Money in the Bank (30 page)

The report of the pistol was what had brought Dolly to the study. After locking the cellar door on Mrs. Cork, she had hurried to the garage, started up her hostess's two-seater and steered it out into the drive, and it had been her intention to remain seated at the wheel till Soapy joined her. But shots in the night alter everything. They always caused Inspector Purvis to break into a sharp run, and they had the same effect on Dolly.

She had not liked the sound of that shot. It seemed to suggest, that her mate had struck a sticky patch, and, like a good wife, she flew to his assistance. A glance told her that she had done well to make, it snappy.

At the moment when she entered the room, Soapy had contrived with a lucky kick to free himself for an instant from his adversary's clutching hands, and he was now on his feet. But he was in poor shape. Selling shares in non-existent oil wells is profitable, but it does not develop the thews and sinews, and only the two brandies had enabled Soapy to put up the admirable fight he had been doing. He had the air of a man who would crumble at the next onslaught.

And it was plain this onslaught was in the very process of developing. Jeff, too, had risen, and his whole demeanour was so patently that of one who is measuring his distance preparatory to swinging the right to the button that Dolly did not hesitate, but acted at once like the resourceful little woman she was. She raised the tobacco jar in both hands and brought it down with a bump on the back of his head.

The. tobacco jar was one of those large, thick, bulging tobacco jars, constructed apparently of some sort of stone and ornamented with a college coat of arms. Lord Uffenham had bought it in his freshman year at Cambridge, and the fact that in all this time it had not managed to get itself broken testifies to its rugged strength.

Dolly, moreover, though of apparently frail physique,  was stronger than she looked. She possessed good, muscular wrists and had a nice sense of timing. The result was that one blow or buffet, as Ernest Pennefather would have termed it, was amply sufficient. Jeff's eyes rolled heavenwards, his knees buckled beneath him, and he sagged to the floor.

And, as he did so, Anne sprang forward with an anguished scream and flung herself on the remains.

"Jeff!" she cried. "Oh, Jeff, darling!"

Considering her views, strongly held and freely expressed, regarding this young man, such agitation may appear strange. One would have expected a "Bravo!" or possibly a round of applause. But it is a well-known fact, to which any authority on psychology can testify, that at times like this the feminine outlook tends to extreme and sudden alteration.

A girl may scorn and loathe the scrum-half who leaps at her in rhododendron walks, but let her behold that scrum-half weltering in his blood after being rapped over the head with a tobacco jar, and hate becomes pity, pity forgiveness, and forgiveness love.

It is true that Jeff was not weltering in a great deal of blood, for all that had happened was that the ragged edge of the arms of Lord Uffenham's Alma Mater had scratched his scalp, but he was weltering in quite enough to make Anne realise that she loved him, that she would always love him and that, so far from being the dregs of the human species, he was the finest flower that species had produced to date.

"Oh, Jeff!" she wailed.

"His name's Walter," corrected Lord Uffenham, who, tense though the situation was, could not let this pass. "No, by Jove, you're right," he added. "Forget my own name next."

He turned to stare reproachfully at Dolly, who was picking up the pistol.

"Hey!" he said.

Dolly was busy with Soapy, who was leaning against the desk, slowly recovering. "Feeling okay, honey?"

"Shall be in a minute, sweetness."

"At-a-boy. Did you get the ice?"

"It's in the jar."

"In the jar?"

"Sure, in the jar. The old egg said so."

"If by 'the old egg' you mean me," said Lord Uffenham, offended, "let me tell you, you greasy Tishbite---"

Dolly raised a hand.

"Just a minute, Pop. Be with you in a second." She turned back to Soapy. "Get to the car, pettie, quick, and start her up. We want to be on our way before Chimp comes horning in. It's just along the drive. Turn to the right as you go out. Take the jar."

"Okay, honeybunch," said Mr. Molloy dutifully, and disappeared.

"Now, Pop," said Dolly briskly, "I'm with you. What's on your mind?"

Lord Uffenham stared.

"What's on my mind? What's on my dashed mind? D'yer realize that every penny of my capital is in that tobacco jar that your blasted husband's gone off with?"

"Is that a fact?"

"Every ruddy penny."

