Money for Nothing (19 page)

It was in Mr Twist's mind to inquire of his companion precisely what she meant by this expression, but more urgent matters claimed his attention. More even than the exact interpretation of the phrase 'so far', he wished to know what the next move was.

'What happens now?' he asked.

'We go back to Rudge.'

'And collect the stuff?'

'Yes. And then make our getaway.'

No programme could have outlined more admirably Mr Twist's own desires. The mere contemplation of it heartened him. He snatched his glass from the table and drained it with a gesture almost swashbuckling.

'Soapy will have doped the old man by this time, eh?'

'That's right.'

'But suppose he hasn't been able to?' said Mr Twist with a return of his old nervousness. 'Suppose he hasn't had an opportunity?'

'You can always find an opportunity of doping people. You ought to know that.'

The implied compliment pleased Chimp.

'That's right,' he chuckled.

He nodded his head complacently. And immediately something which may have been an iron girder or possibly the ceiling and the upper parts of the house seemed to strike him on the base of the skull. He had been standing by the table, and now, crumpling at the knees, he slid gently down to the floor. Dolly, regarding him, recognized instantly what he had meant just now when he had spoken of John appearing like a total loss to his life-insurance company. The best you could have said of Alexander Twist at this moment was that he looked peaceful. She drew in her breath a little sharply, and then, being a woman at heart, took a cushion from the arm-chair and placed it beneath his head.

Only then did she go to the telephone and in a gentle voice ask the operator to connect her with Rudge Hall.

'Soapy?'

'Hello!'

The promptitude with which the summons of the bell had been answered brought a smile of approval to her lips. Soapy, she felt, must have been sitting with his head on the receiver.

'Listen, sweetie.'

'I'm listening, pettie!'

'Everything's set.'

'Have you fixed that guy?'

'Sure, precious. And Chimp, too.'

'How's that? Chimp?'

'Sure. We don't want Chimp around, do we, with that sixty-five–thirty-five stuff of his? I just slipped a couple of drops into his high-ball and he's gone off as peaceful as a lamb. Say, wait a minute,' she added, as the wire hummed with Mr Molloy's low-voiced congratulations. 'Hello!' she said, returning.

'What were you doing, honey? Did you hear somebody?'

'No. I caught sight of a bunch of lilies in a vase, and I just slipped across and put one of them in Chimp's hand. Made it seem more sort of natural. Now listen, Soapy. Everything's clear for you at your end now, so go right ahead and clean up. I'm going to beat it in that guy Carroll's runabout, and I haven't much time, so don't start talking about the weather or nothing. I'm going to London, to the Belvedere. You collect the stuff and meet me there. Is that all straight?'

'But, pettie!'

'Now what?'

'How am I to get the stuff away?'

'For goodness sake! You can drive a car, can't you? Old Carmody's car was outside the stable-yard when I left. I guess it's there still. Get the stuff and then go and tell the chauffeur that old Carmody wants to see him. Then, when he's gone, climb in and drive to Birmingham. Leave the car outside the station and take a train. That's simple enough, isn't it?'

There was a long pause. Admiration seemed to have deprived Mr Molloy of speech.

'Honey,' he said at length, in a hushed voice, 'when it comes to the real smooth stuff you're there every time. Let me just tell you...'

'All right, baby,' said Dolly. 'Save it till later, I'm in a hurry.'

Soapy Molloy replaced the receiver, and came out of the telephone-cupboard glowing with the resolve to go right ahead and clean up as his helpmeet had directed. Like all good husbands, he felt that his wife was an example and an inspiration to him. Mopping his fine forehead, for it had been warm in the cupboard with the door shut, he stood for awhile and mused, sketching out in his mind a plan of campaign.

The prudent man, before embarking on any enterprise which may at a moment's notice necessitate his skipping away from a given spot like a scalded cat, will always begin by preparing his lines of retreat. Mr Molloy's first act was to go to the stable-yard in order to ascertain with his own eyes that the Dex-Mayo was still there.

