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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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ONE day in late autumn Mr. Smiler Bunn paid a visit to the Zoo. He arrived there at about half an hour before closing time, and proceeded without delay to a lonely nook at the back of the eagles' aviaries, where, unobserved by a living creature, except an elderly, bald-headed vulture of intoxicated appearance, he took from a handbag a bowler hat and a false moustache, both of which he rapidly donned. He thrust the bag under some shrubs and went back to the entrance lodge. There were many people going out of the Zoo and none coming in. He knocked peremptorily at the door of the lodge and scowled at the mild- looking individual who opened it.
"Mr. Heber Ilch?" he asked sharply.
"Yes," said the mild-looking man. Smiler handed him a card.
DETECTIVE-INSPECTOR SAVIDGE,
SCOTLAND YARD.
"This is a very unpleasant thing for you, Ilch, my man," he said.
The unfortunate Ilch staggered.
"Wha—what do you mean?"
"This shortage in the gate receipts. Don't speak—don't incriminate yourself—anything you say may be used in evidence against you, and don't you forget it—see? Nobody accuses you yet. You're to go to the superintendent at once to attend the inquiry. All the other gatekeepers are there already. It'll look bad, your being late." He scowled more than ever. "If you're innocent you're safe—if you're guilty. Lord 'elp you. You'd better be careful. And now slip across to the super's house. You'll probably lose your job, anyway. And don't try to bolt—you're watched! There's half a dozen detectives within reach. Here, lock your door and hook it."
Mr. Ilch put his hands to his head like a stunned person. It was not surprising that he should feel stunned, for there never was and never will be a more honest man in London than Mr. Ilch—now deceased. His accounts were perfectly in order—and he was in a hurry to prove it. Locking the door of his lodge, he galloped hastily off in the direction of the superintendent's house. Mr. Bunn watched him till he turned a corner, then taking a key from his pocket, he opened the door, calmly stepped into the lodge, cleared all the gold and silver out of the till in two swift grabs, stepped out, relocked the door, passed carelessly through the exit gate, and took a taxi.
"Simple as kiss me hand," he said complacently; "I always reckoned it was. Poor blooming Ilch! I reckon his receipts '11 be a bit short to-night, anyhow. Serve him right for not having the courage of his convictions."
He leaned forward to the hole which leads to the taxi-driver's ear and commanded him to drive to the Religious and Temperance Tract Association's offices in Paternoster Row. This was to cover his tracks.
He stopped the taxi at the top of the Row, and took a four-wheeler to Liverpool Street. From Liverpool Street he took a bus to Piccadilly Circus. From the corner of Piccadilly he strolled along to a quiet restaurant in Wardour Street, where he proceeded to order so thorough a dinner that he became a prime favourite of the waiter at once. He took a small table in a remote corner with his face to the wall and his back to the world, and proceeded to count the result of his incursion into the realm of natural history, while the waiter brought him a sherry-and-bitters.
"Thirty-three pound twelve," he mused, and looked at his hands. "Thought I had bigger hands than that. It's deceiving work, grabbing money. However—it's not so dusty, Smiler, my lad. Be satisfied—don't be a hog. It's unlucky to be hoggish."
Then the waiter placed his aperitif before him and went away to command his soup. The restaurant was quite empty and quiet as Smiler leaned back in his chair thoughtfully smoking a cigarette. As a he sat there musing he became vaguely aware of a low murmur of voices behind the wall facing him, and in an absent sort of way he listened to this murmur—much as a man lying half asleep on a sunny beach listens to the murmur of the water. But the voices rose a little and suddenly Smiler stiffened, sitting bolt upright. One of those voices he had heard before—and had not been anxious to hear again. Moreover, he had not expected to hear it, at any rate during his life.
It belonged—unless he was woefully mistaken—to no less a person than Kate the Gun, whom he had last seen being led away by a detective who had arrested her, and from whom he had understood that she was likely shortly to be extradited for the purpose of receiving something in the neighbourhood of a life sentence in New York.
