Money for Nothing (13 page)

'Now tie yourself into a reef knot,' said Hugo.

Chimp gritted his teeth. A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things, and there came back to him the recollection of mornings when he had stood at his window and laughed heartily at the spectacle of his patients at Healthward Ho being hounded on to these very movements by the vigilant Sergeant-Major Flannery. How little he had supposed that there would ever come a time when he would be compelled himself to perform these exercises. And how little he had guessed at the hideous discomfort which they could cause to a man who had let his body muscles grow stiff.

'Wait,' said Hugo, suddenly.

Mr Twist was glad to do so. He straightened himself, breathing heavily.

'Are you thinking beautiful thoughts?'

Chimp Twist gulped.

'Yes,' he said, with a strong effort.

'Beautiful, tranquil thoughts?'

'Yes.'

'Then carry on.'

Chimp resumed his calisthenics. He was aching in every joint now, but into his discomfort there had shot a faint gleam of hope. Everything in this world has its drawbacks and its advantages. With the drawbacks to his present situation he had instantly become acquainted, but now at last one advantage presented itself to his notice – the fact, to wit, that the staggerings and totterings inseparable from a performance of the kind with which he was entertaining his limited but critical audience had brought him very near to the open window.

'How are the thoughts?' asked Hugo. 'Still beautiful?'

Chimp said they were, and he spoke sincerely. He had contrived to put a space of several feet between himself and his persecutor, and the window gaped invitingly almost at his side.

'Yours,' said Hugo, puffing smoke meditatively, 'has been a very happy life, Twist. Day after day you have had the privilege of seeing my Uncle Lester doing just what you're doing now, and it must have beaten a circus hollow. It's funny enough even when you do it, and you haven't anything like his personality and appeal. If you could see what a priceless ass you look it would keep you giggling for weeks. I know,' said Hugo, receiving an inspiration, 'do the one where you touch your toes without bending the knees.'

In all human affairs the semblance of any given thing is bound to vary considerably with the point of view. To Chimp Twist, as he endeavoured to comply with this request, it seemed incredible that what he was doing could strike anyone as humorous. To Hugo, on the other hand, it appeared as if the entertainment had now reached its apex of wholesome fun. As Mr Twist's purple face came up for the third time, he abandoned himself wholeheartedly to mirth. He rocked in his chair, and, rashly trying to inhale cigarette smoke at the same time, found himself suddenly overcome by a paroxysm of coughing.

It was the moment for which Chimp Twist had been waiting. There is, as Ronnie Fish would have observed in the village Hall an hour or so earlier if the audience had had the self-restraint to let him get as far as that, a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Chimp did not neglect the opportunity which Fate had granted him. With an agile bound he was at the window, and, rendered supple, no doubt, by his recent exercises, leaped smartly through it.

He descended heavily on the dog Emily. Emily, wandering out for a last stroll before turning in, had just paused beneath the window to investigate a smell which had been called to her attention on the gravel. She was trying to make up her mind whether it was rats or the ghost of a long-lost bone when the skies suddenly started raining heavy bodies on her.

Emily was a dog who, as a rule, took things as they came, her guiding motto in life being the old Horatian
Nil Admirari
, but she could lose her poise. She lost it now. A startled oath escaped her, and for a brief instant she was completely unequal to the situation. In this instant, Chimp, equally startled but far too busy to stop, had disengaged himself and was vanishing into the darkness.

A moment later Hugo came through the window. His coughing fit had spent itself, and he was now in good voice again. He was shouting.

At once Emily became herself again. All her sporting blood stirred in answer to these shouts. She forgot her agony. Her sense of grievance left her. Recognizing Hugo, she saw all things clearly, and realized in a flash that here at last was the burglar for whom she had been waiting ever since her conversation with that wire-haired terrier over at Webleigh Manor.

