Part 13

“Don’t you get trying to play any tricks with me!” he warned Mr. Dobb. “We’ve got a understanding, and you stick to it, and I stick to it, and there’s an end of it! I don’t want no ’anky-panky!”

“Thirty-five quid—that was what I was going to ask for that shandyleary,” mentioned Mr. Dobb. “Only I’ve ’ad a lot of hincidental expenses with it lately, so I’m asking thirty-eight now. And it’s worth it—well worth it. You ’ave a look at it, and you’ll say so, too. It’s a bargain.”

“What’s the game?” said Mr. Bindley, aggressively. “What are you trying on—a sort of blackmail?”

“Well, yes, that’s what it really is,” acquiesced Mr. Dobb, very smoothly. “Only you call it that again, and up goes the price a quid a time! See?”

Mr. Bindley, snorting, laid his palm on the handle of the door.

“They tells me Miss Delafayne ’as got a dooce of a temper,” observed Mr. Dobb, irrelevantly.

Mr. Bindley plucked open the door and marched out. Five yards away he halted and came back again to the threshold.

“What’s that got to do with it?” he demanded.

“It’s a lovely shandyleary,” declared Mr. Dobb.

“To blazes with your shandyleary, and you too!” bawled the choleric Mr. Bindley. “Why don’t you speak straight out?”

“Just what I’m going to,” answered Mr. Dobb; and abruptly abandoned his pose of suavity. “Look ’ere, Bindley, I’ve got you tied up tight! See? ’Ere, glance at that little notice on the wall there. ‘Strictly Business!’ that says, don’t it? Well, that’s my motter. I’ve been planning to sell you that shandyleary, and I’m going to.”

“Huh!” scornfully returned Mr. Bindley.

“Huh-ing or no huh-ing, I’m going to! You can’t ’elp yourself. You’ve been trying a bit of artfulness with the public over them lost jewels, so you can’t squeal if some one else tries ’is artfulness on you. Fust of all, you don’t mind admitting I’ve got that parcel of coloured beads and brass, do you? Suppose I goes and calls in the first ten chaps I meet outside and tells ’em ’ow that jew’l’ry come into my ’ands? That would make you look pretty foolish, wouldn’t it?”

“I could say you stole them.”

“Not good enough. I can prove any amount of alleybys. I could prove there couldn’t be no other way they _could_ ’ave got into my ’ands except through Bellaby.”

“I could say he stole them, and you were the receiver.”

“Yes, so you could,” agreed Mr. Dobb; “and we wouldn’t ’alf ’ave a chatty time in the dock explaining ’ow it all really came about. They wouldn’t overlook your trying to deceive ’em, as you ’ave done, in a ’urry.”

“So, I’m to buy the shandyleary to prevent the truth coming out, am I?” said Mr. Bindley, not without admiration. “It’s pretty smart, but not smart enough.”

“You’ve been smart enough in your time, from what they tells me about you,” returned Mr. Dobb. “You ought to be smart enough now to see you’re cornered. Why, I’ve got you any number of ways. I could sue you for the reward, for example, if I went about the thing carefully.”

“Well, couldn’t I deny they were the jewels? They won’t agree exact with the description, you know.”

“Ah, I thought you might say that! That’s my trump card. You say they ain’t ’er jewels? Very well, I hexibits the ’ole jolly collection in the very front of my window, and pastes the reward bill over ’em, and writes a paper beside ’em what says: ‘These jewels ’ave been found and ’ave not been claimed by anyone. They are all false, and Miss Margureety Delafayne says they ain’t ’ers.’ That’ll start people putting two and two together, won’t it?”

“Let ’em!” cried Mr. Bindley, forcefully. “Before ever I’ll be blackmailed out of—”

“Easy enough to talk like that,” said Mr. Dobb, reproachfully. “But ’aven’t you any consideration for _’er_? Why soon as ever the story gets round the town, she’ll be the laughing-stock of the place. ’Er and ’er false jewellery will be ’eld up to ridicule wherever she goes. Besides, a little bird ’as told me that you and ’er are doing a bit of courting. Well, if what I’ve ’eard of ’er temper is true, she’ll ’ave something to say to you for allowing ’er to be made ridic’lous like that, when you could ’ave prevented it. Straight, if I was you, Bindley, I wouldn’t lose a fiancy like that and a bargain of a shandyleary for thirty-nine paltry quid!”

