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

of London."

"Laughing-stock?" snorted the annoyed Bones. "What the dickens do you mean, old thing? I told you there are no comic poems. They're all like that."

"I was afraid they were," said Hamilton. "But poems needn't be comic," he added a little more tactfully, as he saw Bones's colour rising, "they needn't be comic to excite people's amusement. The most solemn and sacred things, the most beautiful thoughts, the most wonderful sentiments, rouse the laughter of the ignorant."

"True, true," agreed Bones graciously. "And I rather fancy that they are a little bit on the most beautiful side, my jolly old graven image. All heart outpourings you understand--but no, you wouldn't understand, my old crochety one. One of these days, as I've remarked before, they will be read by competent judges ... midnight oil, dear old thing--at least, I have electric light in my flat. They're generally done after dinner."

"After a heavy dinner, I should imagine," said Hamilton with asperity. "What are you going to do about it, Bones?"

Bones scratched his nose.

"I'm blessed if I know," he said.

"Shall I tell you what you must do?" asked Hamilton quietly.

"Certainly, Ham, my wise old counsellor," said the cheerful Bones. "Certainly, by all means, Why not?"

"You must go to Miss Whitland and tell her all about it."

Bones's face fell.

"Good Heavens, no!" he gasped. "Don't be indelicate, Ham! Why, she might never forgive me, dear old thing! Suppose she walked out of the office in a huff? Great Scotland! Great Jehoshaphat! It's too terrible to contemplate!"

"You must tell her," said Hamilton firmly. "It's only fair to the girl to know exactly what is hanging over her."

Bones pleaded, and offered a hundred rapid solutions, none of which were acceptable to the relentless Hamilton.

"I'll tell her myself, if you like," he said. "I could explain that they're just the sort of things that a silly ass of a man does, and that they were not intended to be offensive--even that one about her lips being like two red strips. Strips of what--carpet?"

"Don't analyse it, Ham, lad, don't analyse it!" begged Bones. "Poems are like pictures, old friend. You want to stand at a distance to see them."

"Personally I suffer from astigmatism," said Hamilton, and read the poems again. He stopped once or twice to ask such pointed questions as how many "y's" were in "skies," and Bones stood on alternate feet, protesting incoherently.

"They're not bad, old boy?" he asked anxiously at last. "You wouldn't say they were bad?"

"Bad," said Hamilton in truth, "is not the word I should apply."

Bones cheered up.

"That's what I think, dear ex-officer," he smirked. "Of course, a fellow is naturally shy about maiden efforts, and all that sort of thing, but, hang it all, I've seen worse than that last poem, old thing."

"So have I," admitted Hamilton, mechanically turning back to the first poem.

"After all"--Bones was rapidly becoming philosophical--"I'm not so sure that it isn't the best thing that could happen. Let 'em print 'em! Hey? What do you say? Put that one about young Miss Marguerite being like a pearl discovered in a dustbin, dear Ham, put it before a competent judge, and what would he say?"

"Ten years," snarled Hamilton, "and you'd get off lightly!"

Bones smiled with admirable toleration, and there the matter ended for the moment.

It was a case of blackmail, as Hamilton had pointed out, but, as the day proceeded, Bones took a more and more lenient view of his enemy's fault. By the afternoon he was cheerful, even jocose, and, even in such moments as he found himself alone with the girl, brought the conversation round to the subject of poetry as one of the fine arts, and cunningly excited her curiosity.

"There is so much bad poetry in the world," said the girl on one such occasion, "that I think there should be a lethal chamber for people who write it."

"Agreed, dear old tick-tack," assented Bones, with an amused smile. "What is wanted is--well, I know, dear old miss. It may surprise you to learn that I once took a correspondence course in poetry writing."

"Nothing surprises me about you, Mr. Tibbetts," she laughed.

He went into her office before leaving that night. Hamilton, with a gloomy shake of his head by way of farewell, had already departed, and Bones, who had given the matter very considerable thought, decided that this was a favourable occasion to inform her of the amusing efforts of his printer correspondent to extract money.

The girl had finished her work, her typewriter was covered, and she was wearing her hat and coat. But she sat before her desk, a frown on her pretty face and an evening newspaper in her hand, and Bones's heart momentarily sank. Suppose the poems had been given to the world?

"All the winners, dear old miss?" he asked, with spurious gaiety.

She looked up with a start.

"No," she said. "I'm rather worried, Mr. Tibbetts. A friend of my step-father's has got into trouble again, and I'm anxious lest my mother should have any trouble."

"Dear, dear!" said the sympathetic Bones. "How disgustingly annoying! Who's the dear old friend?"

"A man named Seepidge," said the girl, and Bones gripped a chair for support. "The police have found that he is printing something illegal. I don't quite understand it all, but the things they were printing were invitations to a German lottery."

"Very naughty, very unpatriotic," murmured the palpitating Bones, and then the girl laughed.

