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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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The Bunn-Fortworth Combine, sallying forth in search of a little friend, completely snaggle up the plans of a would-be-but-wasn't millionairess, and considerately provide a "healer" with an opportunity of practising his art upon himself.
MR. SMILER BUNN, whose face for the last half-hour had been falling as steadily and depressingly as a barometer in the path of a storm, suddenly flung the book he had been reading clean across the room, and with a half scared, half fierce look in his eyes impatiently drove his thumb down on the electric bell-push near him.
His friend and partner, ex-Lord Fortworth, who had been watching him idly through the haze of a grand cigar, grinned slightly.
"What's biting you now, Flood?" he asked. "These books and things are getting on to your nerves, old man. You look as though you'd seen a ghost."
"I don't know anything about any ghosts, Fortworth," said Mr. Bunn sharply, keeping his thumb down and the bell busy, "but I've just read something that would make a pretty fine mess of your nerves "
He broke off as Sing Song, the gentle Chinese pirate who officiated as valet, cook, and universal crutch to the two crooks, appeared, with his usual amiable grin.
"Burn that book, Sing Song, and quick about it." Mr. Bunn indicated the rejected volume on the floor. "I wouldn't torture my better feelings by reading a thing like it. And bring in the old brandy—understand?"
Lord Fortworth, now modestly figuring to the world in general and (he hoped) to the police in particular as Mr. Henry Black, looked genuinely interested.
"Whatever stung you this time, Flood, stung you good and deep. What was it?" he inquired a trifle anxiously, for their tastes and tendencies were so very similar that whatever nauseated one of them was extremely likely to thoroughly sicken the other.
"Well, there's one thing—it's killed my opinion of the French as sportsmen—not as cooks, mind, but as genuine sports—stone dead. Absolutely stone dead, mind," announced Mr. Bunn loudly and aggressively. "I wouldn't treat a crocodile the way they seem to treat those poor devils of soldiers in their Foreign Legion. There's a lot about it in that book I've just had destroyed, and in one part it's horrible; especially about how they feed the men. Do you know what they have for breakfast in the Foreign Legion, Fortworth?"
"Me? No. I'm not so fond of reading myself into a fit of the blue horrors. What is it?"
"Thirty minutes' 'lung training'—half an hour of it, running as hard as they can hop it round a thundering great barrack square—and no falling out allowed, mind you. That's what they call their breakfast! A French regiment, mind—a nation that knows about cookery like the French."
"Oh, they don't know anything about breakfasts, the French—they always were a bit pinched in their ideas concerning breakfasts—roll and coffee about covers their idea of a square feed in the morning. Don't those chaps in that Foreign Legion get anything else besides their athletic sports?"
"Not to eat. Just about dawn they get a pint of black coffee strong enough to knock a bullock endways—but nothing to eat."
"Oh, well, hard luck!" said Fortworth carelessly. "Probably they get all they deserve—the French are a pretty practical push when you think it over." He took another cigar. "It don't do to be too sentimental over a herd of blackguards in Algeria that you've never seen nor heard of till to-day, Flood. Let 'em gallop—they joined their regiment of their own free will."
Mr. Bunn, who, for all his unconventional ideas as to a man's right to another man's property, was a tolerably tender-hearted sportsman, looked severely at his partner.
"Let's hope, old man, that you'll never find yourself running round the exercise yard at Dartmoor, for instance, in a pair of yellow breeches and golf stockings, with crowsfeet printed all over 'em—thinking of the breakfasts you've put away in the happy days."
Fortworth suddenly looked solemn.
"Begosh, you're right, Flood!" he said very seriously indeed. Mr. Bunn nodded.
"I thought I could convince you. And that brings me to something else, Fortworth. Supposing—just supposing, mind—something went wrong with us—suppose some thundering detective got on to us, or some of the crooks we've doped it out to get landed in the salad-basket and try to curry favour by giving us away—where should we be? We should look like two cents—in about two minutes. We ought to guard against the worst, old man—and the worst would be a stretch of penal servitude as long as a ladder. It would be Dartmoor for the best part of our lives, Fortworth, and don't forget it."
The two old rogues shuddered in unison and—also in unison—visited the rare old brandy which Sing Song had brought for their sustenance.
"We ought to do something about it," said Fortworth very anxiously.
Smiler agreed.
"What can you do?" he inquired.
Fortworth shook his head, but even as he did so Mr. Bunn's face brightened up.