Mr. Bindley, his complexion of a fine purple hue, stood staring at Mr. Dobb.

“It’s a dirty trick!” he gasped at last.

“Dessay,” said Mr. Dobb. “We’ve all got to live.”

“And if—if I was fool enough to buy your confounded shandyleary, how do I know you wouldn’t diddle me again? You might keep some of them jewels back and—”

“Not a bit of it,” said Mr. Dobb, quite eagerly. “I’d be glad to ’ave finished with such trickery on the public. You give me a cheque for that shandyleary, and you can take the jew’l’ry away with you when you go, if you like. You’ll know it ain’t safe to stop the cheque, because that would lead to all sorts of hinquiries, and—”

“I shouldn’t dream of giving you a cheque. You’d blackmail me again over that, some’ow. But I’ve got some notes on me—”

“Forty quid?” asked Mr. Dobb, urbanely. “That’s the price up-to-date, you know.”

“Where’s the shandyleary?” growled Mr. Bindley.

“Downstairs in my cellar. And ’ere’s the jew’l’ry.”

“All of it?”

Mr. Dobb, lifting a package from beneath his counter, opened the wrapping and displayed a mass of personal ornament.

“You compare that with the list and you’ll find there ain’t a thing missing,” he said, tying up the parcel again and returning it beneath the counter.

“Well, let’s see the shandyleary,” grunted Mr. Bindley, with ill grace, “and maybe I’ll offer you a price for it.”

“Spoke like a sensible man!” declared Mr. Dobb. “It’s in three parts. I’ll carry ’em up.”

Elatedly he tripped down into his cellar. He was just about to pick up the nearest portion of the chandelier, when a sudden anguish assailed him. With an anxious cry he ran back up the stairway again. The shop was empty. Mr. Dobb darted behind his counter. The parcel was gone. He raced out into the roadway, and was rewarded with a view of Mr. Bindley, the parcel tight-clutched beneath his arm, rapidly retiring down the perspective.

Mr. Dobb opened his mouth to shout, then blinked and became thoughtful. And, at long last, he made a helpless, fluttering gesture with his hands and retired forlornly into his shop.

That same evening Mr. Clark, in a state of considerable jubilation, came to see him.

“I’ve ’ad a bit of luck to-day!” babbled the stout ferryman. “I met ’er face to face, and I’m cured! Why, close to, she’s nearly ’alf as old as I am! Bindley was with ’er, and that’s what I come to see you about, to see if you can hexplain the mystery. He saw me ’anging about the corner, as usual, and ’e asked me if I’d do a little job for ’im, seeing as ’e reckoned to ’ave a busy time before the hopening of the theayter.”

“Well?” sourly prompted Mr. Dobb.

“Well, first of all, ’e give me a bob, and then ’e give me a letter to deliver by ’and, marked ‘Hurgent,’ to the heditor of the ‘Shore’aven Gazette.’”

“Ah!” commented Mr. Dobb.

“But that ain’t the mystery. Then ’e give me another bob and a ’eavy little parcel to be left at the stage-door. It was addressed to Miss Margureety Delafayne, and on it was written in pencil, ‘_From one ’oo repents_.’ Now, seeing ’e was with ’er at the time, what did ’e want to send that there parcel to the theayter for? And what did that bit about repenting mean? Can _you_ see any sense in it?”

“No,” said Mr. Dobb, churlishly and untruthfully.

_EPISODE IX_ THE GREEN EYES OF THE LITTLE BIRMINGHAM GOD

Mr. Horace Dobb sharply closed the tattered volume which had been occupying his leisure, and looked up as if something were momentarily dazzling him. And next he removed his slippered feet from the mantelshelf and very slowly and carefully described an arc with his heels until he was sitting erect in his chair, alertly yet contemplatively, and also with a suggestion of breathlessness, in the manner of one who is visited by an inspired idea.

