“Damned strange procedure, all this is, I must say; but I’ve made stranger things work and I’ll make this work, too!” he grated, with an evil smile. “I live most of the time at Inklewold. You know the estate, of course. Drive it in an hour from here; O’Toole says he has a car. I never put a gate at the service entrance, thank fortune, so you’ll be able to coast in almost to the house.”
And now he started drumming on the table.
“My daughter, Aileen. Her... her personal jewels are worth half a million dollars!” he jerked out emotionally. “And they’re not in her safe-deposit box and haven’t been for a week. They’re hidden somewhere in the house. Not in her own suite, for I’ve had every corner of that combed over, and I’ve grilled her damned French maid, Annette, till she begged for mercy, too. Not in his room, either. That’s been searched. But, somewhere, he has them secreted!”
“I getcha,” Johnny Dolan said brightly. “An’ so, whoever this slug is, you wish us to hang him by the thumbs an’ stick lighted matches under his toenails, an everything like that, till he comes t’rough wit’ the stuff. Okay, chief! You could’a hunted a long time before findin’ any better two lads than us at—”
“Psst!” Mr. O’Toole interrupted. “It ain’t like that; it’s like this. It seems that Miss Aileen has fell greatly in love wit’ the head chuffer, a large, handsome lad named Miles Duncan, an’ Mr. Van Inkle has at last found out positive it is tonight they’re gonna elope, if possible, an’ so consequently you and me got—”
“Shut up!” Mr. Van Inkle barked, and now his little moustache was sticking out like the hairs on a cat, when you tie it to a hydrant and keep shoving a dog at it. “That is the situation. Here is how I mean to deal with it. I have kept Duncan, literally, in the house and made certain that he has sent out nothing. My daughter chooses to defy me. She has flatly refused to tell me anything about the matter since I... ah — um — questioned her last Sunday. I have stopped her allowance and tied up her personal funds; she has nothing whatever but the little fortune these jewels will bring, if they’re able to get them out of the house and sell them; and if they’re not able there’ll be no elopement!” Mr. Van Inkle hissed.
“I get it now, chief,” Johnny Dolan said, with a slight frown. “Only lissen. We stick a knife through this lob’s neck. Okay. Only are you sure you got the right spot picked to bury him, where the bulls—”
“Half past one! About half past one!” Mr. Van Inkle muttered, almost to himself. “From all I have pieced together, I’m positive they mean to start about half past one. Duncan’s room is at the top floor, rear. He’ll come down the main stairway to join her and when he does he’ll have those jewels on him and — here! Give me that filthy bill of fare.”
He snatched out a pencil and sketched rapidly.
“Look! Service drive here and here’s the smaller outside door to the cellar. I’ll unlock that myself. Cross to the stairs here and come out in the side corridor, here. Now! Along here to the back stairs and up to the main corridor on the second floor and here — right here — is a large closet. Odds and ends in there — some trunks full of books — I don’t know just what — plenty of room for you, anyway. Go in there and wait. Duncan will come down the stairs here and along here, to my daughter’s suite at the front. And when he does,” rattled out Mr. Van Inkle, “you’ll whisk out without a sound and garrote him! Choke him into insensibility; don’t let so much as one audible gasp get out of him. Go through him, get the jewels and disappear yourselves, like a pair of real ghosts. There will be no excitement; Duncan, I think, will never know quite what happened to him and there will be no elopement! I choose to deal with this matter, you see, in the slightly unusual way I find best!” Mr. Van Inkle concluded, comfortably, and it struck Johnny Dolan that this old guy must have quite a florist’s bill, the way he liked to chuck bouquets at himself.
He glanced at his watch and then turned up his collar, pulled down his hat and arose.
“The household is abed by eleven. I wish to get home before that. Be there by twelve. You’ll hide in the cellar when you’ve done your work and I’ll be down some time before dawn for the jewels. I will then give you the name of a man you may call upon tomorrow, who will hand you fifty thousand dollars in cash — because that is how I pay for a perfect job!... And if you should feel tempted to steal the jewels,” he smiled as he moved toward the door, “bear in mind that I’ll spend a million if necessary to catch you and send you up for life!”
It was quite wonderful, Johnny Dolan reflected as they rolled at last into the midnight blackness of the service drive, how a car like this one of Sniffy’s, which was built around 1700, could get this far. It was also quite wonderful thinking how this time tomorrow you would have twenty-five grand in your pants and — “Psst!” Mr. O’Toole said, slowing down, with two quick sniffs. “This is a very swell job I am lettin’ you in on — no risks, I mean, an’ I done all the preliminary work. So. how it looks to me, instead o’ splittin’ even we could say twenty grand for you an’ thirty for me, huh?”
“Hey, lissen!” Johnny Dolan began hotly — but just then the car bounced over a rock at the side and his head flew up and hit the hickory bow of the top, causing many stars to flash in front of his eyes. And it was very peculiar indeed, but it seemed that in some way this sock had started something spinning inside his dome! What he meant, here they would be hiding down this cellar for quite some time and—
“That is, supposin’ you would do all the real work in there, which of course you would not,” Mr. O’Toole pressed on ruthlessly. “So, since we will be workin’ together, the way I said, I will take thirty-five grand an’ you will take fifteen. Right?”
“Well — okay, Sniffy,” Johnny Dolan said mildly.
Mr. O’Toole shot a sidelong glance at him, sniffed three times and cleared his throat.
“Or better yet, seein’ that wit’out me you would not be gettin’ a thin dime, we will say I have thirty-seven-five an’ you take twelve-five, Dolan. Okay?”
It so happened that whatever had started spinning inside Johnny Dolan’s dome, it was now spinning faster and faster. On account of... well, look!
Sniffy O’Toole never packed no rod, on account of he was very nervous about such things since they put his brother in the hot seat, but Johnny Dolan packed a very fine rod which Moey the Mutt had given him because there were a couple of chambers which for some reason refused to shoot.
So, getting back to the cellar, here would be him and Sniffy and all them jewels, with probably several hours to wait, so it would be very simple to get behind Sniffy and knock him cold with the butt of the rod and then, supposing he could find bags or something to muffle the shots, to put a couple of slugs through Sniffy’s coco and hide him under the coal. Then, when Mr. Van Inkle came down, he could say Sniffy had gone on home and tomorrow morning he could collect the fifty grand from this party, and it would be at least several days before you could notice anything in the cellar and—
“Psst, Dolan!” Mr. O’Toole said sharply. “Okay, I ast you?”
“Huh? Oh, sure. Anything you say, pal,” Johnny Dolan replied.
“Okay, then!” Mr. O’Toole cried softly. “We will leave it like that — forty grand for me an’ ten for you, an’ you are certain’y gettin’ a wonderful break, sucker. An’ now we got that settled, from this point onwards, Dolan,” he chuckled softly, “we are, no kiddin’, the same as a couple o’ ghosts.”