An Amiable Charlatan Part 19

He indicated by a little gesture two men who had emerged from somewhere in the background.

"I will go with the utmost pleasure," Mr. Parker consented. "At the same time this gentleman has obviously been drinking and his charge is absurd."

It was precisely at this moment that I felt something hard pressed against my hand. With a dexterity that was nothing short of miraculous, Mr.

Parker, who apparently was standing with his hands in his pockets, had suddenly forced one of them through some secret opening in his coat.

In those few seconds it seemed to me I lived a year. I had no time to think--no time to realize that if I failed nothing could save my appearance at Bow Street on the following morning as a common pickpocket.

I gripped the pocketbook from his hand and, without changing a muscle, dropped it into the yawning overcoat pocket of the bucolic gentleman.

The moment was over and pa.s.sed. Mr. Parker, with a movement forward, had covered my proceedings. I had been face to face with death years before, but I had never felt quite the same thrill.

"This way, gentlemen, if you please," Mr. Cullen directed softly.

"You will not object to my accompanying you?" I asked.

"Certainly not," Mr. Cullen replied; "I, in fact, am not sure that it would not be my duty to ask you to come."

"One moment!" I begged.

Mr. Cullen paused.

"The gentleman who made this charge," I went on, "seems to me to be in a very uncertain condition. Might I suggest that, before you commit yourself to taking these people to the police station, you just make sure he really has been robbed of his pocketbook?"

"Had it here," the old gentleman declared; "right in this pocket! Look for yourself--gone!"

"The old gentleman scarcely seems to me," I remarked, "to be in a fit condition to know which pocket it was in."

Mr. Cullen, who had been walking carefully between him and the other two, smiled in a superior way.

"Please feel in all your pockets," he told his accomplice.

The old gentleman obeyed. Suddenly he stopped short. A blank expression came into his face.

"What have you got there?" I asked.

He brought it out with ill-concealed reluctance. It was, without doubt, the pocketbook. I shall never forget Mr. Cullen's face! He was bereft of words. He stared at it as though he had seen it come up through the floor.

Mr. Moss simply stood with his mouth open. Mr. Parker alone appeared unmoved by any emotion of surprise. His manner was serious--almost dignified.

"I want you to take this from me straight, Mr. Cullen," he said. "I am not a man who loses his temper easily, but you're trying us a bit high."

Mr. Cullen remained for a moment or two speechless. He looked at me and drew a long breath. I knew perfectly well what he was thinking. He had had a man on either side of Mr. Parker and Mr. Moss. The only person who could have transferred that pocketbook was myself. I could see him readjusting his ideas as to my moral character.

"Mr. Parker--gentlemen," he said, removing his hat, "pray accept my apologies. You are free to return to your seats whenever you choose. This gentleman was evidently mistaken," he added, speaking with withering sarcasm and turning sharply toward his coadjutor. "You oughtn't to come to these places in your present condition, sir. Take my advice and get along home at once."

The bucolic gentleman, who had completely lost his appearance of inebriety, mumbled a few incoherent words and departed. After his departure Mr. Parker a.s.sumed a more genial att.i.tude.

"Well, well! I suppose you only did your duty, sir," he remarked, with a resigned sigh. "We were on our way to the bar. Will you join us, Mr.

Cullen?"

I did not hear the detective's reply, but somehow or other we all drifted there. Mr. Moss at once found an easy-chair, which he p.r.o.nounced to be "a bit of all right" and in which he a.s.sumed an easy and elegant att.i.tude.

Mr. Parker, Mr. Cullen, and I completed the circle, which now included a professional gutter-thief, a disappointed detective, Mr. Parker and myself. It was a unique moment in my life!

The wine affected the spirits of no one except, perhaps, Mr. Moss; and him, when we finally broke up our party, we thought it advisable to get rid of in quick order. To my surprise Mr. Parker seemed in a particularly despondent frame of mind. He needed pressing even to come to supper.

"You were quick-witted, Walmsley," he admitted as we rolled away in the car, "quick-witted, I'll admit that; but you were dead clumsy with your fingers! I could see what you were doing from the back of my head."

"Really!" I murmured. "Well, I suppose that sort of thing is a gift. I only know that I hope I may never have to do it again."

Mr. Parker sighed.

"I fear," he said, "that your troubles with us will soon be over. Eve has been telling me about that young idiot of an Englishman who visited the Bundercombes out in Okata. If there was one man whose name I thought I was safe to make use of it was Joe Bundercombe!"

"It seems," I admitted, "to have been an unfortunate choice. What do you think of doing about it?"

Mr. Parker apparently had no immediate answer ready for me. During our brief ride in the motor and in the early stages of supper he was afflicted by a taciturnity that made him almost negligible as a companion. And then suddenly a light broke over his face. He had the appearance of a shipwrecked mariner who suddenly catches sight of land in the offing. His lips were a little parted, his boyish face all aglow.

"Walmsley, my dear fellow!" he exclaimed. "Eve, dear! The problem is solved! Raise your gla.s.ses and drink with me. Here's farewell to Mr.

Joseph H. Parker and Miss Parker. And a welcome to Mr. and Miss Bundercombe, of Okata!"

"That's all very well," I said; "but Reggie will be on your track."

Mr. Parker beamed on Eve and me.

"We shall see!" he declared didactically.

CHAPTER IX--THE EXPOSURE

The next morning at twelve o'clock I took a taxi-cab round to Banton Street. The hall porter, who was beginning to know me well, seemed a little surprised at my appearance.

"Is the young lady upstairs?" I asked.

He was distinctly taken aback.

"Mr. Parker and his daughter have gone," he told me. I stopped on my way to the stairs.

"Gone?" I repeated.

"Went off this morning," he continued; "two taxi-cabs full of luggage."

"Aren't they coming back?"

"No signs of it."

"Did they leave any address?"

"None!"