John had taken her to lunch there one day, and fraternizing
with the Webleigh dog under the table, she had immediately noticed in his
manner something aloof and distinctly patronizing. It had then come out in
conversation that they had had a burglary at the Manor a couple of nights
ago, and the wirehaired terrier, according to his own story, had been the
hero of the occasion. He spoke with an ill-assumed off-handedness of barking
and bitings and chasings in the night, and, though he did not say it in so
many words, gave Emily plainly to understand that it took an unusual dog to
grapple with such a situation, and that in a similar crisis she herself would
inevitably be found wanting. Ever since that day she had been longing for
a chance to show her mettle, and now it had come. Calling instructions in
a high voice, she raced for the bushes into which Chimp had disappeared. Hugo,
a bad third, brought up the rear of the procession.

Chimp, meanwhile, had been combining with swift movement some very rapid thinking. Fortune had been with him in the first moments of this dash for safety, but now, he considered, it had abandoned him, and he must trust to his native intelligence to see him through. He had not anticipated dogs. Dogs altered the whole complexion of the affair. To a go-as-you-please race across country with Hugo he would have trusted himself, but Hugo in collaboration with a dog was another matter. It became now a question not of speed but of craft; and he looked about him, as he ran, for a hiding-place, for some shelter from this canine and human storm which he had unwittingly aroused.

And Fortune, changing sides again, smiled upon him once more. Emily, who had been going nicely, attempted very injudiciously at this moment to take a short cut and became involved in a bush. And Chimp, accelerating an always active brain, perceived a way out. There was a low stone wall immediately in front of him, and beyond it, as he came up, he saw the dull gleam of water.

It was not an ideal haven, but he was in no position to pick and choose. The interior of the tank from which the gardeners drew ammunition for their watering-cans had, for one who from childhood had always disliked bathing, a singularly repellent air. Those dark, oily-looking depths suggested the presence of frogs, newts and other slimy things that work their way down a man's back and behave clammily around his spine. But it was most certainly a place of refuge.

He looked over his shoulder. An agitated crackling of branches announced that Emily had not yet worked clear, and Hugo had apparently stopped to render first aid. With a silent shudder Chimp stepped into the tank and, lowering himself into the depths, nestled behind a water-lily.

Hugo was finding the task of extricating Emily more difficult than he had anticipated. The bush was one of those thorny, adhesive bushes, and it twined itself lovingly in Emily's hair. Bad feeling began to rise, and the conversation took on an acrimonious tone.

'Stand still!' growled Hugo. 'Stand still, you blighted dog.'

'Push,' retorted Emily. 'Push, I tell you! Push, not pull. Don't you realize that all the while we're wasting time here that fellow's getting away?'

'Don't wriggle, confound you. How can I get you out if you keep wriggling?'

'Try a lift in an upwards direction. No, that's no good. Stop pushing and pull, I tell you. Pull not push. Now, when I say "
To
you...."'

Something gave. Hugo staggered back. Emily sprang from his grasp. The chase was on again.

But now all the zest had gone out of it. The operations in the bush had occupied only a bare couple of minutes, but they had been enough to allow the quarry to vanish. He had completely disappeared. Hugo, sitting on the wall of the tank and trying to recover his breath, watched Emily as she darted to and fro, inspecting paths and drawing shrubberies, and knew that he had failed. It was a bitter moment, and he sat and smoked moodily. Presently even Emily gave the thing up. She came back to where Hugo sat, her tongue lolling, and disgust written all over her expressive features. There was a silence. Emily thought it was all Hugo's fault, Hugo thought it was Emily's. A stiffness had crept into their relations once again, and when at length Hugo, feeling a little more benevolent after three cigarettes, reached down and scratched Emily's head, the latter drew away coldly.

'Damn fool!' she said.

Hugo started. Was it some sound, some distant stealthy footstep, that had caused his companion to speak? He stared into the night.

'Fathead!' said Emily. 'Can't even pull somebody out of a bush.'

She laughed mirthlessly, and Hugo, now keenly on the alert, rose from his seat and gazed this way and that. And then, moving softly away from him at the end of the path, he saw a dark figure.

Instantly, Hugo Carmody became once more the man of action. With a stern shout he dashed along the path. And he had not gone half a dozen feet when the ground seemed suddenly to give way under him.

