesitate. Be sure what you are going to say, and say it clearly and crisply. And your hair. See that it is tidy. But I was forgetting. You will be wearing a wig. Well, that is all, I think. Good-bye."

"Good-bye," said Jeff.

He replaced the receiver, and went to the window and stood there, looking out, his hands in his pockets, a frown on his face. Nature had intended him to be a cheerful, even exuberant young man, of ready laugh and face-splitting grin, but there was in his demeanour now a deep dejection. In the gutter below, sparrows were chirping their madrigals, but he showed no disposition to take the bass.

He could see no ray of hope on the horizon. With the feeling, which was his constant companion nowadays, for the wedding was fixed for the fifth of July and it was already the tenth of June, that if anybody cared to describe him as some wild thing taken in a trap, which sees the trapper coming through the woods, it would be all right with him, he threw a moody banana skin at the loudest of the sparrows, and went back into the room.

CHAPTER II

Immediately opposite Halsey Chambers, face to face with it across the narrow court, stands Halsey Buildings. It is a ramshackle edifice given over to stuffy little offices, whose proprietors consider that the privilege of printing the magic word "Mayfair" on their notepaper compensates for the lack of ventilation. And at the time at which this story begins, the window of the third floor bore the legend in large black letters:

J.
S
HERINGHAM
A
DAIR

(Private Investigator)

On the morning of the day following the trying of the case of Pennefather
v.
Tarvin, there turned in at the entrance of Halsey Court and started to make her way towards Halsey Buildings a young woman of stylish appearance and a certain rather bold and challenging beauty. Her golden hair gleamed brassily, her lips were ruddier than the cherry and her eyes sparkling and vivacious.

But they were not the sort of eyes which go with a meek and contrite heart, and one doubts if someone like the late John Knox would have taken to her very much. For, though a pleasing spectacle, she bore about her to the discerning gaze that subtle aura which stamps a girl as one of those at whose approach the prudent host packs away his knick-knacks and locks up the spoons. Her name was Dolly Molloy, and she was the bride of one Soapy Molloy, a share-pusher of some distinction.

Halsey Court was still its dishevelled self, and Dolly, as fastidious a girl as ever swiped a bottle of scent when the shopkeeper was not looking, eyed it askance. It was with a frown of distaste on her attractive face that she mounted the echoing stone stairs of Halsey Buildings and with the handle of her parasol—a present, though that institution was not aware of it, from Jarrow's Stores (Novelty Dept.)—rapped on the grimy glass of the door marked "J. Sheringham Adair."

It is, of course, practically impossible for anyone really to have a name like J. Sheringham Adair, and it may be stated at once that the man who had established himself opposite Jeff Miller's flat missed it by a wide margin. He was a dubious character called Twist, known to his intimates as Chimp. And at the moment when the staccato sound of ivory impinging on glass broke in upon his peace, he was seated at his desk, consuming a frugal lunch.

The abrupt intimation that an unexpected caller had arrived brought him to his feet in sudden agitation, choking on a sandwich. As one whose business methods had led him to incur a good deal of displeasure in a good many quarters in his time, he always quailed when his privacy was invaded without appointment. Too often, on such occasions, he had been compelled to jump out of windows or to hide in cupboards. Indeed, his first act now was to cast a quick glance at the spacious closet behind his desk, and he had already started to make a move in its direction, when the door opened and the discovery of the intruder's sex stilled his alarm. A moment later, he was himself again.   He had recognised an old acquaintance.

"Well, well, well," he cried. Mrs. Molloy was not a woman of whom he was fond, but relief lent an almost effusively welcoming note to his voice. "Well, well, well, look who's here. Come along in and sit down, Dolly, Take the clean chair."

"What clean chair?" asked the visitor, establishing herself, after an inspection which might have pained a more sensitive man, on a corner of the desk. "Are you trying to grow mustard and cress in here, or sump'n? Well, Chimp, it's a long time since we run across each other. You look about the same as ever."

