nodded. He suspected that a great deal of the property which he was to acquire had been secured by underhand means. He more than suspected that, for all his princely origin, his companion was not too honest.
‘That is why I have asked that the money you pay should be in American currency. By the way, have you made that provision?’ Lord Carfane nodded. ‘And, of course, I shall not ask you to pay a single dollar until you are satisfied that the property is worth what I ask. It is in fact worth three times as much.’
Lord Carfane was nothing if not frank.
‘Now, I’m going to tell you, my dear chap,’ he said, ‘there will only be one person at Carfane Hall who will know anything whatever about this little transaction of ours. He’s an expert jeweller. He is an authority, and he will examine every piece and price it before I part with a single bob!’
His Highness heartily, but gravely, approved of this act of precaution.
Lord Carfane had met his companion a few weeks before in a highly respectable night club, the introduction having been effected through the medium of a very beautiful lady who had accidentally spilt a glass of champagne over his lordship’s dress trousers. She was so lovely a personage that Lord Carfane did no more than smile graciously, and a few minutes later was introduced to her sedate and imposing presence.
Harry the Valet invariably secured his introductions by this method. Usually he worked with Molly Kien, and paid her a hundred pounds for every introduction.
He spoke no more of jewels smuggled from Russia and offered at ridiculous prices, but talked sorrowfully of the misfortunes of his country; spoke easily of his estates in the Crimea and his mines in the Urals, now, alas! in Bolshevik hands. Lord Carfane was immensely entertained.
On the following evening, Harry drove down in Lord Carfane’s limousine to Berkshire, and was introduced to the glories of Carfane Hall; to the great banqueting chamber with its high raftered roof; to the white-tiled larder where petrified turkeys hung in rows, each grisly corpse decorated with a gay rosette…
‘My tenants come in on Christmas Eve,’ explained Lord Carfane,’ and my butler presents each one with a turkey and a small bag of groceries—’
‘An old feudal custom?’ suggested the Prince gravely.
Lord Carfane agreed with equal gravity.
The Prince had brought with him a large, heavily locked and strapped handbag, which had been deposited in the safe, which was the most conspicuous feature of Ferdie’s library. The expert jeweller was arriving on the morrow, and his lordship looked forward, with a sense of pleasurable anticipation, to a day which would yield him 400 per cent profit on a considerable outlay.
‘Yes,’ said Ferdie at dinner that night, ‘I prefer a combination safe. One can lose keys, but not if they’re here’—he tapped his narrow forehead and smiled.
Harry the Valet agreed. One of his greatest charms was his complete agreement with anything anybody said or did or thought.
Whilst he dwelt in luxury in the halls of the great, his unhappy confederate had a more painful task. Joe the Runner had collected from a garage a small, light trolley. It was not beautiful to look upon, but it was fast, and under its covered tilt, beneath sacks and amidst baskets, a man making a swift getaway might lie concealed and be carried to London without exciting attention.
Joe made a leisurely way into Berkshire and came to the rendezvous at the precise minute he had been ordered. It was a narrow lane at the termination of a footpath leading across the Carfane estate to the house. It was a cold, blue- fingered, red-nosed job, and for three hours he sat and shivered. And then, coming across the field in the blue dusk, he saw an old man staggering, carrying a rush basket in one hand and an indescribable something in the other. He was evidently in a hurry, this ancient. From time to time he looked back over his shoulder as though he expected pursuit. Breathlessly, he mounted the stile and fell over rather than surmounted it.
Stumbling to his feet, he saw Joe sitting at the wheel of the van, and gaped at him toothlessly, his eyes wide with horror. Joe the Runner recognised the signs.
‘What have you been doin’?’ he demanded sternly.
For a few minutes the breathless old man could not speak; blinked fearfully at his interrogator; and then:
‘He’s fired me,’ he croaked. ‘Wouldn’t give me no turkey or nothin’, so I went up to the ‘All and pinched one.’
‘Oh!’ said Joe judiciously.
It was not an unpleasant sensation, sitting in judgment on a fellow creature.
‘There was such a bother and a fuss and shouting going on…what with the safe bein’ found broke open, and that foreign man being caught, that nobody seed me,’ whimpered the elderly Mr Timmins.
‘Eh?’ said Joe. ‘What’s that—safe broken open?’
The old man nodded.
‘I heered ‘em when I was hiding in the pantry. His lordship found that the safe had been opened an’ money took. He sent for the constable, and they’ve got the prince locked up in a room, with the under-gardener and the butler on guard outside the door—’
He looked down at the frozen turkey in his red, numbed hand; and his lips twitched pathetically.
‘His lordship promised me a turkey and his lordship said I shouldn’t have—’
Joe Runner was a quick thinker. ‘Jump up in the truck,’ he commanded roughly. ‘Where do you live?’
‘About three miles from here,’ began Mr Timmins.
Joe leaned over, and pulled him up, parcel, bag and turkey.
‘Get through into the back, and keep quiet.’
He leapt down, cranked up the engine with some difficulty, and sent the little trolley lumbering on to the main road. When he passed three officers in a police car speeding towards Carfane Hall his heart was in his mouth, but he was not challenged. Presently, at the urgent desire of the old man, he stopped at the end of a row of cottages.
‘Gawd bless you, mister!’ whimpered Mr Timmins. ‘I’ll never do a thing like this again.’
‘Hi!’ said Joe sternly. ‘What do I get out of this?’
And then, as the recollection of a debt came to him:
‘Leave the turkey—and hop!’
Mr Timmins hopped.
It was nine o’clock on Christmas morning, and Angela Willett had just finished her packing.
Outside the skies were dark and cheerless, snow and rain were falling together, so that this tiny furnished room had almost a palatial atmosphere in comparison with the drear world outside.
‘I suppose it’s too early to cook the sausages—by the way, our train leaves at ten tonight, so we needn’t invent ways of spending the evening—come in.’
It was Joe the Runner, rather wet but smiling. He carried under his arm something wrapped in an old newspaper.
‘Excuse