"I'll tell you what it is, Fortworth. The things that jack up all the convicts that ever escape from Dartmoor, or most other places, is money and clothes. See? If one of those chaps had had the sense and foresight to thoroughly learn his way about Dartmoor when he was free, and hide in a damp-proof box a suit of smart clothes, a handful of money, a set of faked letters to prove who he was—not—a mirror and dope to make up with, a flask of whisky, and one or two tins of these patent self-heating foods, a fishing-rod or camera, and a set of things like that—hid some of these outfits in different places near the prison and learned the way to them so thoroughly that he could get to 'em blindfolded—why, he could pretty well pull his freight from Dartmoor whenever he got tired of it and a fog came down. More or less."
Fortworth nodded, with a gentle shudder.
"Yes—more or less. Mostly less. However, if he did make a dash for it at any time those boxes would certainly help him. We'll go into it—make out a list of things—after lunch. A month's holiday down in Devonshire, looking round, wouldn't do either of us any harm. We'll see about it—after lunch."
Mr. Bunn rose.
"After all, it's only a sort of life insurance—and I always did believe in life insurance," he said.
Then they went out for the brief stroll as far as Regent Street with which it was becoming their practice to agitate their appetites into action.
It was half-way along Bond Street that they met Miss Eily Desmond—the charming little lady whom it pleased the hard-shell old partners to consider their "ward."
Eily had once been an accountant at the great brewery and distillery near Andover which had been one of the many concerns controlled by Lord Fortworth in his palmy days. When the financier, some months after his pyrotechnical smash, went with Mr. Bunn (by night and without noise) to bring away a supply of wine for their own use, they had come unexpectedly upon Eily Desmond, working secretly upon certain figures which she had some vague idea of holding over the head of the liar and full-size embezzler who was manager of the works. This refined ruffian had jilted Eily—who thought, quite mistakenly, she loved him. The figures the girl had prepared were "confiscated" by the Bunn-Fort-worth Combine, who promptly proceeded to bleed the manager, one Sheldrupp, who had married an almost improperly wealthy widow; of a sum which would have set most folk up for life. Ever since then Eily—who had achieved a certain share of fame as a concert singer—had been a sort of spoilt darling of the two old pirates—who, incidentally, had provided a very tolerable nest-egg for the girl out of the plunder.
She was quite unaware of the "profession" followed by her two "guardians," and loved them both—as a daughter. She firmly believed that Lord Fortworth was a much wronged and hideously misrepresented man, and was one of the very few who knew that Mr. Henry Black and Lord Fortworth were the same individual.
She was soon to be married to Mr. Marcus Mottisfonte, the wealthy son of a plus-wealthy parent, one General Mottisfonte, the famous and literary warrior renowned in practically every old-established club in the country for his searching and scientific volume on "Port: What It Is and Is Not—with a Few Chapters on Sherry."
Marcus—or "Mark," as he was usually referred to by the Bunn-Fortworth Combine—was a "nut" gone wrong. That is to say, he had been a distinctly nutty individual at twenty-two, but after a year of it had lost his interest in savage socks, soppy suits, and silly society, and, his natural force asserting itself, had thrown up the quarter-witted crew which had hitherto comprised his company, and gone in for religion—or, more clearly, for the modern religion which is Speed.
He had a ninety-horse eight-cylinder "Bug" car which had helped tear up the track at Brooklands and make tyre manufacturers wealthy beyond the dreams of the drunken; he had a two-hundred-horse whale-backed motor-boat which could slide across the waves and disappear in the distance with the rapidity and precision of a man's salary sliding over the dining-room table to his wife on pay-day; he owned a water-plane—at the bottom of the Solent, whither he had accompanied her half-way before reluctantly deciding to let her go her way while he went his; and a hundred-horse monoplane, which he kept at home, and which he used largely to frazzle his father's nerves into ribbons whenever the old gentleman showed signs of being a trifle fractious in the matter of applying a little gold stopping to the financial hole which usually yawned before Marcus about half-quarter day.
He was a good-looking youth, with, perhaps, just that shortage of imagination which is characteristic of most physically reckless men. He wore a moderately useful set of brains inside his attractively-shaped head, and he was quite certain that Eily Desmond was Queen of the Earth.
And since this latter belief was shared to a very considerable extent by Messrs. Bunn and Fortworth, it is not in itself a matter for very great surprise that the two crooks were a little upset, on meeting Eily in Bond Street, to observe that most of her customary pretty colour was gone, that her eyes were not so bright as usual, and were ringed with violet shadows.
"Why, Eily, my dear, what's happened to your roses?" asked Mr. Bunn, more concerned than he liked. "Aren't you very well?"
The girl looked at them both for a fraction of a second, dully, almost as though she did not recognise them. Then her face brightened up.
