The Lunatic at Large Part 21

"This w'y, sir," said the maid, and Mr Bunker found himself in the little room where this story opened.

The moment he was alone he went to the window and peeped cautiously between the slats of the venetian blind.

The street was quiet, both cabs had disappeared, and for a minute or two he could see nothing even of Moggridge. Then a figure moved carefully from the shelter of a bush a little way down the railings, and, after a quick look at the house, stepped back again.

"He means to play the waiting game," said Mr Bunker to himself. "Long may you wait, my wary Moggridge!"

He took a rapid survey of the room. He saw the medical library, the rented furniture, and the unlit gas-stove; and at last his eye fell upon a box of cigarettes. To one of these he helped himself and leaned his back against the mantelpiece.

"There must be at least one room at the back," he reflected; "that room must have a window, and beyond that window there is all London to turn to.

Friend Moggridge, I trust you are prepared to spend the evening behind your bush."

He had another look through the blind and shook his head.

"A little too light yet,-I'd better wait for a quarter of an hour or so."

To while away the time he proceeded to make a tour of the room, for, as he said to himself, when in an unknown country any information may possibly come in useful. There was nothing whatever from which he could draw even the most superficial deduction till he came to the writing-desk. Here a heap of bills were transfixed by a long skewer, and at his first glance at the uppermost his face a.s.sumed an expression of almost ludicrous bewilderment. He actually rubbed his eyes before he looked a second time.

"One dozen shirts," he read, "four under-flannels, four pair socks, one dozen handkerchiefs, two sleeping-suits-marked Francis Beveridge! the account rendered to Dr G. Twiddel! What in the name of wonderment is the meaning of this?"

He sat down with the bill in his hand and gazed hard at it.

"Precisely my outfit," he said to himself.

"Am I-Does it--? What a rum thing!"

He sat for about ten minutes looking hard at the floor. Then he burst out laughing, resumed in a moment his air of philosophical opportunism, and set about a further search of the desk. He looked at the bills and seemed to find nothing more to interest him. Then he glanced at one or two letters in the drawers, threw the first few back again, and at last paused over one.

"Twiddel to Billson," he said to himself. "This may possibly be worth looking at."

It was dated more than a month back from the town of Fogelschloss.

"Dear Tom," it ran, "we are having an A 1 time. Old Welsh is in splendid form, doing the part to perfection. He has never given himself away yet, not even when drunk, which, I am sorry to say, he has been too often. But then old Welsh is so funny when he is drunk that it makes him all the more like the original, or at least what the original is supposed to be.

"Of course we don't dare to venture into places where we would see too many English. This is quite an amusing place for a German town, some baths and a kind of a gambling-table, and some pretty girls-for Germans. There is a sporting aristocrat here, in an old castle, who is very friendly, and is much impressed with Welsh's account of his family plate and deer-forest, and has asked us once or twice to come out and see him. We are no end of swells, I a.s.sure you.

"Ta, ta, old chap. Hope the practice prospers in your hands. Don't kill _all_ the patients before I come back.-Ever thine,

GEORGE TWIDDEL."

"From this I conclude that Dr Twiddel is on the festive side of forty," he reflected; "there are elements of mystery and a general atmosphere of alcohol about it, but that's all, I'm afraid."

He put it back in the drawer, but the bill he slipped into his pocket.

"And now," thought he, "it is time I made the first move."

After waiting for a minute or two to make sure that everything was quiet, he gently stepped out into a little linoleum-carpeted hall. On the right hand was the front door, on the left two others that must, he thought, open into rooms on the back. He chose the nearer at a venture, and entered boldly. It was quite dark. He closed the door again softly, struck a match, and looked round the room. It seemed to be Dr Twiddel's dining- and sitting-room.

"Pipes, photographs, well-sat-in chairs," he observed, "_and_ a window."

He pulled aside the blind and looked out into the darkness of a strip of back-garden. For a minute he listened intently, but no sound came from the house. Then he threw up the sash and scrambled out. It was quite dark by this time: he was enclosed between two rows of vague, black houses, with bright windows here and there, and chimney-cans faintly cutting their uncouth designs among a few pale London stars. The s.p.a.ce between was filled with the two lines of little gardens and the ranks of walls, and in the middle the black chasm of a railway cutting.

