Bones in London by Edgar Wallace (the reading strategies book .txt) 📗

clauses through, and then flung down the contract in disgust.

"There's nothing mentioned about a deposit," she said, "and, anyway, I doubt very much whether I could get it back, even on his signature."

A quarter of an hour later Miss Clara Stegg took up the contract again and read the closely-printed clauses very carefully. When she had finished she said:

"I just hate the idea of that fellow making money."

"You've said that before," said her sister tartly.

At six o'clock that evening Bones went home. At nine o'clock he was sitting in his sitting-room in Clarges Street—a wonderful place, though small, of Eastern hangings and subdued lights—when Hamilton burst in upon him; and Bones hastily concealed the poem he was writing and thrust it under his blotting-pad. It was a good poem and going well.

It began:

  How very sweet
  Is Marguerite!

And Bones was, not unreasonably, annoyed at this interruption to his muse.

As to Hamilton, he was looking ill.

"Bones," said Hamilton quietly, "I've had a telegram from my pal in
Dundee. Shall I read it?"

"Dear old thing," said Bones, with an irritated "tut-tut," "really, dear old creature, at this time of night—your friends in Dundee—really, my dear old boy——"

"Shall I read it?" said Hamilton, with sinister calm.

"By all means, by all means," said Bones, waving an airy hand and sitting back with resignation written on every line of his countenance.

"Here it is," said Hamilton. "It begins 'Urgent.'"

"That means he's in a devil of a hurry, old thing," said Bones, nodding.

"And it goes on to say," said Hamilton, ignoring the interruption. "'Your purchase at the present price of jute is disastrous. Jute will never again touch the figure at which your friend tendered, Ministry have been trying to find a mug for years to buy their jute, half of which is spoilt by bad warehousing, as I could have told you, and I reckon you have made a loss of exactly half the amount you have paid.'"

Bones had opened his eyes and was sitting up.

"Dear old Job's comforter," he said huskily.

"Wait a bit," said Hamilton, "I haven't finished yet," and went on: "'Strongly advise you cancel your sale in terms of Clause 7 Ministry contract.' That's all," said Hamilton.

"Oh, yes," said Bones feebly, as he ran his finger inside his collar, "that's all!"

"What do you think, Bones?" said Hamilton gently.

"Well, dear old cloud on the horizon," said Bones, clasping his bony
knee, "it looks remarkably like serious trouble for B. Ones, Esquire.
It does indeed. Of course," he said, "you're not in this, old Ham.
This was a private speculation——"

"Rot!" said Hamilton contemptuously. "You're never going to try a dirty trick like that on me? Of course I'm in it. If you're in it, I'm in it."

Bones opened his mouth to protest, but subsided feebly. He looked at the clock, sighed, and lowered his eyes again.

"I suppose it's too late to cancel the contract now?"

Bones nodded.

"Twenty-four hours, poor old victim," he said miserably, "expired at five p.m."

"So that's that," said Hamilton.

Walking across, he tapped his partner on the shoulder.

"Well, Bones, it can't be helped, and probably our pal in Dundee has taken an extravagant view."

"Not he," said Bones, "not he, dear old cheerer. Well, we shall have to cut down expenses, move into a little office, and start again, dear old Hamilton."

"It won't be so bad as that."

"Not quite so bad as that," admitted Bones. "But one thing," he said with sudden energy, "one thing, dear old thing, I'll never part with. Whatever happens, dear old boy, rain or shine, sun or moon, stars or any old thing like that"—he was growing incoherent—"I will never leave my typewriter, dear old thing. I will never desert her—never, never, never, never, never!

He turned up in the morning, looking and speaking chirpily. Hamilton, who had spent a restless night, thought he detected signs of similar restlessness in Bones.

Miss Marguerite Whitland brought him his letters, and he went over them listlessly until he came to one large envelope which bore on its flap the all-too-familiar seal of the Ministry. Bones looked at it and made a little face.

"It's from the Ministry," said the girl.

Bones nodded.

"Yes, my old notetaker," he said, "my poor young derelict, cast out"—his voice shook—"through the rapacious and naughty old speculations of one who should have protected your jolly old interests, it is from the Ministry."

"Aren't you going to open it?" she asked.

"No, dear young typewriter, I am not," Bones said firmly. "It's all about the beastly jute, telling me to take it away. Now, where the dickens am I going to put it, eh? Never talk to me about jute," he said violently. "If I saw a jute tree at this moment, I'd simply hate the sight of it!"

She looked at him in astonishment.

"Why, whatever's wrong?" she asked anxiously.

"Nothing," said Bones. "Nothing," he added brokenly. "Oh, nothing, dear young typewriting person."

She paused irresolutely, then picked up the envelope and cut open the flap.

Remember that she knew nothing, except that Bones had made a big purchase, and that she was perfectly confident—such was her sublime faith in Augustus Tibbetts—that he would make a lot of money as a result of that purchase.

Therefore the consternation on her face as she read its contents.

"Why," she stammered, "you've never done—— Whatever made you do that?"

"Do what?" said Bones hollowly. "What made me do it? Greed, dear old sister, just wicked, naughty greed."

"But I thought," she said, bewildered, "You were going to make so much out of this deal?"

"Ha, ha," said Bones without mirth.

"But weren't you?" she asked.

"I don't think so," said Bones gently.

"Oh! So that was why you cancelled the contract?"

Hamilton jumped to his feet.

"Cancelled the contract?" he said incredulously.

"Cancelled the contract?" squeaked Bones. "What a naughty old story-teller you are!"

