Chapter 9
I
It was only after many hours of thought that it had flashed upon
me that the simplest and safest way of removing the Little Nugget
was to induce him to remove himself. Once the idea had come, the
rest was simple. The negotiations which had taken place that
morning in the stable-yard had been brief. I suppose a boy in
Ogden's position, with his record of narrow escapes from the
kidnapper, comes to take things as a matter of course which would
startle the ordinary boy. He assumed, I imagine, that I was the
accredited agent of his mother, and that the money which I gave
him for travelling expenses came from her. Perhaps he had been
expecting something of the sort. At any rate, he grasped the
essential points of the scheme with amazing promptitude. His
little hand was extended to receive the cash almost before I had
finished speaking.
The main outline of my plan was that he should slip away to
London, during the afternoon, go to my rooms, where he would find
Smith, and with Smith travel to his mother at Monaco. I had
written to Smith, bidding him be in readiness for the expedition.
There was no flaw in the scheme as I had mapped it out, and though
Ogden had complicated it a little by gratuitously luring away
Augustus Beckford to bear him company, he had not endangered its
success.
But now an utterly unforeseen complication had arisen. My one
desire now was to undo everything for which I had been plotting.
I stood there, looking at her dumbly, hating myself for being the
cause of the anxiety in her eyes. If I had struck her, I could not
have felt more despicable. In my misery I cursed Cynthia for
leading me into this tangle.
I heard my name spoken, and turned to find White at my elbow.
'Mr Abney would like to see you, sir.'
I went upstairs, glad to escape. The tension of the situation had
begun to tear at my nerves.
'Cub id, Bister Burds,' said my employer, swallowing a lozenge.
His aspect was more dazed than ever. 'White has just bade
an--ah--extraordinary cobbudicatiod to me. It seebs he is in
reality a detective, an employee of Pidkertod's Agedcy, of which
you have, of course--ah--heard.'
So White had revealed himself. On the whole, I was not surprised.
Certainly his motive for concealment, the fear of making Mr Abney
nervous, was removed. An inrush of Red Indians with tomahawks
could hardly have added greatly to Mr Abney's nervousness at the
present juncture.
'Sent here by Mr Ford, I suppose?' I said. I had to say something.
'Exactly. Ah--precisely.' He sneezed. 'Bister Ford, without
codsulting me--I do not cobbedt on the good taste or wisdob of his
actiod--dispatched White to apply for the post of butler at
this--ah--house, his predecessor having left at a bobedt's dotice,
bribed to do so, I strodgly suspect, by Bister Ford himself. I bay
be wrodging Bister Ford, but do dot thig so.'
I thought the reasoning sound.
'All thad, however,' resumed Mr Abney, removing his face from a
jug of menthol at which he had been sniffing with the tense
concentration of a dog at a rabbit-hole, 'is beside the poidt. I
berely bedtiod it to explaid why White will accompady you to
London.'
'What!'
The exclamation was forced from me by my dismay. This was
appalling. If this infernal detective was to accompany me, my
chance of bringing Ogden back was gone. It had been my intention
to go straight to my rooms, in the hope of finding him not yet
departed. But how was I to explain his presence there to White?
'I don't think it's necessary, Mr Abney,' I protested. 'I am sure
I can manage this affair by myself.'
'Two heads are better thad wud,' said the invalid sententiously,
burying his features in the jug once more.
'Too many cooks spoil the broth,' I replied. If the conversation
was to consist of copybook maxims, I could match him as long as he
pleased.
He did not keep up the intellectual level of the discussion.
'Dodseds!' he snapped, with the irritation of a man whose proverb
has been capped by another. I had seldom heard him speak so
sharply. White's revelation had evidently impressed him. He had
all the ordinary peaceful man's reverence for the professional
detective.
'White will accompany you, Bister Burds,' he said doggedly.
'Very well,' I said.
After all, it might be that I should get an opportunity of giving
him the slip. London is a large city.
A few minutes later the cab arrived, and White and I set forth on
our mission.
We did not talk much in the cab. I was too busy with my thoughts
to volunteer remarks, and White, apparently, had meditations of
his own to occupy him.
It was when we had settled ourselves in an empty compartment and
the train had started that he found speech. I had provided myself
with a book as a barrier against conversation, and began at once
to make a pretence of reading, but he broke through my defences.
'Interesting book, Mr Burns?'
'Very,' I said.
'Life's more interesting than books.'
I made no comment on this profound observation. He was not
discouraged.
'Mr Burns,' he said, after the silence had lasted a few moments.