It was. It stood out on the gravel, simply waiting for someone to spring to its wheel and be off.

So far, so good. But how far actually was it? The really difficult part of the operations, Mr Molloy could not but recognize, still lay before him. The knock-out drops nestled in his waistcoat pocket all ready for use, but in order to bring about the happy ending it was necessary for him, like some conjuror doing a trick, to transfer them thence to the interior of Mr Lester Carmody. And little by little, chilling his enthusiasm, there crept upon Soapy the realization that he had not a notion how the deuce this was to be done.

The whole question of administering knock-out drops to a fellow-creature is a very delicate and complex one. So much depends on the co-operation of the party of the second part. Before you can get anything in the nature of action, your victim must first be induced to start drinking something. At Health-ward Ho, Soapy had gathered from the recent telephone conversation, no obstacles had arisen. The thing had been, apparently, from the start a sort of jolly carousal. But at Rudge Hall, it was plain, matters were not going to be nearly so simple.

When you are a guest in a man's house, you cannot very well go about thrusting drinks on your host at half-past eleven in the morning. Probably Mr Carmody would not think of taking liquid refreshment till lunch-time, and then there would be a butler in and out of the room all the while. Besides, lunch would not be for another two hours or more, and the whole essence of this enterprise was that it should be put through swiftly and at once.

Mr Molloy groaned in spirit. He wandered forth into the garden, turning the problem over in his mind with growing desperation, and had just come to the conclusion that he was mentally unequal to it, when, reaching the low wall that bordered the moat, he saw a sight which sent the blood coursing joyously through his veins once more – a sight which made the world a thing of sunshine and bird-song again.

Out in the middle of the moat lay the punt. In the punt sat Mr Carmody. And in Mr Carmody's hand was a fishing-rod.

Æsthetically considered, wearing as he did a pink shirt and a slouch hat which should long ago have been given to the deserving poor, Mr Carmody was not much of a spectacle, but Soapy, eyeing him, felt that he had never beheld anything lovelier. He was not a fisherman himself but he knew all about fishermen. They became, he was aware, when engaged on their favourite pursuit, virtually monomaniacs. Earthquakes might occur in their immediate neighbourhood, dynasties fall and pestilences ravage the land, but they would just go on fishing. As long as the bait held out, Lester Carmody, sitting in that punt, was for all essential purposes as good as if he had been crammed to the brim with the finest knock-out drops. It was as though he were in another world.

Exhilaration filled Soapy like a tonic.

'Any luck?' he shouted.

'Wah, wah, wah,' replied Mr Carmody inaudibly.

'Stick to it,' cried Soapy. "Atta-boy!'

With an encouraging wave of the hand he hurried back to the house. The problem which a moment before had seemed to defy solution had now become so simple and easy that a child could have negotiated it – any child, that is to say, capable of holding a hatchet and endowed with sufficient strength to break a cupboard door with it.

'I'm telling the birds, telling the bees,' sang Soapy gaily, charging into the hall, 'Telling the flowers, telling the trees how I love you...'

'Sir?' said Sturgis respectfully, suddenly becoming manifest out of the infinite.

Soapy gazed at the butler blankly, his wild woodnotes dying away in a guttural gurgle. Apart from the embarrassment which always comes upon a man when caught singing, he was feeling, as Sturgis himself would have put it, stottled. A moment before, the place had been completely free from butlers, and where this one could have come from was more than he could understand. Rudge Hall's old retainer did not look the sort of man who would pop up through traps, but there seemed no other explanation of his presence.

And then, close to the cupboard door, Soapy espied another door, covered with green baize. This, evidently, was the Sturgis bolt-hole.

'Nothing,' he said.

'I thought you called, sir.'

'No.'

'Lovely day, sir.'

'Beautiful,' said Soapy.

He gazed bulgily at this inconvenient old fossil. Once more, shadows had fallen about his world, and he was brooding again on the deep gulf that is fixed between artistic conception and detail-work.