This path, as he should have remembered, knowing the terrain as he did, was a terrace path, set high above the shrubberies below. It was a simple enough matter to negotiate it in daylight and at a gentle stroll, but to race successfully along it in the dark required a Blondin. Hugo's third stride took him well into the abyss. He clutched out desperately, grasped only cool Worcestershire night air, and then, rolling down the slope, struck his head with great violence against a tree which seemed to have been put there for the purpose.

When the sparks had cleared away and the firework exhibition was over, he rose painfully to his feet.

A voice was speaking from above – the voice of Ronald Overbury Fish.

'Hullo!' said the voice. 'What's up?'

Weighed down by the burden of his many sorrows, Ronnie Fish had come to this terrace path to be alone. Solitude was what he desired, and solitude was what he supposed he had got until, abruptly, without any warning but a wild shout, the companion of his School and University days had suddenly dashed out from empty space and apparently attempted to commit suicide. Ronnie was surprised. Naturally no fellow likes getting the bird at a village concert, but Hugo, he considered, in trying to kill himself was adopting extreme measures. He peered down, going so far in his natural emotion as to remove the cigarette-holder from his mouth.

'What's up?' he asked again.

Hugo was struggling dazedly up the bank.

'Was that you, Ronnie?'

'Was what me?'

'That.'

'Which?'

Hugo approached the matter from another angle.

'Did you see anyone?'

'When?'

'Just now. I thought I saw someone on the path. It must have been you.'

'It was. Why?'

'I thought it was somebody else.'

'Well it wasn't.'

'I know, but I thought it was.'

'Who did you think it was?'

'A fellow called Twist.'

'Twist?'

'Yes, Twist.'

'Why?'

'I've been chasing him.'

'Chasing Twist?'

'Yes. I caught him burgling the house.'

They had been walking along, and now reached a spot where the light, freed from overhanging branches, was stronger. Mr Fish became aware that his friend had sustained injuries.

'I say,' he said, 'you've hurt your head.'

'I know I've hurt my head, you silly ass.'

'It's bleeding, I mean.'

'Bleeding?'

'Bleeding.'

Blood is always interesting. Hugo put a hand to his wound, took it away again, inspected it.

'By Jove! I'm bleeding.'

'Yes, bleeding. You'd better go in and have it seen to.'

'Yes.' Hugo reflected. 'I'll go and get old John to fix it. He once put six stitches in a cow.'

'What cow?'

'One of the cows. I forget its name.'

'Where do we find this John?'

'He's in his room over the stables.'

'Can you walk it all right?'

'Oh, yes, rather.'

Ronnie, relieved, lighted a cigarette, and approached an aspect of the affair which had been giving him food for thought.

'I say, Hugo, have you been having a few drinks or anything?'

'What do you mean?'

'Well, buzzing about the place after non-existent burglars.'

'They weren't non-existent. I tell you I caught this man Twist . . .'

'How do you know it was Twist?'

'I've met him.'

'Who? Twist?'

'Yes.'

'Where?'

'He runs a place called Healthward Ho near here.'

'What's Healthward Ho?'

'It's a place where fellows go to get fit. My uncle was there.'

'And Twist runs it?'

'Yes.'

'And you think this – dash it, this pillar of society was burgling the house?'

'I caught him, I tell you.'

'Who? Twist?'

'Yes.'

'Well, where is he, then?'

'I don't know.'

'Listen, old man,' said Ronnie gently. 'I think you'd better be pushing along and getting that bulb of yours repaired.'

He remained gazing after his friend, as he disappeared in the direction of the stable-yard, with much concern. He hated to think of good old Hugo getting into a mental state like this, though of course, it was only what you could expect if a man lived in the country all the time. He was still brooding when he heard footsteps behind him and looked round and saw Mr Lester Carmody approaching.

Mr Carmody was in a condition which in a slimmer man might have been called fluttering. He, like John, had absented himself from the festivities in the village, wishing to be on the spot when Mr Twist made his entry into the house. He had seen Chimp get through the dining-room window and had instantly made his way to the front hall, proposing to wait there and see the precious suitcase duly deposited in the cupboard under the stairs. He had waited, but no Chimp had appeared. And then there had come to his ears barkings and shoutings and uproar in the night. Mr Carmody, like Othello, was perplexed in the extreme.