The Seven Dials Mystery (Superintendent Battle 2)

Again Bundle opened her mouth, and again shut it without speaking.

“Right you are,” agreed Bill. “Who’ll take first duty?”

“Shall we spin for it?”

“Might as well.”

“All right. Here goes. Heads you first and I second. Tails, vice versa.”

Bill nodded. The coin spun in the air. Jimmy bent to look at it.

“Tails,” he said.

“Damn,” said Bill. “You get first half and probably any fun that’s going.”

“Oh, you never know,” said Jimmy. “Criminals are very uncertain. What time shall I wake you? Three?”

“That’s about fair, I think.”

And now, at last, Bundle spoke:

“What about me?” she asked.

“Nothing doing. You go to bed and sleep.”

“Oh!” said Bundle. “That’s not very exciting.”

“You never know,” said Jimmy kindly. “You may be murdered in your sleep while Bill and I escape scot-free.”

“Well, there’s always that possibility. Do you know, Jimmy, I don’t half like the look of that countess. I suspect her.”

“Nonsense,” cried Billy hotly. “She’s absolutely above suspicion.”

“How do you know?” retorted Bundle.

“Because I do. Why, one of the fellows at the Hungarian Embassy vouched for her.”

“Oh!” said Bundle, momentarily taken aback by his fervour.

“You girls are all the same,” grumbled Bill. “Just because she’s a jolly good-looking woman—”

Bundle was only too well-acquainted with this unfair masculine line of argument.

“Well, don’t you go and pour confidences into her shell-pink ear,” she remarked. “I’m going to bed. I was bored stiff with that drawing room and I’m not going back.”

She left the room. Bill looked at Jimmy.

“Good old Bundle,” he said. “I was afraid we might have trouble with her. You know how keen she is to be in everything. I think the way she took it was just wonderful.”

“So did I,” said Jimmy. “It staggered me.”

“She’s got some sense, Bundle has. She knows when a thing’s plumb impossible. I say, oughtn’t we to have some lethal weapons? Chaps usually do when they’re going on this sort of stunt.”

“I have a bluenosed automatic,” said Jimmy with gentle pride. “It weighs several pounds and looks most dangerous. I’ll lend it to you when the time comes.”

Bill looked at him with respect and envy.

“What made you think of getting that?” he said.

“I don’t know,” said Jimmy carelessly. “It just came to me.”

“I hope we shan’t go and shoot the wrong person,” said Bill with some anxiety.

“That would be unfortunate,” said Mr. Thesiger gravely.

Eighteen

JIMMY’S ADVENTURES

Our chronicle must here split into three separate and distinct portions. The night was to prove an eventful one and each of the three persons involved saw it from his or her own individual angle.

We will begin with that pleasant and engaging youth, Mr. Jimmy Thesiger, at a moment when he has at last exchanged final good nights with his fellow conspirator, Bill Eversleigh.

“Don’t forget,” said Bill, “three a.m. If you’re still alive, that is,” he added kindly.

“I may be an ass,” said Jimmy, with rancorous remembrance of the remark Bundle had repeated to him, “but I’m not nearly so much of an ass as I look.”

“That’s what you said about Gerry Wade,” said Bill slowly. “Do you remember? And that very night he—”

“Shut up, you damned fool,” said Jimmy. “Haven’t you got any tact?”

“Of course I’ve got tact,” said Bill. “I’m a budding diplomatist. All diplomatists have tact.”

“Ah!” said Jimmy. “You must be still in what they call the larval stage.”

“I can’t get over Bundle,” said Bill, reverting abruptly to a former topic. “I should certainly have said that she’d be—well, difficult. Bundle’s improved. She’s improved very much.”

“That’s what your Chief was saying,” said Jimmy. “He said he was agreeably surprised.”

“I thought Bundle was laying it on a bit thick myself,” said Bill. “But Codders is such an ass he’d swallow anything. Well, night-night. I expect you’ll have a bit of a job waking me when the times comes—but stick to it.”

“It won’t be much good if you’ve taken a leaf out of Gerry Wade’s book,” said Jimmy maliciously.

Bill looked at him reproachfully.

“What the hell do you want to go and make a chap uncomfortable for?” he demanded.

“I’m only getting my own back,” said Jimmy. “Toddle along.”

But Bill lingered. He stood uncomfortably, first on one foot and then on the other.

“Look here,” he said.

“Yes?”

“What I mean to say is—well, I mean you’ll be all right and all that, won’t you? It’s all very well ragging but when I think of poor Gerry—and then poor old Ronny—”

Jimmy gazed at him in exasperation. Bill was one of those who undoubtedly meant well, but the result of his efforts would not be described as heartening.

“I see,” he remarked, “that I shall have to show you Leopold.”

He slipped his hand into the pocket of the dark-blue suit into which he had just changed and held out something for Bill’s inspection.

“A real, genuine, bluenosed automatic,” he said with modest pride.

“No. I say,” said Bill, “is it really?”

He was undoubtedly impressed.

“Stevens, my man, got him for me. Warranted clean and methodical in his habits. You press the button and Leopold does the rest.”

“Oh!” said Bill. “I say, Jimmy?”

“Yes?”

“Be careful, won’t you? I mean, don’t go loosing that thing off at anybody. Pretty awkward if you shot old Digby walking in his sleep.”

“That’s all right,” said Jimmy. “Naturally, I want to get value out of old Leopold now I’ve bought him, but I’ll curb my bloodthirsty instincts as far as possible.”

“Well, night-night,” said Bill for the fourteenth time, and this time really did depart.

Jimmy was left alone to take up his vigil.

Sir Stanley Digby occupied a room at the extremity of the west wing. A bathroom adjoined it on one side, and on the other a communicating door led into a smaller room, which was tenanted by Mr. Terence O’Rourke. The doors of these three rooms gave on to a short corridor. The watcher had a simple task. A chair placed inconspicuously in the shadow of an oak press just where the corridor ran into the main gallery formed a perfect vantage ground. There was no other way into the west wing, and anyone going to or from it could not fail to be seen. One electric light was still on.

Jimmy ensconced himself comfortably, crossed his legs and waited. Leopold lay in readiness across his knee.

He glanced at his watch. It was twenty minutes to one—just an hour since the household had retired to rest. Not a sound broke the stillness, except for the far-off ticking of a clock somewhere.

Somehow or other, Jimmy did not much care for that sound. It recalled things. Gerald Wade—and those seven ticking clocks on the mantelpiece . . . Whose hand had placed them there, and why? He shivered.

It was a creepy business, this waiting. He didn’t wonder that things happened at spiritualistic séances. Sitting in the gloom, one got all worked up—ready to start at the least sound. And unpleasant thoughts came in on a fellow.