Money in the Bank (19 page)

Anne started.

"Oh, no!"

Mr. Trumper was firm.

"Afraid," he repeated. "Terrified. He slunk away, and refused to have anything to do with the matter."

Anne was biting her lip. It is not pleasant for a girl of spirit to be compelled to recognise in the man to whom she has pledged herself the absence of the quality she most admires in the male, and she would have given much to be able to dismiss the accusation as absurd. But she knew that it was not. She remembered the affair of the stuffed antelope. The man who refuses to go into his aunt's study and delve into stuffed antelopes is a man who, if he declines to apprehend burglars in wardrobes, does so from dastardly motives.

For an instant, as had happened before, there came to her the disagreeable suspicion that Lionel Green was not, as she had supposed, the top, but somewhere very low down on the list. She tried to scout the idea, but it would not be scouted.   The poisoned barb remained.

"The man is a poltroon," proceeded Mr. Trumper, for the Trumpers did not lightly forgive. "And he has left me in a most unpleasant quandary. I wish to finish dressing, and how can I, with burglars liable to come bursting out of wardrobes at any moment?"

Anne saw his point, and it seemed to her well taken. Under such conditions, the fastidious dresser cannot do himself justice. She reflected.

"You say Mr. Adair was having a bath?"

"Yes. He assured me that he would only be a minute, but the impression I received was that he intended to remain wallowing in the water indefinitely. In any case, we cannot possibly delay until he is dried and dressed. I want something done about it immediately. My tie is in my bedroom. So is my coat. And I have not yet brushed my hair."

Anne nodded, and fell again to thinking. Her brows were bent, and the tip of her nose wiggled.

"Do you know," she said, "I think our best plan is to go to Mrs. Cork."

The idea came as something quite new to Mr. Trumper.

"Mrs. Cork?" he echoed, turning it over in his mind. He believed in keeping the women out of these things.

"Yes, I know she is of the female sex," said Anne, reading his thoughts. "But does that matter—I mean, in the case of an exceptional woman like her? You wouldn't object to a spot of help from Boadicea, if she were handy?"

Mr. Trumper admitted that the warlike queen of the Iceni might have been of considerable assistance in a crisis like the present one, and that he would have welcomed her co-operation.

"Mrs. Cork," said Anne, "rather reminds one of Boadicea, don't you think?"

"There is a resemblance."

"And after the sort of life she has led, this kind of thing will be right up her street. I mean, she has probably spent half her time these last years shooing lions and leopards and cannibal chiefs and things like that out of her tent."

Mr. Trumper endorsed this. Mrs. Cork had often held him spellbound with tales of her adventures in the wilds, and he had been left with a confused impression that on most of these expeditions of hers her tent had been a sort of social centre for the wild life of the neighbourhood. "Let's all go round to Cork's," lions had said to one another, when they found time hanging a little heavy on their paws of an evening. And the same thing applied to cannibal chiefs and leopards.

"You are perfectly right," he said, pleased at this happy solution of a problem which had threatened to become an
impasse.
"Shall we go to her at once?"

"Tally ho!" said Anne.

CHAPTER XVIII

Mrs. Cork's suite was on the first floor. It consisted of a vast bedroom and an almost equally large sitting-room, opening off it. Plain, even Spartan, though she might be in her mode of life when on shikarri, the great huntress was a woman who believed in doing herself well when the conditions were right. Established at Shipley Hall, she had striven to surround herself with an atmosphere of refinement and luxury, and she had succeeded. A leopard, calling upon her in these new quarters of hers, would have halted on the threshold and backed out with an awkward apology.

She had completed her simple toilet some time before Anne and Mr. Trumper set out, for she was a swift dresser who did not bother much about primping. Off with the sporting tweeds and the sensible shoes, and into the tea-gown and the old pearl necklace, was her way. She was now reclining on a settee, reading
A Woman In The Wilds,
her favourite book. She was just feeling, as authors so often do about their own work, what capital stuff it was and how well written, when there was a knock at the door and Anne came in, followed by Mr. Trumper in his shirt sleeves.