"Oh, yes, Mr. Flood!" she said, smiling upon them both; "only I have been having such headaches."
"Headaches, hey?" said Fortworth, scowling a little. "That won't do—can't go about having headaches like this—hey, Flood? We must take her to a specialist."
Mr. Bunn was looking worried.
"How's your appetite, Eily? Do you eat properly? Do you take pains about your meals?"
"Oh, yes," said Eily, her lips twitching a little. "It is just headaches. Marcus arranged for a special doctor for me—a very clever man. I shall soon be quite all right. I am lunching with Marcus presently, and was doing some shopping before meeting him. It is all right, you know. I think it must have been too much singing, and I'm not going to sing any more this season."
"Hum!"
Mr. Bunn glanced round. There were not many passers-by.
"Let me look at your tongue, my dear," he said. "It may be indigestion."
A gentleman does not usually request a lady to show him her tongue in Bond Street, but Miss Desmond had had far too many proofs of the purely paternal interest which the partners took in her to object. She moved into the greater privacy of a doorway and favoured Mr. Bunn with a brief glimpse of what our more humorous music-hall stars describe as "woman's one defence."
Smiler shook his head, and taking a pencil jotted down a few notes on a card.
"You must be careful about your food, child," he said, and passed the card to his partner.
"What do you think of that for a lunch menu for her, Fortworth?" he asked. "It's a bit severe, perhaps, but necessary."
Fortworth nodded.
"Couldn't she have just one glass of a light white wine, Flood, don't you consider? It couldn't do her much harm, hey?"
But Smiler Bunn shook his head.
"She oughtn't to. It hurts me more than it hurts her, although she mightn't think so," he said paternally. "She'd better keep to lemon-squash for a day or two—or China tea with a slice of lemon in it, not milk." He gave the card to Eily. "Tell Mark that's what you'd better have for lunch," he said. "D'you like lemon, my dear?"
"Yes," replied Eily dutifully.
"That's a good girl. Don't shirk the lemons—for, after all, it may only be a touch of biliousness."
And so saying Mr. Bunn shook hands, and with a promise to call and see her and her mother shortly, the Combine bade Miss Desmond au revoir, and moved on.
IT was several afternoons later, and Messrs. Bunn and Fortworth were deeply immersed in the preparation of their "liberty-insurance"—namely, the listing, purchase and packing in aluminium-lined tin trunks of four of their patent "Outfits Suitable for Escaped Convicts" for burial or concealment on Dartmoor within easy reach of the prison, when they were disturbed by a visitor, no other, indeed, than Mr. Marcus Mottisfonte, who was labouring under an access of agitation unusual in one so young and speedy.
He came in in a hurry, and, looking white and tired, blurted out:
"Eily's gone—disappeared!"
"What's that?"
Smiler dropped a pair of sporting-looking knickerbockers such as a tourist visiting Dartmoor might feel called upon to occupy, and turned to Mottisfonte.
"What d'you mean, Eily's gone?" he asked.
Marcus dropped into an armchair as big as a bed and even more comfortable, and poured himself a stiff whisky-and-soda.
"She has gone. She has been staying with her mother at an aunt's farmhouse near Amesbury—a place on Salisbury Plain. Karlin thought the Plain air would do her good. She had been on the farm three days, and I was seeing her every day—it's near my governor's place, and he's a bit off his oats, too. I am stopping with him, and it fits in rather decently for me to run over and lunch or tea with Eily. Well, yesterday I went over there at about three o'clock in my new hundred 'Elite' to take Eily for a flight across the Plain, and she wasn't there. She'd promised to be ready—and Karlin had said it would do her more good than harm. But when I arrived she'd gone—leaving no message. Her mother said she went walking with Karlin. I understood from the old lady that Karlin had told her the appointment to fly with me was off on account of engine trouble. That was yesterday after-noon—and Eily's never turned up since. We waited till tea-time—till dinner-time—till midnight—but she never came. Ever since dawn I've been working like the devil—hunting, putting men on searching, telegrams, police, telephoning, garages, and deuce knows what all. But there's no news—and as I know that Eily looks upon you two as kind of guardians I flew up here to see you. My 'plane is down at Raynes Park Golf Links—I came down there, know a man there, and thought it might be a bit risky to descend inside any London park. Do you know anything about it?"
The partners stared at each other.
"We haven't seen the child for nearly a week," said Smiler. "Met her in Bond Street on the way to lunch with you. Didn't even know she was going down to the country. D'you think she's eloped with this man Karlin? Is that your idea? Who is Karlin anyway?"