And incidentally Smiler Bunn had been largely responsible for her arrest.
THE thought of Kate the Gun being at large gave him a feeling as though his stomach had turned a handspring! And not unnaturally either, for he was well aware that Kate—if it really was she behind the wall—would stick at nothing to get even with him for his part in her arrest.
He listened again.
Yes, it was Kate the Gun behind the wall. There was no doubt about that. He did not know how she got there, nor did he care. She was there—that was enough for Mr. Bunn. He turned and beckoned to his waiter.
"Give a liquer of best brandy. I'm feelin' rather bilious," he said softly. "You can stop that dinner. I've lost me appetite. Bring me a steak and chips, and a pint of Scotch ale instead. I'll have a welsh rabbit to follow it."
"Yessare."
The waiter started away, but Smiler quietly called him back. "Listen," he said. The man listened.
"Where does that talking come from?" asked Smiler.
"Private room, sare. Three gentlemen and one madame. They have but now come. One minute before you arrive, yessare?" Smiler produced a sovereign. "See this?" he said.
"Oh, yessare!" said the waiter blandishingly.
"Well, now, listen to me. I want to hear what those people are saying without being seen—see? And it's worth one quid to me. One James o' goblin. Understand?" "Oh, yessare! Will you come to zis table."
He conducted Smiler to a table round a corner—a table tucked away behind a pillar, and partly covered with newspapers. Obviously it was the table at which the waiter sat when he was not working.
"If you sit here, sare—"
The man placed a chair and Smiler sat down. The wall was now on his left, almost touching his elbow. Level with his ear there was a slight depression in the paper-covered wall.
"A hole in ze wall," said the waiter in a whisper. "It goes through. Nozzing but papare at zis end of ze hole, and nozzing but papare at ze ozzare end where is ze private room. You place the ear nearer to ze wall—a-ah, you hear? Merci, m'sieu, merci."
He took his sovereign and stood away. Mr. Bunn more or less fixed his ear to the wallpapered tunnel leading through to the "private" room and listened tensely. Kate the Gun was speaking.
"And when I get that fat slouch I'll hand it to him good and hard. Bunn's his name, is it? When I've finished with him he won't be much more than a biscuit—and no champion biscuit neither. He threw me down, and if it hadn't been for you, Billy, I'd have been well on my road to jail."
Smiler nodded thoughtfully. He had an idea now, and when another voice was raised in answer to that of Kate the Gun that idea was confirmed. The voice which answered the adventuress was the voice of a man whom Smiler had only seen and heard speak once before in his life—the man who, disguised as a German chef, but really a detective, had arrested Kate the Gun on the occasion when Smiler had saved his brother from her. Had this man done his duty Kate would have been extradited and in an American jail by now. But she was here—obviously because she had bribed the detective, who possibly had become one of her gang. The other two men were the "plug-uglies." Smiler knew that the moment they raised their melodious voices.
Then Kate the Gun said in a lower voice:
"Now, see here, this year's trip's been a freeze-out for us up to now, and we've got to make good quick. I'm no Oil Trust, and it gives me a sore head to see good golden bucks paid out day after day and nix paid in—see? Now, what about this lonely miser at Horsham—say, it sounds like a dime novel. You got wise to him and his gold plate first, Michael. Now put us next to the facts and we'll work out the scheme." She spoke very softly, and "Michael," one of the "plug-uglies," answered in the same key.
And Mr. Bunn glued his ear to the wall and closed his eye in order to hear better.
NOT till an hour later did he arise from that table, hand the waiter another five shillings, and hastily quit the restaurant. He left the meal he had ordered wholly untouched and stone cold; the waiter inherited that.
Two minutes after his departure there issued from the "private" room a party of four, made up of one nice-looking old lady with silvery hair but rather hard eyes, a quiet little man of German appearance, a tallish, well-built clergyman with a face like a prize-fighter, and a keen-eyed man who looked like a Colonial cardsharp. On the whole the gang of Kate the Gun were admirably disguised.
