Part 11

As he heard her and turned, she urged in the same odd fashion: “For Heaven’s sake--not a sound!”

“Why--Miss June!” he gasped. “Where are you?”

She checked him with wild whisperings that yet served to draw him to her prison.

He was dumbfounded, quite as much as by her fiercely tragic voice as by the amazing predicament in which he found her.

“Help me out!” she commanded him. “And don’t make the least sound. Uncle Si is next door, and if he finds me here, something terrible will happen.”

Such force and such anxiety had one at least of the results so much to be desired. They forbade the asking of futile questions. Every moment was precious if she was to make good her escape.

William in this crisis proved himself a right good fellow. His sense of the ludicrous was keen, but he stifled it. Moreover, a legitimate curiosity had been fully aroused, but he stifled that also as he proceeded to carry out these imperious orders. But even with such ready and stalwart help, June was to learn again that it was no easy matter to escape from the Hoodoo.

Without venturing to speak again, William mounted the gate-legged table and offered both hands to the prisoner. But the trouble was that she was so tightly pinned that she could not raise hers to receive them. And it was soon fatally clear that so long as the Hoodoo kept the perpendicular it would be impossible for any external agent to secure a hold upon the body wedged within its jaws.

After several attempts at dislodgement had miserably failed, June gasped in a kind of anguish: “Do you think you can tip this thing over--very gently--without making a sound?”

This was trying William highly indeed, but it seemed the only thing to be done. Happily he was tall and strong; much was said, all the same, for his power of muscle and the infinite tact with which it was applied that he was able to tilt the Hoodoo on to its end. Keeping the vase firmly under control, he then managed to regulate its descent to the shop floor so skilfully as to avoid a crash.

Such a feat was really a triumph of applied dynamics. June, however, was not in a position to render it all the homage it deserved, even if she was deeply grateful for the address that William brought to bear upon his task. Once the Hoodoo had been laid full length on the shop floor she was able to wriggle her body and her shoulders with what violence she pleased, without the fear of disaster. A series of convulsive twists and writhings and she was free!

As soon as she knew that she was no longer pinned by the jaws of the monster, the action of a strong mind was needed to ward off a threat of hysteria. But she controlled herself sufficiently to help William restore the Hoodoo to the perpendicular; and then she said in a whisper of extreme urgency which was barely able to mask the sob of nerves overstrung: “Not one word now. But go straight into the kitchen--just as if you hadn’t seen me. And remember whatever happens”--the whisper grew fiercer, the sob more imminent--“if Uncle Si asks the question you _haven’t_ seen me. I’m supposed to be looking for a job. You understand?”

To say that William did understand would have been to pay him a most fulsome compliment; yet the stout fellow behaved as if the whole of this amazing matter was as clear as daylight. Such was June’s fixity of will, the sheer force of her personality, that he left the shop at once like a man hypnotised. Excited questions trembled upon his lips, but in the face of this imperiousness he did not venture to give them play.

He made one attempt--one half-hearted attempt.

“But Miss June----!”

The only answer of Miss June was to cram one hand over his mouth, and with the other to propel him towards the door which led to the back premises.

XXX

AS soon as William had passed out of the shop, June stood a moment to gather nerve and energy for the task before her. Feeling considerably tossed, above all she was devoured by a horrible form of excitement whose effect was like nothing so much as a bad dream. But this was not a time for dreams. The situation was full of peril; not a moment must be lost.

The picture was her immediate concern. She set herself at once to the business of moving the oak chest aside. This presented no difficulty, for there was nothing in it; but the loose board beneath it did. Fingers unhelped could not prise it up; they must have a chisel. She knew that such an implement was to be found in one of the drawers of the desk, but she had stealthily to open three or four before she came upon the right one.

While all this was going on, she could hear the voices of William and Uncle Si in the room next door. It seemed that no matter what her caution or her haste, she would almost certainly be interrupted before she was through with her task. But luck was with her. She was able to lift the board, take forth the picture, replace the chest and return the chisel to its drawer without the voices coming any nearer.

Picture in hand, she tiptoed out of the shop as far as the stairs. Through the open door of the inner room the back of Uncle Si was visible as she crept by. It was taking a grave risk to attempt the stairs at such a moment, but she was wrought up to a point when to go back and wait was impossible. She must continue to chance her luck.

Up the stairs she crept, expecting at every second one to hear a harsh voice recall her. To her unspeakable relief, however, she was able to gain sanctuary in her own room without hindrance. She bolted the door against the enemy, although so far as she was aware, he was still in the room below in total ignorance of what had happened.

Shivering as if in the throes of fever, she sat on the edge of her narrow bed. The treasure was hers still. She held it to her bosom as a mother holds a child; yet the simple act gave rise at once to the problem of problems: What must be done with the thing now? There could be no security for it under that roof. And not to the picture alone did this apply, but also to herself. Anything might happen as soon as the old man found out that the Van Roon was not, after all, to be his. Meanwhile, the future hardly bore thinking about; it was like a precipice beyond whose edge she dare not look.

