Money in the Bank (21 page)

CHAPTER XX

Anne, meanwhile, had reached Jeff's room and found it empty. Jeff, like Mrs. Cork, was a quick dresser and had long since dried and clothed himself and gone out into the garden to enjoy what to the connoisseur is the best part of a fine summer day. Purified by his great love, he had grown very fond of the twilight of late.

Anne, crediting him with less soulfulness, had the idea that he might have gone to her uncle's pantry for a quick port, to enable him to face with greater fortitude the dinner and lecture which lay before him. It was thither that she now hastened.

She found Lord Uffenham standing motionless in the middle of the floor. His eyes were closed, and he was holding between his hands a small forked stick.

"Hullo, my dear," he said. "I came on this in the hall the other day. Must have been there fifty years, I should think. It belonged to my old father. It's a thing water-diviners use. You hold it like this, and if there's water anywhere, it twists like a serpent. I remember experimenting with it as a boy, but whether it worked or not, I couldn't tell yer."

Anne was not interested in finding water. She wanted to find Jeff.

"Have you seen Mr. Adair?" she asked, breathlessly.

"No," said Lord Uffenham. "But if you run across him, send him to me. I've got a job for him. It's an odd thing, but as I was standing here just now with my eyes shut, thinking of water and waiting for this apparatus to wriggle, the word 'pond' suddenly flashed into my mind. The word 'pond,'" said Lord Uffenham, impressively. "I consider that dashed significant."

"Angel, I must find Mr. Adair."

"His name's not Adair."

"I know it isn't."

"It's ... No," said Lord Uffenham, after a pause, "I thought I had it, but I haven't. If you had asked me a minute ago, I could have told you. It's some name like Willard or Tiller. But I was saying about this word 'pond' suddenly flashing into my mind. There's only one pond at Shipley, as far as I know, and that's the one by the sunken garden. Nothing is more likely than that I put those dashed diamonds—in a biscuit tin or something, no doubt, with a string tied to it—in that. It's just the sort of place that might have suggested itself, because I was rather using them up towards the end. And I used to wander round there quite a lot in the old days. Sort of a favourite spot of mine. I consider this one of the most promising ideas I've had. Get hold of young Tiller and tell him to go and wade about there to-morrow morning, early. Save him having a bath."

"But he won't be here to-morrow morning."

"Hey?"

"A
frightful thing has happened, darling. That's why I'm trying to find him. The real one has turned up."

"What d'yer mean, the real one?"

"The real Sheringham Adair. Mr. Trumper found him in his wardrobe. An awful little man with a waxed moustache."

"Good Lord! Is that who the rat was?"

"You haven't met him?"

"Of course, I've met him. Had a long talk with him about his moustache. You know how he gets the ends to stick up like that? Smears 'em with soap. Told me so himself. ' What d'yer put on the filthy thing?' I asked him. 'Beeswax?' And he said No, just ordinary wax or toilet soap or shaving cream. 'Lord-love-a-duck!' I said, thinking to myself that it takes all sorts to make a world, and then, just as I was going to break his neck, he skipped away like a cat on hot bricks. So he got into Trumper's wardrobe, did he? Wish I'd known."

"But how did you come to meet him?"

"That sweet little woman, Mrs. Molloy, told me he was going to search my room, of all dashed impertinence, so I lay in wait for him and pounced out at him, and he told me all about his moustache. He's a spy in the pay of Trumper."

"He's got nothing to do with Mr. Trumper."

"Yes, he has. Trumper has bought him with his gold. She told me so. Mrs. Molloy."

"Well, never mind. I haven't time to argue about it. I must find Jeff. Where can he have got to?"

"Jeff?"

"Mr. Willard or Tiller, or whatever his name is."

"It might be Spiller."

"It might be anything. The point is that I've got to find him. I can't let him receive the full impact of Mrs. Cork without warning. It would be too awful."

Lord Uffenham appeared to be musing.

"His name's Jeff, is it?"

"So he told me."

"Do you call him Jeff?"

"When I call him anything."

"It hasn't taken you long to get to Christian names. Just as I foresaw. You've fallen in love with the feller."

