Their eyes met in a hostile glare. The flush on the little man"s face deepened.
"Are you trying to get fresh with me?" he demanded dangerously.
"Yes," said Ashe.
The answer seemed to disconcert his adversary. He was silent for a moment.
"Well," he said at last, "maybe it"s all for the best. If you weren"t full of gall probably you wouldn"t have come here at all; and whoever takes on this job of mine has got to have gall if he has nothing else. I think we shall suit each other."
"What is the job?"
The little man"s face showed doubt and perplexity.
"It"s awkward. If I"m to make the thing clear to you I"ve got to trust you. And I don"t know a thing about you. I wish I had thought of that before I inserted the advertis.e.m.e.nt."
Ashe appreciated the difficulty.
"Couldn"t you make an A--B case out of it?"
"Maybe I could if I knew what an A--B case was."
"Call the people mixed up in it A and B."
"And forget, halfway through, who was which! No; I guess I"ll have to trust you."
"I"ll play square."
The little man fastened his eyes on Ashe"s in a piercing stare.
Ashe met them smilingly. His spirits, always fairly cheerful, had risen high by now. There was something about the little man, in spite of his brusqueness and ill temper, which made him feel flippant.
"Pure white!" said Ashe.
"Eh?"
"My soul! And this"--he thumped the left section of his waistcoat--"solid gold. You may fire when ready, Gridley.
Proceed, professor."
"I don"t know where to begin."
"Without presuming to dictate, why not at the beginning?"
"It"s all so darned complicated that I don"t rightly know which is the beginning. Well, see here ... I collect scarabs. I"m crazy about scarabs. Ever since I quit business, you might say that I have practically lived for scarabs."
"Though it sounds like an unkind thing to say of anyone," said Ashe. "Incidentally, what are scarabs?" He held up his hand.
"Wait! It all comes back to me. Expensive cla.s.sical education, now bearing belated fruit. Scarabaeus--Latin; noun, nominative--a beetle. Scarabaee--vocative--O you beetle! Scarabaeum-- accusative--the beetle. Scarabaei--of the beetle. Scarabaeo--to or for the beetle. I remember now. Egypt--Rameses--pyramids-- sacred scarabs! Right!"
"Well, I guess I"ve gotten together the best collection of scarabs outside the British Museum, and some of them are worth what you like to me. I don"t reckon money when it comes to a question of my scarabs. Do you understand?"
"Sure, Mike!"
Displeasure clouded the little man"s face.
"My name is not Mike."
"I used the word figuratively, as it were."
"Well, don"t do it again. My name is J. Preston Peters, and Mr.
Peters will do as well as anything else when you want to attract my attention."
"Mine is Marson. You were saying, Mr. Peters--?"
"Well, it"s this way," said the little man.
Shakespeare and Pope have both emphasized the tediousness of a twice-told tale; the Episode Of the Stolen Scarab need not be repeated at this point, though it must be admitted that Mr.
Peters" version of it differed considerably from the calm, dispa.s.sionate description the author, in his capacity of official historian, has given earlier in the story.
In Mr. Peters" version the Earl of Emsworth appeared as a smooth and purposeful robber, a sort of elderly Raffles, worming his way into the homes of the innocent, and only sparing that portion of their property which was too heavy for him to carry away. Mr.
Peters, indeed, specifically described the Earl of Emsworth as an oily old second-story man.
It took Ashe some little time to get a thorough grasp of the tangled situation; but he did it at last.
Only one point perplexed him.
"You want to hire somebody to go to this castle and get this scarab back for you. I follow that. But why must he go as your valet?"
"That"s simple enough. You don"t think I"m asking him to buy a black mask and break in, do you? I"m making it as easy for him as possible. I can"t take a secretary down to the castle, for everybody knows that, now I"ve retired, I haven"t got a secretary; and if I engaged a new one and he was caught trying to steal my scarab from the earl"s collection, it would look suspicious. But a valet is different. Anyone can get fooled by a crook valet with bogus references."
"I see. There"s just one other point: Suppose your accomplice does get caught--what then?"
"That," said Mr. Peters, "is the catch; and it"s just because of that I am offering good pay to my man. We"ll suppose, for the sake of argument, that you accept the contract and get caught.
Well, if that happens you"ve got to look after yourself. I couldn"t say a word. If I did it would all come out, and so far as the breaking off of my daughter"s engagement to young Threepwood is concerned, it would be just as bad as though I had tried to get the thing back myself.
"You"ve got to bear that in mind. You"ve got to remember it if you forget everything else. I don"t appear in this business in any way whatsoever. If you get caught you take what"s coming to you without a word. You can"t turn round and say: "I am innocent.
Mr. Peters will explain all"--because Mr. Peters certainly won"t.
Mr. Peters won"t utter a syllable of protest if they want to hang you.
"No; if you go into this, young man, you go into it with your eyes open. You go into it with a full understanding of the risks--because you think the reward, if you are successful, makes the taking of those risks worth while. You and I know that what you are doing isn"t really stealing; it"s simply a tactful way of getting back my own property. But the judge and jury will have different views."
"I am beginning to understand," said Ashe thoughtfully, "why you called the job delicate and dangerous."
Certainly it had been no overstatement. As a writer of detective stories for the British office boy, he had imagined in his time many undertakings that might be so described, but few to which the description was more admirably suited.
"It is," said Mr. Peters; "and that is why I"m offering good pay.
Whoever carries this job through gets one thousand pounds."
Ashe started.
"One thousand pounds--five thousand dollars!"