For a full minute Mr. Dobb remained thus, and then he rose and shuffled out into his shop. Here he opened a cupboard to take from it a small metallic object. Returning to his parlour, he placed this object on the table, and it stood revealed as a posturing figure of tarnished brass, ostensibly Oriental in origin.

And now for a long, long while Mr. Dobb stared at this figure in deep meditation, with his eyelids twitching and flickering impatiently when, now and then, he found that his inventiveness had stampeded him into some mental cul-de-sac. And then he began to pace the narrow confines of the room, walking in a tense, rigid way, as though his thoughts were so delicately balanced on each other that the slightest disturbance of their equilibrium would send them scattering uselessly in all directions.

But at last he halted, nodded his head thrice with keen satisfaction at the idol on the table, and then came to the greatest animation, whistling, snapping his fingers, and even pirouetting a little.

“Green heyes and all, just like it says in the book,” he remarked, enigmatically.

And with that he bundled the idol back into its cupboard, and set forth to confabulate with Mr. Peter Lock at his place of employment.

The hour happily being that usually devoted to siesta, Mr. Dobb found Mr. Lock quite alone at his post in the billiard-room at the “Royal William Hotel.”

Mr. Dobb at once put to Mr. Lock a direct question.

“Well, I don’t know,” murmured Mr. Lock, reflectively. “There’s two or three of ’em. ’Specially at billiards. But, on the whole, I should say that Sinnett is. Come to think of it, I’m pretty certain he is. I don’t know where you’d find a bigger, anyway.”

“Ah, but does ’e think ’e’s smart?” asked Mr. Dobb. “That’s the kind of mug _I’m_ after.”

“He’s the sort what’s so busy thinking about his cleverness,” replied Mr. Lock, “that he don’t have a moment to spare for finding out what a fool he really is.”

“That’s the sort what’s good for trade,” declared Mr. Dobb, appreciatively. “’E’s just the kind of chap I’m needing.”

“What’s the game this time?” asked Mr. Lock.

“Hidols’ heyes,” said Mr. Dobb. “I been reading a book,” he continued in response to Mr. Lock’s uncomprehending stare. “And there was a hidol in it what ’ad real hemerald heyes, and this ’ere hidol was stole from a temple somewhere out foreign by a couple of chaps what didn’t know about its heyes, and there wasn’t half some murders and niggers and things in it.”

“Why, that’s a old, old plot,” said Mr. Lock, disparagingly. “You’re losing your dash, ’Orace. Fancy you having to go to books to learn anything!”

“P’r’aps it’ll be a noo enough plot so far as this ’ere Mr. Sinnett is concerned,” observed Mr. Dobb, unruffled.

He tarried some while longer in intimate discussion with Mr. Lock, and then departed to interview another member of the translated crew of the obsolete “Jane Gladys,” in the plump and venerable person of Mr. Samuel Clark, the ferryman.

Mr. Clark, perceiving the advent of Mr. Dobb, came forward to greet him with marked expectancy.

“Sam, do you know a chap called Sinnett—Mr. George Sinnett?” queried Mr. Dobb.

“Squeaky voice, leather gaiters, nose like a fox?” sketched Mr. Clark.

“That’s ’im.”

“_Know_ ’im? I _’ate_ ’im!” stated Mr. Clark.

“Just as well,” sagely remarked Mr. Dobb. “Nothing like a bit of feeling to make a man sincere in his hefforts.”

“Meaning—”

“Why, this ’ere Sinnett is the next down on our list, Sam,” announced Mr. Dobb. “’E’s down for a Hindian hidol—fifteen pounds.”

“And us?” quickly asked Mr. Clark.

“’Alf of it between the three of you,” promised the master-mind of the confederacy. “I can hafford to be generous. It only cost me three-and-six.”

“Brummagem?” next inquired Mr. Clark.

