Bones in London - Edgar Wallace (top books to read .txt) 📗

/> "Bones," shouted Hamilton, "you're my mascot! Do you know what has happened?"

"Lower your voice, lower your voice, dear old friend," protested Bones. "My typewriter mustn't think I am quarrelling."

"He came last night," said Hamilton, "just as I was going to bed, and knocked me up." He was almost incoherent in his joy. "He offered me three thousand five hundred pounds for my shares, and I took it like a shot."

Bones gaped at him.

"Offered you three thousand five hundred?" he gasped. "Good heavens! You don't mean to say----"

Consider the tragedy of that moment. Here was Bones, full of great schemes for establishing a car upon the world's markets, who had in his head planned extensive works, who saw in his mind's eye vistas of long, white-covered festive boards, and heard the roar of cheering which greeted him when he rose to propose continued prosperity to the firm. Consider also that his cheque was on the table before him, already made out and signed. He was at that moment awaiting the arrival of Mr. Soames.

And then to this picture, tangible or fanciful, add Mr. Charles O. Soames himself, ushered through the door of the outer office and standing as though stricken to stone at the sight of Bones and Hamilton in consultation.

"Good morning," said Bones.

Mr. Soames uttered a strangled cry and strode to the centre of the room, his face working.

"So it was a ramp, was it?" he said. "A swindle, eh? You put this up to get your pal out of the cart?"

"My dear old----" began Bones in a shocked voice.

"I see how it was done. Well, you've had me for three thousand five hundred, and your pal's lucky. That's all I've got to say. It is the first time I've ever been caught; and to be caught by a mug like you----"

"Dear old thing, moderate your language," murmured Bones.

Mr. Soames breathed heavily through his nose, thrust his hat on the back of his head, and, without another word, strode from the office, and they heard the door slam behind him. Bones and Hamilton exchanged glances; then Bones picked up the cheque from the desk and slowly tore it up. He seemed to spend his life tearing up expensive cheques.

"What is it, Bones? What the dickens did you do?" asked the puzzled Hamilton.

"Dear old Ham," said Bones solemnly, "it was a little scheme--just a little scheme. Sit down, dear old officer," he said, after a solemn pause. "And let this be a warning to you. Don't put your money in industries, dear old Captain Hamilton. What with the state of the labour market, and the deuced ingratitude of the working classes, it's positively heartbreaking--it is, indeed, dear old Ham."

And then and there he changed the whole plan and went out of industrials for good.


CHAPTER V

A CINEMA PICTURE

Mr. Augustus Tibbetts, called "Bones," made money by sheer luck--he made more by sheer artistic judgment. That is a fact which an old friend sensed a very short time after he had renewed his acquaintance with his sometime subordinate.

Yet Bones had the curious habit of making money in quite a different way from that which he planned--as, for example, in the matter of the great oil amalgamation. In these days of aeroplane travel, when it is next to impossible to watch the comings and goings of important individuals, or even to get wind of directors' meetings, the City is apt to be a little jumpy, and to respond to wild rumours in a fashion extremely trying to the nerves of conservative brokers.

There were rumours of a fusion of interests between the Franco-Persian Oil Company and the Petroleum Consolidated--rumours which set the shares of both concerns jumping up and down like two badly trained jazzers. The directorate of both companies expressed their surprise that a credulous public could accept such stories, and both M. Jorris, the emperor of the Franco-Persian block, and George Y. Walters, the prince regent of the "Petco," denied indignantly that any amalgamation was even dreamt of.

Before these denials came along Bones had plunged into the oil market, making one of the few flutters which stand as interrogation marks against his wisdom and foresight.

He did not lose; rather, he was the winner by his adventure. The extent of his immediate gains he inscribed in his private ledger; his ultimate and bigger balance he entered under a head which had nothing to do with the oil gamble--which was just like Bones, as Hamilton subsequently remarked.

Hamilton was staying with Sanders--late Commissioner of a certain group of Territories--and Bones was the subject of conversation one morning at breakfast.

The third at the table was an exceedingly pretty girl, whom the maid called "Madame," and who opened several letters addressed to "Mrs. Sanders," but who in days not long past had been known as Patricia Hamilton.

"Bones is wonderful," said Sanders, "truly wonderful! A man I know in the City tells me that most of the things he touches turn up trumps. And it isn't luck or chance. Bones is developing a queer business sense."

Hamilton nodded.

"It is his romantic soul which gets him there," he said. "Bones will not look at a proposition which hasn't something fantastical behind it. He doesn't know much about business, but he's a regular whale on adventure. I've been studying him for the past month, and I'm beginning to sense his method. If he sees a logical and happy end to the romantic side of any new business, he takes it on. He simply carries the business through on the back of a dream."

The girl looked up from the coffee-pot she was handling.