Marcus scowled a little.
"He's a nerve specialist—clever beast. Not a doctor exactly—calls himself a healer. He tackled my father's gout a year ago and worked miracles—or so my governor thinks. He swears by the chap. Recommended him to me when Eily's nerves went queer. He treated a friend of mine, too, some time ago—Lady Sybil Chark—and worked wonders for her. So I simply 'retained' the chap, lock, stock and barrel, for Eily. He's been attending her for the last three months. When she went down to the farm he put up at Amesbury and motored out twice a day. D'you know him?"
"What's he like to look at?" demanded Smiler.
"Oh, striking sort of Johnny! Remarkable eyes—middle-aged, well preserved, smart military style. Seems all right."
"Know anything about him? Got a photo? "
"No"
"What were you paying him?"
"Twenty-five guineas a week."
The partners looked solemn.
"Useful sum for a 'healer.' Must be a fool to elope from that. Eily's only worth five or six hundred a year. It don't look like an elopement to me. Besides, Eily's as straight as a telegraph wire. You're her Willy-boy, Marcus—don't make any mistake about that. It's queer."
Mr. Bunn frowned and touched the bell for Sing Song.
"It's no good hanging about here, anyhow. We'd better get down to Amesbury. Give us the address of the farm, Marcus, and we'll follow on."
"I can give one of you a lift in the monoplane if you like," offered Mr. Mottisfonte.
"No doubt—no doubt," said Mr. Bunn blandly. "But it won't be me, old man. A man of my weight deserves all he gets if he once starts skidding about the sky in these whizz-kites that you are so fond of. We do our travelling per car, my lad—per car on Palmer cords."
Sing Song entered, a glitter of excitement in his beady eyes, and a slight mark on his cheek near his right ear where he had pressed it against the keyhole.
"Order round the big car and look alive, Song, my son. You'll drive. Salisbury. Slip into it now. We'll lock up," commanded Fortworth.
They arranged to meet Marcus at the farm, and a moment later saw him out, returning rather thoughtfully to fortify themselves against the journey.
"I don't like it somehow, Fortworth," said Mr. Bunn rather seriously as he set down his glass. "There's a crooked kind of sound about this Karlin tough. And Eily ain't the sort of girl to elope with any mere damn healer when she's up to her hatpins in love with as decent a little millionaire as young Marcus Mottisfonte. It ain't reasonable—and it ain't like her."
Mr. Bunn's eyes grew a little bloodshot.
"I like that little kid like my own daughter, Fortworth," he said, with a slightly hoarse, growling note under-running his voice. "And if this Karlin stiff has hurt a hair of her head, God help him when I get next to him, that's all!"
"Help him?" Fortworth leaned forward. "He'll be beyond help, Flood. You listen to me! It'll be mercy on his soul he'll want—not help. Come on!"
They put on their heavy coats, and each having furnished a pocket with one of worthy Mr. Browning's 45 calibre productions, with a six-shot magazine, proceeded to fill their flasks in readiness for the journey.
It was not until their car was rolling smoothly across Salisbury Plain that Mr. Bunn, having concluded a healthy and refreshing slumber, turned the full force of his mind once more upon the case of Eily Desmond's singular disappearance.
And this time his intelligence, doubtless invigorated by sleep, instantly wrapped itself like a playful octopus round a point which hitherto had not struck him as calling for any special thought.
He lighted a cigar to assist his mind, and woke his partner.
"I'll tell you what it is, Fortworth," he said. "I shouldn't care to bet any heavy money that this Lady Sybil Chark doesn't know a bit more about this business than Mark thinks."
Fortworth looked doubtful.
"Why?." he inquired.
"Well," said Smiler, "look at it like this. Here we have got young Mark worth how much—half a million left him by his mother, wasn't it, of which he gets only the interest until he's thirty, paid quarterly. Well, he's the only son, and his father, so they say, is worth all of a million himself. That'll be Mark's too, later on, when the gout gets the old man. That makes Marky a pretty hot proposition—he'll be worth a million and a half of money. Now, although we know Eily is too good for any Mottisfonte that ever enclosed a bit of common or pinched a right-of-way—good sort as, I agree, young Mark is—at the same time we've got to bear in mind that Eily ain't considered by the Mottisfonte push generally to be a good match for Mark. That's so, ain't it?"
Fortworth gave a somewhat sullen assent.
"That's where this Lady Sybil Chark comes in—Eily told us about her, remember. She's had her hooks out for Mark for years, so I understand, and it was pretty well a go between her and Mark when Eily met him and dished Sybil for fair. The old man, General Mottisfonte, we also know, is inclined to be against the match with Eily—when sober. But we'll put it that the General don't matter. We'll only reckon the Mottisfonte women-folk. Now, we know they'd like to get Eily out of Mark's way, hey?"