One act, however, did not admit of a moment’s delay: there and then the treasure must be smuggled out of the house and put in a place of safety. Rowelled by this thought, June rose from the bed, took a piece of brown paper and some string from her box, and proceeded to transform the picture into a neat parcel. She then slipped off her dress, which was considerably the worse for contact with the dusty interior of the Hoodoo, performed a hasty toilette, put on her walking-out coat and skirt and changed her shoes. Finally, she put on the better of the only two hats she possessed, slipped her mother’s battered old leather purse into her coat pocket, and then, umbrella in one hand, parcel in the other, she turned to the hazard of stealing downstairs and making good her escape.

In the middle of the twisty stairs, just before their sharpest bend would bring her into the view of persons below, she stopped to listen. The voices had ceased; she could not hear a sound. Two ways lay before her of reaching the street: one via the parlour to the kitchen and out along the side entry, the other through the front door of the shop. Either route might be commanded at the moment by the enemy. With nothing to guide her, June felt that the only safe course just then was to stay where she was. In the strategic position she had taken up on the stairs she could not be seen from below, yet a quick ear might hope to gain a clue to what was going on.

She had not to wait long. From the inner room, whose door opposite the foot of the stairs was still half open, although its occupant was no more seen, there suddenly came the strident tones of Uncle Si. They were directed unmistakably kitchenward. “Boy, you’d better get the tea ready. Seemin’ly that gell ain’t home.”

“Very good, sir,” came a prompt and cheerful response from the back premises.

June decided at once that the signs were favourable. Now was her chance; the way through the front shop was evidently clear. Deftly as a cat she came down the remaining stairs and stole past the half-open door of what was known as “the lumber room,” where, however, old chairs were sometimes fitted with new legs and old chests with new panels.

Uncle Si was undoubtedly there. June could hear him moving about as she passed the door; indeed she was hardly clear of it when she received a most unwelcome reminder of this fact. Either he chanced to turn round as she crept by, or he caught a glimpse of her passing in one of the numerous mirrors that surrounded him. For just as she reached the shop threshold she heard his irascible bark: “That you, niece?”

The road clear ahead, June did not pause to weigh consequences. She simply bolted. Even if the old man was not likely to guess what her neat parcel contained, it would surely be the height of folly to give him the chance.

Never in her life had she been quite so thankful as when she found herself in the street with the treasure safely under her arm.

XXXI

JUNE went swiftly down New Cross Street to the Strand. Until she reached that garish sea of traffic she dare not look back lest hot on her heels should be Uncle Si. Such a discovery was not at all likely she well knew; the feeling was therefore illogical, yet she could not rid herself of it until she was merged in the ever-flowing tide.

Taking refuge at last in a jeweller’s doorway from the maelstrom of passers by, June had now another problem to face. The Van Roon must find a home. But the question of questions was--where?

Apart from William and Uncle Si, and her chance acquaintance, Mr. Keller, she did not know a soul in London. Mr. Keller, however, sprang at once to her mind. Yet more than one reservation promptly arose in regard to him. She knew really nothing about him beyond the fact that he was a man of obviously good address, belonging to a class superior to her own. He was a man of the world, of a certain breeding and education, but whether it would be wise to trust a comparative stranger in such a matter seemed exceedingly doubtful to a girl of June’s horse sense. Still there was no one else to whom she could turn. And recalling the circumstances of their first meeting, if one could ignore the means by which it had come about, there was something oddly compelling, something oddly attractive, about this Mr. Keller.

In the total absence of other alternatives, June found her mind drawn so far in the direction of this man of mystery that at last she took from her purse a slip of paper on which he had written his name and address: “Adolph Keller, No. 4, Haliburton Studios, Manning Square, Soho.”

Could she trust him with the care of a Van Roon? Now that she had been a witness of its terrible effect on Uncle Si, she was forced to ask whether it would be right to trust any man with such a talisman. Luckily, the world was not peopled exclusively with Uncle Sis. She would have to trust somebody with her treasure, that was certain; and, after all, there was no reason to suspect that Mr. Keller was not an honest man.

She was still in the jeweller’s doorway, wrestling with the pros and cons of the tough matter, when a passing bus displaying the name Victoria Station caught her eye. In a flash came the solution of the problem.

Again she entered the sea of traffic, to be borne slowly along by the slow tide as far as Charing Cross. Here she waited for another bus to Victoria. The solving of the riddle was absurdly simple after all. What place for her treasure could be safer, more accessible than a railway station cloak room?

