LITMIR.BIZ

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He pointed out the crooks. The big one was mine, the guy you bluffed. Tommy shoved a ticket into my hand and told me to get aboard the cars. He was going to sleuth the other crook.’ Julius paused. ‘I thought for sure you’d know all this.’

      ‘Julius,’ said Tuppence firmly, ‘stop walking up and down. It makes me giddy. Sit down in that arm-chair, and tell me the whole story with as few fancy turns of speech as possible.’

      Mr Hersheimmer obeyed.

      ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Where shall I begin?’

      ‘Where you left off. At Waterloo.’

      ‘Well,’ began Julius, ‘I got into one of your dear old-fashioned first-class British compartments. The train was just off. First thing I knew a guard came along and informed me mightily politely that I wasn’t in a smoking-carriage. I handed him out half a dollar, and that settled that. I did a bit of prospecting along the corridor to the next coach. Whittington was there right enough. When I saw the skunk, with his big sleek fat face, and thought of poor little Jane in his clutches, I felt real mad that I hadn’t got a gun with me. I’d have tickled him up some.

      ‘We got to Bournemouth all right. Whittington took a cab and gave the name of an hotel. I did likewise, and we drove up within three minutes of each other. He hired a room, and I hired one too. So far it was all plain sailing. He hadn’t the remotest notion that anyone was on to him. Well, he just sat around in the hotel lounge, reading the papers and so on, till it was time for dinner. He didn’t hurry any over that either.

      ‘I began to think that there was nothing doing, that he’d just come on the trip for his health, but I remembered that he hadn’t changed for dinner, though it was by way of being a slap-up hotel, so it seemed likely enough that he’d be going out on his real business afterwards.

      ‘Sure enough, about nine o’clock, so he did. Took a car across the town – mighty pretty place by the way, I guess I’ll take Jane there for a spell when I find her – and then paid it off and struck out along those pine-woods on the top of the cliff. I was there too, you understand. We walked, maybe, for half an hour. There’s a lot of villas all the way along, but by degrees they seemed to get more and more thinned out, and in the end we got to one that seemed the last of the bunch. Big house it was, with a lot of piny grounds around it.

      ‘It was a pretty black night, and the carriage drive up to the house was dark as pitch. I could hear him ahead, though I couldn’t see him. I had to walk carefully in case he might get on to it that he was being followed. I turned a curve and I was just in time to see him ring the bell and get admitted to the house. I just stopped where I was. It was beginning to rain, and I was soon pretty near soaked through. Also, it was almighty cold.

      ‘Whittington didn’t come out again, and by and by I got kind of restive, and began to mooch around. All the ground floor windows were shuttered tight, but upstairs, on the first floor (it was a two-storied house) I noticed a window with a light burning and the curtains not drawn.

      ‘Now, just opposite to that window, there was a tree growing. It was about thirty foot away from the house, maybe, and I sort of got it into my head that, if I climbed up that tree, I’d very likely be able to see into that room. Of course, I knew there was no reason why Whittington should be in that room rather than in any other – less reason, in fact, for the betting would be on his being in one of the reception-rooms downstairs. But I guess I’d got the hump from standing so long in the rain, and anything seemed better than going on doing nothing. So I started up.

      ‘It wasn’t so easy, by a long chalk! The rain had made the boughs mighty slippery, and it was all I could do to keep a foothold, but bit by bit I managed it, until at last there I was level with the window.

      ‘But then I was disappointed. I was too far to the left. I could only see sideways into the room. A bit of curtain, and a yard of wall-paper was all I could command. Well, that wasn’t any manner of good to me, but just as I was going to give it up, and climb down ignominiously, someone inside moved and threw his shadow on my little bit of wall – and, by gum, it was Whittington!

      ‘After that, my blood was up. I’d just got to get a look into that room. It was up to me to figure out how. I noticed that there was a long branch running out from the tree in the right direction. If I could only swarm about half-way along it, the proposition would be solved. But it was mighty uncertain whether it would bear my weight. I decided I’d just got to risk that, and I started. Very cautiously, inch by inch, I crawled along. The bough creaked and swayed in a nasty fashion, and it didn’t do to think of the drop below, but at last I got safely to where I wanted to be.

      ‘The room was medium-sized, furnished in a kind of bare hygienic way. There was a table with a lamp on it in the middle of the room, and sitting at that table, facing towards me, was Whittington right enough. He was talking to a woman dressed as a hospital nurse. She was sitting with her back to me, so I couldn’t see her face. Although the blinds were up, the window itself was shut, so I couldn’t catch a word of what they said. Whittington seemed to be doing all the talking, and the nurse just listened. Now and then she nodded, and sometimes she’d shake her head, as though she were answering questions. He seemed very emphatic – once or twice he beat with his fist on the table. The rain had stopped now, and the sky was clearing in that sudden way it does.

      ‘Presently, he seemed to get to the end of what he was saying. He got up, and so did she. He looked towards the window and asked something – I guess it was whether it was raining. Anyway, she came right across and looked out. Just then the moon came out from behind the clouds. I was scared the woman would catch sight of me, for I was full in the moonlight. I tried to move back a bit. The jerk I gave was too much for that rotten old branch. With an almighty crash, down it came, and Julius P. Hersheimmer with it!’

      ‘Oh, Julius,’ breathed Tuppence, ‘how exciting! Go on.’

      ‘Well, luckily for me, I pitched down into a good soft bed of earth – but it put me out of action for the time, sure enough. The next thing I knew, I was lying in bed with a hospital nurse (not Whittington’s one) on one side of me, and a little black-bearded man with gold glasses, and medical man written all over him, on the other. He rubbed his hands together, and raised his eyebrows as I stared at him. “Ah!” he said. “So our young friend is coming round again. Capital. Capital.”

      ‘I did the usual stunt. Said: “What’s happened?” And “Where am I?” But I knew the answer to the last well enough. There’s no moss growing on my brain. “I think that’ll do for the present, sister,” said the little man, and the nurse left the room in a sort of brisk well-trained way. But I caught her handing me out a look of deep curiosity as she passed through the door.

      ‘That look of hers gave me an idea. “Now then, doc,” I said, and tried to sit up in bed, but my right foot gave me a nasty twinge as I did so. “A slight sprain,” explained the doctor. “Nothing serious. You’ll be about again in a couple of days.”

      ‘I noticed you walked lame,’ interpolated Tuppence.

      Julius nodded, and continued:

      ‘ “How did it happen?” I asked again. He replied dryly. “You fell, with a considerable portion of one of my trees, into one of my newly-planted flower-beds.”

      ‘I liked the man. He seemed to have a sense of humour. I felt sure that he, at least, was plumb straight. “Sure, doc,” I said, “I’m sorry about the tree, and I guess the new bulbs will be on me. But perhaps you’d like to know what I was doing in your garden?” “I think the facts do call for an explanation,” he replied. “Well, to begin with, I wasn’t after the spoons.”

      ‘He smiled. “My first theory. But I soon altered my mind. By the way, you are an American, are you not?” I told him my name. “And you?” “I am Dr Hall, and this, as you doubtless know, is my private nursing home.”

      ‘I didn’t know, but wasn’t going to put him wise. I was just thankful for the information. I liked the man, and I felt he was straight, but I wasn’t going to give him the whole story. For one thing he probably wouldn’t

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