Money for Nothing (18 page)

'Honey,' said Mr Molloy devoutly, 'I always said you were the brains of the firm, and I always will say it. I'd never have thought of a thing like this myself in a million years.'

It was about an hour later that Sergeant-Major Flannery, seated at his ease beneath a shady elm in the garden of Healthward Ho, looked up from the novelette over which he had been relaxing his conscientious mind and became aware that he was in the presence of Youth and Beauty. Towards him, across the lawn, was walking a girl who, his experienced eye assured him at a single glance, fell into that limited division of the Sex which is embraced by the word Pippin. Her willowy figure was clothed in some clinging material of a beige colour, and her bright hazel eyes, when she came close enough for them to be seen, touched in the Sergeant-Major's susceptible bosom a ready chord. He rose from his seat with easy grace, and his hand, falling from the salute, came to rest on the western section of his waxed moustache.

'Nice morning, Miss,' he bellowed.

It seemed to Sergeant-Major Flannery that this girl was gazing upon him as on some wonderful dream of hers that had unexpectedly come true, and he was thrilled. It was unlikely, he felt, that she was about to ask him to perform some great knightly service for her, but if she did he would spring smartly to attention and do it in a soldierly manner while she waited. Sergeant-Major Flannery was pro-Dolly from the first moment of their meeting.

'Are you one of Doctor Twist's assistants?' asked Dolly.

'I am his only assistant, Miss. Sergeant-Major Flannery is the name.'

'Oh? Then you look after the patients here?'

'That's right, Miss.'

'Then it is you who will be in charge of my poor brother?'

She uttered a little sigh, and there came into her hazel eyes a look of pain.

'Your brother, Miss? Are you the lady . . .'

'Did Doctor Twist tell you about my brother?'

'Yes, Miss. The fellow who's been . . .'

He paused, appalled. Only by a hair's-breadth had he stopped himself from using in the presence of this divine creature the hideous expression 'mopping it up a bit'.

'Yes,' said Dolly. 'I see you know about it.'

'All I know about it, Miss,' said Sergeant-Major Flannery, 'is that the doctor had me into the orderly-room just now and said he was expecting a young lady to arrive with her brother, who needed attention. He said I wasn't to be surprised if I found myself called for to lend a hand in a rough-house, because this bloke – because this patient was apt to get verlent.'

'My brother does get very violent,' sighed Dolly. 'I only hope he won't do you an injury.'

Sergeant-Major Flannery twitched his banana-like fingers and inflated his powerful chest. He smiled a complacent smile.

'He won't do
me
an injury, Miss. I've had experience with . . .' Again he stopped just in time, on the very verge of shocking his companion's ears with the ghastly noun 'souses' . . . 'with these sort of nervous cases,' he amended. 'Besides, the doctor says he's going to give the gentleman a little sleeping-draught, which'll keep him as you might say 'armless till he wakes up and finds himself under lock and key.'

'I see. Yes, that's a very good idea.'

'No sense in troubling trouble till trouble troubles you, as the saying is, Miss,' agreed the Sergeant-Major. 'If you can do a thing in a nice, easy, tactful manner without verlence, then why use verlence? Has the gentleman been this way long, Miss?'

'For years.'

'You ought to have had him in a home sooner.'

'I have put him into dozens of homes. But he always gets out. That's why I'm so worried.'

'He won't get out of Healthward Ho, Miss.'

'He's very clever.'

It was on the tip of Sergeant-Major Flannery's tongue to point out that other people were clever, too, but he refrained, not so much from modesty as because at this moment he swallowed some sort of insect. When he had finished coughing he found that his companion had passed on to another aspect of the matter.

'I left him alone with Doctor Twist. I wonder if that was safe.'

'Quite safe, Miss,' the Sergeant-Major assured her. 'You can see the window's open and the room's on the ground floor. If there's trouble and the gentleman starts any verlence, all the doctor's got to do is to shout for 'elp and I'll get to the spot at the double and climb in and lend a hand.'

His visitor regarded him with a shy admiration.

'It's such a relief to feel that there's someone like you here, Mr Flannery. I'm sure you are wonderful in any kind of an emergency.'

'People have said so, Miss,' replied the Sergeant-Major, stroking his moustache and smiling another quiet smile.

