"Ah, blow your half-crown," said the other in lordly callousness. "Sh! Keep quiet, and keep away from that door! Steady. Your half-crown's safe enough. That came out of the change I gave him. But listen: here's what I think. All four of those notes were counterfeit, and they were pretty nearly perfect counterfeits. I'll just bet you there's only one man in England who could have made 'em. I wasn't altogether satisfied with this `Blake' and his `secretary' when they came in here; that's why I made 'em pay in advance. And I'll bet you, my lad, that we've caught two members of the Willoughby gang."
Evelyn faintly gurgled in the dark. The night-porter, in a series of grunts, appeared to be registering a question or a protest. I do not know what sound your heart may be presumed to make when it goes into your boots, as mine did then; but we were very mixed and onomatopoetic together.
"Don't you read the newspapers?" demanded the clerk. "Shh! SHH! Quiet. It's been all over the front page of the Post and the World for the last fortnight. Willoughby was the American forger — best of his kind in the world. Super-engraver. They knew he was over here, and they knew he had a plant for manufacturing the stuff somewhere in the West Country
"Ah," agreed the porter, "but —‘
"I know. They caught Willoughby last week and found his plant near Torquay. Willoughby started shooting, and barricaded himself in; they had to shoot to get him, and they got him through the head. There was eight or ten thousand pounds' worth of counterfeit stuff in his plant. The inquest is next week-"
I could have bowed in the dark. For now we might perceive, unrolled in beautiful simplicity, the whole story of the cross-tangle as it concerned the money and as it concerned Joseph Serpos and as it concerned the elusive Willoughby case. When I had been arrested at Moreton Abbott in mistake for Serpos, and the sergeant had talked on the 'phone to Torquay, it now became clear why the sergeant had been so hilariously amused. "And he probably thought he was doing well, I suppose, the poor fool!" Also I recalled Charters's words to me on the phone, when he had explained how Serpos had robbed his safe without knowing that the contents of the safe were exhibits in the Willoughby case. "He wasn't here at the time we caught Willoughby. The fool!" In other words, Mr. Joseph Serpos had made plans as elaborate as a master-criminal's in order to pinch a sackful of counterfeit money.
However, it explained Serpos's unusual conduct when he was caught. It explained why be had first broken down almost in tears; and why, when his wits pulled together, he said with bogus humility that he wished to go back and take his medicine: the whole Uriah-Heepish behaviour with the shrewd look behind it. For he realized what he had done. He also realized that no very steep charge would be pressed against him. And yet… and yet…
And yet, 1 realized, this was no help to us in our situation. The clerk was speaking again.
"There were two or three others in that Willoughby gang," he persisted. "And I tell you I know that's who they are. I've got a gun. It's that one that's been downstairs in the drawer. It hasn't been fired in years, but it's loaded, and-"
I hurried Evelyn away from the door, over towards the dim line of windows. We had to go. carefully in the dark, and by miscalculation I almost knocked over the little table bearing the bottle and glass. I spoke against Evelyn's ear.
"Did you lock the door out into the hall?"
"Yes. I thought of that."
"Then we can beat them back to the room. If they catch us here it's good-bye, and it'll have to be the ledge again. Do you feel up to it?" '
"Yes."
She was half-way through the window, going steadily, when she turned round again. "Ken, I forgot. The door of your room is locked. But mine isn't. If they don't get any answer from your room, they'll go to mine. And there's a communicating door between."
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Quiet Hotel
We beat them by a short head; but we beat them. When the clerk threw open the communicating door, we were standing in my room by the mantelpiece, and I was lighting cigarettes for Evelyn and myself. The trouble was that it is devilish difficult to assume an air of outraged dignity when you're grimy, dishevelled, and when the lady had no shoes on. There had not even been time for that.
That fellow had charged at the door, evidently convinced that we had done a bunk. I had heard him hammering vainly at my door while we shuffled along the ledge. Now he entered by the open way, and stopped dead.
Before I had not noticed him: he had been only a professional Voice masked under a dim light in the glass fort downstairs. Now he emerged as an energetic young man with flat fair hair, a rather high colour, serious eyes under sandy brows, and a heavy jaw. His clothes were good, and rather worn. He had one hand in the pocket of his jacket: it was gripped round something which made a suggestive bulge there. After throwing open the door, he stopped dead — and I could see in his expression the sort of position in which he thought he had found us. You could almost hear the word: "Misconduct, eh?" Yet this sort of thing usually startles the person who walks in more than the person who is walked in upon. He was definitely flustered.
"Good evening," I said politely. "Well?"
His suspicions, it was clear, were struggling with his professional bearing. The question was whether he would go back into his chrysalis or emerge from it. His tone showed a mixture of the two.
"I — came in," he said. "You didn't answer my knock."
"No," I agreed. "Well?"
There was a pause. Then, after a glance at the night-porter behind, he got it out.
"I'm sorry if there's been a mistake," he said; "but do you usually pay your bills with counterfeit money?"
His higher colour, at that remark, seemed to say, "Rather neat way of putting it." I thought I detected in this young man a keen student of the films. If so, it was all the worse. His eyes had a shiny look, and he breathed rather fast: undoubtedly he was prepared for trouble.
"Counterfeit money? What the devil do you mean, counterfeit money?"
"I repeat, sorry if there's a mistake. You gave me four ten-shilling notes. All of them are bad."
Evelyn and I looked at each other, as though at a private revelation which had just startled us.
"I wonder!" said Evelyn, acting at the very top of her form. "Could it be… that car you sold"
"And," I said, "he paid me in bundles of notes. New notes"
We did not offer to explain to him; we threw sentences at each other as though we were solving a problem of our own, growing more and more excited over it without the matter being of the least concern to anyone else. Then Evelyn, with a look well below freezing, broke off and gave him a glance. You could see that it had shaken his reassurance.
"Both of us seem to have made a mistake," she told him. "However, please don't let it worry you. There is plenty of perfectly good money in my handbag in the other room."
Now he was looking at our grimy state, and his eye wandered across to the window. Then he made his decision. He volplaned down into honest speech, and I liked him for it.
"Look here," he said, "if I'm making a ruddy fool of myself, I'll find it out fast enough. But I think you're a couple of crooks, and I think you've been up to something here tonight. Got any objection to being searched?"
"Yes."
Nodding and bracing himself, he took the revolver out of his pocket. Again his film-training came to his assistance. "Get 'em up," he said.
"Nonsense," cried Evelyn.
"Get 'em up," he said, and meant it. At the back of his bead he was probably enjoying this, despite his uneasiness. It was just possible that he might cut loose with a harmless shot or two to show his mastery of the situation; and the moment that people begin firing harmless shots is the moment that somebody gets hit. Up went our hands, a queer situation for a sedate English hotel-room with a picture of "Deer Drinking by Moonlight" on the wall. Then he beckoned to the night-porter.