Money in the Bank (29 page)

"Sozzled?"

"Fried. Plastered. Ossified. Oh, hell," said Dolly, impatient, as so many of her compatriots had found themselves when in England, at the slowness of comprehension of the aborigines.   "Drunk."

"Drunk!"

"He's got a load on that would sink an ocean liner."

Mr. Trumper squeaked amazedly.

"Bless my soul! Are you sure?"

"Sure?" repeated Dolly, weighing the question. "Well, no, I'm not sure. I'm only guessing. The bozo may be a strict teetotaller, for all I know. I'm just going by the fact that he's in the cellar, singing comic songs and breaking bottles."

"Breaking bottles?"

"Yay. He seemed to be using a hatchet on them. All except one. That was the one he loosed off at me when I poked my head in at the door and said 'Hello, what goes on?' It missed my perm by an inch, and I backed out. sort of feeling that I'd best not get mixed up in what begun to look like a vulgar brawl. I reckoned the thing to do was to come and hand in my report to you."

"You did quite rightly. I will attend to this."

Mr. Trumper was squeaking incredulously.

"This is most extraordinary. He seemed perfectly normal at dinner."

"No," said Mrs. Cork. "I remember now noticing that there was a wild gleam in his eyes. No doubt he had been drinking like a fish all the afternoon."

There was disapproval in her voice, but mingled with it a certain note of satisfaction, even of relief. Except in print where it can be investigated by Inspector Purvis and his like, everybody hates a mystery, and the enigma of Cakebread had been vexing her intensely. Dolly's story had made everything clear. All that was wrong with Cakebread, it now appeared, was that he was a secret dipsomaniac. She knew where she was with dipsomaniacs. Many of her most intimate acquaintances in Africa had been native chiefs who could never say No when the Cape gin was circulating.

"He is in the cellar, you say? I will go and see him at once."

"Better take a battle-axe or sump'n."

Mr. Trumper again proved how invaluable he was when there was any job to be done, any little thing to be fetched. He galloped into the drawing-room and came back with the poker.

"Take this, Clarissa."

"Thank you, Eustace."

"I will come with you."

"There is no necessity."

"I would prefer it," said Mr. Trumper, with quiet decision, and Dolly, too, announced her intention of making one of the party.

The procession passed through the green baize door, and by stone-flagged passages and worn stone steps came to the cellar. Its door stood open, but no sounds of revelry proceeded from beyond it.

Mrs. Cork peered in. Mr. Trumper and Dolly exchanged whispers in her rear.

"He seems very quiet," said Mr. Trumper.

"Just biding his time," said Dolly.

Mrs. Cork gave tongue, speaking with a sharp imperiousness. Her nerves were of chilled steel, but this uncanny silence was having its effect on them. When a butler has received wide publicity as a bottle-breaker, you expect to find him breaking bottles. If he merely lurks, you are disconcerted.

"Cakebread!"

The silence continued.

"Cakebread!"

More silence. It was as if this butler were crouching for the spring.

"Perhaps he has gone," suggested Mr. Trumper hopefully.

"No," said Dolly. "I can see his eyes gleaming over there at the back."

The statement was like a bugle call to Mrs. Cork. It was never her way to stand bandying words when there was a possibility of action. Grasping the poker, she strode into the darkness, and Eustace Trumper, with only the merest suspicion of a pause, strode in after her.

He had scarcely crossed the threshold, a little weak about the knees but conscious that this was a far, far better thing that he did than he had ever done, when the door slammed behind him and he heard the key turn in the lock.

Anne, meanwhile, on her way to the garden to round up stragglers, had reached the terrace. About to cross it, she halted abruptly. Out of the corner of her eye, she had seen that the lights were on in Mrs. Cork's study. And the sudden thought came to her that she had been the last person in it. Her employer had sent her there only a quarter of an hour before to fetch a copy of A Woman In The Wilds, extracts from which she wished to incorporate in her lecture.