'But what's worrying me is what's going to happen when my brother comes to after the sleeping-draught and finds that he is locked up. That's what I meant just now when I said he was so clever. The last place he was in they promised to see that he stayed there, but he talked them into letting him out. He said he belonged to some big family in the neighbourhood and had been shut up by mistake.'

'He won't get round
me
that way, Miss.'

'Are you sure?'

'Quite sure, Miss. If there's one thing you get used to in a place like this, it's artfulness. You wouldn't believe how artful some of these gentlemen can be. Only yesterday that Admiral Sir Rigby-Rudd toppled over in my presence after doing his bending and stretching exercises and said he felt faint and he was afraid it was his heart and would I go and get him a drop of brandy. Anything like the way he carried on when I just poured half a bucketful of cold water down his back instead, you never heard in your life. I'm on the watch all the time, I can tell you, Miss. I wouldn't trust my own mother if she was in here, taking the cure. And it's no use arguing with them and pointing out to them that they came here voluntarily of their own free will, and are paying big money to be exercised and kept away from wines, spirits, and rich food. They just spend their whole time thinking up ways of being artful.'

'Do they ever try to bribe you?'

'No, Miss,' said Mr Flannery, a little wistfully. 'I suppose they take a look at me and think – and see that I'm not the sort of fellow that would take bribes.'

'My brother is sure to offer you money to let him go.'

'How much – how much good,' said Sergeant-Major Flannery carefully, 'does he think that's going to do him?'

'You wouldn't take it, would you?'

'Who, me, Miss? Take money to betray my trust, if you understand the expression?'

'Whatever he offers you, I will double. You see, it's so very important that he is kept here, where he will be safe from temptation. Mr Flannery,' said Dolly, timidly, 'I wish you would accept this.'

The Sergeant-Major felt a quickening of the spirit as he gazed upon the rustling piece of paper in her hand.

'No, no, Miss,' he said, taking it. 'It really isn't necessary.'

'I know. But I would rather you had it. You see, I'm afraid my brother may give you a lot of trouble.'

'Trouble's what I'm here for, Miss,' said Mr Flannery bravely. 'Trouble's what I draw my salary for. Besides, he can't give much trouble when he's under lock and key, as the saying is. Don't you worry, Miss. We're going to make this brother of yours a different man. We...'

'Oh!' cried Dolly.

A head and shoulders had shot suddenly out of the study window – the head and shoulders of Doctor Twist. The voice of Doctor Twist sounded sharply above the droning of bees and insects.

'Flannery!'

'On the spot, sir.'

'Come here, Flannery. I want you.'

'You stay here, Miss,' counselled Sergeant-Major Flannery paternally. 'There may be verlence.'

There were, however, when Dolly made her way to the study some five minutes later, no signs of anything of an exciting and boisterous nature having occurred recently in the room. The table was unbroken, the carpet unruffled. The chairs stood in their places, and not even a picture-glass had been cracked. It was evident that the operations had proceeded according to plan, and that matters had been carried through in what Sergeant-Major Flannery would have termed a nice, easy, tactful manner.

'Everything jake?' inquired Dolly.

'Uh-huh,' said Chimp, speaking, however, in a voice that quavered a little.

Mr Twist was the only object in the room that looked in any way disturbed. He had turned an odd greenish colour, and from time to time he swallowed uneasily. Although he had spent a lifetime outside the law, Chimp Twist was essentially a man of peace and accustomed to look askance at any by-product of his profession that seemed to him to come under the heading of rough stuff. This doping of respectable visitors, he considered, was distinctly so to be classified; and only Mr Molloy's urgency over the telephone wire had persuaded him to the task. He was nervous and apprehensive, in a condition to start at sudden noises.

'What happened?'

'Well, I did what Soapy said. After you left us the guy and I talk back and forth for awhile, and then I agreed to knock a bit off the old man's bill, and then I said "How about a little drink?" and then we have a little drink, and then I slip the stuff you gave me in while he wasn't looking. It didn't seem like it was going to act at first.'

'It don't. It takes a little time. You don't feel nothing till you jerk your head or move yourself, and then it's like as if somebody has beaned you one with an iron girder or something. So they tell me,' said Dolly.