Dolly chewed her lip. She appeared genuinely distressed.

"That's kinda tough," she agreed. "I hate to do a thing like this to you, Pop, because you're a good old scout. Listen. Here's the best way out. We'll cut you in for twenty-five per."

Anne looked up. Her face was twisted.

"I believe he's dead," she whispered.

"Oh, I shouldn't think so," said Dolly.

Lord Uffenham betrayed a certain petulance.

"Don't interrupt now, my dear. We're talking business. Yer'll do what?"

"Slip you twenty-five per cent of the gross receipts. I wouldn't do it for everyone, mind you. It's a lot of money. And that's not a firm offer," Dolly warned him. " It all depends on whether we can freeze Chimp out of the deal. How about it, Pop? Think on your feet. I'm in a hurry."

Lord Uffenham was breathing stertorously. He seemed unimpressed by the magnanimity of the concession.

"Twenty-five per cent? Are you aware that my niece's little bit of stuff is in that jar, too?"

"You don't say? How did that happen?"

"I had charge of it. It was my sacred trust, dash it. I'll have to make it good to her. D'yer realise what this means? It means that I've got to marry Mrs. Cork!"

Dolly's grave, concerned face broke into a relieved smile.

"Well, why didn't you tell me before that you and the Corko were that way? Why, this makes us all happy. If you're all set to marry Mrs. Cork, there's nothing to worry about. She's got more dough than you could shake a stick at. You won't miss this little bit of chicken-feed I and Soapy are taking. Listen, Pop. She's in the cellar. Here's the key. Go let her out, and don't do it till she says 'Yes' through the keyhole. Good-bye, I must rush," said Dolly, and vanished.

For some moments after she had gone, Lord Uffenham stood motionless, his eyes fixed on the key in his hand. He heard dimly, as in a dream, his niece saying something about somebody not being dead, but he was unable to give her his attention. He was thinking of Mrs. Cork as a life-partner and using all his powerful will to force himself to the dread task before him.

Then suddenly he turned and started for the door, moving slowly but with steady eye and squared jaw, like an aristocrat of the French Revolution walking to the tumbril.

It was at this moment that there came from without the sound of a car gathering speed down the drive.

It had not taken Dolly long to reach the car. Like Myrtle Shoesmith and Anne Benedick, she could move quickly when she chose.

Her mood, as she hastened to where the tail-light shone redly in the darkness, was one of quiet happiness. Anther first suspicion that all might not be for the best in the best of all possible worlds came when, arriving where the car waited, its engine purring softly, she saw standing beside it not only her husband but the cheese-mite Twist.

"Oh, hello," she said, not a little taken aback.

Chimp was in excellent humour. The pistol-shot had come to him as a refreshing surprise. He had been so certain that Dolly would have forgotten that item in the programme.

"At-a-girl," he said, quite amiably. "Let's go."

Dolly was still trying to adjust herself to his unwelcome presence.

"What have you done with the prunes?"

"Locked 'em in. How about the Cork dame?"

Relief flooded over Dolly. She had seen the way.

"She's in the cellar," she said, then started dramatically, with a quick intake of the breath. Her eyes had widened, and she was staring past Chimp. "Cheese!" she exclaimed. "She isn't, neither. Here she comes!"

Chimp started.

"Where?" he cried, wheeling.

"There," said Dolly, bringing the butt-end of the pistol into smart contact with his averted head.

Between a smallish pistol and a stout tobacco-jar ornamented with the arms of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, there is really no comparison, considering each in the light of a mechanism for soaking people on the occipital bone. Where Jeff had collapsed like a wet sock, Chimp Twist-merely tottered.

But it takes a man several seconds to totter, and a woman accustomed to acting promptly finds a few seconds an ample margin for pushing her husband into a two-seater car, leaping in herself and driving off.

Mr. Molloy, who had been an entranced spectator, was overcome with admiration.

"You're certainly hitting 'em right to-night, pettie."

"It's all in the follow-through," said Dolly. She relapsed into silence, her eyes on the road.