None of them took much notice of a four-wheeler a few yards from the door of the restaurant; the blinds of the cab were drawn down, and only the bland blue eyes of Smiler Bunn were visible as, peering round the blind, he carefully scrutinised the party as they left the café.
The four vanished up the street, and Smiler drove thoughtfully to a famous Fleet Street hostelry, where he devoured a meal which made the waiter look anxious.
Then he returned to his flat in Ridgeford Mansions, where he proposed to utilise an hour in silent thought. First of all he carefully marshalled and mentally arrayed before him the facts. There was, it seemed, a miser who lived in a lonely old house just outside the Sussex village of Southwater, near Horsham. The place was known as the Tower House, because it possessed a tower of some kind. In the tower, it was said, the miser kept a chest of rare gold plate. On the tower, for some weird, miserish reason of his own, the owner of the gold plate kept a searchlight. The name of the miser was Amberfold—Colonel Amberfold. And the gang of Kate the Gun proposed to "pinch" the plate of Colonel Amberfold in four days' time precisely.
THAT was all the information Smiler Bunn had gained from this hour at the tunnelled wall of the "private" room—that and a slightly sprained ear. They were a clever gang, and had gradually lowered their voices to little more than whispers.
Nevertheless, it was enough to furnish food for thought. Smiler rose, switched off the electric light save only for one shaded lamp on a writing-table, and, taking a large apple in his hand, reseated himself to plan things out. He had quite decided to enter into competition with Kate the Gun's gang. It was nervous work certainly, for they were a tough "bunch," but it looked like being well-paid.
The thing that puzzled Smiler most was the searchlight which Michael, the "plug-ugly," had mentioned. He couldn't see why the miserly Colonel had gone to the expense in installing it. Vainly he racked his brains, vainly he ate apple after apple, groping for a reason. And so at ten o'clock he grumpily ate what he termed a "lay-out" of eggs and bacon and went to bed.
ON the following day a long, grey, speedy-looking motor-car slid to a standstill outside the Black Lion Hotel, Horsham, and its solitary occupant—a heavy-looking man with a reddish beard and moustache—having turned the car over to an individual who looked as though he usually washed in lubricating oil, and who claimed to be in charge of the garage, entered the hotel and reserved himself an apartment for three days. Then he passed on into the dining-room. The name that he wrote in the register was Huish—Coomber Huish. But the voice with which, immediately after he had registered, he proceeded to galvanize the waiter into activity was the voice of Smiler Bunn. After the meal he gave the waiter half a sovereign.
"That was a steak worth eating, my lad. And the tomatoes was hot stuff. You look after me and I'll look after you—see? Here's half a bar for you."
When the waiter recovered his breath he learned that Mr. Coomber Huish was an author and was engaged in writing a book as astronomy. He had come to Horsham, it seemed, because only from a spot midway between Southwater and Horsham in all England was a certain comet to be seen during the next three days.
"I shall probably be out half the night—p'raps all night—while I'm here, surveying the stars and this comet, and if you want to do yourself a bit of good you'd better arrange with somebody to sit up at night to let me in," said Mr. Huish. "Side or back door '11 do. I don't want to disturb the whole hotel every night. It'll be worth half a quid a night to anybody who obliges me."
The waiter implored Mr. Huish to leave it all to him, and Mr. Huish was graciously pleased to do so.
HE took a little run in his car on the Southwater road during the afternoon.
It may be explained here that the first thing Smiler Bunn had done on his return to town after the episode of the Duchess of Cornchester's diamonds in the New Forest was to take a thorough course of lessons in the art of motor-driving and managing.
During his spin he had found occasion to pull up and refresh himself at the Vine Inn, Southwater, and, thanks to a few innocent questions, a certain freedom in the standing of drinks, and the natural garrulousness of the landlord, he had learned quite a number of interesting facts concerning Colonel Amberfold of the Tower House.