Fortworth nodded. "And this being so, who should come along just when he's wanted but Mister Healer—what's his name?—Karlin—hungry for money, as most healers are, and probably a bit of a crook. (Remember that hypnotic blackguard Kincardell and his wife we met at the Lee-Hulsey's* that time? They called themselves 'mental healers,' though 'hyenas' would have been a complimentary description of 'em.) Just for sake of argument we'll say Lady Sybil is the main guy who is pulling the ropes. Sybil has a money talk with Karlin, and comes to an understanding with him, and Karlin quietly gets Eily out of the way—at a price. How's that, Fortworth?"
* See story "On the Wing," in "The Progress of Smiler Bunn."
"Sounds easy the way you put it."
"Yes, it does," said Smiler grimly. "And as Mark will have to put us up for the night it ought to be simple enough to find out if it looks right."
An hour later they were passing through the gates of the drive leading to General Mottisfonte's great grey house on the edge of Salisbury Plain.
Marcus, who had shot across the face of the heavens in about a third of the time it had taken them to motor down, was expecting them.
"Any news?" asked Smiler, handing his coat to a butler who looked as though he knew nearly as much about port as his master.
"Nothing," said Marcus. "If I don't hear anything to-night I'm going to offer a reward to-morrow that will stagger people. You're just too late for dinner."
The partners looked unhappy.
"Oh, well, it can't be helped!" said Smiler. "We'll have anything that's going—soup, bit of fish, a bird or so, and something of that kind."
Marcus nodded.
"I've fixed that up for you. Afterwards, I thought we would run down to the farm and see if Mrs. Desmond has heard from Eily. Hear what the police say, too."
"Good!" approved Smiler. "And—"
He stopped short as a lady came into the hall—an elaborate lady, tall, graceful, in an excruciatingly expensive but very attractive gown.
Marcus introduced her as Lady Sybil Chark, and the eyes of the partners hardened a little as they bowed. She was beautiful, in a hardish, brilliant, insincere style, and her eyes were remarkable. She was famous for her eyes, but the experienced old pair of wolves who were now making her acquaintance knew rather better than most what that latent touch of wild-cat green in a lady's eyes stood for.
"You have come to help Marcus?" said Lady Sybil, in a voice that made Smiler think of a lemon preserved in syrup. "We are all hoping so much that you will be successful."
Mr. Bunn nodded.
"Well, Lady Sybil, we mostly make a point of being successful where Eily Desmond—our ward—is concerned, don't we, Black?"
"We do," replied Fortworth, briefly and not outrageously politely.
Lady Sybil smiled.
"I am sure Marcus and all of us are relieved to know that," she said, her eyes narrowing slightly, as, moving round a little, she got a better view of the faces of the partners in the soft light of the hall. And presuming Mr. Bunn's theory to have been correct, it must be confessed that she had reason to narrow her eyes, for the faces of the partners were much too grim to be reassuring.
Several other people, guests (who have no more to do with this story than the recent fog in Patagonia), came into the hall then, crossing to the billiard-room, and Marcus sent the butler to see about serving a meal for the partners, while he led the way to what he described as the "small gun-room," where he proposed his friends should dine.
But, for all the confidence which the Combine had exhibited to Lady Sybil, they were irritably aware of the fact that when at about twelve thirty that night they retired to their rooms they were no nearer finding out Eily's whereabouts than they had been in London.
Neither Mrs. Desmond nor her sister, whom, with Marcus, they had visited, knew anything more than Marcus had previously told them, and the police could add nothing whatsoever to the fact that they were as usual working upon a clue.
"Well, what are we going to do about it, Fortworth?" demanded Mr. Bunn as he removed his coat in Fortworth's room, preparatory to a final chat with his partner. "You remember what I said in the train—Sybil's the vampire at the bottom of it all."
"Well, we can let Sing Song search her room to-morrow when she's out. If she is in this and has kept in touch with Karlin, the Chink might come across something or other worth knowing," suggested Fortworth.
They turned to the amiable Sing Song, who was waiting to valet them.
"And meantime it can't do any harm for Sing Song to watch her," said Smiler. "I may be wrong, Fortworth, but I've got a hunch that Sybil is the dame that's pulling the strings in this job, and it won't do any harm if we all keep a lamp out for her."
He turned again to the Chink.
"That being the case, it's an all-night sitting for you, Sing, my son. Tired?"