She boarded Bus 23. But hardly had it turned the corner into Whitehall when a thin flicker of elation was dashed by the salutary thought that her brain was giving out. The cloak room at Charing Cross, from the precincts of whose station she had just driven away, was equally adapted to her need. Along the entire length of Whitehall and Victoria Street she was haunted by the idea that she was losing her wits. A prolonged scrutiny of her pale but now collected self in a confectioner’s window on the threshold of the London and Brighton terminus was called for to reassure her. And even then, for a girl so shrewd and so practical, there remained the scar of a distressing mental lapse.

It did not take long to deposit the parcel in the cloak room on the main line down platform. But in the act of doing so, occurred a slight incident which was destined to have a bearing on certain events to follow. When a ticket was handed to her, she could only meet the charge of three pence with a ten shilling note.

“Nothing smaller, Miss?” asked the clerk.

“I’m afraid I haven’t,” said June, searching her purse, and then carefully placing the ticket in its middle compartment.

“You’ll have to wait while I get change then.”

“Sorry to trouble you,” June murmured, as the clerk went out through a door into an inner office. Ever observant and alert, she noticed that the clerk was a tallish young man, whose freely curling fair hair put her in mind of William, and that he wore a new suit of green corduroy.

The likeness to William gave _bouquet_ to her politeness, when the young man returned with the change. “Sorry to give you so much trouble,” she said again.

“No trouble, miss.” And Green Corduroy handed the change across the cloak room counter with a frank smile that was not unworthy of William himself.

XXXII

THE treasure in a safe place, June had to consider what to do next. One fact stood out clear in her mind. She must leave at once the sheltering roof of S. Gedge Antiques. There was no saying what would happen when the Old Crocodile discovered that the Van Roon was missing.

The sooner she collected her box and her gear, and found another lodging the better. Her best plan would be to go back to New Cross Street and get them now. Uncle Si was hardly likely as yet to have made the discovery. It would be wise, therefore, to take advantage of this lull, for at the most it was only a matter of a few hours before the truth was known. And when known it was, Number Forty-six New Cross Street was the very last place in London in which she would choose to be.

There was a chance, of course, that “the murder” was out already. But she would have to take the risk of that. All that she had in the world beyond the six paper pounds, nine shillings and ninepence in her purse, was in the box in the garret. Her entire resources were about seventeen pounds in money, a scanty wardrobe, and a few odds and ends of jewellery of little value, but if she could get hold of these they might suffice to tide her over a sorely anxious time.

In the present state of her nerves, courage was needed to return to New Cross Street. But it had to be. And it was now or never. If her box was to be got away, she must go boldly back at once and claim it. How this was to be done without arousing suspicion she did not quite know, but the most hopeful method was to announce that she had been able to find a job, and also good lodgings, and that she did not care to lay the burden of her presence upon Uncle Si one hour longer than was necessary.

She had been brought up with a strict regard for the truth, but fate was driving her so hard that she could not afford to have scruples. Hanging by a strap on the Underground to Charing Cross, which seemed the quickest route, and time was the essence of the matter, she rehearsed the part she had now to play. Certainly the playing itself would not lack gusto. Nothing life so far had given her would yield quite so much pleasure as saying good-bye to the Old Crocodile, and ironically thanking him for all his kindness. At the same time, the job and lodgings story must be pitched in just the right key, or his suspicions would be aroused, and then something horribly unpleasant might occur.

By the time June had turned out of the Strand into New Cross Street, a heavy autumnal dusk had fallen upon that bleak thoroughfare. Somehow the dark pall struck at her heart. In a sense it was symbolical of the business upon which she was engaged. She felt like a thief whose instinct welcomes darkness, and whose conscience fears it.

Never in her life had she needed such courage as to turn up that gloomy and dismal street and accost the forbidding threshold of S. Gedge Antiques. The shop was still open, for it was hardly more than six o’clock, and two gas jets lit the interior in a way that added to its dolour.

She stood a moment with the knob of the shop door in her hand. All the nerve she could muster was wanted to venture within. But she did go in, and she felt a keen relief when a hasty glance told her that Uncle Si was not there.

XXXIII

JUNE had a further moment of indecision while she thought out what her line must be. She resolved to go direct to her room and pack her box. Afterwards she must find William and enlist his help in bringing it downstairs, and then she would get a taxi and drive off with her things before Uncle Si discovered his loss. Otherwise...!

Her mind had not time to shape the grisly alternative, before the immediate course of events shaped it for her. Suddenly she was aware of a presence lurking in the dark shadows of the shop interior. It was couchant, vengeful, hostile. Almost before June could guess what was happening it had sprung upon her.

With astounding force her right wrist was grasped and twisted behind her back. She gave a little yelp of pain. A second yelp followed, as she struggled to free herself, only to find that she was locked in a vice, and that to fight against it would be agony.

