Piccadilly Jim · Chapter 17 (1/3)

XVII

Miss Trimble, Detective

Downstairs, in the dining-room, Jimmy was smoking cigarettes and reviewing in his mind the peculiarities of the situation, when Ann came in.

“Oh, there you are,” said Ann. “I thought you must have gone upstairs.”

“I have been having a delightful and entertaining conversation with my old chum, Lord Wisbeach.”

“Good gracious! What about?”

“Oh, this and that.”

“Not about old times?”

“No, we did not touch upon old times.”

“Does he still believe that you are Jimmy Crocker? I’m so nervous,” said Ann, “that I can hardly speak.”

“I shouldn’t be nervous,” said Jimmy encouragingly. “I don’t see how things could be going better.”

“That’s what makes me nervous. Our luck is too good to last. We are taking such risks. It would have been bad enough without Skinner and Lord Wisbeach. At any moment you may make some fatal slip. Thank goodness, aunt Nesta’s suspicions have been squashed for the time being now that Skinner and Lord Wisbeach have accepted you as genuine. But then you have only seen them for a few minutes. When they have been with you a little longer, they may get suspicious themselves. I can’t imagine how you managed to keep it up with Lord Wisbeach. I should have thought he would be certain to say something about the time when you were supposed to be friends in London. We simply mustn’t strain our luck. I want you to go straight to aunt Nesta now and ask her to let Jerry come back.”

“You still refuse to let me take Jerry’s place?”

“Of course I do. You’ll find aunt Nesta upstairs.”

“Very well. But suppose I can’t persuade her to forgive Jerry?”

“I think she is certain to do anything you ask. You saw how friendly she was to you at lunch. I don’t see how anything can have happened since lunch to change her.”

“Very well. I’ll go to her now.”

“And when you have seen her, go to the library and wait for me. It’s the second room along the passage outside here. I have promised to drive Lord Wisbeach down to his hotel in my car. I met him outside just now and he tells me aunt Nesta has invited him to stay here, so he wants to go and get his things ready. I shan’t be twenty minutes. I shall come straight back.”

Jimmy found himself vaguely disquieted by this piece of information.

“Lord Wisbeach is coming to stay here?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Oh, nothing. Well, I’ll go and see Mrs. Pett.”

No traces of the disturbance which had temporarily ruffled the peace of the drawing-room were to be observed when Jimmy reached it. The receiver of the telephone was back on its hook, Mrs. Pett back in her chair, the dog Aida back in her basket. Mrs. Pett, her mind at ease now that she had taken the step of summoning Mr. Sturgis, was reading a book, one of her own, and was absorbed in it. The dog Aida slumbered noisily.

The sight of Jimmy, however, roused Mrs. Pett from her literary calm. To her eye, after what Lord Wisbeach had revealed there was something sinister in the very way in which he walked into the room. He made her flesh creep. In A Society Thug (Mobbs and Stifien, $1.35 net, all rights of translation reserved, including the Scandinavian) she had portrayed just such a man⁠—smooth, specious, and formidable. Instinctively, as she watched Jimmy, her mind went back to the perfectly rotten behaviour of her own Marsden Tuke (it was only in the last chapter but one that they managed to foil his outrageous machinations), and it seemed to her that here was Tuke in the flesh. She had pictured him, she remembered, as a man of agreeable exterior, the better calculated to deceive and undo the virtuous; and the fact that Jimmy was a presentable-looking young man only made him appear viler in her eyes. In a word, she could hardly have been in less suitable frame of mind to receive graciously any kind of a request from him. She would have suspected ulterior motives if he had asked her the time.

Jimmy did not know this. He thought that she eyed him a trifle frostily, but he did not attribute this to any suspicion of him. He tried to ingratiate himself by smiling pleasantly. He could not have made a worse move. Marsden Tuke’s pleasant smile had been his deadliest weapon. Under its influence deluded people had trusted him alone with their jewellery and whatnot.

“Aunt Nesta,” said Jimmy, “I wonder if I might ask you a personal favour.”

Mrs. Pett shuddered at the glibness with which he brought out the familiar name. This was super-Tuke. Marsden himself, scoundrel as he was, could not have called her “Aunt Nesta” as smoothly as that.

“Yes?” she said at last. She found it difficult to speak.

“I happened to meet an old friend of mine this morning. He was very sorry for himself. It appears that⁠—for excellent reasons, of course⁠—you had dismissed him. I mean Jerry Mitchell.”

Mrs. Pett was now absolutely appalled. The conspiracy seemed to grow more complicated every moment. Already its ramifications embraced this man before her, a trusted butler, and her husband’s late physical instructor. Who could say where it would end? She had never liked Jerry Mitchell, but she had never suspected him of being a conspirator. Yet, if this man who called himself Jimmy Crocker was an old friend of his, how could he be anything else?

