There was a sudden silence that made him turn his head. Cora and Eva were looking at him They were no longer smiling. There was a look of suppressed rage and disappointment in Cora's eyes that startled him.
'Do you like them?' he asked, with a catch in his voice. Little Ernie moved forward. 'Wot's hup?'
'Nothing,' Cora said viciously. 'I might have known the fool was pulling my leg. What are you trying to do, George? Get even?'
George suddenly went cold.
'What do you mean?' he said, feeling the blood leave his face.
'What I say,' she said, pointing to the bundle on the bed. He pushed past her and turned the things over. At first he couldn't believe what he saw. He held up one garment and stared at it stupidly. It looked like a pair of black combinations, only it had a long tail. He dropped it as if it had bitten him and stared down at the rest of the stuff.
'It's a Mickey Mouse outfit,' Eva cried suddenly. 'My God! It's Mickey Mouse!'
Little Ernie started to laugh. Eva joined him Together they shrieked at George and Cora.
'Wot a card!' Little Ernie spluttered. 'In the middle of the night! Stone me! 'Ad our Cora properly. Oh dear, oh dear, this'll kill me!' He collapsed howling in an armchair
George turned away. He wanted to be sick. He wanted to die. He heard Cora say in a voice hoarse with frustrated rage, 'Get out! Do you hear! Get out, both of you!' And when Little Ernie and Eva, roaring with hysterical mirth, had stumbled out of the room, Cora turned on George. 'You rotten rat!' she said. 'Do you think that's funny? Do you think you can make a fool out of me?'
George wasn't listening He picked up a scrap of notepaper that he had just noticed lying on the bed. It seemed to be a letter written in small, neat handwriting:
He became aware that Cora was standing at his elbow, reading over his shoulder. He screwed up the note and turned away, crushed and dazed.
Cora suddenly burst out: 'So you weren't lying! You did it! And she made a fool out of you! God! What a sucker you are! What a damn, stupid, dim-witted fool!' And she suddenly went in peal after peal of jeering laughter. 'Go away, you chump,' she cried, throwing herself on the bed and rolling backwards and forwards, holding her sides. 'Oh, it's the funniest thing I've ever heard. You sucker! You big tough, stupid sucker!'
George opened the door and went slowly down the passage to his room.
18
The following night the first of three robberies took place at a garage on the Kingston Bypass. The police stated that the robberies were the work of one man, described by the three garage attendants as a big, powerful fellow with shoulders like an ox. They could give no better description than this, since the man had masked his face with a white handkerchief.
This fellow had walked into the Kingston garage just after midnight. He seemed to know exactly what he was doing. He threatened the attendant with a Luger revolver, and before the attendant could gather his startled wits together, the man had given him a crushing punch on the jaw. When the attendant recovered consciousness, he found the till had been rifled and nearly twenty pounds were missing.
The following night a similar crime was committed at a garage on the Watford Bypass. The big man again succeeded in getting away, this time with thirty pounds.
Another attendant was attacked the next night in a garage on the Great West Road by the same man, and forty-five pounds were taken.
Then, as abruptly as they had begun, the garage robberies ceased.
George, with a net gain of nearly a hundred pounds, decided for the time being, not to tempt Providence further.
He had told no one what he had done; but Cora, reading of the robberies, knowing that the man who had been responsible for them was big and had carried a Luger, looked at George questioningly.
She was uneasy about George. Since the night she and the other two had laughed at him there had come over him a subtle change. He was hard now, and his temper inclined to fly up. There was a cold, bitter, brooding look in his eyes that Cora didn't like.
He had left Eva's flat before anyone was up on the morning following the scene with the Mickey Mouse costume. Cora, awakening to find him gone, hoped that she had seen the last of him, but he returned in the afternoon just as she was going out.
She was wearing a silk frock, silk stockings and high- heeled shoes borrowed from Little Ernie's Wardrobe. Little Ernie and Eva had gone off to the dog-racing at Wembley, and she was alone in the flat.
George came in and stood looking at her, the brooding expression in his eyes.
'What do you want?' she snapped, uneasy, and wondering why he had come back.
'Here,' he said, thrusting an envelope at her, 'buy yourself some clothes.'
She took the envelope, and found inside five ten-pound notes. She knew the wise thing to do was to throw the money at him and tell him to go to hell, but fifty pounds impressed her, and she could not give up such a sum, no matter what the consequences might he.
'Where did you get this from?' she asked.