"But you have," said the girl. "Here's a note from the Ministry, regretting that you should have changed your mind and taken advantage of Clause Seven. The contract was cancelled at four forty-nine."

Bones swallowed something.

"This is spiritualism," he said solemnly. "I'll never say a word against jolly old Brigham Young after this!"

In the meantime two ladies who had arrived in Paris, somewhat weary and bedraggled, were taking their morning coffee outside the Café de la Paix.

"Anyway, my dear," said Clara viciously, in answer to her sister's plaint, "we've given that young devil a bit of trouble. Perhaps they won't renew the contract, and anyway, it'll take a bit of proving that he did not sign that cancellation I handed in."

As a matter of fact, Bones never attempted to prove it.

CHAPTER VII DETECTIVE BONES

Mr. Harold de Vinne was a large man, who dwelt at the dead end of a massive cigar.

He was big and broad-shouldered, and automatically jovial. Between the hours of 6 p.m. and 2 a.m. he had earned the name of "good fellow," which reputation he did his best to destroy between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.

He was one of four stout fellows who controlled companies of imposing stability—the kind of companies that have such items in their balance sheets as "Sundry Debtors, £107,402 12_s_. 7_d_." People feel, on reading such airy lines, that the company's assets are of such magnitude that the sundry debtors are only included as a careless afterthought.

Mr. de Vinne was so rich that he looked upon any money which wasn't his as an illegal possession; and when Mr. Augustus Tibbetts, on an occasion, stepped in and robbed him of £17,500, Mr. de Vinne's family doctor was hastily summoned (figuratively speaking; literally, he had no family, and swore by certain patent medicines), and straw was spread before the temple of his mind.

A certain Captain Hamilton, late of H.M. Houssas, but now a partner in the firm of Tibbetts & Hamilton, Ltd., after a short, sharp bout of malaria, went off to Brighton to recuperate, and to get the whizzy noises out of his head. To him arrived on a morning a special courier in the shape of one Ali, an indubitable Karo boy, but reputedly pure Arab, and a haj, moreover, entitled to the green scarf of the veritable pilgrimage to Mecca.

Ali was the body-servant of Augustus Tibbetts, called by his intimates "Bones," and he was arrayed in the costume which restaurateurs insist is the everyday kit of a true Easterner—especially such Easterners as serve after-dinner coffee.

Hamilton, not in the best of tempers—malaria leaves you that way—and dazzled by this apparition in scarlet and gold, blinked.

"O man," he said testily in the Arabic of the Coast, "why do you walk-in-the world dressed like a so-and-so?" (You can be very rude in Arabic especially in Coast Arabic garnished with certain Swahili phrases.)

"Sir," said Ali, "these garmentures are expressly designated by Tibbetti. Embellishments of oriferous metal give wealthiness of appearance to subject, but attract juvenile research and investigation."

Hamilton glared through the window on to the front, where a small but representative gathering of the juvenile research committee waited patiently for the reappearance of one whom in their romantic fashion they had termed "The Rajah of Bong."

Hamilton took the letter and opened it. It was, of course, from Bones, and was extremely urgent. Thus it went:

"DEAR OLD PART.,—Ham I've had an offer of Browns you know the big big Boot shop several boot shop all over London London. Old Browns going out going out of the bisiness Sindicate trying to buy so I niped in for 105,000 pounds got lock stock and barrill baril. Sindicate awfuly sore awfuley sore. All well here except poor young typewrighter cut her finger finger sliceing bread doctor says not dangerus."

Hamilton breathed quickly. He gathered that Bones had bought a boot-shop—even a collection of boot-shops—and he was conscious of the horrible fact that Bones knew nothing about boots.

He groaned. He was always groaning, he thought, and seldom with good reason.

Bones was in a buying mood. A week before he had bought The Weekly Sunspot, which was "A Satirical Weekly Review of Human Affairs." The possibilities of that purchase had made Hamilton go hot and moisty. He had gone home one evening, leaving Bones dictating a leading article which was a violent attack on the Government of the day, and had come in the following morning to discover that the paper had been resold at a thousand pounds profit to the owners of a rival journal which described itself as "A Weekly Symposium of Thought and Fancy."

But Boots … and £105,000 …!

This was serious. Yet there was no occasion for groaning or doubt or apprehension; for, even whilst Hamilton was reading the letter, Bones was shaking his head violently at Mr. de Vinne, of the Phit-Phine Shoe Syndicate, who had offered him £15,000 profit on the turn-over. And at the identical moment that Hamilton was buying his ticket for London, Bones was solemnly shaking hands with the Secretary of the Phit-Phine Shoe Syndicate (Mr. de Vinne having violently, even apoplectically, refused to meet Bones) with one hand, and holding in the other a cheque which represented a profit of £17,500. It was one of Bones's big deals, and reduced Hamilton to a condition of blind confidence in his partner…. Nevertheless….

A week later, Bones, reading his morning paper, reached and passed, without receiving any very violent impression, the information that Mr. John Siker, the well-known private detective, had died at his residence at Clapham Park. Bones read the item without interest. He was looking for bargains—an early morning practice of his because the buying fever was still upon him.

Hamilton, sitting at his desk, endeavouring to balance the firm's accounts from a paying-in book and a cheque-book, the counterfoils of which were only occasionally filled in, heard the staccato "Swindle! … Swindle!" and knew that Bones had reached the pages whereon were displayed the prospectuses of new companies.

He had the firm conviction that all new companies were founded on frauds and floated by criminals. The offer of seven per cent. debenture stock moved him to sardonic laughter. The certificates of eminent chartered accountants brought a meaning little smile to his lips, followed by the perfectly libellous statement that