Part 36 (2/2)

”And tell him that Major Barstowe says he's a liar.”

”Yes.”

”That's all.”

”That's easy enough,” said Smithers.

”I'll stand by the wall here, and if any of the girls look over, as they probably will, for I'm going to whistle to them, I'll make them come over and toss for sovereigns.”

”That would be a lark,” said the unfortunate.

”Bother,” said Jones, ”I've forgot.”

”What?”

”All my sovereigns are upstairs in the bag--I know--lend me yours whilst I'm waiting.”

”I--I never lend sovereigns,” said Smithers.

”Why, I'm going to _give_ you fifty--and I only ask you to lend me five for a moment in case those girls--”

Smithers put his hand in his pocket and produced the coins; they were in a little chamois leather bag. ”Don't open the bag,” said he, ”just shake it and they'll know there are sovereigns in it by the noise.”

”Right,” said Jones. ”Now go and tell Colonel Hawker that Major Barstowe says he's a liar.”

Smithers went off, b.u.t.terfly net in hand.

Jones was under no delusion. He reckoned that the garden was always under surveillance, and that a man getting over a wall would have little chance of reaching the street, unless he managed to distract the attention of watchers. He thought it probable that his conversation with Smithers had been watched, and possibly the handing over of some article noted.

There was a seat just here, close to the wall. He sat down on it, pulled his cap over his eyes, and stretched out his legs. Then under the peak of the cap, he watched Smithers approaching Colonel Hawker, interrupt him just as he was on the point of making a stroke, and lead him aside.

The effect on the colonel's mind of the interruption to his stroke, followed by the sudden information that his veracity had been impeached, was miraculous and sudden as the slap on the side of the face that sent the b.u.t.terfly hunter flying. The attack on Barstowe, who seemed to fight well, the cries, the shouts, the imprecations, the fact that half a dozen people, inmates and attendants, joined in the confusion as if by magic, all this was nothing to Jones, nor was the subsidiary fact that one of the inmates, a quiet mannered clergyman, with a taste for arson, had taken advantage of the confusion and was patiently and sedulously at work, firing the thatch of the summer house in six different places, with a long concealed box of matches.

Jones, on the stroke of the Colonel, had risen from the seat, and with the aid of a wall-trained plum tree, had reached the top of the wall and dropped on the other side into a bed of mignonette. It was a hockey day at the school, and there were no girls in the garden. He ran across it to the open front gate and reached the road, ran down the road, which was deserted, and burning in the late afternoon suns.h.i.+ne, reached a side road and slackened his pace. All the roads were of the same pattern, broad, respectable, and lined with detached and semi-detached houses set in gardens, and labelled according to the owner's fancy. Old Anglo-Indian colonels and majors lived here, and one knew their houses by such names as ”Lucknow,” ”Cawnpore,” etc., just as one knows azaleas by their blossoms. Jones, like an animal making for cover, pushed on till he reached a street of shops. A long, long street, running north and south with the shop fronts on the eastern side, sun-blinded and sunlit. A peep of blue and perfect sea shewed at the end of the street, and on the sea the white sail of a boat. Sandbourne-on-Sea is a pleasant place to stay at, but Jones did not want to stay there.

His mind was working feverishly. There was sure to be a railway station somewhere, and, as surely, the railway station would be the first place they would hunt for him.

London was his objective. London and the National Provincial Bank, but of the direction or the distance to be travelled, he knew no more than the man in the moon.

CHAPTER XXIV

HE RUNS TO EARTH

As the fox seeks an earth, he was seeking for a hole to hide in. Across the road a narrow house, set between a fishmonger's shop and a sea-side library, displayed in one of its lower windows a card with the word ”Apartments.” Jones crossed the road to this house and knocked at the hall door. He waited a minute and a half, ninety seconds, and every second a framed vision of Hoover in pursuit, Hoover and his a.s.sistants streaming like hounds on a hot scent. Then he found a decrepit bell and pulled it.

Almost on the pull the door opened, disclosing a bustless, sharp-eyed and cheerful-looking little woman of fifty or so, wearing a cameo brooch and cornelian rings. She wore other things but you did not notice them.

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