“Mitchell,” Jimmy went on, unconscious of the emotions which his every word was arousing in his hearer’s bosom, “told me about what happened yesterday. He is very depressed. He said he could not think how he happened to behave in such an abominable way. He entreated me to put in a word for him with you. He begged me to tell you how he regretted the brutal assault, and asked me to mention the fact that his record had hitherto been blameless.” Jimmy paused. He was getting no encouragement, and seemed to be making no impression whatever. Mrs. Pett was sitting bolt upright in her chair in a stiffly defensive sort of way. She had the appearance of being absolutely untouched by his eloquence. “In fact,” he concluded lamely, “he is very sorry.”

There was silence for a moment.

“How do you come to know Mitchell?” asked Mrs. Pett.

“We knew each other when I was over here working on the Chronicle. I saw him fight once or twice. He is an excellent fellow, and used to have a right swing that was a pippin⁠—I should say extremely excellent. Brought it up from the floor, you know.”

“I strongly object to prizefighters,” said Mrs. Pett, “and I was opposed to Mitchell coming into the house from the first.”

“You wouldn’t let him come back, I suppose?” queried Jimmy tentatively.

“I would not. I would not dream of such a thing.”

“He’s full of remorse, you know.”

“If he has a spark of humanity, I have no doubt of it.”

Jimmy paused. This thing was not coming out as well as it might have done. He feared that for once in her life Ann was about to be denied something on which she had set her heart. The reflection that this would be extremely good for her competed for precedence in his mind with the reflection that she would probably blame him for the failure, which would be unpleasant.

“He is very fond of Ogden really.”

“H’m,” said Mrs. Pett.

“I think the heat must have made him irritable. In his normal state he would not strike a lamb. I’ve known him to do it.”

“Do what?”

“Not strike lambs.”

“Isch,” said Mrs. Pett⁠—the first time Jimmy had ever heard that remarkable monosyllable proceed from human lips. He took it⁠—rightly⁠—to be intended to convey disapproval, scepticism, and annoyance. He was convinced that this mission was going to be one of his failures.

“Then I may tell him,” he said, “that it’s all right?”

“That what is all right?”

“That he may come back here?”

“Certainly not.”

Mrs. Pett was not a timid woman, but she could not restrain a shudder as she watched the plot unfold before her eyes. Her gratitude towards Lord Wisbeach at this point in the proceedings almost became hero-worship. If it had not been for him and his revelations concerning this man before her, she would certainly have yielded to the request that Jerry Mitchell be allowed to return to the house. Much as she disliked Jerry, she had been feeling so triumphant at the thought of Jimmy Crocker coming to her in spite of his stepmother’s wishes and so pleased at having unexpectedly got her own way that she could have denied him nothing that he might have cared to ask. But now it was as if, herself unseen, she were looking on at a gang of conspirators hatching some plot. She was in the strong strategic position of the person who is apparently deceived, but who in reality knows all.

For a moment she considered the question of admitting Jerry to the house. Evidently his presence was necessary to the consummation of the plot, whatever it might be, and it occurred to her that it might be as well, on the principle of giving the schemers enough rope to hang themselves with, to let him come back and play his part. Then she reflected that, with the self-styled Jimmy Crocker as well as the fraudulent Skinner in the house, Lord Wisbeach and the detective would have their hands quite full enough. It would be foolish to complicate matters. She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. Mr. Sturgis would be arriving soon, if he had really started at once from his office, as he had promised. She drew comfort from the imminence of his coming. It would be pleasant to put herself in the hands of an expert.

Jimmy had paused, midway to the door, and was standing there as if reluctant to accept her answer to his plea.

“It would never occur again. What happened yesterday, I mean. You need not be afraid of that.”

“I am not afraid of that,” responded Mrs. Pett tartly.

“If you had seen him when I did⁠—”

“When did you? You landed from the boat this morning, you went to Mr. Pett’s office, and then came straight up here with him. I am interested to know when you did see Mitchell?”

She regretted this thrust a little, for she felt it might put the man on his guard by showing that she suspected something but she could not resist it, and it pleased her to see that her companion was momentarily confused.

“I met him when I was going for my luggage,” said Jimmy.

It was just the way Marsden Tuke would have got out of it. Tuke was always wriggling out of corners like that. Mrs. Pett’s horror of Jimmy grew.

“I told him, of course,” said Jimmy, “that you had very kindly invited me to stay with you, and he told me all, about his trouble and implored me to plead for him. If you had seen him when I did, all gloom and repentance, you would have been sorry for him. Your woman’s heart⁠—”

Whatever Jimmy was about to say regarding Mrs. Pett’s woman’s heart was interrupted by the opening of the door and the deep, respectful voice of Mr. Crocker.