“Now, where is it?” The low voice hissing in her ear was surely that of a maniac. “Where’s the picture?” The grip upon her had the strength of ten. “Where is it--eh?” As the question was put, her captor shook her fiercely. “Tell me.” He shook her again. “Oh, you won’t--won’t you?” And then she realized that there was something in his hand.

She called wildly for William, but there was no response.

“No use lifting up your voice. The boy’s out.”

She fought to get free, but with a wrist still locked, she was at his mercy. “Now then, where’s that picture? Won’t tell me--eh?” There was madness in that depth of rage.

Quite suddenly there came a sickening crash upon her shoulders. She let out with her heels and found the shin of the enemy, she fought and screamed, yet pinned like that, she felt her wrist must break and her arm be wrenched from its socket.

“Where is it--you thief?” The stick crashed again, this time in a series of horrible blows. So severe was the pain that it seemed to drive through her whole being. She began to fear that he meant to kill her; and as the stick continued to descend she felt sure that he would.

She was a strong, determined girl, but her captor had her at a hopeless disadvantage. His strength, besides, was that of one possessed. Her cries and struggles merely added to his savagery.

“Tell me where it is or I’ll knock the life out of you.”

Utterly desperate, she contrived at last to break away; and though with the force of a maniac he tried to prevent her escape, somehow she managed to get into the street. He followed her as far as the shop door, brandishing the stick, hurling imprecations upon her, and threatening what he would do if she didn’t bring the picture back at once.

Bruised and gasping, June reeled into the darkness. Feeling more dead than alive, she lingered nearby after the old man had gone in, trying to pull her battered self together. She badly wanted her box, yet the only hope of getting it now was by means of the police. As things were, however, it would not be wise to ask their help. The old wretch was so clever he might be able to make her out a thief; besides, for the time being she had had more than enough of this horrible affair.

Cruelly hurt she moved at last with slow pain towards the Strand. By now she had decided that her most imperative need was a night’s lodging. Before starting to look for one, however, the enticing doors of a teashop gave her a renewed sense of weakness. Gratefully she went in and sat down, ordering a pot of tea and a little bread and butter which she felt too ill to eat.

Nearly half an hour she sat in the company of her thoughts. Hard, unhappy thoughts they were. Without one friend to whom in this crisis she could turn, the world which confronted her now was an abyss. The feeling of loneliness was desolating, yet, after all, far less so than it would have been were she not fortified by the memory of a certain slip of paper in her purse.

A slow return of fighting power revived a spark of natural resolution within her. After all, a potent weapon was in her hands. She must think out a careful plan of turning it to full account. And at the worst she was now beyond the reach of Uncle Si. Even if he kept her box and all its contents, weighed in the scale of the picture’s fabulous worth, her modest possessions amounted to very little.

Stimulated by this conclusion, she began to forget her aches. When a waitress came June asked for her bill. It was sixpence. She put her hand in the pocket of her coat. Her purse was not there.

With a little thrill of fear, she felt in the pocket on the other side. The purse was not there either. She was stunned. This was a blow far worse than those she had just received. She grew so dazed that as she got up she swayed against the table, and had to hold on by it to save herself from falling.

The waitress who had written out the bill caught a glimpse of scared eyes set in a face of chalk.

“Aren’t you well?” she asked.

“I--I’ve lost my purse,” June stammered. “It’s fallen out of my pocket, I think.” As with frantic futility she plunged her hand in again, she was raked by the true meaning of such a fact in all its horror. Unless her purse had been stolen on the Underground, and it was not very likely, it had almost certainly fallen out of her pocket in the course of the struggle with Uncle Si.

It was lying now on the shop floor unless the old wretch had found it already. And if he had he would lose no time in examining its contents. He had only to do so for the cloak-room ticket to tell him where the Van Roon was deposited, and to provide him with a sure means of obtaining it.

“You may have had your pocket picked.”

June did not think so. Yet, being unable to take the girl into her confidence, she did not choose to disclose her doubts.

“Perhaps I have,” she gasped. And then face to face with the extreme peril of the case, her overdriven nerves broke out in mutiny. She burst into tears. “I don’t know what I’ll do,” she sobbed.

The waitress was full of sympathy. “Your bill is only sixpence. Come in and pay to-morrow.”

Through her tears June thanked her.

“’Tisn’t my bill, although it’s very kind of you. There was something very important in my purse.”

“Where did you have it last?”

“In the booking hall, when I took a ticket from Victoria to Charing Cross.”

“Your pocket’s been picked,” said the waitress with conviction. “There’s a warning in all the Tubes.”

The comfort was cold, yet comfort it was of a kind. June saw a wan ray of hope. After all, there was a bare possibility that inexorable Fate was not the thief.

“I’d go to Scotland Yard if I were you,” said the waitress. “The police often get back stolen property. Last year my sister’s house was burgled, and they recovered nearly everything for her.”