Callidino laughed softly.
“That is true,” he said, with a nod to the man on the floor. “It was very clever. I suppose you dropped the packet?”
The masked man inclined his head.
“Please go on,” he said, “do not let me interrupt you.”
“What is going to happen when I have finished?” asked George, still keeping his face to the safe.
“As far as I am concerned, nothing. Just as soon as you have got through your work, and have extracted whatever booty there is to be extracted, I shall retire.”
“You want your share, I suppose?”
“Not at all,” said the other calmly. “I do not want my share by any means. I am not entitled to it. My position in society prevents me from going farther down the slippery path than to connive at your larceny.”
“Felony,” corrected the man on the floor.
“Felony,” agreed the other.
He waited until without a sound the heavy door of the safe swung open and George had put his hand inside to extract the contents, and then, without a word, he passed through the door, closing it behind him.
The two men sat up tensely and listened. They heard nothing more until the soft thud of the outer door told them that their remarkable visitor had departed.
They exchanged glances—interest on the one face, amusement on the other.
“That is a remarkable man,” said Callidino.
The other nodded.
“Most remarkable,” he said, “and more remarkable will it be if we get out of Hatton Garden tonight with the loot.”
It would seem that the “more than most” remarkable happening of all actually occurred, for none saw the jewel thieves go, and the smashing of Gilderheim’s jewel safe provided an excellent alternative topic for conversation to the prospect of Sunstar for the Derby.
II
Sunstar’s Derby
There it was again!
Above the babel of sound, the low roar of voices, soft and sorrowful, now heard, now lost, a vagrant thread of gold caught in the drab woof of shoddy life gleaming and vanishing. … Gilbert Standerton sat tensely straining to locate the sound.
It was the “Melody in F” that the unseen musician played.
“There’s going to be a storm.”
Gilbert did not hear the voice. He sat on the box-seat of the coach, clasping his knees, the perspiration streaming from his face.
There was something tragic, something a little terrifying in his pose. The profile turned to his exasperated friend was a perfect one—forehead high and well-shaped, the nose a little long, perhaps, the chin strong and resolute.
Leslie Frankfort, looking up at the unconscious dreamer, was reminded of the Dante of convention, though Dante never wore a top-hat or found a Derby Day crowd so entirely absorbing.
“There’s going to be a storm.”
Leslie climbed up the short stepladder, and swung himself into the seat by Gilbert’s side.
The other awoke from his reverie with a start.
“Is there?” he asked, and wiped his forehead.
Yet as he looked around it was not the murky clouds banking up over Banstead that held his eye; it was this packed mass of men and women, these gay placards extolling loudly the honesty and the establishment of “the old firm,” the booths on the hill, the long succession of canvas screens which had been erected to advertise somebody’s whisky, the flimsy-looking stands on the far side of the course, the bustle, the pandemonium and the vitality of that vast, uncountable throng made such things as June thunderstorms of little importance.
“If you only knew how the low brows are pitying you,” said Leslie Frankfort, with good-natured annoyance, “you would not be posing for a picture of ‘The Ruined Gambler.’ My dear chap, you look for all the world, sitting up here with your long, ugly mug adroop, like a model for the coloured plate to be issued with the Christmas Number of the Anti-Gambling Gazette. I suppose they have a gazette.”
Gilbert laughed a little.
“These people interest me,” he said, rousing himself to speak. “Don’t you realise what they all mean? Every one of them with a separate and distinct individuality, everyone with a hope or a fear hugged tight in his bosom, everyone with the capacity for love, or hate, or sorrow. Look at that man!” he said, and pointed with his long, nervous finger.
The man he indicated stood in a little oasis of green. Hereabouts the people on the course had so directed their movements as to leave an open space, and in the centre stood a man of medium height, a black bowler on the back of his head, a long, thin cigar between his white, even teeth. He was too far away for Leslie to distinguish these particulars, but Gilbert Standerton’s imagination filled in the deficiencies of vision, for he had seen this man before.
As if conscious of the scrutiny, the man turned and came slowly towards the rails where the coach stood. He took the cigar from his mouth and smiled as he recognised the occupant of the box-seat.
“How do you do, sir?”
His voice sounded shrill and faint, as if an immeasurable distance separated them, but he was evidently shouting to raise his voice above the growling voices of the crowd. Gilbert waved his hand with a smile, and the man turned with a raise of his hat, and was swallowed up in a detachment of the crowd which came eddying about him.
“A thief,” said Gilbert, “on a fairly large scale—his name is Wallis; there are many Wallises here. A crowd is a terrible spectacle to the man who thinks,” he said half to himself.
The other glanced at him keenly.
“They’re terrible things to get through in a thunderstorm,” he said, practically. “I vote we go along and claim the car.”
Gilbert nodded.
He rose stiffly, like a man with cramp, and stepped slowly down the little ladder to the ground. They passed through the
