Ice in the Bedroom (21 page)

'Honey,' he cried, as at long last the door opened, 'Guess what. Great news!'

Dolly, who had been putting down her purchases, if one may loosely call them that, turned sharply.

'Don't tell me---?'

'Yep!'

'She's gone?'

'Left this evening.'

'Who told you?'

'That guy Cornelius. He's just been on the phone.'

'So it's official?'

'That's right.'

'Gee!' said Dolly with fervour.

She was feeling all the pleasurable emotions of a general who has seen his plan of campaign work out satisfactorily and knows that he will have something good to include in his memoirs.

'I thought those snakes would do it. Only thing I was afraid of was that there mightn't have been an answer to that advert, on account of it isn't everybody that's got snakes. But I thought it was worth trying, and it was. Well, I'd been hoping to take my shoes off and put my feet up and relax a while, because let me tell you an afternoon's shopping's hard on the dogs and mine feel like they was going to burst, but we've no time for that. Let's go.'

'Go? What's the hurry? We've all the time there is now. We've got it made.'

As had so often happened in the course of their married life, Dolly found her consort's slowness of apprehension trying. She would have supposed that even Soapy would have seen what the hurry was. But where a less loving wife might have responded with some wounding reference to Dumb Isaacs who must have been dropped on their heads when babies, she merely sighed, counted ten and explained the situation.

'Look,' she said. 'You know the Yorke dame hired Chimp to find her lost husband. Well, when a woman's got a private eye working on an assignment like that, she don't cut herself off from the latest news bulletins. If she's checking out, she lets him know. She gets on the phone before she starts and says, "Hey, I'm leaving for the country. Here's my forwarding address."'

Soapy's jaw fell. As always, he had not thought of that. 'You think she told Chimp she was pulling out?'

'Of course she did. He may be on his way to Castlewood now.'

'Gosh!'

'Only I've an idea he'd wait till it was later. These summer evenings there's generally people about in a place like Valley Fields, and Chimp's one of those cautious guys. Still, we don't want to sit around here, chewing the fat. We gotta move.'

'I'm ready.'

'Me, too. But let's not go off half-cock. What'll we need? A torch?'

'Why a torch?'

Dolly counted ten again.

'Because when we get to Castlewood, we aren't going to switch on all the lights. On account we don't want to shout out to the neighbours, "Hey! You thought this house was empty, didn't you? Well, that's where you was wrong. The Molloys are here, come to pick up that Prosser ice." '

'Oh, I see,' said Soapy, taking her point. He could generally understand things, if you used short words and spoke slowly.

'So we'll need a torch. And, seeing that quite likely Chimp'll blow in while we're there, it wouldn't hurt,' said Dolly, 'to take along my blackjack.'

Soapy nodded silently, his heart too full for speech. What a helpmeet, he was saying to himself. She thought of everything.

The journey from the metropolis to Valley Fields can be made by train, by omnibus and part of the way by tram, but if you are in a hurry and expense is no object, it is quicker to take a taxi. Soapy and Dolly did this, and were fortunate to get one of the newer and speedier kind, though to their anxious minds the vehicle seemed to be merely strolling. It was a silent ride. Light conversation is impossible at times like this. Only when they reached their destination and Castlewood's dark, deserted aspect heartened them, did either speak.

'Looks like he's not here yet,' said Soapy.

'We'll know that better when we've scouted around some.'

'How do you mean?'

'Well, if Chimp's come, he'll have broken a window or sump'n, or how could he get in?'

'Oh, I see.'

'You go around that side. I'll go this.'

They met at the back door.

'All straight my end,' said Soapy.

'Same mine. I guess we're in time.'

'You had me worried for a moment, baby.'

'I wasn't feeling any too good neither myself,' said Dolly. 'Well, here goes.'

