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« on: March 14, 2023, 08:14:04 am » |
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THERE was something characteristic in the knock upon the door of Number 17 Chapel Fields Terrace, in the southern outskirts of Norwich. It was firm but not assertive. A sensitive ear might almost have found in it a note of courteous friendliness. Mr. Elijah Pank lowered his Norwich Evening News, his wife paused in the act of folding up the tablecloth. Amy, who was standing before the mirror, regarding the angle of her hat and rearranging an insubordinate tress of hair, indulged in a distinct start.
“Now who might that be?” Mrs. Pank asked, making no movement towards gratifying her curiosity. “I can’t think of a soul likely to come here at this hour of the evening. Expecting any one, Elijah?”
“No, I ain’t,” her husband replied. “You go and see who it is, Mother, instead of wasting your breath wondering. Or there’s Amy---her legs are younger. Let her go and see.”
Amy was willing enough, but her mother was before her. She threw open the door and Mr. Ernest Pank, very neatly dressed and with a smile upon his face, stepped into the passage.
“Hello,” he exclaimed, “how’s everybody? Good-evening, Aunt,” he went on, embracing her chastely. “How are you, Uncle? Amy, my dear, you look quite pretty enough without any more fussing around with your hair. Are you ready?”
They all stared at him. There was a certain amount of doubt in Elijah Pank’s severe regard, there was sheer bewilderment in his wife’s rather saucerlike eyes, and there was mingled excitement and pique in Amy’s expression.
“Ready for what?” she demanded.
“Isn’t this Wednesday?” the visitor queried. “Didn’t you promise to have dinner with me at one of the big hotels on Wednesday night?”
“Can’t remember a word about it,” she faltered, the pink colour stealing into her cheeks and the light of pleasurable anticipation in her eyes.
“Going off without a word,” Mrs. Pank exclaimed with severity, as she recovered her composure. “Leaving your luggage behind and never a good-bye even. That’s the way you treat your relatives, is it?”
“What sort of manners do you call that, young man?” Elijah Pank chimed in. “Why, you might have been a deserter!”
“What are you all talking about?” Ernest Pank asked cheerfully, as he laid his hat upon the dresser table and looked around him in friendly fashion. “I told you I had taken too big an order and had to go up to London to see whether we could fill it. I left all my things down here to show that I was coming back. I’m here now to finish the job. You didn’t expect me to waste my money on telegrams, did you? Can I take Cousin Amy over to the Royal Hotel for dinner?”
“No, you cannot,” her mother objected vigorously. “I’m not going to have the girl’s head filled with stuff like that. Take her to dinner indeed---at eight o’clock in the evening! She had her dinner at one o’clock, as folks like us do, and she’s just had her bite of supper---though scarcely a mouthful, I will admit. What are you talking about?”
“I sha’n’t be five minutes,” Amy promised, squeezing her cousin’s arm. “I was only going out with Harry to-night, so I was wearing my old hat. Five minutes. You wait where you are and don’t go playing any more tricks till I come down.”
She ran upstairs with flying footsteps. Her mother looked after her helplessly.
“That’s young people nowadays,” she said, shaking her head.
“Got a will of her own, anyway,” her father grunted, opening out his newspaper.
“Why shouldn’t she have?” Ernest Pank demanded, passing a cigar to his uncle and lighting a cigarette for himself. “I say---you’ve been having something good! Makes me hungry to smell it.”
“It’s boiled beef, young man,” his aunt confided. “I can dish you up a little if you like.”
He shook his head.
“Not to-night, thanks. I promised Amy when I got back again we would go into the Royal or the Maid’s Head, sit down and have our dinner with the rest of them there. And why not? I’m making plenty of money, Amy looks nice enough to go anywhere and the treasury notes count. The only thing I’m afraid of is that perhaps she’s not hungry, if she has had supper.”
“Don’t you worry,” her mother replied impressively. “The girl’s scarcely eaten anything since you went away. To-night she had an idea that she couldn’t eat beef, and she’s done nothing but fumble with some bread and butter and some apples Mabel Wilkins sent in. I’ll put the warming pan across your bed, Ernest. You’ll be staying the night?”
“I can’t this time,” he regretted. “Sorry, Aunt, but my Chief is coming along by the night train. I’ve had to take a room at the Royal.”
“Business must be easy with you that you can go and stay in a place like that,” Elijah Pank remarked.
“It’s not for pleasure,” his nephew declared earnestly. “Next time I come these are my quarters, if you can take me in. I’m not one for hotels myself, but when the governor is along, he likes to have me on hand.”
