Bones in London - Edgar Wallace [78]
At midnight Bones was sitting on the platform at King’s Cross, alternately smoking a large pipe and singing tuneless songs. They told him that the next train from York would not arrive until three in the morning.
“That doesn’t worry me, old thing. I’ll wait all night.”
“Expecting somebody, sir?” asked the inquisitive porter.
“Everybody, my dear old uniformed official,” said Bones, “everybody!”
BONES HITS BACK
It may be said of Bones that he was in the City, but not of it. Never once had he been invited by the great and awe-inspiring men who dominate the finance of the City to participate in any of those adventurous undertakings which produce for the adventurers the fabulous profits about which so much has been written. There were times when Bones even doubted whether the City knew he was in it.
He never realized his own insignificance so poignantly as when he strolled through the City streets at their busiest hour, and was unrecognized even by the bareheaded clerks who dashed madly in all directions, carrying papers of tremendous importance.
The indifference of the City to Mr Tibbetts and his partner was more apparent than real. It is true that the great men who sit around the green baize cloth at the Bank of England and arrange the bank rate knew not Bones nor his work. It is equally true that the very important personages who occupy suites of rooms in Lombard Street had little or no idea of his existence. But there were men, and rich and famous men at that, who had inscribed the name of Bones in indelible ink on the tablets of their memory.
The Pole Brothers were shipbrokers, and had little in common, in their daily transactions, with Mr Harold de Vinne, who specialized in industrial stocks, and knew little more about ships than could be learnt in an annual holiday trip to Madeira. Practically there was no bridge to connect their intellects. Sentimentally, life held a common cause, which they discovered one day, when Mr Fred Pole met Mr Harold de Vinne at lunch to discuss a matter belonging neither to the realms of industrialism nor the mercantile marine, being, in fact, the question of Mr de Vinne leasing or renting Mr Pole’s handsome riverside property at Maidenhead for the term of six months.
They might not have met even under these circumstances, but for the fact that some dispute arose as to who was to pay the gardener. That matter had been amicably settled, and the two had reached the coffee stage of their luncheon, when Mr de Vinne mentioned the inadvisability – as a rule – of discussing business matters at lunch, and cited a deplorable happening when an interested eaves-dropper had overheard certain important negotiations and had most unscrupulously taken advantage of his discovery.
“One of these days,” said Mr de Vinne between his teeth, “I’ll be even with that gentleman.” (He did not call him a gentleman.) “I’ll give him Tibbetts! He’ll be sorry he was ever born.”
“Tibbetts?” said Mr Fred Pole, sitting bolt upright. “Not Bones?”
The other nodded and seemed surprised.
“You don’t know the dear fellow, do you?” he asked, only he did not use the expression “dear fellow.”
“Know him?” said Mr Fred, taking a long breath. “I should jolly well say I did know him. And my brother Joe knows him. That fellow–”
“That fellow–” began Mr de Vinne, and for several minutes they talked together in terms which were uncomplimentary to Augustus Tibbetts.
It appeared, though they did not put the matter so crudely, that they had both been engaged in schemes for robbing Bones, and that in the pursuance of their laudable plans they had found themselves robbed by Bones.
Mr de Vinne ordered another coffee and prepared to make an afternoon of it. They discussed Bones from several aspects and in various lights, none of which revealed his moral complexion at its best.
“And believe me,” said Mr de Vinne at the conclusion of his address for the prosecution, “there’s money to be made out of that fellow. Why, I believe he has three hundred thousand pounds.”
“Three