"Have you made up your mind, dear?"

"About going in with Bones?" Hamilton smiled. "No, not yet. Bones is frantically insistent, has had a beautiful new Sheraton desk placed in his office, and says that I'm the influence he wants, but----"

He shook his head.

"I think I understand," said Sanders. "You feel that he is doing it all out of sheer generosity and kindness. That would be like Bones. But isn't there a chance that what he says is true--that he does want a corrective influence?"

"Maybe that is so," said Captain Hamilton doubtfully. "And then there's the money. I don't mind investing my little lot, but it would worry me to see Bones pretending that all the losses of the firm came out of his share, and a big slice of the profits going into mine."

"I shouldn't let that worry you," said his sister quietly. "Bones is too nice-minded to do anything so crude. Of course, your money is nothing compared with Bones's fortune, but why don't you join him on the understanding that the capital of the Company should be---- How much would you put in?

"Four thousand."

"Well, make the capital eight thousand. Bones could always lend the Company money. Debentures--isn't that the word?"

Sanders smiled in her face.

"You're a remarkable lady," he said. "From where on earth did you get your ideas on finance?"

She went red.

"I lunched with Bones yesterday," she said. "And here is the post."

"Silence, babbler," said Hamilton. "Before we go any farther, what about this matter of partnership you were discussing with Patricia?"

The maid distributed the letters. One was addressed:

"Captin Captian Hamilton, D.S.O."

"From Bones," said Hamilton unnecessarily, and Bones's letter claimed first attention. It was a frantic and an ecstatic epistle, heavily underlined and exclaimed.

"Dear old old Ham," it ran, "you simply must join me in _magnifficant_ new sceme sheme plan! Wonderfull prophits profets! The most extraordiny _chance_ for a fortune..."

"For Heaven's sake, what's this?" asked Hamilton, handing the letter across to his sister and indicating an illegible line. "It looks like 'a bad girl's leg' to me."

"My dear!" said the shocked Mrs. Sanders, and studied the vile caligraphy. "It certainly does look like that," she admitted, "and---- I see! 'Legacy' is the word."

"A bad girl's legacy is the titel of the play story picture" (Bones never crossed anything out). "There's a studyo at Tunbridge and two cameras and a fellow awfully nice fellow who understands it. A pot of money the story can be improve improved imensely. Come in it dear old man--_magnifficant_ chance. See me at office eariliest earilest ealiest possible time.

"Thine in art for art sake,
"BONES."

"From which I gather that Bones is taking a header into the cinema business," said Sanders. "What do you say, Hamilton?"

Hamilton thought a while.

"I'll see Bones," he said.

He arrived in Town soon after ten, but Bones had been at his office two hours earlier, for the fever of the new enterprise was upon him, and his desk was piled high with notes, memoranda, price lists and trade publications. (Bones, in his fine rage of construction, flew to the technical journals as young authors fly to the Thesaurus.)

As Hamilton entered the office, Bones glared up.

"A chair," said the young man peremptorily. "No time to be lost, dear old artist. Time is on the wing, the light is fadin', an' if we want to put this jolly old country--God bless it!--in the forefront----"

Bones put down his pen and leant back in his chair.

"Ham," he said, "I had a bit of a pow-pow with your sacred and sainted sister, bless her jolly old heart. That's where the idea arose. Are you on?"

"I'm on," said Hamilton, and there was a moving scene. Bones shook his hands and spoke broken English.

"There's your perfectly twee little desk, dear old officer," he said, pointing to a massive piece of furniture facing his own. "And there's only one matter to be settled."

He was obviously uncomfortable, and Hamilton would have reached for his cheque-book, only he knew his Bones much better than to suppose that such a sordid matter as finance could cause his agitation.

"Ham," said Bones, clearing his throat and speaking with an effort, "old comrade of a hundred gallant encounters, and dear old friend----"

"What's the game?" asked Hamilton suspiciously.

"There's no game," said the depressed Bones. "This is a very serious piece of business, my jolly old comrade. As my highly respected partner, you're entitled to use the office as you like--come in when you like, go home when you like. If you have a pain in the tum-tum, dear old friend, just go to bed and trust old Bones to carry on. Use any paper that's going, help yourself to nibs--you'll find there's some beautiful nibs in that cupboard--in fact, do as you jolly well like; but----"

"But?" repeated Hamilton.

"On one point alone, dear old thing," said Bones miserably, yet heroically, "we do not share."

"What's that?" asked Hamilton, not without curiosity.

"My typewriter is my typewriter," said Bones firmly, and Hamilton laughed.

"You silly ass!" he said. "I'm not going to play with your typewriter."

"That's just what I mean," said Bones. "You couldn't have put it better, dear old friend. Thank you."

He strode across the room,