Downstairs came Amy, wearing a hat of the béret type with little flaps at the sides over her ears, a confection which the millinery establishment in which she worked had pronounced the latest decree of Bond Street. Her clothes were neat, her figure trim, her gloves and shoes a little better than passable. She was filled with the unshakable confidence of the real provincial. She took her cousin’s arm and led him away.
“If Ernest’s a little extravagant,” she said, looking back, “what does it matter? He works hard and so do I. We must spend sometimes.”
“These young people,” Mrs. Bank murmured happily, as she closed the door behind them. . . .
They walked pleasantly up to the Post Office Square. There was only one convenient spot on the way, but they did not fail to exchange the least cousinly of kisses.
“I’m not pretending that I’m used to these sort of places, you know,” Amy explained, as they mounted the steps of the hotel.
“Don’t you worry,” her protector reassured her. “They won’t bite us.”
On the contrary, the two young people were received as though they had been expected and as though their coming was the most usual thing in the world. They were ushered into the coffee-room by an effusive head waiter and given a comfortable table. Ernest Pank glanced at the menu, approved of it and ordered a bottle of wine. To Amy it was a glimpse of the world her dreams had conceived and the films had confirmed. . . .
“I sha’n’t be able to let you go again, Ernest, you know,” she said, when dinner came to an end.
He sighed and returned the squeeze of her fingers under the tablecloth.
“I would like to settle down,” he confided. “Unfortunately my business takes me all over the country.”
“What---selling those stupid heels?”
“They’re not stupid,” he contradicted her. “They’re the best-made heels in the world. They are paying for this dinner. They paid for my new suit of clothes and they paid for something else I’ve got in my pocket. They will even run to coffee in the lounge,” he invited, rising to his feet. “What about a cigarette?”
“I should love one,” she assented. “That’s the only decent thing about my shop---they let us smoke now and then without kicking up a fuss about it.”
They took possession of two easy-chairs in the open hall and ordered sweet liqueurs with their coffee. When they had been in evidence some twenty minutes or so and Ernest Pank felt that his position as a local young man was established, he rose to his feet, with a word of excuse to Amy, and, crossing to the office, put his head through the open window.
“Would you be so kind, Miss,” he asked politely, “as to let me have a look at the visitors’ book?”
“That’s no trouble at all,” was the bland reply.
“I want to see if my cousin was staying here some time in December,” Pank explained, as he turned the pages backwards. “Ah, here we are. Somewhere about here.” December the nineteenth---no entries which seemed of interest. Eighteenth. Seventeenth. On the seventeenth there were three entries in the same handwriting:
John W. Spence of London,
Robert T. Mason of London,
Thomas G. Payne of London.
“Found what you want?” the girl enquired.
He nodded and turned the book towards her.
“You don’t happen, I suppose,” he asked insinuatingly, “to remember these three gentlemen?”
She looked at the names doubtfully.
“Oh, yes, I remember them all right,” she admitted. “They didn’t show themselves in the hotel much. One of them had a private sitting room and they were up there most of the time. I can tell you one thing, if it interests you.”
“What’s that?” he enquired.
“They got through two bottles of whisky a day and a good many other drinks besides. Our Norwich boys are pretty useful but these three took the cake.”
“Londoners, I suppose?”
She reflected for a moment.
“They all had London after their names,” she told him, “but sometimes their talk seemed queer. They had plenty of money, though. The champagne they drank for dinner! You can ask the waiter. Sometimes he couldn’t believe it when they sent for another bottle. The hotel could do with some more customers like that, though. They didn’t give any trouble and they paid their bill all right.”
“Were they business men?”
“Can’t say, I’m sure,” the girl, who was getting bored with the subject and would have preferred something more personal, replied. “They were about the hotel a good bit of the time. Once I remember they were all out---the last night---and didn’t get back till two or three in the morning. Had to knock up the night porter.”
“You didn’t happen to hear them say where they had been to, I suppose?” he ventured.
“I didn’t happen to be about at the time,” she replied, a little sarcastically. “Aren’t you by way of being inquisitive, Mr.---Mr.---what did you say your name was?”
“Pank,” he confided. “It’s a good Norwich name and I’m a Norwich man.”
“Norwich men are as good as the rest, I daresay.”
“And as for the girls,” he added, leaning farther forward, “they can’t be touched anywhere.”
“I’m from Brighton myself,” the young lady remarked affably.
“You surprise me,” Pank confessed. “Then I shall have to give Norwich second to Brighton, after all.”
She made a grimace at him.
“And you with a girl of your own in the chair there!”