“Oh, no,” denied Mr. Dobb, flippantly. “Real native Hindian work—that’s why I give such a ’igh price for it.”

“And Sinnett’s going to pay fifteeen quid for it?” raptly cried Mr. Clark. “Oh, ’appy day! A dozen times ’ave I ferried ’im across, and never so much as a a’penny for a tip! And then ’e ’ad the sauce to say that the fare ought to be less at low tide, because the distance ain’t so far!”

“Never mind,” said Mr. Dobb, “everything comes to ’im ’oo don’t mind laying low for a bit. What’s ’is ’ouse of call, do you know?”

“The ‘Flag and Pennant’ yonder, when ’e ain’t trying to play billiards at the ‘Royal William.’”

“Another thing,” mentioned Mr. Dobb. “’Ave you got any old scars or wounds on you?”

“There’s this old cut on the back of my ’and, what I done that night I was shaving in the fo’c’sle when Alf Runnett come down and tickled me, playful, because ’is gal ’ad gone off with some one else.”

“Just right,” said Mr. Dobb, examining the cicatrice; and forthwith adopted a preceptory attitude towards the stout ferryman.

Mr. Clark, at the end of ten minutes of instruction, asked a few questions to dispel one or two uncertainties of mind, and then professed a complete trust in his ability to carry out Mr. Dobb’s directions. Mr. Dobb, after satisfying himself by something in the nature of a rehearsal that Mr. Clark’s confidence was well founded, then passed on for the purpose of seeking an interview of connective interest with Mr. Joseph Tridge, fourth member of the confederacy established long ago in the bowels of the inglorious “Jane Gladys.”

That same evening Mr. George Sinnett was taking his ease in the bar-parlour of the “Flag and Pennant” when Mr. Samuel Clark entered the apartment a little precipitously and flung himself into a chair beside Mr. Sinnett.

“Never mind!” passionately remarked Mr. Clark. “I’ll get me rights yet! Fair’s fair, ain’t it, Sinnett?”

Mr. Sinnett turned and regarded the ferryman with considerable coldness, for Mr. Clark was presumptuously flinging a bridge across a well-defined social space. Mr. Sinnett, noting that the ferryman was a little glassy of orb and rather reckless about the disposition of his legs, frowned unencouragingly and looked away again.

“Fair’s fair!” again asserted Mr. Clark, dogmatically. “’Im and me was both in it, and that’s what I got for a start-off! Look!”

Mr. Sinnett aloofly disdained the invitation, and next became aware that the back of a huge hand was floating to and fro a few inches below his nose.

“You look at that afore it slips!” directed Mr. Clark, forcefully. “See that scar? That’s what I got for _my_ share.”

“Indeed,” said Mr. Sinnett, not quite comfortably.

“In-blooming-deed!” asserted Mr. Clark. “Just as I was climbing over the railings of the temple.”

“Temple? What temple?” asked Mr. Sinnett puzzled.

“Ah, I ain’t such a fool as to tell you that!” vaunted Mr. Clark. “But the nigger on guard gave me a lick across the back of the ’and with ’is sword, and— My chum got away all right, though. At least, ’e was my chum in those days. But _now_—”

Mr. Clark concluded his sentence with a deep-throated snarl, eloquent of hatred, contempt, and smouldering fury.

Mr. Sinnett, for lack of more intelligent comment, sipped at his glass in a non-committal way.

“Ah, it’s a sailor’s life for fun and hadventure!” cried Mr. Clark; and uttered a few tuneful roulades bearing upon his statement.

“’Ere!” he said, ceasing suddenly to be lyrical and leaning forward to address Mr. Sinnett in a kind of large confidence. “There’s people fool enough to think that I’m ’anging about Shore’aven just to work the ferry! They thinks _that_, they do. Let ’em, says I. So much the better.”

“Well, what _are_ you doing here?”

Mr. Clark bent a little further forward and impressively tapped Mr. Sinnett on the knee.

“_’E’s_ ’ere!” he whispered.

“_He_? Who?”