This, if true, was rather a pity, for Mr. Twist's appearance could scarcely but have been improved by alteration. Pie was a small man with the face of an untrustworthy monkey, the sort of monkey other monkeys would have shrunk from allowing to come within arm's reach of their nut ration, and, not content with Nature's handiwork, had superimposed on his upper lip a waxed moustache of singular hideousness. Nevertheless, he appeared to regard the remark as a tribute.

"Sure, I keep pretty good," he said, curling the growth with a toothpick. "How's Soapy?"

A cloud seemed to pass over Dolly's face. A keen ear might have detected a tremor in her voice, as she replied that Soapy was all right.

"And what brings you around?"

" Well, I happened to be in these parts, and I thought I'd look in. I'd sort of like your advice about something. And then there's that five smackers Soapy loaned you getting on for over a year ago and not a yip out of you since. I'll collect that while I'm here."

"Soapy never loaned me any five smackers."

"I've got your note in my bag."

"I paid it him. Sure, that's right. I remember now. It all comes back to me."

"And now it's coming back to Soapy."

Mr. Twist seemed cast down for an instant, but only for an instant. He was a resilient man.

"Well, we'll get round to that later," he said. "What do you want advice about?"

The rather predatory gleam which had been lighting up his visitor's lustrous eyes died away, and she heaved a sigh, like one about to reveal a secret sorrow. She dabbed at her nose with a delicate cambric handkerchief, one of a set of twelve for which a prominent West End haberdasher had been looking everywhere since he had last enjoyed her patronage.

" I'm kind of worried, Chimp."

"What about?"

"Soapy."

"I thought you would be one of these days. You were a sap to marry him," said Mr. Twist. His association with the absent Mr. Molloy had been a long rather than an affectionate one. He could never forget the numerous occasions on which he, Mr. Molloy, had double-crossed him, Mr. Twist, just when he, Mr. Twist, was preparing to double-cross him, Mr. Molloy. "What's the trouble? Has he started playing the old Army game?"

"It sort of looks like it."

"The big chunk of boloney."

"I'd be glad," said Dolly, with womanly dignity, "if you wouldn't call my husband chunks of boloney."

"What else is there to call him?" asked Chimp. "Slice him where you like, that's what he still is."

Mrs. Molloy bit a brightly coloured lip, but she refrained from the belligerent retort which had trembled on it. Chimp Twist, whatever his defects, and no one was more alive to these than she, was a man of recognized judgment and acumen, and she was a stranger in a strange land and had nobody else to whom to take a young wife's problems. In her native Chicago, there were a dozen knowledgeable Solons in whom she could have confided the anxieties which were gnawing her bosom, with a reasonable certainty of getting aid and comfort. She could even have consulted Dorothy Dix. But this was England, and her advisory committee far away, probably behind bars. Except Miss Dix, of course.

Chimp returned to the matter in hand. His was a nasty little mind, that took pleasure in other people's recitals of their troubles. He anticipated particular enjoyment from a parade of the Molloy family skeletons.

"What's he been doing?"

"Well, it's this dame.  I don't like the way he's acting. I think there's compus-boompus going on."

"What dame?"

"This dame he keeps sauntering in the rose garden with at this Shipley Hall place down in Kent, where we're visiting. They go off into this rose garden together, and she pins fragrant blooms in his buttonhole."

Mr. Twist seemed incredulous.

"She pins fragrant blooms in Soapy's buttonhole?"

"That's right."

"In
Soapy's
buttonhole?"

"That's what she does."

"She must be nuts."

Again, Mrs. Molloy was forced to bite her lip, and again she reminded herself how sorely she needed this man's advice.

"Twice I've caught her at it. I didn't like the look on his face, neither. Sort of soppy. Her name's Cork," said Dolly, in an aggrieved voice, as if this somehow made it worse. "Mrs. Wellesley Cork. Soapy met her somewheres, and she told him about this joint she was running at this place she's rented from some lord or other, and Soapy would have it that we go visit there. It's a sort of crazy joint. You eat vegetables and breathe deep and dance around in circles. It's supposed to be swell for the soul."