'Yes?'
'Let's talk for a spell. These train-journeys are pretty slow.'
Again I seemed to detect that curious undercurrent of meaning in
his voice which I had noticed in the course of our brief exchange
of remarks in the hall. I glanced up and met his eye. He was
looking at me in a way that struck me as curious. There was
something in those bright brown eyes of his which had the effect
of making me vaguely uneasy. Something seemed to tell me that he
had a definite motive in forcing his conversation on me.
'I guess I can interest you a heap more than that book, even if
it's the darndest best seller that was ever hatched.'
'Oh!'
He lit a cigarette.
'You didn't want me around on this trip, did you?'
'It seemed rather unnecessary for both of us to go,' I said
indifferently. 'Still, perhaps two heads are better than one, as
Mr Abney remarked. What do you propose to do when you get to
London?'
He bent forward and tapped me on the knee.
'I propose to stick to you like a label on a bottle, sonny,' he
said. 'That's what I propose to do.'
'What do you mean?'
I was finding it difficult, such is the effect of a guilty
conscience, to meet his eye, and the fact irritated me.
'I want to find out that address you gave the Ford kid this
morning out in the stable-yard.'
It is strange how really literal figurative expressions are. I had
read stories in which some astonished character's heart leaped
into his mouth. For an instant I could have supposed that mine had
actually done so. The illusion of some solid object blocking up my
throat was extraordinarily vivid, and there certainly seemed to be
a vacuum in the spot where my heart should have been. Not for a
substantial reward could I have uttered a word at that moment. I
could not even breathe. The horrible unexpectedness of the blow
had paralysed me.
White, however, was apparently prepared to continue the chat
without my assistance.
'I guess you didn't know I was around, or you wouldn't have talked
that way. Well, I was, and I heard every word you said. Here was
the money, you said, and he was to take it and break for London,
and go to the address on this card, and your pal Smith would look
after him. I guess there had been some talk before that, but I
didn't arrive in time to hear it. But I heard all I wanted, except
that address. And that's what I'm going to find out when we get to
London.'
He gave out this appalling information in a rich and soothing
voice, as if it were some ordinary commonplace. To me it seemed to
end everything. I imagined I was already as good as under arrest.
What a fool I had been to discuss such a matter in a place like a
stable yard, however apparently empty. I might have known that at
a school there are no empty places.
'I must say it jarred me when I heard you pulling that stuff,'
continued White. 'I haven't what you might call a childlike faith
in my fellow-man as a rule, but it had never occurred to me for a
moment that you could be playing that game. It only shows,' he
added philosophically, 'that you've got to suspect everybody when
it comes to a gilt-edged proposition like the Little Nugget.'
The train rattled on. I tried to reduce my mind to working order,
to formulate some plan, but could not.
Beyond the realization that I was in the tightest corner of my
life, I seemed to have lost the power of thought.
White resumed his monologue.
'You had me guessing,' he admitted. 'I couldn't figure you out.
First thing, of course, I thought you must be working in with Buck
MacGinnis and his crowd. Then all that happened tonight, and I saw
that, whoever you might be working in with, it wasn't Buck. And
now I've placed you. You're not in with any one. You're just
playing it by yourself. I shouldn't mind betting this was your
first job, and that you saw your chance of making a pile by
holding up old man Ford, and thought it was better than
schoolmastering, and grabbed it.'
He leaned forward and tapped me on the knee again. There was
something indescribably irritating in the action. As one who has
had experience, I can state that, while to be arrested at all is
bad, to be arrested by a detective with a fatherly manner is
maddening.
'See here,' he said, 'we must get together over this business.'
I suppose it was the recollection of the same words in the mouth
of Buck MacGinnis that made me sit up with a jerk and stare at
him.
'We'll make a great team,' he said, still in that same cosy voice.
'If ever there was a case of fifty-fifty, this is it. You've got
the kid, and I've got you. I can't get away with him without your
help, and you can't get away with him unless you square me. It's a
stand-off. The only thing is to sit in at the game together and
share out. Does it go?'
He beamed kindly on my bewilderment during the space of time it
takes to select a cigarette and light a match. Then, blowing a
contented puff of smoke, he crossed his legs and leaned back.
'When I told you I was a Pinkerton's man, sonny,' he said, 'I
missed the cold truth by about a mile. But you caught me shooting
off guns in the grounds, and it was up to me to say something.'
He blew a smoke-ring and watched it dreamily till it melted in the
draught from the ventilator.
'I'm Smooth Sam Fisher,' he said.
