Bones in London - Edgar Wallace [75]
It was a very simple explanation. Jackson Hyane was a very plausible man. Marguerite Whitland had heard something of her erratic cousin, but certainly nothing in his manner supported the more lurid descriptions of his habits. And Mr Jackson Hyane had begged her, in the name of their relationships, to take a trip to Aberdeen to examine title-deeds which, he explained, would enable her to join with him in an action of the recovery of valuable Whitland property which was in danger of going to the Crown, and she had consented.
The truth was, there had always been some talk in the family of these estate, though nobody knew better than Jackson Hyane how unsubstantial were the claims of the Whitlands to the title. But the Scottish estate had been docketed away in the pigeon-holes of his mind, and promised to be more useful than he had anticipated.
That afternoon he packed his bag at his flat, put his passport and railway tickets together in his inside pocket, and made his final preparations for departure.
An old crony of his called whilst he was drinking the cup of tea which the housekeeper of the flats had prepared, and took in the situation revealed by the packed suit-cases and the burnt papers in the hearth.
“Hello, Johnny!” he said. “You’re getting out, eh?”
Jackson nodded. There was no need to pretend anything with one of his own class.
“Couldn’t you square the bank?”
Jackson shook his head.
“No, Billy,” he said cheerfully, “I couldn’t square it. At this identical moment there are several eminent people in the West End of London who are making applications for warrants.”
“Dud cheques, eh?” asked the other thoughtfully. “Well, it had to come, Johnny. You’ve had a lot of bad luck.”
“Atrocious,” said Mr Jackson Hyane. “There’s plenty of money in Town, but it’s absolutely impossible to get at it. I haven’t touched a mug for two months, and I’ve backed more seconds than I care to think about. Still,” he mused, “there’s a chance.”
His friends nodded. In their circle there was always “a chance,” but he could not guess that that chance which the student of men, Mr Jackson Hyane, was banking upon answered indifferently to the name of Tibbetts or Bones.
At half-past eight that night he saw his cousin off from King’s Cross. He had engaged a sleeper for her, and acted the part of dutiful relative to the life, supplying her with masses of literature to while away the sleepless hours of the journey.
“I feel awfully uncomfortable about going away,” said the girl, in a troubled voice. “Mr Tibbetts would say that he could spare me even if he were up to his eyes in work. And I have an uncomfortable feeling at the back of my mind that there was something I should have told him – and didn’t.”
“Queer bird, Tibbetts!” said the other curiously. “They call him Bones, don’t they?”
“I never do,” said the girl quietly; “only his friends have that privilege. He is one of the best men I have ever met.”
“Sentimental, quixotic, and all that sort of thing, eh?” said Jackson, and the girl flushed.
“He has never been sentimental with me,” she said, but did not deceive the student of men.
When the train had left the station, he drove straightaway to Devonshire Street. Bones was in his study, reading, or pretending to read, and the last person he expected to see that evening was Mr Jackson Hyane. But the welcome he gave to that most unwelcome visitor betrayed neither his distrust nor his frank dislike of the young well-groomed man in evening-dress who offered him his hand with such a gesture of good fellowship.
“Sit down, Mr – er–” said Bones.
There was a cold, cold feeling at his heart, a sense of coming disaster, but Bones facing the real shocks and terrors of life was a different young man from the Bones who fussed and fumed over its trifles.
“I suppose you wonder why I have come to see you, Mr Tibbetts,” said Hyane, taking a cigarette from the silver box on the table. “I rather wonder why I have the nerve to see you myself. I’ve come on a very delicate matter.”