'I guess he must have jerked his head, then. Because all of a sudden he went down and out,' Chimp gulped. 'You – you don't think he's . . . I mean, you're sure this stuff . . .?'

Dolly had nothing but contempt for these masculine tremors.

'Of course. Do you suppose I go about the place croaking people? He's all right.'

'Well, he didn't look it. If I'd been a life-insurance company I'd have paid up on him without a yip.'

'He'll wake up with a headache in a little while, but outside of that he'll be as well as he ever was. Where have you been all your life that you don't know how kayo drops act?'

'I've never had occasion to be connected with none of this raw work before,' said Chimp virtuously. 'If you'd of seen him when he slumped down on the table, you wouldn't be feeling so good yourself, maybe. If ever I saw a guy that looked like he was qualified to step straight into a coffin, he was him.'

'Aw, be yourself, Chimp!'

'I'm being myself all right, all right.'

'Well, then, for Pete's sake, be somebody else. Pull yourself together, why can't you? Have a drink.'

'Ah!' said Mr Twist, struck with the idea.

His hand was still shaking, but he accomplished the delicate task of mixing a whisky and soda without disaster.

'What did you with the remains?' asked Dolly, interested.

Mr Twist, who had been raising the glass to his lips, lowered it again. He disapproved of levity of speech at such a moment.

'Would you kindly not call him "the remains",' he begged. 'It's all very well for you to be so easy about it all and to pull this stuff about him doing nothing but wake up with a headache, but what I'm asking myself is, will he wake up at all?'

'Oh, cut it out! Sure, he'll wake up.'

'But will it be in this world?'

'You drink that up, you poor dumb-bell, and then fix yourself another,' advised Dolly. 'And make it a bit stronger next time. You seem to need it.'

Mr Twist did as directed, and found the treatment beneficial.

'You've nothing to grumble at,' Dolly proceeded, still looking on the bright side. 'What with all this excitement and all, you seem to have lost that cold of yours.'

'That's right,' said Chimp, impressed. 'It does seem to have got a whole lot better.'

'Pity you couldn't have got rid of it a little earlier. Then we wouldn't have had all this trouble. From what I can make of it, you seem to have roused the house by sneezing your head off, and a bunch of the help came and stood looking over the banisters at you.'

Chimp tottered.

'You don't mean somebody saw me last night?'

'Sure they saw you. Didn't Soapy tell you that over the wire?'

'I could hardly make out all Soapy was saying over the wire. Say! What are we going to do?'

'Don't you worry. We've done it. The only difficult part is over. Now that we've fixed the remains. . . .'

'Will you please . . . !'

'Well, call him what you like. Now that we've fixed that guy the thing's simple. By the way, what did you do with him?'

'Flannery took him upstairs.'

'Where to?'

'There's a room on the top floor. Must have been a nursery or something, I guess. Anyway, there's bars to the window.'

'How's the door?'

'Good solid oak. You've got to hand it to the guys who built these old English houses. They knew their groceries. When they spit on their hands and set to work to make a door, they made one. You couldn't push that door down, not if you was an elephant.'

'Well, that's all right, then. Now, listen, Chimp. Here's the low-down. We . . .' She broke off. 'What's that?'

'What's what?' asked Mr Twist, starting violently.

'I thought I heard someone outside in the corridor. Go and look.'

With an infinite caution born of alarm, Mr Twist crept across the floor, reached the door and flung it open. The passage was empty. He looked up and down it, and Dolly, whose fingers had hovered for an instant over the glass which he had left on the table, sat back with an air of content.

'My mistake,' she said. 'I thought I heard something.'

Chimp returned to the table. He was still much perturbed.

'I wish I'd never gone into this thing,' he said with a sudden gush of self-pity. 'I felt all along, what with seeing that magpie and the new moon through glass. . . .'

'Now, listen!' said Dolly vigorously. 'Considering you've stood Soapy and me up for practically all there is in this thing except a little small change, I'll ask you kindly, if you don't mind, not to stand there beefing and expecting me to hold your hand and pat you on the head and be a second mother to you. You came into this business because you wanted to. You're getting sixty-five per cent of the gross. So what's biting you? You're all right – so far.'