Beaumaroy Home from the Wars Part 15

"Of what?"

"Of being shut up. May I lead the way in, Dr. Arkroyd?"

They entered the cottage, and Beaumaroy shut the door. A lamp was burning dimly in the pa.s.sage. He turned it up. "Would you kindly wait here one minute?" Receiving her nod of acquiescence, he stepped softly up the stairs, and she heard him open a door above; she knew it was that of Mr. Saffron's bedroom, where she had visited the old man. She waited--now with a sudden sense of suspense. It was very quiet in the cottage.

Beaumaroy was down again in a minute.

"It is as I feared," he said quietly. "He has got up again, and gone into the Tower. Shall I try and get him out, or will you----?"

"I will go in with you, of course, Mr. Beaumaroy."

His old mirthful, yet rueful, smile came on his lips--just for a moment.

Then he was grave and formal again. "This way, then, if you please, Dr.

Arkroyd," he said deferentially.

CHAPTER XI

THE CAR BEHIND THE TREES

Mr. Percy Bennett, that gentlemanly stranger, was an enemy to delay; both const.i.tutionally and owing to experience, averse from dallying with fortune; to him a bird in his hand was worth a whole aviary on his neighbour's unrifled premises. He thought that Beaumaroy might levant with the treasure; at any moment that unwelcome, though not unfamiliar, tap on the shoulder, with the words (gratifying under quite other circ.u.mstances and from quite different lips) "I want you," might incapacitate him from prosecuting his enterprise (he expressed this idea in more homely idiom--less Latinized was his language, metaphorical indeed, yet terse); finally he had that healthy distrust of his accomplices which is essential to success in a career of crime; he thought that Sergeant Hooper might not deliver the goods!

Sergeant Hooper demurred; he deprecated inconsiderate haste; let the opportunity be chosen. He had served under Mr. Beaumaroy in France, and (whatever faults Major-General Punnit might find with that officer) preferred that he should be off the premises at the moment when Mr.

Bennett and he himself made unauthorized entry thereon. "He's a hot 'un in a sc.r.a.p," said the Sergeant, sitting in a public-house at Sprotsfield on Boxing Day evening, Mr. Bennett and sundry other excursionists from London being present.

"My chauffeur will settle him," said Mr. Bennett. It may seem odd that Mr. Bennett should have a chauffeur; but he had--or proposed to have--_pro hac vice_--or _ad hoc_; for this particular job in fact.

Without a car that stuff at Tower Cottage--somewhere at Tower Cottage--would be difficult to s.h.i.+ft.

The Sergeant demurred still, by no means for the sake of saving Beaumaroy's skin, but still purely for the reason already given; yet he admitted that he could not name any date on which he could guarantee Beaumaroy's absence from Tower Cottage. "He never leaves the old blighter alone later than eleven o'clock or so, and rarely as late as that."

"Then any night's about the same," said gentleman Bennett; "and now for the scheme dear N.C.O.!"

Sergeant Hooper despaired of the doors. The house-door might possibly be negotiated, though at the probable cost of arousing the notice of Beaumaroy--and the old blighter himself. But the door from the parlour into the Tower offered insuperable difficulties. It was always locked; the lock was intricate; he had never so much as seen the key at close quarters and, even had opportunity offered, was quite unpractised in the art of taking impressions of locks--a thing not done with accuracy quite so easily as seems sometimes to be a.s.sumed.

"For my own part," said Mr. Bennett with a nod, "I've always inclined to the window. We can negotiate that without any noise to speak of, and it oughtn't to take us more than a few minutes. Just deal boards, I expect!

Perhaps the old gentleman and your pal Beaumaroy" (the Sergeant spat) "will sleep right through it!"

"If they ain't in the Tower itself," suggested the Sergeant gloomily.

"Wherever they may be," said gentleman Bennett, with a touch of irritability--he was himself a sanguine man and disliked a mind fertile in objections--"I suppose the stuff's in the Tower, isn't it?"

"It goes in there, and I've never seen it come out, Mr. Bennett." Here at least a tone of confidence rang in the Sergeant's voice.

"But where in the Tower, Sergeant?"

"'Ow should I know? I've never been in the blooming place."

"It's really rather a queer business," observed Mr. Bennett, allowing himself, for a moment, an outside and critical consideration of the matter.

"d.a.m.ned," said the Sergeant briefly.

"But, once inside, we're bound to find it! Then--with the car--it's in London in forty minutes, and in ten more it's--where it's going to be; where that is needn't worry you, my dear Sergeant."

"What if we're seen from the road?" urged the pessimistic Sergeant.

"There's never a job about which you can't put those questions. What if Ludendorff had known just what Foch was going to do, Sergeant? At any rate anybody who sees us is two miles either way from a police station--and may be a lot farther if he tries to interfere with us! It's a hundred to one against anybody being on the road at that time of night; we'll pray for a dark night and dirty weather--which, so far as I've observed, you generally get in this beastly neighbourhood." He leant forward and tapped the Sergeant on the shoulder. "Barring accidents, let's say this day week; meanwhile, Neddy"--he smiled as he interjected "Neddy is our chauffeur"--"Neddy and I will make our little plan of attack."

