The Missing Angel - Erle Cox (whitelam books .TXT) 📗

CHAPTER XXIV

It was Tydvil’s fate, however, not to witness the morning awakening of

his guests. Though he, himself, awoke much later than usual, from his

personal inspection of the men, and from the reports of the maids on the

others, none of them seemed inclined to awake, much less to get up. So

Tydvil breakfasted alone, telling the maid who attended him that he

doubted if any of the visitors would care to breakfast; but recommended

that the cook should prepare large quantities of coffee—black.

 

But it was after ten o’clock when he reached his office, a departure from

normal that Miss Brand added to her other evidence of Tydvil’s recent

peculiar behaviour. She and Billy Brewer had taken advantage of Tydvil’s

delayed appearance to discuss many things, though much was purely

personal; because on the third finger of Geraldine’s left hand there now

flashed and sparkled a stone that almost rivalled the light in

Geraldine’s eyes.

 

“But darling,” Billy protested when Geraldine had repeated Tony’s account

of Tydvil’s movements, “Tony must be haywire.”

 

“Look here, Billy,” she contended, “You and I and everyone else look on

Tyddie as the best boy in the class, who always knows his lessons, keeps

his hands clean and who was never a naughty boy in his life.”

 

Billy grinned. “Portrait of a pious softgoods warehouseman by his

secretary. But that’s about it. We all do.”

 

“But it’s not natural for a man to be as perfect as he appears to be.”

 

“For that matter, no one would believe there was such a creature as the

platypus—but there is,” was Billy’s comment.

 

“Well, I doubt if Tyddie is as innocent as he seems.”

 

“Oh, rats, Gerry!” laughed Billy. “You ought to know better than anyone.

Surely he has not been trying to put anything nefarious over you.”

 

“Like to see him try!” said Geraldine, straightening up. “But really,

Billy, so far as that goes I don’t exist. I don’t believe he could tell

you the colour of my eyes.”

 

“Pooh, that’s nothing! I can’t either, and the good Lord knows I’ve

studied them closely enough these last few months. But anyway, if a man

could be with you twenty times a day for years and still doesn’t know you

exist—that proves he’s either nutty or abnormal.”

 

“I don’t care what you say, Billy,” Geraldine stuck to her guns. “He’s

changed. Plenty of men have been proved pious frauds.”

 

“But, best beloved,” Billy argued, “you don’t mean to tell me you think

that Tyddie has suddenly taken to heaving bricks at cops, or has gone

berserk, painted the town red and then tried to clean it up with a club.

It don’t make sense.”

 

“Oh, I know! It does seem crazy; but why has he become such an appalling

fibber?”

 

“Aren’t we all?” Billy philosophised. “Didn’t one of the Old Testament

chaps say ‘All men are liars’?”

 

“Speak for yourself, Billy boy! Anyway, Tyddie seems to be out to break

records.”

 

“Making up for lost time, perhaps! Still, that one about his hat being

pinched at the Carlton seems a bit thick. That is, if Tony is right.”

 

“You can take it from me, Billy,” Geraldine asserted, “Tony may not he

intellectual, but he is absolutely honest, and in his job he misses

nothing.”

 

“Well, even if he is right, I don’t see that it proves that Tyddie has

suddenly gone off the deep end to qualify for the laurels of village

reprobate.”

 

“Maybe, but it does prove he has been up to some pretty steep mischief. A

man like Tyddie does not step into the witness box and commit flat

perjury unless there is something to make it worth while.”

 

“Urn,” mused Billy, “don’t think it’s a fellow feeling, but if he has

gone a bit off the rails, I like him the better for it.”

 

“I’m as bad as you are, Billy,” admitted Geraldine. “He’s been less

saintly and more human these last few days.”

 

“Gerry, dear,” Billy became very serious, “there’s something I have to

tell you. It may hurt.”

 

She held out her hand to him. “I’ll help! What is it, Billy?”

 

“Cranston’s issued a writ against his wife, and named me co-re.”

 

“I always did hate that man,” Geraldine said with deep conviction.

 

“I’m going to defend it, d’you mind?” He looked down at her.

 

“Billy, dear, if I must marry a sinner, and I know you haven’t been

exactly a saint, I’d sooner marry one who gets through with his sinning

before marriage.”

 

“You trust me, Gerry?”

 

“There’s the proof, boy!” She held up the third finger of her left hand.

 

Billy bent forward and swept her up in his arms and the remainder of

their conversation became irrelevant, disconnected, and, to tell the

truth, just a little mushy. But that was their business and none of ours.

 

Whether Tydvil’s conscience was black, grey or spotted, he gave no signs

of that during the morning. To all who encountered him, and especially to

Geraldine, he was more genial than usual. To Miss Brand, it seemed as

though he tackled his work almost gaily. His eyes caught the sparkle of

the stone on her finger the moment he took his chair.