They were neither pleasant nor encouraging. Smiler, lying on a lounge in the smoking-room after a heavy meat tea, reviewing the information he had gathered, came to the conclusion that Colonel Amberfold was a person to whom he had taken a pronounced dislike. Like most misers, the Colonel lived quite alone in the house, but he had taken precautions. The fighting baboons, for instance; Michael had not mentioned them.
Yet the Colonel kept a brace of them—surly, dangerous, dog-toothed, hairy demons that feared nothing in the world when their anger was aroused. "Better than house-dogs," the landlord of the "Vine" had said, and after he had listened to a description of how they had dealt with a poacher's lurcher, fatally, which had come within their reach some time before, Smiler had been inclined to agree with him.
"And every night one of 'em chained on a forty-foot chain to the front door, and the other on a forty-foot chain to the back door," mused Smiler. "Well, it looks like a window entrance for me. Fighting baboons—ugh! Give me 'plug-uglies' for choice. Seems to me I'll have to break my usual rule here. 'No violence' is very good as a rule, but I don't see much sense in gettin' scragged by a blinking baboon. Fair's fair, anyhow, and from what I can hear these apes are as strong as lions and as cunning as tigers. No scraggin' for Smiler, I don't think!"
He thought again of the wanton savagery with which—according to the landlord of the "Vine," at any rate—the baboons had killed the wretched lurcher, and, quite suddenly, and to his extreme surprise, he felt a surge of blood to his heat, hot and furious. He was angry.
"Why, what's this?" he muttered, got off the sofa, and looked at himself in a mirror over the fireplace. "Lost your wool, have you, Mr. 'Uish? Well, and quite right too, my lad. Dogs are fair play—dogs are gentlemen. But baboons is beastly. Tear you to pieces, do they? Ah—well, we'll see."
He left the smoking-room and the hotel still a little flushed.
When he came back half an hour later he had in each of the side-pockets of his jacket a Browning automatic pistol and cartridges to match.
He laid them on his dressing-table and smiled upon them.
"Lucky to get you two gents in a one-eyed town like this," he said affably. "Just the lads to teach etiquette to baboons, ain't you?"
He slipped them into a drawer and locked it. Then he went down to get what he termed a "mouthful of dinner."
THE residence of Colonel Amberford lay rather far back from the main road, and was approached by a narrow lane some hundred yards long. A field stretched between the main road and the dense shrubberies which surrounded the house, and the lane ran down one side of this field. At the road-end of the lane was an ordinary five-barred gate giving entry to the field.
It was at this spot that between twelve and one in the night following the arrival of Smiler Bunn at Horsham a curious happening might have been witnessed by anyone with a habit of nocturnal prowling and ability to see in the dark.
It was a black moonless night; the darkness was so profound as to render it almost impossible to see even the white road. But at twelve o'clock there appeared floating silently through the darkness a small dim light coming along the road from the direction of Horsham. It grew gradually larger and brighter, and brought with it a whirr of a powerfully-engined and carefully-driven motor-car. The car slid level with the lane and slowed to a crawl. Quietly the driver turned the car so that it faced towards Horsham again, stopped it, and, getting down, ran quickly across to the gate in the field and opened it, fastening it back. Then, very carefully, he backed the car into the field, and left it there with its sharp semi-racer nose pointing straight across the corner of the lane to the main road. Thus the car could remain practically invisible from the road, but nevertheless could take the main road again, as it were, at a single bound, if necessary.
The driver chuckled softly, extinguished the light, and, leaving his overcoat in the car, moved quietly away down the lane towards the Tower House. Mr. Smiler Bunn was what he termed "on the job."
Not fifteen minutes later a big, brilliantly-lighted car boomed up from the other direction—as though proceeding to Horsham—passed the lane, slowing as it passed, and some five hundred yards farther on stopped, the roar of the engine dying out gradually. It had been run close into the edge of the road. There were three people in the car—two men and a woman. The men alighted and spread out an assortment of motor tools upon the driver's seat. The woman—she was wearing a man's cap—got down and took off a fur cloak. She was dressed in man's clothes, and with a quick whisper moved silently away from the car. Instantly one of the men stood on the seat of the tonneau and stared steadily towards the Tower House. The woman had slipped through a gap in the hedge level with which the car had pulled up and headed stealthily away towards the house. Kate the Gun and her gang seemed to have put their raid forward two days.