“My cousin,” Pank explained. “A nice little thing, but cousins are cousins, you know,” he went on, with an expressive gesture. “I like to give her a treat now and then when I’m down here, otherwise there’s nothing doing at all. I wonder, Violet---”
“Here, who said my name was Violet?” the girl interrupted.
“I thought it must be,” he hazarded. “It seems to suit you.”
“My name is Miss Brown, I would have you know,” she told him severely. “Madge, when I’m at home with the family.”
“Well, there’s no telling how soon I shall be one of them,” was the bold response. “Madge, could I cut out this page of names? Listen, I’m on the square. I will give you six pairs of gloves and a box of chocolates that would make you ill if you ate it in less than a fortnight.”
She hesitated with her hand upon the book. What her reply might have been it is hard to tell. At that moment she met the challenging gaze of Amy Pank. There was nothing of first-cousinly regard in those eyes!
“Don’t be silly,” Miss Brown replied. “Of course, you can’t do anything of the sort.”
“I want that page so badly,” he begged.
“But what on earth for?”
“Six pairs of gloves, a four-pound box of chocolates and some silk stockings thrown in!”
“And I would get the sack. Certainly not.”
“Could I have a word with the manager, then?”
“The manager is away for three days. He’s gone on his ketch shooting snipe and wild duck on the Broads. Such impudence---wanting to cut a page out of our register!”
“Will you bet me I don’t before I leave?” he challenged.
“I’ll see that you don’t,” she replied, drawing the register away and placing it out of reach. “Now don’t you try to jolly me any more,” she advised. “With your first cousin getting angrier and angrier every minute. You go back to her and hold her hand. You can talk to me when you haven’t got any lady relatives playing around. . . .”
Ernest Pank, temporarily discomfited, retired to the lounge and begged for some more coffee. Amy was inclined to be distant.
“You seemed to have a lot to say to that young woman there,” she remarked.
“Whatever I said to her didn’t do much good,” he answered.
“Not my idea of a sociable evening at all,” she complained. “We’d do better taking a walk than hanging about here.”
“What about the cinema?”
“Too late,” she snapped. “We’d better go for a walk and if you want a drink---you most always do---you can have it at that funny little place. If your stupid friend is not there, we may get it to ourselves. Don’t you want to be alone with me, Ernest?”
He squeezed her hand.
“Of course I do, dear,” he assured her, “but I’ve got to get even with that young woman first. Wait for a moment whilst I telephone.”
“Telephone! At this time of night! To whom?”
“You’re a nice girl, Amy,” her cousin said. “A sensible girl too. I can talk to you as I can’t quite talk to Uncle and Aunt---”
“Stop kidding,” she insisted. “What is it you want? If you’re trying to get round me, well, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
He rose to his feet.
“Well, I’ll show you if I’m kidding,” he threatened. “Wait there one moment.”
He crossed the lounge to the telephone box. He was away altogether barely three minutes. When he returned, he found her drawing on her gloves.
“This is where we don’t go, please, for ten minutes,” he begged her. “I’m going to take it out of that young woman at the window. You’ll see how furious she will be. First of all, we’re going to have another liqueur each.”
“Mr. Masterful, aren’t you?” she observed. “I don’t know that I want any liqueur.”
“Well, you will to-morrow, when I’m not here, so you may as well have it now.”
“Why won’t you be here to-morrow?” she demanded.
“I shall have sold all my heels,” he told her.
“You and your heels,” she repeated. “There are times, Ernest, when, if I didn’t remember you and know that you were my cousin, I’d think that you were bluffing all of us.”
“Perhaps you would say so still more,” he meditated, “if I were to give you the present I bought for you this afternoon.”
She sprang up as though an electric shock had passed through her body. The eternal light of feminine desire was in her eyes.
“A present!” she gasped. “Let me look at it. Please let me see.”
He drew something from his pocket. It looked exactly as a present should look. It was a square jeweller’s box, sealed and fastened with meticulous care. He handed it over to her.
“Is it really for me?” she demanded breathlessly.
“Of course it is.”
She withdrew her gloves again and dug her finger nails into the paper. Out came a wooden box, most attractive---just the sort of wooden box that might hold anything. She forced it open. Cotton wool, of course, and below it a morocco case. She drew a long breath.
“Ernest,” she cried. “What is it?”
She flicked the catch open. It was really a very handsome pendant---platinum and some small, but obviously veritable, diamonds clustered thickly together. Her eyes grew wider and wider.
“Not for me?” she faltered.
“For you, dear,” he assured her. “Of course, it’s for you. That’s so that you will forgive me for going away without saying good-bye, and not take too much notice if I seem to do foolish things.”