Reaching in her dainty bag, she drew out the blackjack and with a firm hand broke the kitchen window. To Soapy, whose nervous system was not at its best, the sound of splintering glass seemed to ring through the silent night like the clashing of a thousand dishes coming apart in the hands of a thousand cooks, and he waited, breathless, for posses of policemen to come charging on the scene with drawn truncheons. But none appeared. Castlewood and its environs were part of Freddie's cousin George's beat that night, and at the moment of their illegal entry that able officer was standing behind a bush in the garden of a house some quarter of a mile distant, enjoying the cigarette to which he had been looking forward for the last two hours. To keep the record straight, he was also thinking tender thoughts of Jennifer Tibbett, his invariable custom when on night duty.

Standing in the kitchen, Dolly switched on her torch.

'I'm going up. Meet me in the living-room.'

‘You taking the torch?'

'Sure I'm taking the torch. I want to see what I'm doing, don't I?'

‘I’ll bump into something in the dark.'

'Well, bump,' said Dolly indulgently. 'Nobody's stopping you. This is Liberty Hall, as that cop said.'

'Don't talk about cops, honey, not at a moment like this,' begged Soapy nervously. It does something to me. And don't be too long upstairs.'

On her return, not even the sight of the chamois leather bag dangling from her fingers was able to restore his composure. He eyed it almost absently, his mind on other things.

'Say, look,' he said. 'Do you suppose this joint is haunted?'

'Shouldn't think so. Why?'

'I heard something.'

'Some what sort of thing?'

Soapy searched for the
mot juste
.

'Sounded kind of slithery.'

'How do you mean - slithery?'

'Well, slithery, sort of. I was feeling my way in here in the dark, and there was something somewhere making a kind of rustling, slithery noise. Just the sort of noise a ghost would make,' said Soapy, speaking as one who knew ghosts and their habits.

'Simply your imagination.'

'You think so?'

'Sure. You're all worked up, baby, and you imagine things.'

'Well, if you say so,' said Soapy dubiously. 'It's all this darkness that gets you down. Beats me why a burglar doesn't go off his nut, having to go through this sort of thing night after night. It would reduce me to a nervous wreck. Could I use a drink!'

'Well, there's prob'ly something in the kitchen. Take the torch and go look.'

'Won't you mind being alone in the dark, pettie?'

'Who - me? Don't make me laugh! Matter of fact, I guess it 'ud be safe enough to switch the lights on, if we draw the curtains. And I'll open the window a couple of inches at the bottom. Sort of close in here. If you find anything, bring three glasses.'

'Three?'

'Just in case Chimp blows in.'

'Oughtn't we to be moving out?'

'Not me! I want to see Chimp's face.'

To anyone acquainted with Chimp Twist this might have seemed a bizarre, even morbid, desire, but Soapy followed her train of thought. He chuckled.

'He'll be sore!'

'He'll be as sore as all get-out. Get moving, sweetie. Let's have some service.'

When Soapy returned, bearing glasses and the bottle of champagne which Sally had been at such pains to buy for Leila Yorke's dinner, he found his wife looking thoughtful.

'Shall I tell you something, Soapy?'

'What, honey?'

'There is a slithery noise. I heard it. Like you said, sort of rustling. Oh, well, I guess it's just a draught or something.'

'Could be,' said Soapy, doubtfully, and would have spoken further, but before he could do so speech froze on his lips.

The front door bell was ringing.

23

THE sound affected both the Molloys unpleasantly, throwing an instant damper on what had looked like being a good party. Soapy, surprisingly agile for a man of his build, executed something resembling the entrechat to which ballet dancers are so addicted, while Dolly, drawing her breath in with a sharp hiss, sprang to the switch and turned off the lights. They stood congealed in the darkness, and not even a distinct repetition of the slithery sound which had alarmed him a few minutes before was able to divert Soapy's attention from this ringing in the night. He clutched the champagne bottle in a feverish grip.

'What was that?' he gasped.

'What did you think it was?' said Dolly. She spoke with an asperity understandable in the circumstances. No girl cares to be asked foolish questions at a moment when she is trying to make certain that the top of her head has not come off.

'Someone's at the front door.'

'Yay.'

'I'll bet it's a cop.'

Dolly had shaken off the passing feeling of having been the victim of one of those gas explosions in a London street which slay six. She was herself again and, as always when she was herself, was able to reason clearly.

'No, not a cop. Want my guess, I'd say it was Chimp, wanting to find out if there's anyone home before he busts in. It's a thing he'd like to know.'