Hardly had the second car stopped when a third, moving silently as only a steam-car can, and absolutely unlighted, glided up, on the heels as it were of the big petrol car, and stopped soundlessly at the head of the lane. There were three men, including the driver, in this car, and had Smiler Bunn been there he would have recognized them from their voices alone—for Smiler never forgot a voice or a face. One of them was the "plug-ugly" Michael, who had told Kate the Gun of Colonel Amberfold's hoarded plate. The others were two London thieves whom Smiler had encountered more than once before. One was a skilful scoundrel, whose favourite line of business was safe-breaking, but who was willing to embark on any little enterprise that promised profit without too much risk. He was known in certain police and criminal circles as "City Joe." The third man was one "Captain" Panton, a "smasher" or counterfeiter, and a close companion of City Joe. These three whispered together for a few moments, and finally two of them went quietly down the lane.
Things seemed ominous for Colonel Amberfold's gold plate. No less than three individual expeditions were "out" after it on this very dark night. And the curious part of the whole business was that there was no coincidence about it at all. It was due to perfectly natural causes.
Smiler Bunn was trying to forestall Kate the Gun, whose attempt on the plate he thought was to take place two nights later. That accounted for Smiler.
City Joe's trio also were trying to forestall Kate the Gun, thanks to Michael, the "plug-ugly" which gentleman, dissatisfied at the share he was to receive as a member of the Kate the Gun's gang, had deserted the standard of that American adventuress and formed his own gang. That accounted for the presence of the steam-car party.
And Kate the Gun, expecting that Michael would endeavour to cut in before her, had shifted her raid two days before in order to get the plate before Michael had time to form his own little army.
SMILER BUNN lay flat on his stomach—much to the discomfort of that usually pampered organ—in the dense shrubbery which surrounded the Tower House.
Only his head protruded from the undergrowth. He was staring intently towards the house through a pair of night-glasses.
He had taken his bearings that afternoon disguised as a tramp, and he knew that only twenty yards of ill-kept lawn lay between him and the front door and windows of the house. The sky seemed to have lightened a shade during the past twenty minutes, and he could just make out the black bulk of the building.
He had lain there some minutes listening and sharing—a Browning pistol resting in the crook of his left arm—and during those minutes he had heard and seen absolutely nothing. But he was uneasy—with an uncanny, creeping uneasiness that he had never before experienced. The place was utterly soundless, but the darkness felt inhabited. It was as though out there in the darkness, perfectly still, perfectly quiet, there were things standing, waiting for him to step on the lawn.
He put down his glasses and clutched his pistol; the butt felt warm and comfortable and reassuring. A Browning automatic pistol is the last word in rapid-firing pocket-size weapons, anyway, and Smiler was feeling glad of it.
He snuggled down in the shrubbery, listening. There was no hurry after all, and he wanted his nervous fit to pass off before proceeding to locate the baboons.
Then, as he lay there, be became gradually aware that the darkness seemed to be waking up. Away across the lawn something yawned enormously; Smiler heard the long sighing inhalation and exhalation of breath, and instantly after a snap of huge teeth brought sharply together. Then something grunted and a chain rattled a little.
Half a second later came the clear, crisp crunch of a soft sole on the gravel—just one, no more. It was as though someone had inadvertently stepped off the turf bordering the coach drive on to the gravel, and then suddenly stepped back on to the turf.
"Hallo?" breathed Smiler. "Who's this?"
From the black patch against the sky right away to the right of the house, which Smiler knew was formed by a clump of half a dozen stunted fir trees, came a low squeak and a sudden soft, liquid pop. In the silence Smiler heard it distinctly. Someone under the firs had drawn a cork from a bottle.