CHAPTER
XXVIII

In the study, Jeff had risen and was propping himself against the desk from which Mrs. Cork had dictated so much good stuff about elephants. He found its solidity comforting. There was something about it that seemed to support the theory that he was awake, and this was a point on which he particularly desired assurance. A man cannot be bumped on the back of the head with a stout tobacco jar without undergoing a certain amount of mental disorder, and it seemed to Jeff that there were aspects of his recent experience which might quite easily have been the phantasmagoria of delirium.

Anne had perched herself on the arm of a chair, and was looking at him with the tender eyes of a mother whose first-born has come safely through a testing attack of mumps. She, too, was conscious that the late happenings had not been without their bizarre side. But of one thing she was sure, quite sure, and that was that this was the man she loved.

"How are you feeling now?" she asked gently Jeff passed a hand across his forehead.

"I'm feeling stunned."

"Well, nobody has a better right to."

"I was never more surprised in my life."

"Than when Mrs. Molloy hit you with that jar?"

"Than when I came out of my swoon and found you kissing me."

"Ob, that?"

"You were kissing me? It was not just a lovely dream?"

"No. I was kissing you. You see, I thought you were dead."

Jeff paused. They were approaching the nub. From this point, he would have to follow her answers very carefully.

"Do I have to be dead for you to kiss me?"

"Not at all. I would prefer it otherwise." Jeff's brain was still a little clouded.

"I don't quite follow this."

"What's puzzling you?"

"Well, only a short while back, your manner suggested that you were not particularly fond of me."

"It was meant to."

"But now---?"

"It looks as if I had changed my mind, doesn't it?"

"You are fond of me?"

"Very."

Once more, Jeff paused. Much depended on her answer to his next question.

"You don't by any chance—love me?"

"I do."

"This is amazing."

"I must say it surprised me, too. It seemed to come over me like a wave, when I saw Mrs. Molloy hit you with the tobacco jar."

Jeff's head was still singing, but now his heart was singing, too.

"Then Heaven bless Mrs. Molloy!" he cried. "Three rousing cheers for the sweet little woman."

Convinced at last, he delayed no longer. He drew Anne into his arms, and for a while there was silence.

"Mind you," he said, at length, "I don't believe this is happening. It isn't fooling me for a second. I know perfectly well that I shall wake up and find we're back in the Ice Age, with you saying 'Oh?' I wonder if you have the remotest conception what it's like for a fellow when you catch him without his warm winter underclothing and say 'Oh?' to him."

Anne uttered a remorseful cry.

"My poor angel! Was I very haughty?"

"Cleopatra could have taken your correspondence course."

"I'm sorry. The fact is, I don't know my own strength. Still, you deserved it."

"If you're going to freeze me to the marrow every time I deserve it, my future looks pretty bleak."

"Oh, no, it won't happen again. Whatever you do, I shall just say to myself 'Oh, it's only that old idiot Jeff. He can't help it, and he has many good points and I love him.' That will be better?"

"That will be fine. I see a singularly placid and happy married life before us. But, you know, you came very near to losing me."

"You mean, you might have gone off and fallen in love with some other girl?"

"Good Lord, no. How on earth could I fall in love with another girl after I'd seen you? What I meant was that a little more of that iciness of yours, and I'd have been like the chap in Excelsior. That's a bit above your head, of course. You've never heard of Excelsior."

"I have!"

"Extraordinary, that private education of yours. It's like your uncle's memory—you never know when it's going to work."

"It worked all right this time," said Anne ruefully. "I suppose you know the Molloys went off with the diamonds?"

"No, did they? By the way, what's become of your uncle?"

"I don't know. He went out."

"Probably to fetch a grasshopper, so that he could tell what the temperature was. Like the chap in Excelsior, I was saying.   They sent out the St. Bernard dogs, and found him lying in the snow, lifeless and beautiful. That's how I should have been."

"Not beautiful."

"You think not?"

"Definitely not, thank goodness. I never want to sec another beautiful man as long as I live. I should call yours a good, honest face, no more."

"Perhaps you're right. Though you aren't seeing me at my best. Being swatted like a fly with tobacco jars does something to a man. It removes the bloom. Still, I knew what you mean. It's pretty tough for girls, isn't it? They start out dreaming that some day they will marry a Prince Charming, and they wind up with fellows like me."