The broad artistic conception of breaking open the cupboard door and getting away with the swag while Mr Carmody, anchored out on the moat, dabbled for bream or dibbled for chub or sniggled for eels or whatever weak-minded thing it is that fishermen do when left to themselves in the middle of a sheet of water, was magnificent. It was bold, dashing, big in every sense of the word. Only when you came to inspect it in detail did it occur to you that it might also be a little noisy.

That was the fatal flaw – the noise. The more Soapy examined the scheme, the more clearly did he see that it could not be carried through in even comparative quiet. And the very first blow of the hammer or axe or chisel selected for the operation must inevitably bring Methuselah's little brother popping through that green baize door, full of inquiries.

'Hell!' said Soapy.

'Sir?'

'Nothing,' said Soapy. 'I was just thinking.'

He continued to think, and to such effect that before long he had begun to see daylight. There is no doubt that in time of stress the human mind has an odd tendency to take off its coat and roll up its sleeves and generally spread itself in a spasm of unwonted energy. Probably if this thing had been put up to Mr Molloy as an academic problem over the nuts and wine after dinner, he would have had to confess himself baffled. Now, however, with such vital issues at stake, it took him but a few minutes to reach the conclusion that what he required, as he could not break open a cupboard door in silence, was some plausible reason for making a noise.

He followed up this line of thought. A noise of smashing wood. In what branch of human activity may a man smash wood blamelessly? The answer is simple. When he is doing carpentering. What sort of carpentering? Why, making something. What? Oh, anything. Yes, but what? Well, say for example a rabbit-hutch. But why a rabbit-hutch? Well, a man might very easily have a daughter who, in her girlish, impulsive way, had decided to keep pet rabbits, mightn't he? There actually were pet rabbits on the Rudge Hall estate, weren't there? Certainly there were. Soapy had seen them down at one of the lodges.

The thing began to look good. It only remained to ascertain whether Sturgis was the right recipient for this kind of statement. The world may be divided broadly into two classes – men who will believe you when you suddenly inform them at half-past eleven on a summer morning that you propose to start making rabbit-hutches, and men who will not. Sturgis looked as if he belonged to the former and far more likeable class. He looked, indeed, like a man who would believe anything.

'Say!' said Soapy.

'Sir?'

'My daughter wants me to make her a rabbit-hutch.'

'Indeed, sir?'

Soapy felt relieved. There had been no incredulity in the other's gaze – on the contrary, something that looked very much like a sort of senile enthusiasm. He had the air of a butler who has heard good news from home.

'Have you got such a thing as a packing-case or a sugar-box or something like that? And a hatchet?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Then fetch them along.'

'Very good, sir.'

The butler disappeared through his green baize door, and Soapy, to fill in the time of waiting, examined the cupboard. It appeared to be a very ordinary sort of cupboard, the kind that a resolute man can open with one well-directed blow. Soapy felt complacent. Though primarily a thinker, it pleased him to feel that he could be the man of action when the occasion called.

There was a noise of bumping without. Sturgis reappeared, packing-case in one hand, hatchet in the other, looking like Noah taking ship's stores aboard the Ark.

'Here they are, sir.'

'Thanks.'

'I used to keep roberts when I was a lad, sir,' said the butler. 'Oh, dear, yes. Many's the robert I've made a pet of in my time. Roberts and white mice, those were what I was fondest of. And newts in a little aquarium.'

He leaned easily against the wall, beaming, and Soapy, with deep concern, became aware that the Last of the Great Victorians proposed to make this thing a social gathering. He appeared to be regarding Soapy as the nucleus of a salon.

'Don't let me keep you,' said Soapy.

'You aren't keeping me, sir,' the butler assured him. 'Oh, no, sir, you aren't keeping me. I've done my silver. It will be a pleasure to watch you, sir. Quite likely I can give you a hint or two if you've never made a robert-hutch before. Many's the hutch I've made in my time. As a lad, I was very handy at that sort of thing.'