A cold thrill fluttered along the spine of Mr. Bunn, as, following the sound of the cork, he heard several grunts from somewhere near the front door of the house. A chain rattled as though it was being drawn across a gravel path, and in a moment the rattle was joined by the swishing sound of the chain as it was dragged over the grass.
Evidently one of the baboons was suspicious. The sound of the chain ceased. The animal appeared to be staring into the shrubbery, then it grunted again; it seemed to be under the fir clump. Smiler remembered that it had a run of forty feet, and drew back into the bushes. The swish of the chain began, and, judging from the sound of it, the animal returned to its shelter by the front door. Followed a sound of eating—and thirty seconds later three hoarse barks, an almost human growl, a moan, the thud of a fall, and silence.
Smiler felt his skin creep and his hair lift. For a moment his blood seemed to freeze.
He had seen nothing at all, but he knew what had happened as though the tragedy had occurred in broad daylight.
One of the baboons had been poisoned.
Out there in the mysterious dark someone, clever as himself, was working swiftly, ruthlessly, silently.
And his instinct told him it was Kate the Gun; she was out there somewhere under the fir trees. Probably she had poisoned a banana with some swift poison from the bottle she had just uncorked.
But if that was so it was not she whose single footstep he had heard on the coach drive. It was impossible for her to be in two places at once, and the fir trees were at least forty yards from the spot where the gravel had crunched.
He stiffened abruptly. Two men had suddenly run softly, on tiptoe, round the edge of the lawn. They passed no more than two feet from his face. And then his heart stood still, for there sounded from the Tower a quick hiss and cackle, and a blinding spear of white light stabbed out into the darkness, sweeping across the shrubbery like the sword of Fate.
The searchlight. Its great clear-cut javelin, passed swiftly over Smiler's head, hung steady for a moment—that was when it picked out Smiler's car—quivered and steadied again and yet again, as it disclosed both the other cars. Then it lifted and swung away to the left. The cold clear beam settled upon a cottage in the village and suddenly began to flicker as a cinematograph projection flickers. The centre of its circle was a window—or what was evidently intended for a window. It looked now like a black shutter. The cottage was really the police-station—a miniature affair that sheltered one constable only. The district sergeant lived in the next village.
And Colonel Amberfold was signalling desperately to the constable. That was why he had installed the searchlight; the fierce, white glare flickering on and off into his bedroom would almost wake a dead policeman, to say nothing of even a village constable.
Suddenly there was a muffled cry from under the firs. The searchlight wheeled and swooped down. Smiler Bunn, lying flat to the earth, a "gun" gripped in each hand, saw in the cold light one with a face that was unmistakably the face of Kate the Gun twist furiously away from the grip of two men. She was dressed in man's clothes, but a lock of black hair falling down her cheek betrayed her.
In her right hand was a revolver, and she jammed it in the faces of the two men with a look and gesture of such ferocity that they quailed back from her.
Not five yards from the group a monstrous black misshapen thing, grotesquely human, jumped about straining at a glittering chain, and uttering queer grunting barks.
Even as Smiler recognized the two men a thin sharp voice quavered down from the top of the Tower:
"Clear out or I'll shoot! I've a shot-gun here!"
Three white faces turned unpwards and dropped instantly as the glare of the searchlight hit the pupils of their eyes. Then the chain of the baboon snapped suddenly and the brute flung forward with a howl. It looked like some kind of devil.
One of the men swung a weapon blindly at the ape; it appeared to be a bar of black steel; but really it was a sandbag, and it took the baboon on the side of the head.
There was no sound, but the baboon dropped like a dead thing. Michael, the "plug-ugly," was one of the most expert sandbaggers in the world.
Kate the Gun flung her revolver viciously at the head of the other man (Smiler recognized him as City Joe) and ran forward out of the beam of light. Smiler heard her panting as she passed him, running to the coach road.
There was a savage snarling oath from Michael, the American ruffian, and he pitched his sandbag into the darkness after her.