She eyed him in amazement. Mr. Trumper was one of those correct, dapper little men, who always wear the right clothes on every occasion. Without a coat and tie, he was practically a nudist. He looked as if he had been surprised while bathing.

"Eustace!" she cried.

Mr. Trumper reddened beneath the unspoken rebuke. She had no need to tell him that all this was highly irregular.

"I know, Clarissa, I know. But when you hear the circumstances---"

Anne helped him out.

"Mr. Trumper has found a burglar in his wardrobe, Mrs. Cork."

"A burglar?"

"Yes," said Mr. Trumper, wondering if there was anybody in the world who, when informed that there was a burglar in his wardrobe, would not say "A burglar?"

Mrs. Cork was interested.

"Did you see him?"

"Well, yes and no."

Mrs. Cork began to wonder if there might not be some difficulty in getting at the facts.

"Tell me the whole story," she said, "from the beginning."

"Omitting no detail, however slight," said Anne. "Don't forget the funny noise."

Mr. Trumper assured her that he would not forget the funny noise. It seemed to him that he would never forget it, but that it would haunt him in his dreams for the rest of his life, getting louder and funnier as the years went by.

"He made a funny noise, did he?" said Mrs. Cork, as if this had caused her to take a more serious view of the affair. "What sort of noise?"

Practice makes perfect. This time, Mr. Trumper put up such a realistic performance that both his hearers found themselves convinced that the sound, bizarre though it was, had proceeded from human lips.

"H'm," said Mrs. Cork, having pondered on it. "I think the man must have been having some kind of a fit. It startled you, I expect?"

"Very much, Clarissa. I nearly jumped out of my skin."

Mrs. Cork was conscious of a stir of protective pity. Hers was a heart toughened over a long period of time by the constant necessity of being on the alert to see that native bearers did not start any oompus-boompus, but it had remained soft in spots, and it was these spots that Eustace Trumper always touched so unerringly. He seemed to her, as Dolly Molloy seemed to Lord Uffenham, so weak and fragile. A rush of resentment against this marauder, who had frightened him, filled her bosom. She went to a writing desk in the corner of the room, and took from a drawer an automatic pistol, the woman in the wilds' best friend.

"And the noise came from the wardrobe?" she asked, having examined the weapon and satisfied herself that it did not lack ammunition.

"The wardrobe, Clarissa."

"Mr. Trumper thinks the man must have hidden there after he ran up the stairs," said Anne. "You had seen someone sprinting upstairs a bit earlier but thought no more of it, hadn't you, Mr. Trumper?"

"Quite. That was why, when you asked me if I had seen the man, I replied, 'Yes and No.' I am still not sure that it was the same man, but I think it must have been."

"Mr. Trumper was coming out of the billiard-room---"

"Exactly. And a man went whizzing up the stairs.

It was just before you came in at the front door with Mrs. Barlow."

"You didn't see who it was?"

"It was nobody I knew. So far, of course, as I was able to ascertain from a quick glance."

Mrs. Cork reflected.

"Could it have been Mr. Adair? He runs up stairs," she said, speaking with a certain disapproval. Like Mr. Trumper, she held strict views on deportment for detectives. Mr. Trumper thought they ought not to sing in their baths. Mrs. Cork liked them to observe the speed limit in built-up areas.

"No, it was not Mr. Adair."

"Perhaps it was Cakebread."

"I doubt if he could run upstairs."

"That is true. Then it certainly seems as if it must have been a burglar. Though what a burglar can be doing in the house at this hour is more than I can understand."

She spoke disapprovingly, as was natural in a woman of her regular views. Even in the wildest parts of Africa, she had always been able to count on having her tent to herself till sundown. No leopard, however lacking in the social sense, would have dreamed of dropping in before lights-out.

"We had better go and see. Keep behind me, Eustace.'

"I will, Clarissa."

"It is all most annoying," said Mrs. Cork. "One did expect that one would be free from this sort of thing in Kent."