Bowed down with the sense of guilt which weighs on those who leave lights on in unoccupied rooms, she hurried in through the french windows to repair her negligence, and found that the room was far from being unoccupied. The first thing she saw in it was England's least likeable scrum-half, J. G. Miller. His back was towards her, and he was making encouraging noises to something on the floor, at the moment obscured from her view by the desk. Moving closer, she found that this something was a substantial trouser-seat. It was jutting out from the interior of a cupboard, and the eye of love told her that it was a trouser-seat she knew—that of her uncle, George, sixth Viscount Uffenham.

An intelligent girl, she should have realised that if her uncle's rear elevation was sticking out of cupboards, it was because he was prospecting for diamonds there. But the strenuous day through which she had passed must have dulled her senses, for the spectacle surprised her.

"What---" she began, and Jeff soared into the air like a man practising for the Standing High Jump. And simultaneously what Inspector Purvis would have recognized as a dull, sickening thud told that the last of the Uffenhams had bumped his head on the roof of the cupboard.

Jeff, turning in mid-air, had been enabled to identify this addition to their little gathering.

"Oh, hullo," he said, cordially. "Come on in. You're just in time."

It was open to Anne to draw herself to her full height and stare coldly at him without speaking. But no red-blooded girl, agog with inquisitiveness, can pursue a settled policy of aloof silence even towards the dregs of the human species, when such dregs seem to be in a position to provide first-hand information on the point which is perplexing her.

"What on earth are you doing?" she cried.

Jeff was brief and to the point. Good news need not be broken gently.

"We've found 'em!"

Anne gasped.

"The diamonds?"

"Yes. All over but the cheering."

Lord Uffenham backed out of the cupboard like a performing elephant entering an arena the wrong way round. With one hand he was rubbing his head, with the other he clutched a large tobacco jar.

"Here they are, my dear. But I wish you wouldn't speak suddenly like that. Not at such a moment."

Jeff could not subscribe to this view. The long, enthralling conversation he had just had with this girl had refreshed him as rain refreshes the parched earth. It was true that the shock her voice had given him had turned his hair white and probably affected his heart permanently, but if she liked to speak suddenly, he felt, by all means let her speak suddenly. The great thing was to get her speaking.

"Yerss," said Lord Uffenham. "Here they are."

"Then stick 'em up!" said a strong, firm, manly voice, and Mr. Molloy walked jauntily in, preceded by the pistol.

CHAPTER
XXVII

At his last appearance in this chronicle, it may be remembered, Soapy Molloy was far from being in debonair mood. Introduced to the pistol which he was now bearing with such a flourish, like a carefree waiter carrying an order of chipped potatoes, he had quailed visibly, as if he had found himself fondling a scorpion. Nobody, seeing him then, could possibly have mistaken him for the Happy Warrior, and a word or two will be necessary to explain why he now walked jauntily and spoke in a strong, firm, manly voice.

It was to the thoughtfulness and tact of his wife that this altered deportment was due. His perturbation had not gone unnoticed by Dolly, and her first act after Chimp Twist had left the room had been to give him a couple of shots from a bottle of brandy which she had begged from Lord Uffenham and kept stowed away, ready for emergencies, in a drawer underneath her step-ins.

Brandy, like port, has the disadvantage that it is not good for the figure, but Mr. Molloy, though a man whose constant aim it was to preserve the streamlined body, was prepared in consideration of the special circumstances to disregard this. Pie had his couple, and they acted like magic. By the time he had finished, he was throwing the pistol in the air and catching it by the barrel. The suggestion he conveyed was that just one more whack at the life-giving fluid would have had him balancing the weapon on the tip of his nose.

It was with a hearty intrepidity, accordingly, that he advanced into the room. There were three persons present, and he had expected only one, but this in no way disconcerted him. The more, he felt, the merrier. And as for experiencing any shyness or embarrassment at being obliged to say "Stick 'em up!" he thought it just the thing one would naturally say at such a moment.

His abrupt entry had produced a silence, but it was not in Lord Uffenham to abstain for long from probing and questioning.

"Stick what up?" he enquired, with his usual thirst for information.

Soapy explained that he had referred to the hands of those present, and Lord Uffenham wanted to know why.

"What's all this about?" he said, turning to Jeff. "Is the blighter tight?"

Soapy made his position clear.

"I want that tobacco jar."

Anne uttered a cry.

" Oh, no! Don't give it him, darling!"

