Money in the Bank (20 page)

Her manner was rather formal, but a certain stiffness is unavoidable on these occasions. The important thing, as far as Chimp was concerned, was that her meaning was clear. She had purposely stripped her words of all ambiguity and they left him in no doubt as to the advisability of quick action. Three seconds is not a very liberal margin to allow for getting out of a wardrobe, but it was ample for Chimp. A stop-watch would probably have clocked him at about one and a tenth. He poured into the room as if he had been liquid, and Mrs. Cork eyed him austerely-over the automatic pistol.

"That's better," she said. "Now, then, what's it all about?"

When she had asked the same question—in native dialect, of course—of cannibal chiefs discovered hiding in her tent, the latter had almost always been frankly tongue-tied and embarrassed. They had not known which way to look. But she was dealing now with a man of ready resource and swift intelligence. Chimp Twist had been in too many delicate situations in his life to allow himself easily to be disconcerted. Brief though the interval was which had been granted him for reflection, he had already discovered the way out of this unpleasantness.

"Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Cork," he said, with easy polish. "Hope I didn't startle you and the folks."

Such airy geniality on the part of detected housebreakers is not usual, and Mrs. Cork's hard stare showed her appreciation of this fact. A forceful reply was on her lips, when Chimp went on speaking.

"Should have told you I was coming, but I wanted to have a word with that fellow first."

"Me?" said Mr. Trumper, surprised.

"Not you, sir," said Chimp, still with that strange affability. "With the guy that's in this joint, impersonating me. I am J. Sheringham Adair, Mrs. Cork. I understand you wished to engage my professional services. I ran into our mutual friend, Mr. Molloy, a coupla days back, and he happened to mention it. And then he told me something that surprised me. He said there was a fellow here already, calling himself Sheringham Adair and claiming to have bought the business off me. Well, naturally I said to myself 'Hullo, hullo, hullo!'"

To Mr. Trumper it seemed that such a piece of information might well have provoked these hunting cries. In him, Chimp had found a credulous and uncritical hearer.

"Who the guy can be, and what his game is, I don't know. According to Molloy, he was engaged by a Miss Benedick, that you sent along to my office. I should like to have a talk with her later on."

"Here she is," said Mr. Trumper, obligingly indicating Anne, in whom a close observer during these last few minutes would have noted signs of anxiety and concern "Miss Benedick, Mr. Adair."

"Good evening, Miss."

" Good evening."

"Nice weather-"

"Very."

"Only hope it holds up," said Chimp. "And now, Miss Benedick, what happened when you called at my office? You found this guy there, I take it? What was he doing?"

"Sitting at the desk."

"Some birds have got a nerve. He told you he was me?"

"Yes."

"And then what?"

"I explained why I had called."

"Well, there you are, Mrs. Cork. That's how it was, and that's how I come to be here. I wanted to see this bozo and get the lowdown on him. Maybe he's a crook, planning to clean out the joint, or maybe he's some young fellow impersonating me just for the hell of the thing. I don't know. If he's one of these bright young cut-ups doing it simply for a gag, I wouldn't want to be too hard on him," said Chimp magnanimously. "We'll have to push him out, of course, but, far as I'm concerned, there won't be no hard feelings."

He eyed Mrs. Cork beamingly, and was pained to observe that her stony face showed no signs of softening.

"All this," she said coldly, giving the automatic pistol a twirl, to show that it was still there, "does not explain why you were prowling about my house and hiding in Mr. Trumper's wardrobe. You gave him a most unpleasant fright."

"He did, indeed," assented Mr. Trumper. Chimp was amazed.

"Is this
your
room, sir? Well, I'll be  darned!   I thought it was the impostor's."

Mrs. Cork continued stony.

"Why?"

"Pardon?"

"What gave you the impression that this room belonged to the impostor, as you call him?"

"I asked around. Made guarded enquiries, like we detectives do. I was planning to jump out and confront him. But it seems I was given a wrong steer. Well, well, well! Sorry I threw a scare into you, Mr. Trumper."

"Not at all."

"Last thing I'd have wanted to happen."

"Don't mention it," begged Mr. Trumper, charmed by his consideration. Unlike Mrs. Cork, he had taken Mr. Twist's story in through the pores, and was remorseful that he should ever have misjudged this blameless investigator.

"Trumper?" said Chimp, musing. "There was a guy called Trumper I once recovered a lot of important papers for. Some relation, maybe?"

"Hardly likely, I think. I have very few relatives living. Just some cousins at Oxford."

"Swell little town, Oxford."

"Very nice."

"All those old colleges."

" Quite. I am a Balliol man."

"Is that so? I was educated in the States myself."

"Really? I have never been in the United States."

"You should certainly go."

"I have often meant to."

"Don't put it off," urged Chimp.

The frown on Mrs. Cork's face had deepened during these polite exchanges. The atmosphere of camaraderie jarred upon her. Eustace, she felt, was treating this man's irruption far too much as if it had been an ordinary afternoon call. To him, it was plain, the occasion seemed a purely social one. She herself was by no means satisfied that this was the moment for chatting of the past and making plans for the future.

"I still fail to understand," she said frigidly, "why you could not have come to the front door to see this man who you say is impersonating you."

"And have him take a run-out powder? Be yourself, lady."

" I should be glad if you would not tell me to be myself. And may I point out that, while your story may be perfectly true, we have only your word for it."

"Is that so? How about my old friend Molloy?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Granted."

"What he means, I think, Clarissa," interpreted Mr. Trumper, "is that Mr. Molloy will vouch for him."

He spoke with a slight diminution of his former cordiality. As has been stated, he was not without his dark suspicions of that big-hearted pusher of oil shares, and it detracted from Chimp's charm, in his opinion, that he should be a friend of such a man.

"I see," said Mrs. Cork. "Yes, that would settle the point. Then we had better go to Mr. Molloy. His room is down the passage."

The Molloys, when the expedition arrived, had finished dressing and were playing solitaire. That is to say, Dolly was playing solitaire, while Soapy, in the role of kibitzer, leaned over her shoulder and told her to put that black ten on that red jack. A charming domestic picture, which broke up abruptly as Mrs. Cork entered, shepherding Chimp before her.

"Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Molloy," she said. "I have just found this man---"

"This gentleman," Chimp ventured deferentially to suggest.

"—in Mr. Trumper's wardrobe," concluded Mrs. Cork, ignoring the proposed emendation. "He says he is a friend of yours."

This, to both Soapy and Dolly, seemed to call for but one answer. They had opened their mouths simultaneously to assure their hostess that they had never seen Chimp before in their lives, when they caught the latter's eye. The glance which he was directing at them was keen and full of meaning.

"And so I am. Known him for years. In fact," said Chimp, laughing as if some thought had amused him; "I could tell you a lot about my old side-kick, Molloy. Yessir, a whole lot that would interest you."

He underlined the words with another significant look, but it was not really needed. Both Soapy and Dolly, though the former was not always very quick at the uptake, understood him without the slightest difficulty. Dolly looked at Soapy, and her eye said "Watch your step, baby. A wrong play here, and the little insect'll be spilling the beans about that Silver River stock of yours," and Soapy looked at Dolly, and his eye said "You betcher."

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.