Sing Song smiled.
"No, mastel."
Smiler looked at his Chink with a touch of genuine admiration.
"Sing Song, old man, you're a marvel," he said frankly. "A yellow marvel—a lemon-coloured miracle. Look at him, Fortworth—up at four o'clock this morning, probably took an opium pill for breakfast, attended to us all day, drove the car about, a hundred miles, pumped most of the servants in the servants' hall, and yet got heart enough to grin as happy as a laughing jackass when I tell him he's got to sit up all night keeping an eye out for Lady Shifty. You're a good lad, Sing, and I shan't forget it."
"But I don't see what you reckon he's going to discover in the night, Flood," criticised Fortworth. "I don't suppose the woman's got Eily locked up in any dungeon below and takes her food down to her at night."
"No—perhaps not," said Smiler. "But she's worth watching. You've got to remember that Karlin chucked away twenty-five guineas a week to get Eily out of the way, and I never heard of any healer who would chuck up twenty-five guineas a week for less than twenty-six. Putting the figure at twenty-six just for sake of argument, somebody's finding it. And if it ain't Sybil, who is it? If Karlin's the man I think he is, he looks on Sybil as a pretty hard lot—and unless she's paid him a good deal in cash Mister Karlin isn't going to put too much distance between 'em. The fact is, if you ask me, Fortworth, I don't believe Eily Desmond is very far away from this house! I don't know why, beyond what I've said—but that's my idea, and that's why I want Lady Slippery watched, and well watched, night and day. Night mostly, as if she wants to see Karlin she wouldn't go to him in the daytime!"
Fortworth, whose face had been clearing, nodded.
"You're right. I'm old Ivory-head again, Flood. I admit it!"
"That's all right, old man," replied Smiler; "you're the figure sharp of the concern." He turned to Sing Song. "Where's Lady Sybil's room? Near ours?"
"Thlee looms down collidol, mastel," replied the ever-ready Chink.
"Good! Get out and watch her now. If Lady Sybil or anybody else starts moving about in the night slip in and wake us—understand? Anybody—even if it's Marcus Mottisfonte himself. See?"
Sing Song saw and got out as requested.
"Of course, all this is more or less guess-work, Fortworth," said Smiler as he finished his cigar. "But it can do no harm and—well, damn it all, I like to feel that we're doing something for that little girl. Hey?"
Fortworth nodded rather fiercely.
"Sure!" he agreed emphatically.
And if additional emphasis be needed to make it quite clear that the two old wolves were sincerely "out" solely on behalf of Eily Desmond, attention is invited to the curious fact that it had not occurred to either of them to consider how they themselves were going to benefit financially out of the affair.
MR. BUNN was just floating peacefully off into dreamland when a shadow drifted quite soundlessly into his room and up to the bedside.
"Mastel!" breathed the shadow into Mr. Bunn's ear about as loudly as the fanning of an owl's wing, which is practically noiseless.
But Smiler heard.
"What is it, you thundering night-hawk?" he snarled softly.
"Mistel Malcus keep watchee allee same me watchee."
Mr. Bunn sat up suddenly, wide-awake as a wolf.
"Marcus watching, too, hey? Well, he ain't watching for fun. It looks as though we're right. Pass me my trousers, there's a good lad. All right—I've got 'em—you go and wake Fortworth."
Sing Song evaporated as silently as he had come, and Mr. Bunn, scrambling on some clothes, dropped his automatic into his pocket and peered out into the corridor. It was quite dark and, naturally, there were no signs of Marcus.
A minute later Sing Song, like an invisible ghost, touched Smiler's arm.
"Mastel got light allee same electlic flash?" asked the Chink.
"Yes; where's Mark?"
"This way, please."
The partners silently followed Sing Song past the head of the staircase, to the end of the corridor, turned a corner, and there, in the feeble moonlight through a deep window, sat Marcus Mottisfonte, fast asleep in a small antique chair.
"Poor old Mark," whispered Smiler. "He's been awake the last forty hours or so. He's all in. Don't wake him—quiet!"
His fingers suddenly gripped the arms of his comrades as a faint, faint click sounded down the corridor they had just turned out of.
Very cautiously he craned round. Someone was moving softly to the head of the staircase, using a tiny pocket flashlight to find the way, or, more probably, to avoid knocking over any of the bric-à-brac in the corridor and on the landing.
Smiler drew back.
"There she goes—easy, now."
They followed, light-footed as cats.
Once downstairs Lady Sybil used her flashlight less cautiously, and the trio had no difficulty in following her across the great hall into a drawing-room, and, steering gingerly here, across to a French window, through which she disappeared.
