Bones in London - Edgar Wallace [72]
The position was as follows: The “Mary Louisa” was on the down line. Two coaches were between the down and the up line, and the guard’s van was exactly on the up line, when the “Mary Louisa” refused to work any further.
Neither the experienced engine-driver, nor Bones, nor the stoker of the special, nor Mr Chenney, nor the ancient guard, could coax the “Mary Louisa” to move another yard. The Lynhaven express stretched across both lines and made all further progress for traffic impossible.
Three hours later a breakdown gang arrived and towed the “Mary Louisa” and her appendages back to Bayham Junction.
Bones and the girl went back to London by the last train, and Bones was very thoughtful and silent.
But Bones was ever an optimist. The next morning he saw on a newspaper placard: “Birthday Honours. Twenty-two New Knights.” And he actually stopped his car, bought a paper, and searched the lists for his name. It was not there.
A STUDENT OF MEN
Mr Jackson Hyane was one of those oldish-looking young men to whom the description of “man about town” most naturally applied. He was always well-dressed and correctly dressed. You saw him at first nights. He was to be seen in the paddock at Ascot – it was a shock to discover that he had not the Royal Enclosure badge on the lapel of his coat – and he was to be met with at most of the social functions, attendance at which did not necessarily imply an intimate acquaintance with the leaders of Society, yet left the impression that the attendant was, at any rate, in the swim, and might very well be one of the principal swimmers.
He lived off Albemarle Street in a tiny flat, and did no work of any kind whatever. His friends, especially his new friends, thought he “had a little money,” and knew, since he told them, that he had expectations. He did not tell them that his expectations were largely bound up in their credulity and faith in his integrity. Some of them discovered that later, but the majority drifted out of his circle poorer without being wiser, for Mr Hyane played a wonderful game of piquet, and seemed to be no more than abnormally lucky.
His mother had been a Miss Whitland, his father was the notorious Colonel Hyane, who boasted that his library was papered with High Court writs, and who had had the distinction of being escorted from Monte Carlo by the police of the Principality.
Mr Jackson Hyane was a student of men and affairs. Very little escaped his keen observation, and he had a trick of pigeon-holing possibilities of profit, and forgetting them until the moment seemed ripe for their exploitation. He was tall and handsome, with a smile which was worth at least five thousand pounds a year to him, for it advertised his boyish innocence and enthusiasm – he who had never been either a boy or enthusiastic.
One grey October day he put away his pass-book into a drawer and locked it, and took from a mental pigeon-hole the materials of an immature scheme. He dressed himself soberly and well, strolled down into Piccadilly, and calling a cab, drove to the block of City buildings which housed the flourishing business of Tibbetts and Hamilton, Limited.
The preliminaries to this invasion had been very carefully settled. He had met Miss Marguerite Whitland by “accident” a week before, had called at her lodgings with an old photograph of her father, which he had providentially discovered, and had secured from her a somewhat reluctant acceptance of an invitation to lunch.
Bones looked up from his desk as the debonair young man strolled in.
“You don’t know me, Mr Tibbetts,” said Jackson Hyane, flashing his famous smile. “My name is Hyane.”
It was his first meeting with Bones, but by no means the first time that Jackson had seen him.
“My dear old Hyane, sit down,” said Bones cheerfully. “What can we do for you?”
Mr Hyane laughed.
“There’s nothing you can do for me, except