"Oh, angel, don’t gibber. Not now. Things are too tense. You should have seen Mrs. Cork. Boadicea, bristling with pistols. I must tell Jeff to fly before she gets hold of him. Where do you think he can be?"

Lord Uffenham was a difficult man to sidetrack, once he had embarked on a train of thought.

"Christian names," he said musingly. "The infallible test. If it happens soon enough, of course. I remember when I was a young man, noticing that if a woman called me 'Georgie' after we'd had a couple of lunches and a spin in a hansom cab together, it was always the beginning of the end. You call him 'Jeff,' do yer? And all this fuss and bustle and running around wringing your hands and crying 'Oh, where is he? I must save him, I must save him!' You're potty about the chap."

"I'm not!"

"And a very good thing, too. I'm delighted. Just the right young feller for you. He'll keep yer bright and interested. That plumber of yours would have bored you stiff in a week. It's going to be embarrassing for you, by the way, having to tell him you've changed your mind."

"I haven't changed my mind."

"But you've only yourself to blame," said Lord Uffenham, more in sorrow than anger. "Did I or did I not repeatedly warn yer that you were crazy to suppose for an instant that you could marry that perisher? But you would stick to it that he was the blue-eyed boy. That," he concluded, becoming profound, "is the whole trouble with fellers like Lionel Green. If you see one without actually wanting to kick him, you think, 'This must be love.'"

"'Darling, will you stop!"

"Stop what?"

"Talking this absolute nonsense. I do love Lionel."

"What, still? Even though this splendid young Spiller has come along? I don't understand it," said Lord Uffenham, wagging his ponderous head. "He can't have been playing his cards right. In spite of what I told him. 'The obvious course for you to pursue, Spiller,' I said to him, 'is to reach out and grab her and fold her in a dashed close embrace. That'll work it.' I don't see how I could have put it plainer."

Anne was conscious of a warmth about the cheeks. Only an hour or two had elapsed since Jeff actually had folded her in an embrace almost close enough to satisfy even her uncle's exacting standards. And though she had comported herself on that occasion with a maidenly dignity which would have pleased Emily Post, she was guiltily aware of not having been as shocked and repelled as she should have been. For an instant, indeed, until she had thought of Lionel Green and how devoted she was to him, she had had a distinct illusion that she was passing through an experience not wholly without its pleasurable aspect.

Lord Uffenham had fallen into a silence. He had the air of a man who is trying to probe a mystery to its depths. Pie came out of his thoughts, to put a question.

"Has he kissed yer yet?"

"No, he has not."

"Well, I'm dashed."

"Did you tell him to?"

"Of course I did. I look on that young feller as a son—don't know when I've met a young feller I've taken more of a fancy to—and I considered it my duty to promote his interests."

Anne drew a deep breath. She regarded her uncle fixedly. A weaker uncle might have wilted beneath the look.

"I see. So if I suddenly find Mr. Spiller treating me as if I were a sack of coals, I shall have von to thank for it.'

"I don't want any thanks. Only too glad to help. Bring the young folks together, that's what I say. My knowledge of life told me what ought to be done, and I handed the tip on to young Miller."

"Is his name Miller or Spiller?"

"Miller. I've just remembered."

"But how do you know?"

"I found out."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I forgot."

"How did you find out?"

"It was the day he arrived here. I was taking a look round his room, just to see if they had made him comfortable, and there was a book on the table by the bed, with his name written in the fly leaf. Oddly enough, it was a name I had an idea I'd heard somewhere. J. G. Miller."

"What!"

Anne was aware of something that felt like a powerful electric shock passing through her.

"Yerss. J. G. Miller."

Anne was still tingling. J. G. Miller! ... It was possible, of course, that this was another and a blameless J. G. Miller, but it seemed to her highly improbable. The surname Miller is not an uncommon one, but the juxtaposition of the initials was surely damning.

"Are you certain?"

"Of course, I'm certain. Why the name should have seemed familiar, I can't tell you. I've a memory like a steel trap, but it doesn't always work as it should. Now that I think back, I believe it was the cook who was saying something about a feller called J. G. Miller, who had done something or other. And I seem to recollect a conversation on the same subject with that little squirt, Trumper."

"Oh!"

