Many men in such a position would have given up the struggle. Sigsbee H. Waddington did. The last Gallagher had been on duty in the neighbourhood of Bleeker Street, and Mr. Waddington, turning into Washington Square, tottered to a bench and sagged down on it.
For some moments, the ecstatic relief of resting his feet occupied his mind to the exclusion of everything else. Then there occurred to him a thought which, had it arrived earlier in the day, would have saved him a considerable output of energy. He suddenly recollected that he had met the missing policeman at the apartment of Hamilton Beamish: and, pursuing this train of thought to its logical conclusion, decided that Hamilton Beamish was the one person who would be able to give him information as to the man’s whereabouts.
No tonic, however popular and widely-advertised, could have had so instantly revivifying an effect. The difference between Mr. Waddington before taking and after taking this inspiration was almost magical. An instant before, he had been lying back on the bench in a used-up attitude which would have convinced any observer that the only thing to do with a man in such a stage of exhausted dejection was to notify the City authorities and have him swept up and deposited in the incinerator with the rest of the local garbage. But now, casting off despair like a cloak, he sprang from his seat and was across the Square and heading for the Sheridan before such an observer would have had time to say “What ho!”
Not even the fact that the elevator was not running could check his exhilarated progress. He skimmed up the stairs to Hamilton Beamish’s door like a squirrel.
“Beamish!” he cried. “Hey, Beamish!”
Up on the roof, Officer Garroway started as a warhorse at the sound of the bugle. He knew that voice. And, if it should seem remarkable that he should have remembered it after so many days, having been in conversation with it but once, the explanation is that Mr. Waddington’s voice had certain tonal qualities that rendered it individual and distinctive. You might mistake it for a squeaking file, but you could not mistake it for the voice of anybody but Sigsbee H. Waddington.
“Gosh!” said Officer Garroway, shaking like an aspen.
The voice had had its effect also on Mrs. Waddington. She started up as if the bed on which she sat had become suddenly incandescent.
“Siddown!” said Officer Garroway.
Mrs. Waddington sat down.
“My dear old constable,” began Lord Hunstanton.
“Shut up!” said Officer Garroway.
Lord Hunstanton shut up.
“Gosh!” said Officer Garroway once more.
He eyed his prisoners in an agony of indecision. He was in the unfortunate position of wanting to be in two places at once. To rush down the stairs and accost the man who had sold him that stock would mean that he would have to leave these two birds, with the result that they would undoubtedly escape. And that they should escape was the last thing in the world that Officer Garroway desired. These two represented the most important capture he had made since he had joined the Force. The female bird was a detected burglar and assaulter of the police, and he rather fancied that, when he took him to headquarters and looked him up in the Rogues Gallery, the male bird would prove to be Willie the Dude, wanted in Syracuse for slipping the snide. To land them in the coop meant promotion.
On the other hand, to go down and get his fingers nicely placed about the throat of the man downstairs meant that he would get his three hundred dollars back.
What to do? What to do?
“Oh, gosh! Oh, Gee!” sighed Officer Garroway.
A measured footstep made itself heard. There came into his range of vision an ambassadorial-looking man with a swelling waistcoat and a spot of ink on his nose. And, seeing him, the policeman uttered a cry of elation.
III
“Hey!” said Officer Garroway.
“Sir?” said the newcomer.
“You’re a deputy.”
“No, sir. I am a butler.”
“Say, Be-eeeee-mish!” bleated the voice below.
It roused the policeman to a frenzy of direct action. In a calmer moment he might have been quelled by the protruding green-grey eyes that were looking at him with such quiet austerity: but now they had no terrors for him.
“You’re a deputy,” he repeated. “You know what that means, don’t you, dumbbell? I’m an officer of the Law and I appoint you my deputy.”
“I have no desire to be a deputy,” said the other with the cold sub-tinkle in his voice which had once made the younger son of a marquess resign from his clubs and go to Uganda.
It was wasted on Officer Garroway. The man was berserk.
“That’s all right what you desire and don’t desire. I’ve made you a deputy, and you’ll be one or go up the river for resisting an officer of the Law, besides getting a dot over the bean with this stick that’ll make you wish you hadn’t. Now then?”
“The position being such as you have outlined,” said the butler with dignity, “I have no alternative but to comply with your wishes.”
“What’s your name?”
“Rupert Anthony Ferris.”
“Where do you live?”
“I am in the employment of Mrs. Sigsbee H. Waddington, at present residing at Hempstead, Long Island.”
“Well, I’ve got two birds in here that are wanted at headquarters, see? I’m locking them in.” Officer Garroway slammed the door and turned the key. “Now, all you have to do is to stand on guard till I come back. Not much to ask, is it?”
“The task appears to be well within the scope of my powers, and I shall endeavour to fulfil it faithfully.”
“Then go to it,” said Officer Garroway.
Ferris stood with his back to the sleeping-porch, looking at the moon with a touch of wistfulness. Moonlight nights always made him a little homesick, for Brangmarley Hall had been at its best on such occasions. How often had he, then a careless, lighthearted footman, watched the moonbeams reflected on the waters of the moat