“Mr. Sturgis.”

The detective entered briskly, as if time were money with him⁠—as indeed it was, for the International Detective Agency, of which he was the proprietor, did a thriving business. He was a gaunt, hungry-looking man of about fifty, with sunken eyes and thin lips. It was his habit to dress in the height of fashion, for one of his favourite axioms was that a man might be a detective and still look a gentleman, and his appearance was that of the individual usually described as a “popular clubman.” That is to say, he looked like a floorwalker taking a Sunday stroll. His prosperous exterior deceived Jimmy satisfactorily, and the latter left the room little thinking that the visitor was anything but an ordinary caller.

The detective glanced keenly at him as he passed. He made a practice of glancing keenly at nearly everything. It cost nothing and impressed clients.

“I am so glad you have come, Mr. Sturgis,” said Mrs. Pett. “Won’t you sit down?”

Mr. Sturgis sat down, pulled up the knees of his trousers that half-inch which keeps them from bagging and so preserves the gentlemanliness of the appearance, and glanced keenly at Mrs. Pett.

“Who was that young man who just went out?”

“It is about him that I wished to consult you, Mr. Sturgis.”

Mr. Sturgis leaned back, and placed the tips of his fingers together.

“Tell me how he comes to be here.”

“He pretends that he is my nephew, James Crocker.”

“Your nephew? Have you never seen your nephew?”

“Never. I ought to tell you, that a few years ago my sister married for the second time. I disapproved of the marriage, and refused to see her husband or his son⁠—he was a widower. A few weeks ago, for private reasons, I went over to England, where they are living, and asked my sister to let the boy come here to work in my husband’s office. She refused, and my husband and I returned to New York. This morning I was astonished to get a telephone call from Mr. Pett from his office, to say that James Crocker had unexpectedly arrived after all, and was then at the office. They came up here, and the young man seemed quite genuine. Indeed, he had an offensive jocularity which would be quite in keeping with the character of the real James Crocker, from what I have heard of him.”

Mr. Sturgis nodded.

“Know what you mean. Saw that thing in the paper,” he said briefly. “Yes?”

“Now, it is very curious, but almost from the start I was uneasy. When I say that the young man seemed genuine, I mean that he completely deceived my husband and my niece, who lives with us. But I had reasons, which I need not go into now, for being on my guard, and I was suspicious. What aroused my suspicion was the fact that my husband thought that he remembered this young man as a fellow-traveller of ours on the Atlantic, on our return voyage, while he claimed to have landed that morning on the Caronia.”

“You are certain of that, Mrs. Pett? He stated positively that he had landed this morning?”

“Yes. Quite positively. Unfortunately I myself had no chance of judging the truth of what he said, as I am such a bad sailor that I was seldom out of my stateroom from beginning to end of the voyage. However, as I say, I was suspicious. I did not see how I could confirm my suspicions, until I remembered that my new butler, Skinner, had come straight from my sister’s house.”

“That is the man who just admitted me?”

“Exactly. He entered my employment only a few days ago, having come direct from London. I decided to wait until Skinner should meet this young man. Of course, when he first came into the house, he was with my husband, who opened the door with his key, so that they did not meet then.”

“I understand,” said Mr. Sturgis, glancing keenly at the dog Aida, who had risen and was sniffing at his ankles. “You thought that if Skinner recognised this young man, it would be proof of his identity?”

“Exactly.”

“Did he recognise him?”

“Yes. But wait. I have not finished. He recognised him, and for the moment I was satisfied. But I had had my suspicions of Skinner, too. I ought to tell you that I had been warned against him by a great friend of mine, Lord Wisbeach, an English peer whom we have known intimately for a very long time. He is one of the Shropshire Wisbeaches, you know.”

“No doubt,” said Mr. Sturgis.

“Lord Wisbeach used to be intimate with the real Jimmy Crocker. He came to lunch today and met this impostor. He pretended to recognise him, in order to put him off his guard, but after lunch he came to me here and told me that in reality he had never seen him before in his life, and that, whoever else he might be, he was certainly not James Crocker, my nephew.”

She broke off and looked at Mr. Sturgis expectantly. The detective smiled a quiet smile.

“And even that is not all. There is another thing. Mr. Pett used to employ as a physical instructor a man named Jerry Mitchell. Yesterday I dismissed him for reasons it is not necessary to go into. Today⁠—just as you arrived in fact⁠—the man who calls himself Jimmy Crocker was begging me to allow Mitchell to return to the house and resume his work here. Does that not strike you as suspicious, Mr. Sturgis?”

The detective closed his eyes, and smiled his quiet smile again. He opened his eyes, and fixed them on Mrs. Pett.