Anne had given a little jump. Her memory, working with more accuracy than her uncle's, had told her where it was that she had seen Jeff before. And now she knew, beyond further possibility of doubt, that he was the man whom Mrs. Cork wanted to strangle with her bare hands, and for whom she herself, ever since she had read of Lionel Green's dark hour in the witness box, had been feeling so violent an animosity.

Her eyes flashed. Her teeth clenched. She quivered from head to foot. Mrs. Molloy, had she been present, would have had no hesitation in describing her as mad as a wet hen. She was asking herself how she could ever have been deceived by his superficial charm into imagining for an instant that she had liked Jeff. She strode to the door, a figure of almost Cork-like menace.

"You off?" said Lord Uffenham.

"Yes. I want a word with Mr. J. G. Miller."

"Of course. Going to tell him Mrs. Cork is after him with her hatchet."

"That and other things."

"Well, don't forget about the pond."

"I'll get Lionel to look there to-morrow."

"Lionel?" said Lord Uffenham, aghast. "What's the use of Lionel? He'd be afraid to get his feet wet. For God's sake, don't put your trust in that poop. If you want my frank opinion of Lionel Green---"

It appeared that Anne did not. She went out without waiting for it. It had just occurred to her as a possibility that Jeff might be in the garden.

Lord Uffenham stared at her in his solid, unblinking way. Then, feeling that he had done his duty as an uncle, he took up the forked stick and closed his eyes again.

CHAPTER XXI

It had been Jeff's original intention, on leaving his room, to go and smoke a cigarette on the lawn. But the sudden appearance there of Mr. Shepperson, the man with the double-jointed hips, had caused him to alter his plans. It might be, of course, that Mr. Shepperson would not say "Nice evening" and engage him in conversation, but the risk was a grave one and not to be taken by a lover who wished to be alone with his thoughts. He sheered away, accordingly, like an antelope that had caught sight of Mrs. Cork, and was enabled by this prompt action to nip the menace in the bud. For some minutes, he had been strolling up and down the rhododendron walk in a deep reverie.

The solitary meditations of the Jeff Miller of pre-Anne days would have had to do with far different themes than those which now engrossed him. Love had tapped a deep vein of poetry in him and he was trying to remember how that "Come into the garden, Maud" thing went. Not a thought of mysterious Malays, screams in lonely houses and Inspector Purvis drawing in his breath sharply and saying "This is human blood!" had so much as entered his mind.

He was still in difficulties with the second and fourth lines, when Anne came out of the house, breathing flame softly through the nose and looking to left and right like a lioness seeking her prey. In her passage from Lord Uffenham's pantry to the lawn, she had lost none of her desire to have a word with Mr. J. G. Miller.

She was aware of Mr. Shepperson ambling up.

"Nice evening," said Mr. Shepperson.

"Yes," said Anne. "I'm looking for Mr. Adair."

"I think you will find him in the rhododendron walk. He was on the lawn when I came out, but he hurried off. A pity," said Mr. Shepperson. "I should have liked a chat. A charming chap, don't you think?"

Anne gulped. At such a moment, this sort of thing was not easy to bear.

"Very," she contrived to say.

"Most attractive. Dinner is late, is it not?"

"I'm afraid there has been a sort of upset."

"Dear, dear," said Mr. Shepperson, who wanted his spinach, and Anne resumed her purposeful prowl.

The light in the rhododendron walk was dim. Steep bastions of flowered bushes shut out the afterglow, leaving only above the mossy path a canopy of spangled blue. But the visibility was good enough to enable Jeff to identify Anne, as she entered it, and all unconscious of the impending doom he hastened to meet her, scarcely able to believe that such good fortune had been vouchsafed him. His spirits soared, and he immediately started to buzz.

"What an extraordinary thing," he said. "I was just saying 'Come into the garden, Maud,' and here you are. Some people would call that a coincidence, but I should put it down to will power. You don't know how the rest of it goes, do you?"

"The rest of what?"

"'Come into the garden, Maud.'"

"No, I don't."

"I thought everybody knew 'Come into the garden, Maud.' When they educated you privately, I'm afraid they scamped their work. You should have gone to Roedean, where you would have been filled right up to the brim."