The description of the Clarissa Cork colony for the promotion of plain living and high thinking was not a very lucid one, but Chimp nodded understandingly.

"I know the sort of thing you mean. Yogi stuff."

"Please yourself. Your guess is as good as mine. The place seems to me like a booby-hatch. I wouldn't mind breathing deep, if I was allowed to stoke up first, but all these vegetables are getting me down. When I reach for the knife and fork, I like to feel there's something in the old nosebag I can dig my teeth into. A little more of it, and I'll be cutting out paper dolls and sticking straws in my hair. The butler's gone bugs already."

"I've sometimes thought of starting a racket like that myself," said Mr. Twist reflectively. "There's money in it. But tell me more. Does Soapy dance around in circles?"

"Sure."

"The big stiff. I hope he strains a muscle. What's that you
were saying about the butler? Gone bugs, has he?"

"He could step straight into Bloomingdale, and no questions asked. He wanders around the place like a lost spirit, with a strange, fixed look on his pan, like he was seeing visions or sump'n. And guess what. I found him in my room yesterday, burrowing under the dressing-table. Yessir, sticking up from under the dressing-table like Pike's Peak, and had the nerve to say he was looking for a funny smell. Funny smell, my foot. There wasn't a sign of any funny smell."

Mr. Twist agreed that this sounded, at the most charitable estimate, borderline stuff. He said with some interest that he had never seen a loony butler—adding, in this connection, that he would rather see than be one.

"Yay," said Doily. "It's certainly the by-Goddest joint I was ever in. But I didn't come here to talk about that. What do you make of this thing of Soapy and this dame? Talk quick. I've got to get a train in a minute."

Mr. Twist gave his verdict without hesitation. He had little faith in his fellow men and none in Soapy Molloy.

"The sooner you form a flying wedge and break up the play, the better off you'll be," he replied, with all the emphasis at his disposal. "He is your man, and he's doing you wrong."

Dolly nodded sombrely. He had but confirmed her own view.

"That's the way I feel. This Cork dame is rich. Got it in gobs. And what I've been asking myself is, what's to prevent Soapy ditching me and making a pass at her? She. would be a pushover for him. He's full of sex appeal, the sweet old pieface," said Dolly, with a sort of mournful wifely pride. "And he's just at what you might call the dangerous age. Young enough to have preserved that schoolgirl complexion, and old enough to have gotten tired of work and be looking around for a rich wife to take him away from it all."

"You watch him like a hawk, and if you get the goods on him, jump on his neck."

"You don't think it's just that he's sort of being civil, what with her being his hostess and all like that, what I mean?"

"No, I don't."

"Nor me," said Dolly regretfully. "Well, I must be getting along, or I'll miss that train. Been nice, seeing you."

"Drop in any time you're passing. That'll be five smackers."

"What'll be five smackers?"

"My professional advice. Slip me that note of mine, and we'll call it square."

Dolly Molloy quivered like a wounded deer.

"Five smackers for a measly coupla words which I'd practically made up my mind already to do like what you said? You've got a nerve."

"We Mayfair consultants come high," said Mr. Twist complacently. "Matter of fact, you're sitting pretty. Sherlock Holmes used to get jewelled snuff-boxes."

Only a womanly fear of missing a train could have kept his client from lingering to express her opinion of him in blistering Chicagoese. But time was flying. She opened her bag, and placed a piece of paper on the desk. Too late, she was reminding herself that Alexander Twist had never been the man easily to be got the better of in a business transaction. It was precisely this keen commercial sense of his which had rendered spacious cupboards, into which to withdraw from exasperated callers, so necessary to his well-being.

Her heart was heavy, as she sped in the express towards the picturesque Kentish village of Shipley. A now solidified suspicion of a loved husband, coupled with the thought that there would be only spinach and potatoes for dinner, had robbed her entirely of her usual effervescence. Moodily she alighted at her destination, and with drawn brows started on the short walk up the hill to Shipley Hall.