She had guessed correctly. Chimp Twist, as she had said, was a cautious man. He thought ahead, and preferred, before making any move, to be sure that there were no pitfalls in his path. Being in a hurry to get to her car and start shaking the dust of Valley Fields from its tyres, Leila Yorke had made their telephone conversation a brief one, and in it had not mentioned whether or not she was being accompanied in her exodus by the secretary who had called at his office. It was quite possible that the girl had been left behind to do the packing.

This provided food for thought. Nothing is more embarrassing for a man who has entered an empty house through a broken window and is anxious for privacy than to find, when he has settled in and it is too late to withdraw, that the house is not empty, after all. This is especially so if he knows there to be shot-guns on the premises. Soapy had told Chimp all about Leila Yorke's shot-gun, and he shrank from being brought in contact with such a weapon, even if only in the hands of a secretary. So he rang the door bell.

When he had rung it twice and nothing had happened, he felt he might legitimately conclude that all was well. He left the front door steps and began to sidle round the house, and was delighted to find that the very first window he came to had been carelessly left a few inches open at the bottom. It obviated the necessity of breaking the glass, a task to which, for his policy was to be as silent as possible and to avoid doing anything to arouse comment and curiosity in the neighbours, he had not been looking forward. To raise the window was with him the work of an instant, to slide over the sill that of another, and, well pleased, he was just saying to himself that this was the life, when a sudden blaze of light dazzled him. It also made him bite his tongue rather painfully, and gave him the momentary illusion that he was in Sing Sing, being electrocuted.

The mists cleared away, and he saw Dolly. Her face was wearing the smug expression of a female juvenile delinquent who has just played a successful practical joke on another member of her age group, and her sunny smile, which Soapy admired so much, seemed to gash him like a knife. Not for the first time he was wishing that, if it could be done without incurring any unpleasant after-effects for himself, he could introduce a pinch of some little-known Asiatic poison into this woman's morning cup of coffee or stab her in several vital spots with a dagger of Oriental design. A vision rose before his eyes of Mrs. Thomas G. Molloy sinking for the third time in some lake or mere and himself, with a sneer on his lips, throwing her an anvil.

It is never easy at times like this to think of the right thing to say. What Chimp said was:

'Oh, there you are,' which he himself recognized as weak.

'Yes, we're here,' said Dolly. 'What are you doing in these parts?'

A lifetime spent in keeping one jump ahead of the law had given Chimp the ability to think quickly and to recover with a minimum of delay from sudden shocks.

‘I came here,' he said, with a good deal of dignity, 'to get that ice for Soapy, like I promised him I would.'

'Oh, yeah?'

'Yeah.'

'You was going to pick it up and hand it over to Soapy?'

'Yeah.'

'For ten per cent of the gross?'

'That was the arrangement.'

'Sort of a gentlemen's agreement, was there? Well, that's too bad.'

'What's too bad?'

'That you should have had all this trouble for nothing. We've got that ice ourselves. It's over there on that table. And,' said Dolly, packing a wealth of meaning into her words as she produced her blackjack from its bag and gave it a tentative swing, 'you take one step in its direction, and you're going to get the headache of a lifetime.'

Observations like this always cause a silence to fall on a conference. If a Foreign Secretary at a meeting of Foreign Secretaries at Geneva were to use such words to another Foreign Secretary, the other Foreign Secretary would for a moment not know what to say. Chimp did not. He fondled his waxed moustache in the manner of a baffled villain in old-time melodrama, and cast a glance at Soapy, as if hoping for support from him. But Soapy's face showed that he was in full accord with the remarks of the last speaker.

He decided to make an appeal to their better feelings, though long association with the Molloys, Mr. and Mrs., particularly Mrs., should have told him that he was merely chasing rainbows.

'Is this nice?' he asked.

'I like it,' Dolly assured him.

'Me, too,' said Soapy.

'Yessir,' said Dolly, 'if there's one thing that gives me that warm glow, it's getting my hooks on a chunk of ice like this Prosser stuff. Must be worth fifty thousand dollars, wouldn't you say, Soapy?'