A frightened cat bolted before him as he hurried down to the foot of the strip, but that was all the life he saw. He looked over the wall right into the deep creva.s.se. A little way off, on the one hand, hung a cl.u.s.ter of signal-lights, and the shining rails reflected them all along to the mouth of a tunnel on the other. Turning his head this way and that, there was nothing to be seen anywhere else but garden wall after garden wall.

"It's a choice between a hurdle-race through these gardens, a cat-walk along this wall, and a descent into the cutting," he reflected. "The walls look devilish high and the cutting devilish deep. Hang me if I know which road to take."

While he was still debating this somewhat perplexing question, he felt the ground begin to quiver under him. Through the hum of London there gradually arose a louder roar, and in a minute the head-lights of an engine flashed out of the tunnel. One after another a string of bright carriages followed it, each more slowly than the carriage in front, till the whole train was at a standstill below him with the red signal-lamp against it.

In an instant his decision was taken. At the peril of life and garments he scrambled down the rocky bank, picking as he went an empty first-cla.s.s compartment, and just as the train began to move again he swung himself up and sprang into a carriage.

Unfortunately he had chosen the wrong one in his haste, and as he opened the door he saw a comical vision of a stout little old gentleman huddling into the farther corner in the most dire consternation.

"Who are you, sir? What do you want, sir?" spluttered the old gentleman.

"If you come any nearer me, sir-one step, sir!-I shall instantly communicate with the guard! I have no money about me. Go away, sir!"

"I regret to learn that you have no money," replied Mr Bunker, imperturbably; "but I am sorry that I am not at present in a condition to offer a loan."

He sat down and smiled amicably, but the little gentleman was not to be quieted so easily. Seeing that no violence was apparently intended, his fright changed into respectable indignation.

"You needn't try to be funny with me, sir. You are committing an illegal act. You have placed yourself in an uncommonly serious position, sir."

"Indeed, sir?" replied Mr Bunker. "I myself should have imagined that by remaining on the rails I should have been much more seriously situated."

The old gentleman looked at him like an angry small dog that longs to bite if it only dared.

"What is the meaning of this illegal intrusion?" he demanded. "Who are you? Where did you come from?"

"I had the misfortune, sir," explained Mr Bunker, politely, "to drop my hat out of the window of a neighbouring carriage. While I was picking it up the train started, and I had to enter the first compartment I could find. I am sorry that my entry frightened you."

"Frightened me!" spluttered the old gentleman. "I am not afraid, sir. I am an honest man who need fear no one, sir. I do not believe you dropped your hat. It is perfectly uninjured."

"It may be news to you, sir," replied Mr Bunker, "that by gently yet firmly pa.s.sing the sleeve of your coat round your hat in the direction of the nap, it is possible to restore the gloss. Thus," and suiting the action to the word he took off his hat, drew his coat-sleeve across it, and with a genial smile at the old gentleman, replaced it on his head.

But his neighbour was evidently of that truculent disposition which merely growls at blandishments. He snorted and replied testily, "That is all very well, sir, but I don't believe a word of it."

"If you prefer it, then, I fell off the telegraph wires in an attempt to recover my boots."

The old gentleman became purple in the face.

"Have a care, sir! I am a director of this company, and at the next station I shall see that you give a proper account of yourself. And here we are, sir. I trust you have a more credible story in readiness."

As he spoke they drew up beside an underground platform, and the irascible old gentleman, with a very threatening face that was not yet quite cleared of alarm, bustled out in a prodigious hurry. Mr Bunker lay back in his seat and replied with a smile, "I shall be delighted to tell any story within the bounds of strict propriety."

But the moment he saw the irate director disappear in the crowd he whipped out too, and with the least possible delay transferred himself into a third-cla.s.s carriage.

From his seat near the window he watched the old gentleman hurry back with three officials at his heels, and hastily search each first-cla.s.s compartment in turn. The last one was so near him that he could hear his friend say, "d.a.m.n it, the rascal has bolted in the crowd!" And with that the four of them rushed off to the barrier to intercept or pursue this suspicious character. Then the whistle blew, and as the train moved off Mr Bunker remarked complacently, if a little mysteriously, to himself, "Well, whoever I am, it would seem I'm rather difficult to catch."