The Essential Edgar Wallace Collection. Edgar Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ my jolly old Marguerite "--he paused, shaking at his temerity, for it was only on the previous day that he had discovered her name--"a matter which requires tact and discretion, young Marguerite----"

      "You needn't say it twice," she said.

      "Well once," said Bones, brightening up. "That's a bargain--I'll call you Marguerite once a day. Now, dear old Marguerite, listen to this."

      She listened with the greatest interest, jotting down the preliminary expenses. Purchase of steamer, five thousand pounds; provisioning of same, three thousand pounds, etc., etc. She even undertook to make a copy of the plan which Mr. Dibbs had given into his charge, and which Bones told her had not left him day nor night.

      "I put it in my pyjama pocket when I went to bed," he explained unnecessarily, "and----" He began to pat himself all over, consternation in his face.

      "And you left it in your pyjama pocket," said the girl quietly. "I'll telephone to your house for it."

      "Phew!" said Bones. "It seems incredible. I must have been robbed."

      "I don't think so," said the girl; "it is probably under your pillow. Do you keep your pyjamas under your pillow?"

      "That," said Bones, "is a matter which I never discuss in public. I hate to disappoint you, dear old Marguerite----"

      "I'm sorry," said the girl, with such a simulation of regret that Bones dissolved into a splutter of contrition.

      A commissionaire and a taxicab brought the plan, which was discovered where the girl in her wisdom had suggested.

      "I'm not so sure how much money I'm going to make out of this," said Bones off-handedly, after a thorough and searching examination of the project. "It is certain to be about three thousand pounds--it may be a million or two million. It'll be good for you, dear old stenographer."

      She looked at him.

      "I have decided," said Bones, playing with his paper-knife, "to allow you a commission of seven and a half per cent. on all profits. Seven and a half per cent. on two million is, roughly, fifty thousand pounds----"

      She laughed her refusal.

      "I like to be fair," said Bones.

      "You like to be generous," she corrected him, "and because I am a girl, and pretty----"

      "Oh, I say," protested Bones feebly--"oh, really you are not pretty at all. I am not influenced by your perfectly horrible young face, believe me, dear old Miss Marguerite. Now, I've a sense of fairness, a sense of justice----"

      "Now, listen to me, Mr. Tibbetts." She swung her chair round to face him squarely. "I've got to tell you a little story."

      Bones listened to that story with compressed lips and folded arms. He was neither shocked nor amazed, and the girl was surprised.

      "Hold hard, young miss," he said soberly. "If this is a jolly old swindle, and if the naughty mariner----"

      "His name is Webber, and he is an actor," she interrupted.

      "And dooced well he acted," admitted Bones. "Well, if this is so, what about the other johnny who's putting up ten thousand to my fifteen thousand?"

      This was a facer for the girl, and Bones glared his triumph.

      "That is what the wicked old ship-sailer said. Showed me the money, an' I sent him straight off on the job. He said he'd got a Stock Exchange person named Morris----"

      "Morris!" gasped the girl. "That is my step-father!"

      Bones jumped up, a man inspired.

      "The naughty old One, who married your sainted mother?" he gurgled. "My miss! My young an' jolly old Marguerite!"

      He sat down at his desk, yanked open the drawer, and slapped down his cheque-book.

      "Three thousand pounds," he babbled, writing rapidly. "You'd better keep it for her, dear old friend of Faust."

      "But I don't understand," she said, bewildered.

      "Telegram," said Bones briefly. "Read it."

      She picked up the buff form and read. It was postmarked from Cowes, and ran:

      "In accordance your telegraphed instructions, have sold your schooner-yacht to Mr. Dibbs, who paid cash. Did not give name of owner. Dibbs did not ask to see boat. All he wanted was receipt for money."

      "They are calling this afternoon for my fifteen thousand," said Bones, cackling light-headedly. "Ring up jolly old Scotland Yard, and ask 'em to send me all the police they've got in stock!"

      CHAPTER III

      BONES AND THE WHARFINGERS

      I

      The kite wheeling invisible in the blue heavens, the vulture appearing mysteriously from nowhere in the track of the staggering buck, possess qualities which are shared by certain favoured human beings. No newspaper announced the fact that there had arrived in the City of London a young man tremendously wealthy and as tremendously inexperienced.

      There were no meetings of organized robber gangs, where masked men laid nefarious plans and plots, but the instinct which called the kite to his quarry and the carrion to the kill brought many strangers--who were equally strange to Bones and to one another--to the beautiful office which he had fitted for himself for the better furtherance of his business.

      One day a respectable man brought to Mr. Tibbetts a plan of a warehouse. He came like a gale of wind, almost before Bones had digested the name on the card which announced his existence and identity.

      His visitor was red-faced and big, and had need to use a handkerchief to mop his brow and neck at intervals of every few minutes. His geniality was overpowering.

      Before the startled Bones could ask his business, he had put his hat upon one chair, hooked his umbrella on another, and was unrolling, with that professional tremblement of hand peculiar to all who unroll large stiff sheets of paper, a large coloured plan, a greater portion of which was taken up by the River Thames, as Bones saw at a glance.

      He knew that blue stood for water, and, twisting his neck, he read "Thames." He therefore gathered that this was the plan of a property adjacent to the London river.

      "You're a busy man; and I'm a busy man," said the stentorian man breathlessly. "I've just bought this property, and if it doesn't interest you I'll eat my hat! My motto is small profits and quick returns. Keep your money at work, and you won't have to. Do you see what I mean?"

      "Dear old hurricane," said Bones feebly, "this is awfully interesting, and all that sort of thing, but would you be so kind as to explain why and where--why you came in in this perfectly informal manner? Against all the rules of my office, dear old thing, if you don't mind me snubbing you a bit. You are sure you aren't hurt?" he asked.

      "Not СКАЧАТЬ