"Come away, you fool!" cried City Joe, gripping the "plug-ugly's" arm. "There's nothing doing to-night."
"Aw, in a minute," said Michael, and shook the other off.
He raised a fist clenched round a revolver, and staring straight into the eye of the searchlight pulled the trigger once—twice.
With the second report the dazzling ray vanished—precisely as though it had been blown out.
Out of the profound and pitchy blackness that followed Smiler heard a low groan from the Tower. More footsteps pattered across the lawn before him, and suddenly all was silent. The whole affair had not lasted five minutes.
A faint acrid fume of burnt powder found its way into his nostrils and he shivered slightly.
He lay there listening; almost immediately he heard from somewhere near the head of the lane the rush of a suddenly started engine, followed by the diminishing note of a receding motor. Evidently one of the parties had gone.
He rapidly thought the thing over. Now was his time if he meant doing anything. The others had cleared the way to the gold plate for him if he cared to risk waiting there. But with a dead man on the Tower it was a dangerous risk—if the man at the searchlight was dead. If the shots had alarmed the village, the sooner he was out of it the better. He felt fairly certain that the searchlight had alarmed nobody—least of all the policeman. For not half an hour before he had "shuttered" that policeman's bedroom window himself with a specially-made black-painted wooden shutter muffled in sacking and attached to two long bamboo poles. And even a searchlight cannot shine through half an inch of deal.
He listened for a few seconds longer; they seemed like weeks. There was no sound from any quarter. He remembered that two shots in quick succession are heard not infrequently at night in a district where game is reared and poachers are plentiful.
"When thieves fall out," he muttered, "honest men get a bit of their own back, and I'll chance it."
He crawled out from his shrubbery and stole across to the house, pulling out his electric flash-lamp. In the afternoon he had marked a certain french window. This he found, and two minutes later he was inside the house.
First he went up into the Tower.
At the top he found the Colonel—a lean, mean-looking little man—lying in a heap under the broken searchlight. He turned him over and hastily examined him. He was unhurt save for a nasty graze along the side of the head just above the ear. The "plug-ugly's" bullet had cut a long furrow through the hair, but a touch told Smiler that it was no more than skin deep. He lifted the man carefully, and carried him downstairs to a sort of bed-sitting-room immediately below, and laid him on the bed.
Then he turned briskly to a big safe in the corner. If there was anything worth stealing in the house, he fancied some of it, at any rate, would be here—the garrulous landlord had told him that only about two rooms in the place were furnished, and a glance or two as he entered had confirmed this.
The safe was locked, but with unerring instinct he turned back to the man on the bed. The keys were in the pockets of the shabby dressing-gown.
Ten seconds later half of Smiler Bunn was in the safe and half out—and his hands were busy.
Presently he paused and turned to the figure on the bed.
"You're a miser all right, mate," he said humorously. "But you're a dashed good miser. I will say that for you. I've never heard of a miser before who mised precious stones instead of precious money, but I'm glad to find that there's one any'ow, and I'm pleased to meet you, miser."
He rose from his knees and held a handful of loose-cut jewels under his flashlight. There were all kinds there—diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and lesser stones—none astonishingly big, but all valuable.
Smiler slipped them into his pocket and addressed the figure on the bed:
"Of course, I know as well as if you'd told me that this little lot ain't the pick of the bunch," he said in a friendly voice; "the big 'uns are hid all over the house, here and there. But I ain't no hog; Colonel, and I ain't got time to look for 'em any'ow. So you can have them. So long! You'll be all right—bar a bit of an 'eadache."
He put a water-bottle within reach of the Colonel, and quietly cleared out.
HIS car was waiting exactly as he left it, and he lighted the lamps and climbed in.
"London, first stop. Change here for Horsham!" he said playfully in the manner of a railway porter, and ran her out on to the main road.
"Ah, well," he chuckled, "when thieves fall out...."
But the remainder of the proverb was drowned by the rising note of the engine.