She hung over it. Words at first were difficult. As a matter of fact she had never handled anything quite like it before in her life. Her left hand played with it lovingly, and her right sought his.
“But Ernie,” she whispered in almost awed fashion, “it’s real.”
“Of course it is,” he answered. “I never pleaded poverty, did I? I told you I was doing pretty well. Look at it, my dear, and then put it on. Here’s some one to speak to me.”
She had scarcely any eyes even for the very imposing Inspector of Police who had entered the lobby. She sat there toying with the soft slipperiness of the platinum, turning it about so that the diamonds might catch the reflection of the electric light. It didn’t seem possible! What would the girls say? She knew very well what they would say, and she only smiled with happiness. . . .
The Inspector saluted.
“Glad to do what I can for you, Mr. Pank,” he said. “We heard about your coming from Headquarters. I am alone to-night. Captain Phillips---that’s the Chief Constable---he would have liked to see you if he had been here, but he’s away for a few days.”
The young lady inside the office was watching the two with fascinated eyes.
“I want you to persuade that young lady,” Pank explained, “to let me have a page out of her hotel register. She knows which one it is. I want to cut it out and take it up to London. She won’t give it to me, naturally, and I don’t want to make too much fuss about it. A copy would do for her all right.”
The Inspector rapped with his knuckles upon the counter and the young lady advanced. He whispered in her ear for a moment. She looked at Ernest Pank with a new interest.
“Fancy your being a detective all the time,” she exclaimed.
“Don’t you give it away,” he replied severely. “Now that you know it’s all right, just cut that page out carefully. You can copy it first, if you want to.”
She accepted a knife from the Inspector and together they made a pretty good job of it. Pank wrapped the page up in an evening paper.
“Tell me,” she begged in an awed tone. “Had they done anything wrong? Were they criminals? We didn’t miss anything that I know of from the hotel and nothing happened in the city that I can remember.”
“I’m afraid they were not very reputable characters,” Pank admitted, “but I don’t think you will see any more of them. If you could find out what they were doing, where they went to, for instance, that time they were out till two or three o’clock in the morning, it would mean a bracelet for you.”
“I would tell you in a moment if I knew, bracelet or no bracelet,” she replied. “I didn’t even hear that they were out late till afterwards, and they were off directly.”
“Did you see much of them?” Pank asked.
“Quite as much as I wanted,” the young lady confided, with a little toss of the head. “There was one very good-looking one---quite the gentleman too. He wanted me to go up and have dinner with them in their sitting room. As though I’d be likely to, and all three of them strangers!”
“You must have had plenty of experience,” Pank said ingratiatingly. “Tell me, did you think they talked like gentlemen?”
“They talked funny sometimes,” she replied. “I thought at first that they were foreigners who had learned to speak English. One of them told me he was born in Yarmouth. Wanted to persuade me, he did,” she went on indignantly, “that because he was born there, we could get married in twelve hours if I would go over there with him. They don’t catch a Brighton girl that way!”
She pushed a recalcitrant curl back from her forehead. Ernest Pank risked his cousin’s attention being still absorbed by her pendant, and patted her hand.
“I wonder now,” he asked, “was there any one in the hotel who saw more of them than you did, who might be able to give me a word of description or a hint of some sort?”
“George, the smoke-room waiter,” she answered promptly. “There he is. You ask him. They never left him alone. It was drinks all day long and then drinks up in the bedrooms after closing hours. They were as thick as thieves with George.”
Pank crossed the hall swiftly and was just in time to stop the waiter. In a few seconds they were upon most amicable terms.
“Remember them three, sir!” George exclaimed. “I’ll remember them to my dying day. Rough sort of gentlemen they were, in a way, but gentlemen all the same,---and as for the stuff! They didn’t seem to know what to do with it, sir. It came streaming out of their pockets.”
Pank drew the man a little farther on one side and a treasury note made its appearance, followed by a whisper. The waiter laughed.
“I’m much obliged to you for the note, sir,” he said, “but I’ve got to tell you this about those gentlemen---they treated me fair and square, and whoever wants to find out anything about ’em can get it from where they choose, but they don’t get it from me. They never did any harm that I could see. They hung about the place most of the day and played cards most of the night. They were out that once late that you speak of, but where they were I don’t know, and if I knew, it would take a rare handful of treasury notes to make me tell. I only hope I meet ’em again some day.”
Ex-detective Pank having learned a little more than he was supposed to learn, returned once more to the counter. He wished the Inspector good-night and made enquiries about the early trains to London. When he returned to his seat, he found a somewhat difficult problem awaiting him.
“Take me somewhere where I can thank you for this,” Amy begged, as she fondled the pendant.
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