Bones in London - Edgar Wallace [59]
“Don’t trouble to get up,” said Hamilton. “It’s your motor licence. You needn’t be able to drive a car to get that.”
And then Bones dropped his attitude of insouciance and became a vociferous advertisement for the six-cylinder Carter-Crispley (“the big car that’s made like a clock”). He became double pages with illustrations and handbooks and electric signs. He spoke of Carter and of Crispley individually and collectively with enthusiasm, affection, and reverence.
“Oh!” said Hamilton, when he had finished. “It sounds good.”
“Sounds good!” scoffed Bones. “Dear old sceptical one, that car…”
And so forth.
All excesses being their own punishment, two days later Bones renewed an undesirable acquaintance. In the early days of Schemes, Ltd, Mr Augustus Tibbetts had purchased a small weekly newspaper called the Flame. Apart from the losses he incurred during its short career, the experience was made remarkable by the fact that he became acquainted with Mr Jelf, a young and immensely self-satisfied man in pince-nez, who habitually spoke uncharitably of bishops, and never referred to members of the Government without causing sensitive people to shudder.
The members of the Government retaliated by never speaking to Jelf at all, so there was probably some purely private feud between them.
Jelf disapproved of everything. He was twenty-four years of age, and he, too, had made the acquaintance of the Hindenburg Line. Naturally Bones thought of Jelf when he purchased the Flame.
From the first Bones had run the Flame with the object of exposing things. He exposed Germans, Swedes and Turks – which was safe. He exposed a furniture dealer who had made him pay twice for an article because a receipt was lost, and that cost money. He exposed the man who had been very rude to him in the city. He would have exposed James Jacobus Jelf, only that individual showed such eagerness to expose his own short-comings, at a guinea a column, that Bones had lost interest.
His stock of personal grievances being exhausted, he had gone in for the general line of exposure which embraced members of the aristocracy and the Stock Exchange.
If Bones did not like the man’s face, he exposed him. He had a column headed “What I want to know,” and signed “Senob,” in which such pertinent queries appeared as: “When will the naughty old Lord who owns a sky-blue motorcar, and wears pink spats, realize that his treatment of his tenants is a disgrace to his ancient lineage?”
This was one of James Jacobus Jelf’s contributed efforts. It happened on this particular occasion that there was only one Lord in England who owned a sky-blue car and blush-rose spats, and it cost Bones two hundred pounds to settle his lordship.
Soon after this, Bones disposed of the paper, and instructed Jelf not to call again unless he called in an ambulance – an instruction which afterwards filled him with apprehension, since he knew that JJJ would charge up the ambulance to the office.
Thus matters stood two days after his car had made its public appearance, and Bones sat confronting the busy pages of his garage bill.
On this day he had had his lunch brought into the office, and he was in a maze of calculation, when there came a knock at the door.
“Come in!” he yelled, and, as there was no answer, walked to the door and opened it.
A young man stood in the doorway – a young man very earnest and very mysterious – none other than James Jacobus Jelf.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” said Bones unfavourably “I thought it was somebody important.”
Jeff tiptoed into the room and closed the door securely behind him.
“Old man,” he said, in tones little above a whisper, “I’ve got a fortune for you.”
“Dear old libeller, leave it with the lift-man,” said Bones. “He has a wife and three children.”
Mr Jelf examined his watch.
“I’ve got to get away at three o’clock, old man,” he said.
“Don’t let me keep you, old writer,” said Bones with insolent indifference.
Jelf smiled.
“I’d rather not say where I’m going,” he volunteered. “It’s a scoop, and if it leaked out, there would be the devil to