The Essential Edgar Wallace Collection. Edgar Wallace
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the rise and fall of the tides, he had a scheme for building a theatre where the audience sat on a huge turn-table, and, at the close of one act, could be twisted round, with no inconvenience to themselves, to face a stage which has been set behind them. Piqued by a certain strike which had caused him a great deal of inconvenience, he was engaged one night working out a scheme for the provision of municipal taxicabs, and he was so absorbed in his wholly erroneous calculations that for some time he did not hear the angry voices raised outside the door of his private office.
Perhaps it was that that portion of his mind which had been left free to receive impressions was wholly occupied with a scheme--which appeared in no books or records--for raising the wages of his new secretary.
But presently the noise penetrated even to him, and he looked up with a touch of annoyance.
"At this hour of the night! ... Goodness gracious ... respectable building!"
His disjointed comments were interrupted by the sound of a scuffle, an oath, a crash against his door and a groan, and Bones sprang to the door and threw it open.
As he did so a man who was leaning against it fell in.
"Shut the door, quick!" he gasped, and Bones obeyed.
The visitor who had so rudely irrupted himself was a man of middle age, wearing a coarse pea-jacket and blue jersey of a seaman, his peaked hat covered with dust, as Bones perceived later, when the sound of scurrying footsteps had died away.
The man was gripping his left arm as if in pain, and a thin trickle of red was running down the back of his big hand.
"Sit down, my jolly old mariner," said Bones anxiously. "What's the matter with you? What's the trouble, dear old sea-dog?"
The man looked up at him with a grimace.
"They nearly got it, the swine!" he growled.
He rolled up his sleeve and, deftly tying a handkerchief around a red patch, chuckled:
"It is only a scratch," he said. "They've been after me for two days, Harry Weatherall and Jim Curtis. But right's right all the world over. I've suffered enough to get what I've got--starved on the high seas, and starved on Lomo Island. Is it likely that I'm going to let them share?"
Bones shook his head.
"You sit down, my dear old fellow," he said sympathetically.
The man thrust his hands laboriously into his inside pocket and pulled out a flat oilskin case. From this he extracted a folded and faded chart.
"I was coming up to see a gentleman in these buildings," he said, "a gentleman named Tibbetts."
Bones opened his mouth to speak, but stopped himself.
"Me and Jim Curtis and young Harry, we were together in the _Serpent Queen_--my name's Dibbs. That's where we got hold of the yarn about Lomo Island, though we didn't believe there was anything in it. But when this Dago died----"
"Which Dago?" asked Bones.
"The Dago that knew all about it," said Mr. Dibbs impatiently, "and we come to split up his kit in his mess-bag, I found this." He shook the oilskin case in Bones's face. "Well, the first thing I did, when I got to Sydney, was to desert, and I got a chap from Wellington to put up the money to hire a boat to take me to Lomo. We were wrecked on Lomo."
"So you got there?" said Bones sympathetically.
"Six weeks I was on Lomo. Ate nothing but crabs, drank nothing but rain-water. But the stuff was there all right, only"--he was very emphatic, was this simple old sea-dog--"it wasn't under the third tree, but the fourth tree. I got down to the first of the boxes, and it was as much as I could do to lift it out. I couldn't trust any of the Kanaka boys who were with me."
"Naturally," said Bones. "An' I'll bet they didn't trust you, the naughty old Kanakas."
"Look here," said Mr. Dibbs, and he pulled out of his pocket a handful of gold coins which bore busts of a foreign-looking lady and gentleman. "Spanish gold, that is," he said. "There was four thousand in the little box. I filled both my pockets, and took 'em back to Sydney when we were picked up. I didn't dare try in Australia. 'That gold will keep,' I says to myself. 'I'll get back to England and find a man who will put up the money for an expedition'--a gentleman, you understand?"
"I quite understand," said Bones, all a-quiver with excitement.
"And then I met Harry and Jim. They said they'd got somebody who would put the money up, an American fellow, Rockefeller. Have you ever heard of him?"
"I've heard of him," said Bones; "he's got a paraffin mine."
"It may be he has, it may be he hasn't," said Mr. Dibbs and rose. "Well, sir, I'm very much obliged to you for your kindness. If you'll direct me to Mr. Tibbetts's office----"
It was a dramatic moment.
"I am Mr. Tibbetts," said Bones simply.
Blank incredulity was on the face of Mr. Dibbs.
"You?" he said. "But I thought Mr. Tibbetts was an older gentleman?"
"Dear old treasure-finder," said Bones, "be assured I am Mr. Tibbetts. This is my office, and this is my desk. People think I am older because----" He smiled a little sadly, then: "Sit down!" he thundered. "Let us go into this."
He went into the matter, and the City clocks were booming one when he led his mariner friend into the street.
He was late at the office the next morning, because he was young and healthy and required nine hours of the deepest slumber that Morpheus kept in stock.
The grey-eyed girl was typing at a very respectable speed the notes Bones had given her the evening before. There was a telegram awaiting him, which he read with satisfaction. Then:
"Leave your work, my young typewriter," said Bones imperiously. "I have a matter of the greatest importance to discuss with you! See that all the doors are closed," he whispered; "lock 'em if necessary."
"I hardly think that's necessary," said the girl. "You see, if anybody came and found all the doors locked----"
"Idiot!" said Bones, very red.
"I beg your pardon," said the startled girl.
"I was speaking to me," said Bones rapidly. "This is a matter of the greatest confidence, 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----"