"Give it him?" said Lord Uffenham, surprised. "When it's full of my dashed diamonds? Of course, I won't give it him."

Soapy, who had been led to expect that if he said " Stick 'em up!" his public would do the rest, might have been taken aback by this attitude, had it not been for the beneficent effect of the two brandies. "Get tough," they whispered to him, so he got tough.

"Slip it across, or I'll blow a hole in you!"

Lord Uffenham ignored this observation. Ever since the interview had begun, he had been staring at Soapy in his unblinking way, and he now recognised him. He was also reminded of something he wanted to say to him.

"You're Mrs. Molloy's husband, aren't yer?" It was a description which some men might have resented, but Soapy was proud to be so labelled. "That's me, brother."

"Thought so. I've noticed the back of your head, when I've been waiting at dinner. I don't know if you know it, but you've got a bald spot coming."

Soapy's jaw fell.

"You don't mean that?"

"I do. If you aren't careful, you'll be getting as bald as a toad's stomach. Try Scalpo. Excellent stuff."

"I will.” said Soapy, fervently. "Thanks for telling me."

He raised a hand to feel the back of his head, and found that it was holding a pistol. The discovery recalled him sharply to his duty.

"Well, to hell with all that," he said, blushing as he thought what his wife would have felt, had she been there to witness his neglect of the vital issue. "Gimme that jar."

His insistence annoyed Lord Uffenham.

"But I keep telling yer it's got my diamonds in it."

"I think that's why he wants it," said Jeff. "I ought to have mentioned it to you before, but he's a crook."

"A crook? You mean one of these foul gangsters?"

"Something on those lines. That was why I wanted you to be careful what you said to Mrs. Molloy."

"Is that sweet little woman a crook, too?"

"More deadly than the male."

"Lord-love-a-duck!" said Lord Uffenham, pained and disillusioned. "I must think this over."

"Gimme that jar," said Soapy, but he might have saved his breath. Lord Uffenham was in a trance.

There was a silence. Soapy was uncertain as to what his wife would wish him to do next. Anne was looking at Jeff reproachfully. He was standing with his hands in the air, and this meek acceptance of the position came as a shock to her. She disliked him, but she had supposed him a man of spirit.

"Can't you do something?" she demanded.

Before he could reply, Lord Uffenham had come to life, and it was evident that his meditations had been fruitful. There was a sort of phosphorescent glow in his eyes which looked like the light of inspiration.

"Leave this to me, my dear feller," he said, buoyantly. "I can handle this. I've suddenly remembered something."

He advanced on Soapy, waggling the tobacco jar sternly.

"You can't  point that gun,"  he said. "You  can't pull the trigger. You can't even hold the gun!"

Soapy could not follow this. "Why not?" he asked, surprised.

Lord Uffenham, as he turned to Jeff, was plainly disappointed.

"Odd. It doesn't seem to work. I heard a feller in a play in New York say that to a feller with a pistol, and the other feller, the feller with the pistol, just dropped the dashed thing and burst into tears. Perhaps I didn't say it right."

"It sounded fine," Jeff assured him. "But I doubt if mere words are what you need here. Excuse me a moment."

With a sudden dive, he launched himself at Soapy's knees, and Soapy, who, though he had seen him coming, had expected him to arrive a good deal higher up, crumpled beneath the onslaught. Jeff's arms were round him before he could step aside, and he staggered and fell. There was a sharp report, as the pistol exploded, and then the confused noise of two strong men face to face, rolling about on the carpet.

Every drop of fighting blood in Lord Uffenham's veins stirred at the sight. He started like a war horse. A good many years had passed since he, too, had rolled about on carpets in this manner, but the old spirit still lingered and he itched to join in the fray.

Pawing the air and snorting valiantly, he found himself hampered by the tobacco jar. A man cannot give of his best in a rough and tumble unless his hands are free. And he was wondering where to put the thing so that it would be safe for a minute or two, when he was aware of a sylphlike form at his elbow and gratefully enlisted its services.

"Just catch hold of this, will yer, my dear," he said.

It was only after he had handed over the encumbrance that he made the discovery that his female assistant was not, as he had supposed, his niece Anne, but that ex sweet little woman, Dolly Molloy.