A dull despair settled upon Soapy. It was plain to him now that he had unwittingly delivered himself over into the clutches of a bore who had probably been pining away for someone on whom to pour out his wealth of stored-up conversation. Words had begun to flutter out of this butler like bats out of a barn. He had become a sort of human Topical Talk on rabbits. He was speaking of rabbits he had known in his hot youth – their manners, customs and the amount of lettuce they had consumed per diem. To a man interested in rabbits but too lazy to look the subject up in the Encyclopaedia the narrative would have been enthralling. It induced in Soapy a feverishness that touched the skirts of homicidal mania. The thought came into his mind that there are other uses to which a hatchet may be put besides the making of rabbit-hutches. England trembled on the verge of being short one butler.

Sturgis had now become involved in a long story of his early manhood, and even had Soapy been less distrait he might have found it difficult to enjoy it to the full. It was about an acquaintance of his who had kept rabbits, and it suffered in lucidity from his unfortunate habit of pronouncing rabbits 'roberts', combined with the fact that by a singular coincidence the acquaintance had been a Mr Roberts. Roberts, it seemed, had been deeply attached to roberts. In fact, his practice of keeping roberts in his bedroom had led to trouble with Mrs Roberts, and in the end Mrs Roberts had drowned the roberts in the pond and Roberts, who thought the world of his roberts and not quite so highly of Mrs Roberts, had never forgiven her.

Here Sturgis paused, apparently for comment.

'Is that so?' said Soapy, breathing heavily.

'Yes, sir.'

'In the pond?'

'In the pond, sir.'

Like some Open Sesame, the word suddenly touched a chord in Soapy's mind.

'Say, listen,' he said. 'All the while we've been talking I was forgetting that Mr Carmody is out there on the pond.'

'The moat, sir?'

'Call it what you like. Anyway, he's there, fishing, and he told me to tell you to take him out something to drink.'

Immediately, Sturgis, the lecturer, with a change almost startling in its abruptness, became Sturgis, the butler, once more. The fanatic rabbit-gleam died out of his eyes.

'Very good, sir.'

'I should hurry. His tongue was hanging out when I left him.'

For an instant the butler wavered. The words had recalled to his mind a lop-eared doe which he had once owned, whose habit of putting out its tongue and gasping had been the cause of some concern to him in the late 'seventies. But he recovered himself. Registering a mental resolve to seek out this new-made friend of his later and put the complete facts before him, he passed through the green baize door.

Soapy, alone at last, did not delay. With all the pent-up energy which had been accumulating within him during a quarter of an hour which had seemed a lifetime, he swung the hatchet and brought it down. The panel splintered. The lock snapped. The door swung open.

There was an electric switch inside the cupboard. He pressed it down and was able to see clearly. And, having seen clearly, he drew back, his lips trembling with half-spoken words of the regrettable kind which a man picks up in the course of a lifetime spent in the less refined social circles of New York, Philadelphia and Chicago.

The cupboard contained an old rain-coat, two hats, a rusty golf-club, six croquet balls, a pamphlet on stock-breeding, three umbrellas, a copy of the Parish Magazine for the preceding November, a shoe, a mouse, and a smell of apples, but no suitcase.

That much Soapy had been able to see in the first awful, disintegrating instant.

No bag, box, portmanteau or suitcase of any kind or description whatsoever.

Hope does not readily desert the human breast. After the first numbing impact of any shock, we most of us have a tendency to try to persuade ourselves that things may not be so bad as they seem. Some explanation, we feel, will be forthcoming shortly, putting the whole matter in a different light. And so, after a few moments during which he stood petrified, muttering some of the comments which on the face of it the situation seemed to demand, Soapy cheered up a little.

He had had, he reflected, no opportunity of private speech with his host this morning. If Mr Carmody had decided to change his plans and deposit the suitcase in some other hiding-place he might have done so in quite good faith without Soapy's knowledge. For all he knew, in mentally labelling Mr Carmody a fat, pop-eyed, crooked, swindling, pie-faced, double-crossing Judas, he might be doing him an injustice. Feeling calmer, though still anxious, he left the house and started towards the moat.