“Why, the chap I’ve been telling you about. The chap ’oo ’elped me to steal the hidol out of that sacred temple. Run away with it, ’e did, but I been tracking ’im down all these years, and now I’ve found ’im! And if he ain’t got that hidol still—”

“Valuable, is it?” asked Mr. Sinnett, intrigued.

“Can’t say. ’Im and me only sneaked it for a lark, only them niggers took it so serious. It don’t look vallyble, any’ow. Just a fat thing with a fat face and a couple of bits of green glass for heyes. ’Tain’t as if it was made of gold, as you could see at a glance. There wasn’t ’alf a outcry when we took it, though. After us, they was, for ever so long, and we ’ad to—to take to the jungle to give ’em the slip. And then, one night while I was asleep, my chum took the hidol out of my pocket and ’ooked off with it.”

“And you followed him?” asked Mr. Sinnett, with lively interest.

“Everywhere! Worst of it was, wherever I follered ’im, ’e’d ’ad about a year’s start. But at last I’ve found ’im, and—”

With a species of incredulous annoyance at his own garrulity, Mr. Clark stopped abruptly and rose from his chair.

“You been letting me say more than I ought to!” he remarked, severely.

“Oh, no!” returned Mr. Sinnett, smoothly. “Why, you have not even told me the name of—”

“No; and I ain’t going to, neither!” truculently interrupted Mr. Clark; and marched from the apartment.

“Queer!” murmured Mr. Sinnett. “Very queer!”

A little later in the evening that gentleman, directing his course homeward by accustomed paths, came to a length of quiet, ill-lit thoroughfare, and here he found himself beholding the unusual. For, in the very middle of the roadway, he could clearly discern two men, who grappled earnestly with each other, swaying this way and that in furious embrace, and yet preserving an eerie and almost complete silence.

For some moments, Mr. Sinnett viewed this phenomenon in amazement, and then he hurried forward. His advent appeared to alarm the antagonists, for, as soon as he drew near, they parted. One of them, presenting a stout figure tolerably familiar to Mr. Sinnett, ran clumsily away down the road; the other man, breathing exhaustedly, stood fumbling at his collar in a dazed way. Mr. Sinnett, peering at his features through the gloom, discovered him to be the man who kept the Magnolia Toilet Saloon, one Mr. Joseph Tridge, to wit.

“What’s the game?” demanded Mr. Sinnett.

“No game,” puffed Mr. Tridge. “Dead serious!”

“Wasn’t that the ferryman?”

“Eh?” cried Mr. Tridge, guiltily. “No—oh, no! It wasn’t ’im. It wasn’t anybody _you’d_ know. It—it wasn’t anybody _I_ know!”

“But I’m certain— Did he attack you sudden? Why didn’t you call for the police?”

“We—we’d rather not ’ave the p’lice mixed up with it. It’s a—a private affair. I—I’m all right now.”

Mr. Tridge then stumbled dizzily against the other man.

“Here—here!” cried Mr. Sinnett, in concern. “Why, man, you’re shaking all over! Here, take my arm and lean on me. The ‘Cutlass and Cannon’ is quite close; you’d better have something there to pick you up and pull you together.”

Mr. Tridge lurched again, most convincingly, and Mr. Sinnett, with many encouraging remarks, began to lead him towards the tavern he had named.

“All the same,” muttered Mr. Tridge, hazily, “’e—’e didn’t get it.”

“Get what?”

“Oh, nothing—nothing! I—I wasn’t thinking.”

A minute or so after they reached the “Cutlass and Cannon.” Here Mr. Tridge, with obvious effort, forced himself to a normal deportment, thus escaping the curiosity of the few patrons present in the tap-room. Under direction of Mr. Sinnett, he sat down in a quiet corner, and soon, under the influence of his companion’s prescription, became quite animated. A second potion having been swallowed, and a third ordered, to make quite sure that the required dose should lack nothing in strength, Mr. Sinnett coughed delicately and addressed Mr. Tridge in winning accents.

“You were telling me just now, when—when you were taken queer out in the road—that that ferryman didn’t get what he was after.”