A frown was still darkening her forehead, as she led the procession along the corridor. Anne, watching her rigid back and noting the firmness of the hand which held the automatic pistol, could not repress a pang of commiseration for the unknown malefactor.

Already, she felt, if not a very dull man, he must have begun to suspect that this was not his lucky evening, but he little knew what dark forces he had unchained. In spite of a healthy liking for excitement and the feeling that, if he had done so, the anticlimax would be a jarring one, she found herself hoping that the man had had the sense to escape.

But Chimp Twist had not escaped. He was still crouching in the wardrobe like a weevil nestling in a biscuit. The disadvantage of hiding in wardrobes, even if you enjoy doing that sort of thing, is that it is not easy, once you are stowed away, to ascertain just what is going on outside. The fact that his sneeze had produced no immediate opening of the door, and that for quite a while now silence had been reigning in the room beyond, had suggested to Chimp, as the only explanation that would cover the facts, that he had had the good fortune to seek refuge in the bedroom of a deaf man. Only one so afflicted could have failed to hear the sneeze, and it never occurred to him that anyone who had heard it would have been so lacking in natural curiosity as not to try to track it to its source.

As to what had been happening since the explosion, one could only suppose that the fellow was still dressing. Presently, no doubt, he would complete his toilet and go down to dinner. Meanwhile, there was nothing to be done but wait patiently till the gong sounded the signal of release. To pass the time, he fell to meditating, and his meditations, as was only to be expected, were bitter ones.

To an intelligent man like himself, there could be no doubt by now that the story which Mr. Molloy had told him at the inn had been an essential part of a deliberate trap laid for his undoing. The fact that Lord Uffenham had obviously been advised of his coming, and warned to lie in wait, removed all uncertainty on that point. It was not long before he was able to see the whole mechanism of the plot as clearly as if he had been present at the Molloy family conference, and it is not too much to say that he burned with indignation and resentment.

To a little mild double-crossing among friends Chimp Twist had no objection whatever. It was only natural in any business venture involving large sums of money that investors should wish to protect their interests. But luring a man on into a position where he would encounter somebody like Lord Uffenham in a small bedroom was a very different matter.

It was against Dolly that most of his pique was directed. It was plain to him that it was in her ingenious brain that the dastardly scheme must have germinated. He yielded to no one in his respect for Soapy's ability to sell valueless oil stock to the most difficult prospects, but Soapy, he knew, would not have been capable of organising anything like this in a million years. Every detail of the plot betrayed the woman's touch and, never a great admirer of the sex, he found himself taking one more step in the direction of becoming the complete misogynist.

He was just feeling what a Paradise the world would be without women, and hoping that he would never have to speak to one again, unless perhaps an occasional barmaid, when these dreams of an Eveless Eden were shattered with an abruptness which caused him to bump his head on a projecting hook.

"Come out of it!" said a voice and, deep though it was in tone, he had no difficulty in recognising that the lips from which it proceeded were feminine lips.

CHAPTER XIX

Silence followed the words, broken only by the tumultuous beating of Mr. Trumper's heart. It was partly apprehension that was causing it to imitate a motorcycle, but principally the sudden gush of adoration which he felt for the intrepid woman behind whom he was standing. This was the first time he had seen Mrs. Cork in action, and while tales of female heroism may impress us, they can never do so as completely as the actual sight of their heroine doing her stuff.

Only now did Eustace Trumper realize the full splendour of Clarissa Cork. She was, he felt, correctly, magnificent, and he awaited with interest the unseen miscreant's response.

This did not come immediately. Chimp Twist was human, though most of his acquaintances would have liked to have this proved to them, and it is a human trait to keep on hoping, however sticky the outlook. There was, he felt, just the barest possibility that the words had not been addressed to him. Dogs, he reminded himself, sometimes get into bedrooms, and when this happens, women tell them to come out of it. He remained where he was, silent and trying not to breathe.

Mrs. Cork did not imitate his reserve. Hers was an impatient nature that chafed at delays.

"You inside that wardrobe," she said. "I am Mrs. Cork, the owner of this house. Unless you come out of it in three seconds, I shall start shooting."