 

“So!” he said, “that tonic, no, I think stimulant was the term you

used—that stimulant of yours has lost no time in asserting his

pre-emptive right. Do you believe in long engagements, Miss Brand?”

 

Miss Brand admitted demurely that she had heard they were unwise. The

colour that rose to the creamy skin at the admission delighted Tydvil’s

artistic eye.

 

“For competent secretaries I think the ideal length of an engagement is

ten years,” suggested Tydvil.

 

Still keeping her eyes down a very dainty nose, Miss Brand agreed, but

added, “At the same time, Mr. Jones, as a member of the warehouse staff,

I suppose you will allow ninety-five or ninety-seven and a half per cent

discount in time.”

 

“That’s not business, Miss Brand,” Tydvil chuckled. “That’s nothing but

sheer banditry.”

 

“I’ve always thought I’d like to be a bandit,” replied Geraldine.

 

“Do you know what I think?” asked Tydvil.

 

Geraldine raised her eyes. He was leaning back in his chair regarding her

quizzically, with his head on one side.

 

“I think,” Tydvil went on, “that Geraldine Brand is a shameless young

baggage.”

 

The girl laughed happily.

 

“But,” he continued, “when the time comes the gift of Craddock, Burns and

Despard to the bride will be her trousseau and her entire requirements in

household linen.”

 

He cut short her thanks with a laugh. “I can see that he has been here

again this morning.”

 

Geraldine looked round for some trace of Billy’s presence.

 

But Tydvil, still laughing, said, “Elementary, my dear Watson! Go and

look at your hair in the glass.”

 

With flaming cheeks, Geraldine hurried to the mirror to repair the

disorder wrought by Billy, and Tydvil, watching her over his shoulder,

observed: “Personally, I like it that way, but should you go out into the

warehouse with it like that, someone might obtain an entirely erroneous

impression of me.”

 

“Ump!” replied Geraldine Brand, with a new found audacity, as she busied

herself with her hair. “I wonder!”

 

But Geraldine would not have wondered had she been able to follow the

workings of the mind of Tydvil Jones. As the days passed she, more than

anyone else, even in the police force, was occupied with the doings of

one Basil Williams, a mysterious roysterer who became notorious for

extravagant amusements and extravagant audacity. Basil Williams sprang

into fame two nights later when, at eleven-thirty, he, with two

companions who had dined as amply as he had, was moved to serenade the

east end of Collins Street generally.

 

Remonstrance from a constable on duty led to his referring in approbrious

terms to the constable in particular and the police generally. When the

constable found he was too strenuous a job to handle singly, he called

for assistance. One of the reinforcements was Senior Constable O’Connor,

who welcomed the opportunity to renew an already warm acquaintance. It

took five athletic members of the force to effect the appearance of Basil

Williams at the Watchhouse in Russell Street.

 

Here the captive admitted that his name was Basil Williams. He also gave

names to the Sergeant on duty that that officer did not consider

complimentary. Finally, after a strenuous ten minutes, he was lodged in a

cell with seven charges against his name in the charge book—all of them

serious.

 

That was at five minutes to midnight. Half an hour later when the cell

was opened for the admission of another guest, it was learned with dismay

that Basil Williams had vanished. All that was left to explain his

absence was a note, couched in facetious but opprobrious terms, asking if

the sergeant thought that he, Basil Williams, were a canary to be caged

in such a manner. There was no indication that the lock on the cell door

had been tampered with. The amour propre of the police was not soothed

when they learned that the address given by Basil Williams was that of

Mrs. Julia Blomb, the well known feminist, and a leading figure in

women’s political circles. Mrs. Blomb was not pleased when she was

aroused at four-thirty a.m. by a policeman who demanded the body of one

Basil Williams. It appears that she took no pains to conceal her

displeasure from her visitors.

 

The man who regretted most the absence of Mr. Williams from his cell was

the sergeant in charge of the watchhouse. More so when Senior Constable

O’Connor reminded him in friendly terms of his remarks when the former

captors of the outrageous prisoner had explained he had vanished from

their gaze, also. Never did lover sigh for a maid as that sergeant sighed

for one more glimpse of Basil Williams.

 

All the more so, when he remembered some of the epithets the dishevelled

captive had hurled at him in the presence of subordinates, who only

retained a becoming sobriety of expression by the exercise of desperate

self-constraint. If you call an efficient and conscientious sergeant of

police a drunk-robbing, beer-soaked buzzard; a silver-striped and

pop-eyed son of the public executioner; if you assert that his

appearance is more nauseating than a bucketful of emetic, you may achieve

many things, but popularity will not be among them.

 

All these phrases had Basil Williams addressed to the sergeant, and many

more even less truthful and far more reprehensible.

 

As Mr. Senior remarked to Basil Williams at the first convenient

opportunity, it was surprising where he learned such expressions.

 

But Mr. Williams proudly claimed that he had not learned them at