"It has its funny side," she said. "Mr. Seepidge pretended that he was carrying out a legitimate order--a book of poems. Isn't that absurd?"

"Ha, ha!" said Bones hollowly.

"Listen," said the girl, and read:

"The magistrate, in sentencing Seepidge to six months' hard labour, said that there was no doubt that the man had been carrying on an illegal business. He had had the effrontery to pretend that he was printing a volume of verse. The court had heard extracts from that precious volume, which had evidently been written by Mr. Seepidge's office-boy. He had never read such appalling drivel in his life. He ordered the confiscated lottery prospectuses to be destroyed, and he thought he would be rendering a service to humanity if he added an order for the destruction of this collection of doggerel."

The girl looked up at Bones.

"It is curious that we should have been talking about poetry to-day, isn't it?" she asked. "Now, Mr. Tibbetts, I'm going to insist upon your bringing that book of yours to-morrow."

Bones, very flushed of face, shook his head.

"Dear old disciple," he said huskily, "another time ... another time ... poetry should be kept for years ... like old wine..."

"Who said that?" she asked, folding her paper and rising.

"Competent judges," said Bones, with a gulp.


CHAPTER IX

THE LAMP THAT NEVER WENT OUT

"Have you seen her?" asked Bones.

He put this question with such laboured unconcern that Hamilton put down his pen and glared suspiciously at his partner.

"She's rather a beauty," Bones went on, toying with his ivory paper-knife. "She has one of those dinky bonnets, dear old thing, that makes you feel awfully braced with life."

Hamilton gasped. He had seen the beautiful Miss Whitland enter the office half an hour before, but he had not noticed her head-dress.

"Her body's dark blue, with teeny red stripes," said Bones dreamily, "and all her fittings are nickel-plated----"

"Stop!" commanded Hamilton hollowly. "To what unhappy woman are you referring in this ribald fashion?"

"Woman!" spluttered the indignant Bones. "I'm talking about my car."

"Your car?"

"My car," said Bones, in the off-handed way that a sudden millionaire might refer to "my earth."

"You've bought a car?"

Bones nodded.

"It's a jolly good 'bus," he said. "I thought of running down to Brighton on Sunday."

Hamilton got up and walked slowly across the room with his hands in his pockets.

"You're thinking of running down to Brighton, are you?" he said. "Is it one of those kind of cars where you have to do your own running?"

Bones, with a good-natured smile, also rose from his desk and walked to the window.

"My car," he said, and waved his hand to the street.

By craning his neck, Hamilton was able to get a view of the patch of roadway immediately in front of the main entrance to the building. And undoubtedly there was a car in waiting--a long, resplendent machine that glittered in the morning sunlight.

"What's the pink cushion on the seat?" asked Hamilton.

"That's not a pink cushion, dear old myoptic," said Bones calmly; "that's my chauffeur--Ali ben Ahmed."

"Good lor!" said the impressed Hamilton. "You've a nerve to drive into the City with a sky-blue Kroo boy."

Bones shrugged his shoulders.

"We attracted a certain amount of attention," he admitted, not without satisfaction.

"Naturally," said Hamilton, going back to his desk. "People thought you were advertising Pill Pellets for Pale Poultry. When did you buy this infernal machine?"

Bones, at his desk, crossed his legs and put his fingers together.

"Negotiations, dear old Ham, have been in progress for a month," he recited. "I have been taking lessons on the quiet, and to-day--proof!" He took out his pocket-book and threw a paper with a lordly air towards his partner. It fell half-way on the floor.

"Don't trouble to get up," said Hamilton. "It's your motor licence. You needn't be able to drive a car to get that."

And then Bones dropped his attitude of insouciance and became a vociferous advertisement for the six-cylinder Carter-Crispley ("the big car that's made like a clock"). He became double pages with illustrations and handbooks and electric signs. He spoke of Carter and of Crispley individually and collectively with enthusiasm, affection, and reverence.

"Oh!" said Hamilton, when he had finished. "It sounds good."

"Sounds good!" scoffed Bones. "Dear old sceptical one, that car..."

And so forth.

All excesses being their own punishment, two days later Bones renewed an undesirable acquaintance. In the early days of Schemes, Ltd., Mr. Augustus Tibbetts had purchased a small weekly newspaper called the _Flame_. Apart from the losses he incurred during its short career, the experience was made remarkable by the fact that he became acquainted with Mr. Jelf, a young and immensely self-satisfied man in pince-nez, who habitually spoke uncharitably of bishops, and never referred to members of the Government without causing sensitive people to shudder.

The members of the Government retaliated by never speaking of Jelf at all, so there was probably some purely private feud between them.

Jelf disapproved of everything. He was twenty-four years of age, and he, too, had made the acquaintance of the Hindenburg Line. Naturally Bones thought of Jelf when he purchased the _Flame_.

From the first Bones had run the _Flame_ with the object of exposing things. He exposed Germans, Swedes, and Turks--which was safe. He exposed a furniture dealer who had made him pay twice for an article because a receipt was lost, and