Mr. Bunn was just stealing through after her, when he turned sharply, pushing at his two followers gently, but with amazing swiftness.
"Get back—back! They are coming in. Hide!"
More by instinct and good luck than strategy Mr. Bunn and his partner found themselves sprawling behind a monster lounge, chiefly wondering for a dizzy second or so where Sing Song was. They need not have wondered. That admirable Chink was comfortably doubled up in the corner behind the grand piano.
They were just in time.
An instant later Lady Sybil Chark came through the window, followed by a man.
The lady lost no time in preliminaries. She began to ask questions—and to give some very curious instructions—in low, tense whispers that the listeners could hear perfectly. The man was Karlin, the "healer." And it seemed that, besides instructions, Mr. Karlin had called for money, which was handed over to him in a bunch of rustling bank-notes.
Within a quarter of an hour Lady Sybil had finished with him—and in the process had unwittingly, but very completely, given the Bunn-Fortworth Combine the key to her plans for the elimination of Eily Desmond from the matrimonial department of Marcus Mottisfonte's future, Karlin had passed out into the moonlight, and Lady Sybil had closed the French window behind him and quietly left the drawing-room, wholly unsuspicious of the three gentlemen in and about the furniture.
Five seconds later the window was opened again—far more silently and expertly than the woman had done it—and the Bunn-Fortworth Combine were dogging the figure of Mr. Karlin across a wide lawn, down a drive, and so on to the open Plain.
He was walking quickly towards a wood that bulked dark under the moon about three hundred yards east of the house.
"That's the wood. We must grab him before he gets into there," said Smiler. "Get him, Sing; you're the sprinter of this push—not me."
Sing Song darted after the man; was on him almost before he heard the quick, padding footsteps of the Chink, who ran past him, so that Karlin should not need to turn when confronting him, and was asking the right road to Salisbury as Messrs. Bunn and Fortworth came neatly upon the man from behind before he had an opportunity of bolting for the woods.
Mr. Bunn's right arm slid over his shoulder and under his chin, so that the massive forearm was crooked across the throat, while with his left hand Smiler gripped the startled healer's left wrist.
"Wriggle and I'll suffocate you, Karlin!" said Mr. Bunn. "Go through his pockets, one of you!"
Fortworth relieved the man of a pistol and the bundle of notes he had received from Lady Sybil.
Then the healer felt the lips of a big-calibre Browning press upon the back of his neck a chilly and sinister kiss.
"Get on to the keeper's cottage where you're hiding Miss Desmond—and quick, you hound!"
Mr. Karlin got on; he did not know who it was addressing him, but there was that in the voice which somehow made it translucently clear to him that it would be well to do as the voice demanded—unless he desired a hole in his neck the size of a thrush's nest.
There was a footpath leading into the woods, and it was down this that Mr. Karlin led the Combine. They went silently, two by two. In a moment a faint light shone through the trees—a light from the window of a cottage in a clearing, obviously designed for the occupation of a gamekeeper.
It was to this cottage that they went.
Sing Song opened the door and Smiler thrust the man in, Fortworth following.
"Ah! Take him, Sing Song," said Smiler, suddenly relinquishing his victim to the Chinaman; for Eily Desmond was sitting in a chair by a table, fully dressed.
"Eily, my dear!" said Mr. Bunn, in a queer voice.
And Eily turned to the two old crooks who adored her; but there was no expression in her eyes nor recognition. She looked at them with a strange, blank, unseeing stare that was terrifying. And she was pale as marble, and her face was almost that of an unconscious person.
"My God, Eily," said Mr. Bunn, "what's this?"
But Eily said nothing at all.
It was as though she did not hear... .
Then Mr. Smiler Bunn turned tigerishly upon that mental healer, Mr. Karlin, and ex-Lord Fortworth lined up like a bald-faced grizzly at Mr. Bunn's shoulder, and Sing Song, the gentleman from far Cathay, saw the look upon the faces of Eily's guardians, and quietly shot the bolt of the door.
"And now, Karlin," said Mr. Bunn in a singularly soft and gentle voice, which, nevertheless, held in it a menace and deadly ferocity that made the healer quail. "And now we will have a word with you. I'm not a violent man, Karlin—not a violent man, and—"
"Easy—easy, Flood," said Fortworth quickly, for there was murder, no less, in Mr. Bunn's voice and looks.
Smiler shook his head sharply.
"Yes, old man—I was forgetting," he muttered.
He dropped a heavy hand on Karlin's shoulder and indicated Eily.
"Bring her back, man!"
