command but good old Algernon stood his ground quivering like a pointer.
'No, Janie. I can't allow these unpardonable insinuations against Lovejoy's character to go without demur.'
'Algernon,' Janie ground out, 'I think it's time you faced the facts. Lovejoy's an unprincipled, greedy, lustful, selfish -'
Algernon scraped up some more demur and faced her, pale to the gills but still full of heroism.
'You're very - ' he swallowed and finally made it - 'wrong, Janie.'
I gasped in horror and turned aside, doing my strongman-overcome. 'Algernon!' I exclaimed. 'Janie didn't mean -'
'The swine's acting, Algernon!' Janie cried. 'He's up to something. Can't you see?'
'If you only knew, Janie, what terrible events Lovejoy has been through,' Algernon continued icily. 'How absolutely courageous he was -'
'It was nothing,' I muttered, embarrassed.
'How calmly he explained to the police, despite a serious wound -'
'It's only a scratch,' I put in self-effacingly.
'- when he'd been in the very jaws of death!'
'Anyone would have done the same,' I whispered nobly.
'I want a minute alone with him,' Janie said angrily.
'I fully appreciate your… your relationship, Janie.' Algernon drew himself up for a last stand. 'Don't think I've failed to perceive your, well, your weakness where Lovejoy's concerned. I've turned a blind eye towards your… goings-on until now, perhaps even erroneously. But I must speak out.'
I listened, marvelling. How can somebody reach twenty-two and still talk like reading Bram Stoker? He darted a kindly glance at me. I hastily looked courageous.
'I'm going to search him,' Janie said sweetly. 'From balls to bootlaces.'
'I forbid it!' cried Bulldog Drummond.
'Then,' she said, smiling to show she wasn't smiling at all, 'I'm going to frogmarch him down to the Douglas police station and return the Roman things he's stolen.'
'He's not stolen a single item!' Algernon stood firmly between us, dauntless despite having lost his cutlass in the first wave of boarders swarming over his galleon. 'Your feelings are deforming your views. The very fact that your obsessive desire for Lovejoy is entirely physical -'
'Please,' I said, broken. 'I feel you are going too far.'
'Your fatal attraction continually upsets your judgement!' he cried.
Even Janie was speechless at that. I couldn't help thinking Algernon was making some real progress.
'Don't think, Janie,' he said with controlled calm, 'I'm entirely ignorant of your repeated surrenderings to… well, what can only be called… temptations of the flesh.'
'Excuse me, please,' I said quietly. 'I… I can't stay to hear this.'
'Stay here, Lovejoy!' Janie yelped.
The white-faced Algernon blocked her path as I trailed slowly and sadly to the door.
'It's time I remonstrated, Janie,' he was saying as I went, 'on Lovejoy's behalf as well as your own. Have you never thought of your husband? Have you never searched in your innermost heart to learn what value a woman must place upon her sense of loyalty…?'
Isn't education wonderful?
Outside I inspected the Lagonda's rear off tyre. You'd need a microscope to detect any change. It had taken me all bloody night. I scuffed the gravel in case there were telltale signs. Thank God, I offered up, for tubeless tyres. Hiding stuff in those old-fashioned inner tubes must have been almost impossible.
I stuck my ear near the door. They were still at it.
'I'm going to search every ounce of his stuff before we move an inch!'
'And I absolutely forbid -'
I looked again at the Lagonda. Anybody driving would have to take it slowly towards the main Liverpool ferry road. Especially on the bends, though the Romans were wedged thick and tight in layer after layer of unwaxed toffee paper and would be safe.
I'd left a lot of coins in the stream before climbing to the main road and phoning the police. Well, a dozen. I'd carried the main mass wrapped in my coat and stuffed it in an overgrown niche a hundred yards downstream for later. People have to learn they can't always have everything. I've had to. I would give several to the Castle's museum.
Popplewell would have kittens. I'd insist they were exhibited with gold-lettered name cards, one blue, one green. They'd say: 'These Roman treasures discovered in the Roman Province of the Isle of Man.' I'd make sure the donors' names got pride of place, too: 'Donated by Messrs Dandy Jack, B. Manton and B. Wilkinson.'
And if he asked I'd tell him B for budgie.
'He's a selfish - ' Good old Janie, sticking at it.
Women can really get you down if you let them. What disappoints me most is how suspicious they are for no obvious reason. Even when you're being perfectly open they can't stop imagining what you might be up to. No trust in people. I'm glad I'm not like that.
