Murder Mysteries for the Holiday Season. Джером К. Джером
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unspoilt by conventional training. The money I expect you to put down if you decide to go on is quite a secondary consideration. Really in the nature of a fine if you break your contract. For £150——"
"I am prepared with that," the Young Person said calmly. "And perhaps a little more it necessary."
"Oh, indeed. Then perhaps you will tell me——"
"One thing at a time, Mr. Lean," the Young Person drawled. "I have had to work hard for my little money. I was driving a motor ambulance in France for two years, and that sort of thing teaches one to look after the personal equation. Before we talk of any further funds I should like a receipt for the original sum agreed upon."
Here, obviously, was a development which Dreadfuleyes had not expected. A keen business mind would have seen at once that he was reconsidering his position. But the Young Person babbled on.
"Savings Bank, you understand. Besides, the money I brought down here. I didn't bring the book, of course—that is in my lodgings. But I don't suppose that this interests you, Mr. Lean."
"One never knows," Dreadfuleyes murmured, as he took up a pen and commenced to scribble an elaborate receipt for £150 on a sheet of notepaper. "There! I have practically embodied our agreement on the face of the receipt. You have only to get that stamped at Somerset House and I am liable. Later on we can have a more formal instrument. Of course, if you haven't the money here——"
"But I have," the Young Person murmured. "Here it is all in Treasury notes, which I have been gradually saving for years."
Dreadfuleyes opened the notes and locked them away in a drawer on his desk. It was not displeasing to know that those notes had not been drawn in bulk, but gathered at odd times, and therefore not humanly possible to trace. And there were more to come. How to get possession of that bank book! How to detain this confiding young thing for eight and forty hours in which to forge a letter to the Young Person's address in London to get away with the rest of the plunder once the bank book was in the right hands.
Threats, perhaps force—certainly force if necessary. He scraped his throat, and immediately the man at the writing table got up and, coming forward, took his seat on a couch close by the other table where Dreadfuleyes and the Young Person were seated.
There was nothing formidable about him. He was small and weedy, with a marked obliquity of vision, but his smile was sinister enough. Then Dreadfuleyes turned a new, and, if possible, more repulsive face to the Young Person. She rose quickly as she saw it.
"I suggest you make arrangements to stay here," he grinned—"I mean remain here for a couple of days. Between the two of us we can make your visit quite pleasant. The fact is my dear young lady, we are most anxious to see that bank book of yours."
"What do you mean?" the Young Person gasped.
She looked wildly about her as if seeking some avenue of escape from the danger, and the men smiled.
"Then you really are beginning to understand," Dreadfuleyes said with a hard laugh. "You didn't learn everything in France. You are perfectly safe here so long as you are sensible. That bank book and a few hours' strict confinement to give us a chance to get clear. Don't be afraid."
"I am not afraid," the Young Person cried, "though I know now who you are. You are the Granmere murderer. Yes, I am safe enough so long as you don't get hold of the bank book."
A swift and horrible change came over the face of the man by the table. As he advanced towards the Young Person something gleamed in his right hand. A demon of rage possessed him, those awful eyes were blood-red and full of murder.
"Here, not again," the man on the couch wailed.
The man with the knife heeded not. He reached forward on his toes for the shrinking figure of the Young Person. And then suddenly the whole tense cinema drama changed as if by magic. A crushing right came from the hand of the Young Person and crashed on Dreadfuleyes' jaw, followed by a left uppercut as he was crumpling, and another twisting right laid him on the carpet in a state of stark insensibility. The man on the sofa clung to a cushion and gibbered with a fright he made no effort to conceal. As if in a sort of nightmare the room was full of blue uniforms.
"There he is," the Young Person cried breathlessly. "And, as I thought even from the first, the Granmere murderer tallies in every particular, and on the table you will find a few lines in his own handwriting. Get busy with the handcuffs and don't overlook the gibbering confederate on the sofa."
"But who the devil are you?" the bewildered constable in charge asked. "I don't——"
"Detective Sergeant Temperley," came the reply in a now familiar voice. "Good old Christmas theatricals! Get on with it."
McAllister's Christmas
(Arthur Cheney Train)
I
McAllister was out of sorts. All the afternoon he had sat in the club window and watched the Christmas shoppers hurrying by with their bundles. He thanked God he had no brats to buy moo-cows and bow-wows for. The very nonchalance of these victims of a fate that had given them families irritated him. McAllister was a clubman, pure and simple; that is to say though neither simple nor pure, he was a clubman and nothing more. He had occupied the same seat by the same window during the greater part of his earthly existence, and they were the same seat and window that his father had filled before him. His select and exclusive circle called him "Chubby," and his five-and-forty years of terrapin and cocktails had given him a graceful rotundity of person that did not belie the name. They had also endowed him with a cheerful though somewhat florid countenance, and a permanent sense of well-being.
As the afternoon wore on and the pedestrians became fewer, McAllister sank deeper and deeper into gloom. The club was deserted. Everybody had gone out of town to spend Christmas with someone else, and the Winthrops, on whom he had counted for a certainty, had failed for some reason to invite him. He had waited confidently until the last minute, and now he was stranded, alone.
It began to snow softly, gently. McAllister threw himself disconsolately into a leathern armchair by the smouldering logs on the six-foot hearth. A servant in livery entered, pulled down the shades, and after touching a button that threw a subdued radiance over the room, withdrew noiselessly.
"Come back here, Peter!" growled McAllister. "Anybody in the club?"
"Only Mr. Tomlinson, sir."
McAllister swore under his breath.
"Yes, sir," replied Peter.
McAllister shot a quick glance at him.
"I didn't say anything. You may go."
This time Peter got almost to the door.
"Er—Peter; ask Mr. Tomlinson if he will dine with me."
Peter presently returned with the intelligence that Mr. Tomlinson would be delighted.
"Of course," grumbled