“Did I tell you it was the ferryman? I never meant to.”

“Oh, well, you did! But there’s no harm done. A secret is a secret with me. Same as I shan’t tell anyone,” continued Mr. Sinnett, watching his companion very closely, “that what he was after was an Indian idol.”

Mr. Tridge started violently. “’Ow did you know _that_?” he asked.

“Why, you told me so yourself. Don’t you remember?” returned Mr. Sinnett, with a disarming smile.

“No; I—I don’t remember. My ’ead was going round and round, and— Well, I _am_ a mug!”

He raised his glass and emptied it. Mr. Sinnett, eyeing him with intensity, immediately had the measure refilled.

“After all,” said Mr. Tridge, defensively, “it’s as much mine as ’is!”

“Quite,” readily agreed Mr. Sinnett. “Oh, quite!”

“’E tried to serve me a dirty trick,” said Mr. Tridge, placing an argumentative forefinger on Mr. Sinnett’s necktie, “and _I_ served ’im one instead. See? That’s fair, ain’t it?”

“Certainly,” acquiesced Mr. Sinnett, with a straining quality of helpfulness underlying his tone. “Fair is fair, all the world over, of course!”

“’Course it is. And, mind you, I’m hobstinit. If ’e’d come to me, fair and reasonable, in the first place— You see what I mean? But ’e didn’t. Same as them nigger chaps what ’ave follered me about from time to time, wanting to buy it back. I told ’em once I wouldn’t sell it, and what I says I sticks to. See?”

“Clear as clear. When your mind’s made up, it’s made up.”

“That’s me,” accepted Mr. Tridge, complacently. “Follered me all over the place, they ’ave and hoffered me any amount of money for it. But I ain’t a wobbler. What I says I sticks to. See? Let’s ’ave another!”

“Yes, let’s,” agreed Mr. Sinnett, eagerly.

“Tried to steal it off me, them niggers ’ave,” said Mr. Tridge, disdainfully, after the rites consequent on a further libation had been observed. “But I’m a match for _them_ any day. And they talks about sticking me next time they come across me. Let ’em try that on, that’s all!”

“But why do you think they are so anxious to get it back? What do they want to—”

“Hidol!” sagely returned Mr. Tridge, with an explanatory wave of his glass. “What they says their prayers to. Sort of—sort of marscutt, you know. You know, if you ’ad a marscutt and you lost it, ’ow everything ’ud seem to go wrong for you? Not that it’s brought me much luck.”

“Perhaps these niggers you spoke of was at the back of it?” suggested Mr. Sinnett.

“Maybe,” said Mr. Tridge, with sublime carelessness. “There was always a nigger around whenever things went wrong, anyway. But I’m a British seaman, I am, and I don’t take no notice of niggers. See? And I’m surprised as _you_ should, either!”

“I—I wasn’t thinking,” apologized Mr. Sinnett. “But tell me—do you think perhaps the idol is valuable?”

Mr. Tridge noisily laughed the notion to scorn.

“You ought to see it!” he cried. “Just a figger of fun made of brass, with bits of green glass for eyes.”

Mr. Sinnett sat vigilantly upright.

“Oh, but are you sure they _are_ glass?” he asked.

“Why, what else _could_ they be?” returned Mr. Tridge.

“They—they might—” began Mr. Sinnett, and then checked himself. “Er—quite so,” he ended, belatedly. “What else _could_ they be?”

Mr. Tridge, carelessly flicking the question out of the range of further consideration, now stated that he felt quite recovered from the attack that had been made upon him, and earnestly besought Mr. Sinnett to maintain silence as to the incident, if for no other reason than for the good repute of the Magnolia Toilet Saloon.

“I been wild in my time,” confessed Mr. Tridge, “but I don’t want folks to think that I’m the rough character I used to be. See? And now good-night, and thank ’ee.”

He steered for the door. Mr. Sinnett, with a kindly smile, insisted on accompanying him.

“You—you might be took bad again,” he urged, linking arms with him. “I’ll come your way and see you safe home.”