The Man Who Lost Himself Part 36

"When I get my bag of sovereigns from London. They are coming down soon."

"I like you," said Smithers. "We'll be great friends, won't we?"

"Rather, come out in the garden."

They went out.

The garden encircled the house, big wrought iron gates, locked, gave upon the road.

The tennis and croquet lawns lay at the back of the house, brick walls, covered in part with fruit trees, surrounded the whole place. The wall on the left of the house struck Jones as being practicable, and he noticed that none of the walls were spiked or gla.s.sed. Hoover's patients were evidently not of the dangerous and agile type.

"What's at the other side of this wall?" asked Jones, as they pa.s.sed along by the left hand barrier. Smithers giggled.

"Girls," said he.

"Girls! what sort of girls?"

"Little ones with long hair and bigger ones; they learn their lessons there, it's a school. The gardener left his ladder there one day and I climbed up. There were a lot of girls there. I nodded to them, and they all came to the wall. I made them all laugh. I asked them to come over the wall and toss for sovereigns--then a lady came and told me to go away. She didn't seem to like me."

Jones, all during luncheon--the meal was served in his own apartments--revolved things in his mind, Smithers amongst others.

Smithers' mania for handling gold had evidently been satisfied by giving him these few coins to play with. They were real ones, Jones had satisfied himself of that. Smithers, despite his want of chin, was evidently not a person to be put off with counterfeit coin. Jones had come down from London dressed just as he had called at Curzon Street.

That is to say in a black morning coat and grey trousers. His tall hat had evidently been forgotten by his deporters. After luncheon he asked for a cap to wear in the garden, and was supplied with a grey tweed shooting cap of Hoover's.

With this on his head he took his seat in an arbour, an arbour which, he noticed, had its opening facing the house.

Here, smoking, he continued revolving his plans, and here afternoon tea was served to him.

Ten minutes later the colonel and the major began another game of croquet, and five minutes after that, came from the house Smithers, with a b.u.t.terfly net in his hand.

Jones left the arbour and joined Smithers.

"The sovereigns have come," said Jones.

"The bag of sovereigns?"

"Yes, with a big red seal from the bankers. I'm going to give you fifty."

"Oh, Lord," said Smithers, "but you haven't said anything to Hoover?"

"Not a word--but you must do something for me before I give you them."

"What's that?"

"I want you to go up to Colonel Hawker and take him aside."

"Yes?"

"And tell him that Major Barstowe says he's a liar."

"Yes."

"That's all."

"That's easy enough," said Smithers.

"I'll stand by the wall here, and if any of the girls look over, as they probably will, for I'm going to whistle to them, I'll make them come over and toss for sovereigns."

"That would be a lark," said the unfortunate.

"Bother," said Jones, "I've forgot."

"What?"

"All my sovereigns are upstairs in the bag--I know--lend me yours whilst I'm waiting."

"I--I never lend sovereigns," said Smithers.

"Why, I'm going to _give_ you fifty--and I only ask you to lend me five for a moment in case those girls--"

Smithers put his hand in his pocket and produced the coins; they were in a little chamois leather bag. "Don't open the bag," said he, "just shake it and they'll know there are sovereigns in it by the noise."

"Right," said Jones. "Now go and tell Colonel Hawker that Major Barstowe says he's a liar."

Smithers went off, b.u.t.terfly net in hand.

Jones was under no delusion. He reckoned that the garden was always under surveillance, and that a man getting over a wall would have little chance of reaching the street, unless he managed to distract the attention of watchers. He thought it probable that his conversation with Smithers had been watched, and possibly the handing over of some article noted.

There was a seat just here, close to the wall. He sat down on it, pulled his cap over his eyes, and stretched out his legs. Then under the peak of the cap, he watched Smithers approaching Colonel Hawker, interrupt him just as he was on the point of making a stroke, and lead him aside.

The effect on the colonel's mind of the interruption to his stroke, followed by the sudden information that his veracity had been impeached, was miraculous and sudden as the slap on the side of the face that sent the b.u.t.terfly hunter flying. The attack on Barstowe, who seemed to fight well, the cries, the shouts, the imprecations, the fact that half a dozen people, inmates and attendants, joined in the confusion as if by magic, all this was nothing to Jones, nor was the subsidiary fact that one of the inmates, a quiet mannered clergyman, with a taste for arson, had taken advantage of the confusion and was patiently and sedulously at work, firing the thatch of the summer house in six different places, with a long concealed box of matches.

Jones, on the stroke of the Colonel, had risen from the seat, and with the aid of a wall-trained plum tree, had reached the top of the wall and dropped on the other side into a bed of mignonette. It was a hockey day at the school, and there were no girls in the garden. He ran across it to the open front gate and reached the road, ran down the road, which was deserted, and burning in the late afternoon sunshine, reached a side road and slackened his pace. All the roads were of the same pattern, broad, respectable, and lined with detached and semi-detached houses set in gardens, and labelled according to the owner's fancy. Old Anglo-Indian colonels and majors lived here, and one knew their houses by such names as "Lucknow," "Cawnpore," etc., just as one knows azaleas by their blossoms. Jones, like an animal making for cover, pushed on till he reached a street of shops. A long, long street, running north and south with the shop fronts on the eastern side, sun-blinded and sunlit. A peep of blue and perfect sea shewed at the end of the street, and on the sea the white sail of a boat. Sandbourne-on-Sea is a pleasant place to stay at, but Jones did not want to stay there.

His mind was working feverishly. There was sure to be a railway station somewhere, and, as surely, the railway station would be the first place they would hunt for him.

London was his objective. London and the National Provincial Bank, but of the direction or the distance to be travelled, he knew no more than the man in the moon.

CHAPTER XXIV

HE RUNS TO EARTH

As the fox seeks an earth, he was seeking for a hole to hide in. Across the road a narrow house, set between a fishmonger's shop and a sea-side library, displayed in one of its lower windows a card with the word "Apartments." Jones crossed the road to this house and knocked at the hall door. He waited a minute and a half, ninety seconds, and every second a framed vision of Hoover in pursuit, Hoover and his a.s.sistants streaming like hounds on a hot scent. Then he found a decrepit bell and pulled it.

Almost on the pull the door opened, disclosing a bustless, sharp-eyed and cheerful-looking little woman of fifty or so, wearing a cameo brooch and cornelian rings. She wore other things but you did not notice them.