Karlin, stone white, stepped forward. He was not a man who lacked courage, but he knew danger when he saw it—and his hands were quivering as he began to release the spirit of the girl from the shackles of hypnotism which his evil art had set upon her.
Smiler sent Sing Song for Marcus even as the hypnotist worked.
EILY DESMOND awoke with a long, thrilling shudder just as Marcus Mottisfonte came in, panting like a man who has run a hard race—so that the first familiar face she saw on waking was that of the man she loved.
"Marcus! Marcus! Oh, I knew you would be sure to come at last for me," she said in a strange little cry. "Please don't let him hurt me, Marcus—his eyes are terrible."
Marcus took her in his arms gently with infinite tenderness.
"Dear little Eily, it is all right—oh, it is all finished with now!—there's nothing to fear. See, we are all here, Eily—all here—Marcus and Mr. Flood and Mr. Black and even Sing Song," whispered the boy, his cheek close to hers.
They saw two pale, beautiful little hands come groping round his neck, and clasp and cling there—and the two old crooks blinked a little, tough pair though they were. Sing Song looked on blandly, unmoved. Mr. Bunn was the only thing on earth he loved, and probably he was saving his tears—if indeed he had such a thing in his body—for the day he parted from Mr. Bunn. He heard Smiler speaking.
"Take this animal out," instructed Mr. Bunn softly, indicating Karlin.
Sing Song obeyed willingly, and Marcus and Eily were left to themselves.
"And now what do you propose to do?" said the hypnotist acidly, his eyes glittering in the moonlight. "I have done the girl no harm!"
He seemed to be regaining his nerve.
"Do?" said Smiler. "What do we propose to do to a man-eater who will take a bribe to hypnotise a child he's paid to care for, with the intention of compelling her to go through a form of marriage with him, in order that the announcement of the marriage will drive the man she loves into the arms of another woman? That was the scheme you and that she-wolf outlined just now, wasn't it? Well, I'll tell you what we do," he concluded in a low and deadly tone. "We give him to our Chink." He turned
"He's yours, Sing Song—but don't kill him, understand."
The Chink shot forward like a wolf, gripped the man, and whirled him out of the clearing into the woods. He knew that his master wanted this man rendered less dangerous, knew that the creature had tried to accomplish a deed so infamously treacherous as to appall even his hard-shelled employers, and he had seen with his own Chinese eyes and realised with his own superstitious Chinese mind that the man possessed a strange and most evil power.
Eily Desmond had cried out her fear of his terrible eye—his terrible eyes....
And Sing Song remembered that—and thus it was that somewhere out in the darkness under the trees Mr. Karlin suffered a man-handling that, while it enveloped him with bruises, seemed to concentrate its fullest and most furious energy upon closing those eyes. And so effectual was this concentration that when later on the wreck of what had once considered itself a highly capable hypnotic healer crawled into the cottage to recuperate until the dawn, one of its eyes was closed for ever. So, with his power more effectually quenched than even Sing Song guessed, Mr. Karlin may be left to his own devices....
Within an hour of the coming of the Combine to the cottage Eily Desmond was sleeping the first really natural sleep she had had for two days—and she was where every child like her would be in times of stress, if only Fate arranged things a little more reasonably, namely, in her mother's arms, warm and tranquil and content. And her mother, lying wide-awake beside her, was watching her with tears in her eyes and prayer in her heart.
And Messrs. Smiler Bunn, ex-Lord Fortworth, and Marcus Mottisfonte weren't doing a single thing to a bottle of General Mottisfonte's very best old brandy—except to render it extinct.
They saw no more of Lady Sybil—a note, brief but to the point, slipped under her door by Marcus disposed of her. She had been gone—called away on urgent business—some hours by the time Eily's guardians conveyed their appetites down to breakfast at about eleven o'clock.
It was not till, having seen Eily, and all being well, they had started back to London that they dealt with the bundle of notes they had taken from the "healer."
"I'm not a man that turns down money—not as a general rule," said Mr. Bunn, surveying the bundle with marked distaste. "But somehow this is a wad that I don't seem to have any use for. Most money looks good to me—but this don't."
Fortworth smiled grimly.
"Tainted money. Give it to Sing Song," he grunted sourly.
"What!" Mr. Bunn nearly fell off his seat "Spoil the best servant that ever lived! Sing Song's all right; I'll look after him. Raise his wages some day, if he behaves. What good would it do him? We'd better turn it into some hospital."
And, strange though it may seem, that is what they did—thereby subsequently earning the full approval and unstinted praise of Mrs. Marcus Mottisfonte.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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