Gerald wildly wondered what magic and how much had been needed to give history and a past to these two things of yesterday, the rich Jimmy and the Ugly-Wugly. If he could get them away would all memory of them fade in this boy"s mind, for instance, in the minds of all the people who did business with them in the City? Would the mahogany-and-clerk-furnished offices fade away?
Were the clerks real? Was the mahogany? Was he himself real?
Was the boy?
"Can you keep a secret?" he asked the other boy. "Are you on for a lark?"
"I ought to be getting back to the office," said the boy.
"Get then!" said Gerald.
"Don"t you get stuffy," said the boy. "I was just a-going to say it didn"t matter. I know how to make my nose bleed if I"m a bit late."
Gerald congratulated him on this accomplishment, at once so useful and so graceful, and then said: "Look here. I"ll give you five bob honest."
"What for?" was the boy"s natural question.
"If you"ll help me. "
"Fire ahead."
"I"m a private inquiry," said Gerald.
"Tec? You don"t look it."
"What"s the good of being one if you look it?" Gerald asked impatiently, beginning on another bun. "That old chap on the floor above he"s wanted."
"Police?" asked the boy with fine carelessness.
"No sorrowing relations."
""Return to,"" said the boy; ""all forgotten and forgiven." I see."
"And I"ve got to get him to them, somehow. Now, if you could go in and give him a message from someone who wanted to meet him on business ,"
"Hold on!" said the boy. "I know a trick worth two of that. You go in and see old Ugli. He"d give his ears to have the old boy out of the way for a day or two. They were saying so in our office only this morning."
"Let me think," said Gerald, laying down the last bun on his knee expressly to hold his head in his hands.
"Don"t you forget to think about my five bob," said the boy.
Then there was a silence on the stairs, broken only by the cough of a clerk in That"s office, and the clickety-clack of a typewriter in the office of Mr. U. W. Ugli.
Then Gerald rose up and finished the bun.
"You"re right," he said. "I"ll chance it. Here"s your five bob."
He brushed the bun crumbs from his front, cleared his throat, and knocked at the door of Mr. U. W. Ugli. It opened and he entered.
The door-mat boy lingered, secure in his power to account for his long absence by means of his well-trained nose, and his waiting was rewarded. He went down a few steps, round the bend of the stairs, and heard the voice of Mr. U. W. Ugli, so well known on that staircase (and on the Stock Exchange) say in soft, cautious accents:
"Then I"ll ask him to let me look at the ring and I"ll drop it. You pick it up. But remember, it"s a pure accident, and you don"t know me. I can"t have my name mixed up in a thing like this. You"re sure he"s really unhinged?"
"Quite," said Gerald; "he"s quite mad about that ring. He"ll follow it anywhere. I know he will. And think of his sorrowing relations."
"I do I do," said Mr. Ugli kindly; "that"s all I do think of, of course."
He went up the stairs to the other office, and Gerald heard the voice of That telling his clerks that he was going out to lunch.
Then the horrible Ugly-Wugly and Jimmy, hardly less horrible in the eyes of Gerald, pa.s.sed down the stairs where, in the dusk of the lower landing, two boys were making themselves as undistinguishable as possible, and so out into the street, talking of stocks and shares, bears and bulls. The two boys followed.
"I say," the door-mat-headed boy whispered admiringly, "whatever are you up to?"
"You"ll see," said Gerald recklessly. "Come on!"
"You tell me. I must be getting back."
"Well, I"ll tell you, but you won"t believe me. That old gentleman"s not really old at all he"s my young brother suddenly turned into what you see. The other"s not real at all. He"s only just old clothes and nothing inside."
"He looks it, I must say," the boy admitted; "but I say you do stick it on, don"t you?"
"Well, my brother was turned like that by a magic ring."
"There ain"t no such thing as magic," said the boy. "I learnt that at school."
"All right," said Gerald. "Good-bye."
"Oh, go ahead!" said the boy; "you do stick it on, though."
"Well, that magic ring. If I can get hold of It I shall just wish we were all in a certain place. And we shall be. And then I can deal with both of them."
"Deal?"
"Yes, the ring won"t unwish anything you"ve wished. That undoes itself with time, like a spring uncoiling. But it"ll give you a brand-new wish I"m almost certain of it. Anyhow, I"m going to chance it."
"You are a rotter, aren"t you?" said the boy respectfully.
"You wait and see," Gerald repeated.
"I say, you aren"t going into this swell place! You can"t?"
The boy paused, appalled at the majesty of Pym"s.
"Yes, I am they can"t turn us out as long as we behave. You come along, too. I"ll stand lunch."
I don"t know why Gerald clung so to this boy. He wasn"t a very nice boy. Perhaps it was because he was the only person Gerald knew in London to speak to except That-which-had-been-Jimmy and the Ugly-Wugly; and he did not want to talk to either of them.
What happened next happened so quickly that, as Gerald said later, it was "just like magic". The restaurant was crowded busy men were hastily bolting the food hurriedly brought by busy waitresses.
There was a clink of forks and plates, the gurgle of beer from bottles, the hum of talk, and the smell of many good things to eat.
"Two chops, please," Gerald had just said, playing with a plainly shown handful of money, so as to leave no doubt of his honourable intentions. Then at the next table he heard the words, "Ah, yes, curious old family heirloom," the ring was drawn off the finger of That, and Mr. U. W. Ugli, murmuring something about a unique curio, reached his impossible hand out for it. The door-mat-headed boy was watching breathlessly.