“Of course there is another way,” murmured Daphne thoughtfully, “but the question is, will you agree to it?”
The four men exchanged glances.
“It’s one of Peter Pan’s very choicest, right off the ice!” smiled Sylvester. “Now I’ll lay any one a quid-”
“Oh, Allan-” laughing and blushing- “don’t be a beast! All right, I’ll tell you then. You can laugh at me afterwards.”
But there was little laughter in their faces as she talked.
When she had finished, Lord Trevitter threw back his head and laughed like a schoolboy.
“Daphne, you’re a marvel!” he exclaimed. “my dear, how do you think of these things?”
“Is it good, Jim?”
“Good?” echoed Everest. “It’s glorious, magnificent! Of course, he may not fall for it, but if he’s guilty I believe he will. If, on the other hand, he’s innocent, well – we’re no worse off than we were before.”
“I’m in this, mind!” exclaimed Williamson.
“We’re all in it, the four of us!” answered Lord Trevitter, with his boyish laugh. “Another success for the Adjusters!”
“Oh, I’m so glad you like my ideal” exclaimed the girl. “Let’s thrash it out!”
Richard Henry Gorleston was entirely pleased with himself. As he sat in a West End restaurant eating his dinner he smiled complacently to himself. Twenty-five thousand pounds for nothing, he told himself, was the finest day’s work he had ever done. His solicitors, furthermore, had hinted to him that the bank, rather than court publicity, would settle with him. He signed to his waiter and ordered himself another bottle of champagne and a Corona.
“Have you any objection to my sitting here?”
A suave, smiling, elderly gentleman with white hair and gold-rimmed pince-nez was standing at the table, hesitating, but Gorleston answered his smile cheerfully.
“Not a bit in the world. Crowded here tonight.”
“Somewhat. I don’t know my London well. I’m from the country – North Wales. My annual trip to London. I come up once a year, I see all the sights. And-” with a smile “-I have a little opportunity to indulge my pet hobby – billiards.”
Gorleston was interested in a moment.
“Funny that,” he said. “It’s a particular hobby of mine.” And they were hard at it in a moment. Finally, when the stranger, who volunteered his name as Professor Lucas, called for his bill, Gorleston ventured to suggest that he and his new friend should adjourn for a game.
They played several games. The professor was charmed with his new acquaintance and pressed him to dine with him the following evening. Gorleston accepted with alacrity.
The following evening they met again, but soon after the meal had started the professor was claimed by three friends of his. He expressed extraordinary surprise at seeing them, introduced them to Gorleston, and insisted on their dining with him. It was a merry dinner, and a considerable amount of wine was consumed. Later on the quintet adjourned – this time it was to a pet place of the professor’s. They had a private room there, and Gorleston trounced the professor soundly. Then, in boisterous mood, he took on his three friends and administered severe hidings to each of them. So pleased was he that he sent for two magnums of champagne and after trying ineffectually to play with the rest, which he had previously chalked, he subsided gracefully onto the couch. Eventually Gorleston, hopelessly drunk, was assisted into a taxi. The professor gave the driver the address of 124, Unwin Street, Bloomsbury.
Inside the taxi the behaviour of the four men was a little strange, for they proceeded to extract a good many things from the drunken man’s pockets. They also carefully placed a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles on his face.
“Capital!” murmured the professor as he gazed at the unconscious man. “John Elwes, surely?”
“We’ll hope so,” replied one of the others. “We’ll knock up his landlady and if she greets him as such we’re home.”
“When will he wake up?”
“About eleven tomorrow,” replied the other. “I got that drug from the natives on the West Coast, and I know it backwards. Still, we’ll be on the safe side and turn up at ten o’clock tomorrow.”
One hour later the landlady, profuse in her thanks for bringing Mr. Elwes home, showed the four men out of 124, Unwin Street. In a quiet street they proceeded to remove beards, moustaches and wigs – the professor becoming Allan Sylvester and his three companions – Martin Everest, Sir Hugh Williamson and Lord Trevitter!
“It was a brain-wave of Daphne’s!” chuckled Everest as he lit a cigarette. “We know he’s Gorleston, he knows he’s Gorleston, but his landlady and Adwinter are prepared to swear he’s John Elwes. Besides, he’s in Elwes’s rooms in Elwes’s bed, all his clothes are marked with Elwes’s name, and even his cards are in the name of John Elwes. If I were on the bench,” thoughtfully, “I should have to come to the conclusion that he was Elwes.”
“Of course, the amusing thing to me,” said Williamson, “is that we’ve done it so carefully that even if he can prove he’s Gorleston, he’s in a worse mess. For that establishes definitely that he’s been runnin” a dual personality in order to defraud the bank.“
“Ali, but his attitude tomorrow morning will decide that. If he refuses to give in, we may be wrong. But he won’t. He’ll throw up the sponge. You see if he doesn’t.”
When Richard Henry Gorleston awoke the next morning he stared dazedly round the room. Then with a startled cry he leapt out of bed. But he stopped short, for at that moment the door opened and two men, complete strangers to him, came into the room, and locked the door.
“Well, John Elwes – the game’s up!”
“Wh – wh – what d’you mean? My name’s not John Elwes!
“Really! Then may I ask what you’re doing in John Elwes’s room, sleeping in John Elwes’s bed?” He took a quick step forward, picked up a coat which lay on a chair, glanced at it. “And how come you to be wearing John Elwes’s clothes?”
The other gasped.
“John Elwes’s – clothes?”
“See for yourself! Name in coat – name on the shirt – name on the collar – card-case here on the dressing-table-” he took it up and examined it, “-with John Elwes’s cards in it! If you’re not John Elwes perhaps you’ll not only tell us how you come to be in possession of all his things, but who you are and how you are here.”
For a space of seconds Gorleston glared at him like a rat caught in a trap.
“My name’s Gorleston,” he blurted out desperately. “Richard Henry Gorleston. How I got here I don’t know.”
The taller of the two men smiled pityingly.
“Come again, sonnie,” he answered. “We’re acting on behalf of the Universal Banking Corporation who are rather interested in getting hold of John Elwes for forging Gorleston’s signature to a twenty-five-thousand-pound check. Adwinter, of Queen Anne Street, will swear to you anywhere, and so will your landlady.”
Gorleston moistened his dry lips.
“It’s going to trouble you to prove I’m Elwes,” he said.
“It’s going to trouble you to prove you’re not,” laughed the other easily. “We’ve got your four pals of last night who swear that while you were drunk you let out the whole story.”