"Don't be too generous! Don't leave all the V.C. chances to me," the Sergeant implored.

"Neddy's a fair glutton for 'em! Difficulty is to keep him from murder!

And he stands six foot four and weighs seventeen stone."

"I'll back him up--from be'ind--company in support," grinned the Sergeant, considerably comforted by this description of his coadjutor.

"You'll occupy the station a.s.signed to you, my man," said Mr. Bennett, with an admirable burlesque of the military manner. "The front is wherever a soldier is ordered to be--a fine saying of Lord Kitchener's!

Remember it, Sergeant!"

"Yes, sir," said the Sergeant, grinning still.

He found Mr. Bennett on the whole amusing company, though occasionally rather alarming; for instance, there seemed to him to be no particular reason for dragging in Neddy's predilection for murder; though, of course, a man of his inches and weight might commit murder through some trifling and pardonable miscalculation of force. "Same as if that Captain Naylor hit you!" the Sergeant reflected, as he finished the ample portion of rum with which the conversation had been lightened. He felt pleasantly muzzy, and saw Mr. Bennett's clean-cut features rather blurred in outline. However the sandy wig and red moustache which that gentleman wore--in his character as a Boxing Day excursionist--were still salient features even to his eyes. Anybody in the room would have been able to swear to them.

Thus the date of the attack was settled and, if only it had been adhered to, things might have fallen out differently between Doctor Mary and Mr.

Beaumaroy. Events would probably have relieved Mary from the necessity of presenting her ultimatum, and she might never have heard that illuminating word "Morocco." But big Neddy the Shover--as his intimate friends were wont to call him--was a man of pleasure as well as of business; he was not a bloke in an office; he liked an ample Christmas vacation and was now taking one with a party of friends at Brighton--all tip-toppers, who did the thing in style and spent their money (which was not their money) lavishly. From the attractions of this company--not composed of gentlemen only--Neddy refused to be separated. Mr. Bennett, who was on thorns at the delay, could take it or leave it at that; in any case the job was, in Neddy's opinion (which he expressed with that ma.s.sive but good-humoured scorn which is an appanage of very large men), a leap in the dark, a pig in a poke, blind hookey; for who really knew how much of the stuff the old blighter and his pal had contrived to s.h.i.+ft down to the cottage in the old brown bag? Sometimes it looked light, sometimes it looked heavy; sometimes perhaps it was full of bricks!

In this mood Neddy had to be humoured, even though gentlemanly Mr.

Bennett sat on thorns. The Sergeant repined less at the delay; he liked the pickings which the job brought him much better than the job itself, standing in wholesome dread of Beaumaroy. It was rather with resignation than with joy that he received from Mr. Bennett the news that Neddy had at last named the day that would suit his High Mightiness--Tuesday the 7th of January it was, and, as it chanced, the very day before Beaumaroy was to start for Morocco! More accurately, the attack would be delivered on the actual day of his departure--if he went. For it was timed for one o'clock in the morning, an hour at which the road across the heath might reasonably be expected to be clear of traffic. This was an especially important point, in view of the fact that the window of the Tower faced towards the road and was but four or five yards distant from it.

After a jovial dinner--rather too jovial in Mr. Bennett's opinion, but that was Neddy's only fault, he would mix pleasure with business--the two set out in an Overland car. Mr. Bennett--whom, by the way, his big friend Neddy called "Mike," and not "Percy," as might have been expected--a.s.sumed his sandy wig and red moustache as soon as they were well started; Neddy scorned disguise for the moment, but he had a mask in his pocket. He also had a very nasty little club in the same pocket, whereas Mr. Bennett carried no weapon of offence--merely the tools of his trade, at which he was singularly expert. The friends had worked together before; though Neddy reviled Mike for a coward, and Mike averred, with curses, that Neddy would bring them both to the gallows some day, yet they worked well together and had a respect for one another, each allowing for the other's idiosyncrasies. The true spirit of partners.h.i.+p! On it alone can lasting and honourable success be built.

"Just match-boarding, the Sergeant says it is, does he?" asked Neddy, breaking a long silence, which indeed had lasted until they were across Putney Bridge and climbing the hill.

"Yes, and rotten at that. It oughtn't to take two minutes; then there'll be only the window. Of course we must have a look round first. Then, if the coast's clear, I'll nip in and shove something up against the door of the place while you're following. The Sergeant's to stay on guard at the door of the house, so that we can't be taken in the rear. See?"

"Righto!"

"Then--well, we've got to find the stuff, and when we've found it, you've got to carry it, Neddy. Don't mind if it's a bit heavy, do you?"

"I don't want to overstrain myself," said Neddy jocularly, "but I'll do my best with it--only hope it's there!"

"It must be there. Hasn't got wings, has it? At any rate, not till you put it in your pocket, and go out for an evening with the ladies!"

Neddy paid this pleasantry the tribute of a laugh, but he had one more business question to ask:

"Where are we to stow the car? How far off?"