McClure's Magazine/New Series Volume 1/Number 1/Peter Intervenes

by Edgar Jepson

Peter Intervenes

By Edgar Jepson

PETER was a thoughtful boy, but he deceived the eye. His air of solemnity accorded ill with an essential lightness of spirit not far removed from flippancy; his parsimony in the matter of words gave him not unfrequently an appearance of dullness—which accorded ill with an acumen in practical matters which left nothing to be desired except by those who suffered from it. His leisureliness of movement gave him an appearance of slowness that accorded ill with his catlike quickness when such quickness was plainly demanded by circumstances he had frequently brought about, but over which he had no control. Policemen in London and gamekeepers in the country had observed it with admiration not unmingled with disgust.

His form master—it was a low form—at the Hampstead Grammar School, one of Alfred the Great's happiest foundations, had an even poorer opinion of his industry than of his intelligence. But then he never called on him to apply himself to anything that stirred his interest. Peter was not one of those Admirable Crichtons who airily sop up the paradigms of the irregular Greek verbs, the dates of the English sovereigns, and the names of the Kings of Israel and Judah. But he did know the weight of heroes, of Jimmy Wilde, of Dempsey, of Carpentier, and of Firpo. Also that form master deplored Peter's obdurate disregard of that sacred institution cricket. Peter shirked it if he could.

This came from his abhorrence of waste, of waste of time and good energy. At cricket so very little happened in such a long time. This was not so in football, lawn tennis, golf, boxing and running. In these sports something was always doing; and though but twelve summers had passed over his fair young head, he promised to become expert in them. He had the eye and the head. He had indeed already collected cups for the school under-fourteen quarter-mile and half-mile handicaps, and though he was not yet of a size to collect the cup for the under-fourteen boxing, he could easily out-point any boy of his age in the school. There was a mercenary streak in Peter. He had a preference for sports which rewarded the right expenditure of energies with cups.

But he came of a hard-headed stock. The Stixwoulds are one of those Lincolnshire families who came from Denmark in the tenth century and were found waiting for William the Conqueror with maces and battle-axes and bills and bows, and carved and clubbed and shot and drowned more of the Norman chivalry than did any other section of the English-speaking races of that day. They are kin of the Wakes and Swains and Swatons and have the arched, broad-bridged Lincolnshire noses—the distinguishing characteristic of most of the officers of the closely-cropped cavalry of the Eastern Counties Association with which Oliver Cromwell kept England on the right path for so many years. That nose generally has a good forehead above it. Peter's had.

His father, a doctor, had come to London with visions of becoming a specialist in Harley Street. He was still a good two and a half miles from his goal, a general practitioner at 120 Adelaide Road, South Hampstead. It was not so fashionable as Harley Street, but it had its points. On still nights you could hear the lions roaring in the Zoo.

On that chill and misty March evening, as Peter came along the bottom of Primrose Hill on his way home to supper, he became aware, dimly, of light footsteps coming along at a run on the path behind him. Then out of the dusk appeared a dark figure which became a running girl who panted as she ran. He saw that she was pale and scared and pretty, with large dark eyes.

A London boy, he always took an interest in his fellow creatures. As she passed he fell into a trot beside her.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"They're after me—they're—just behind," said the panting girl.

Peter listened and heard, some way down the path behind them, the sound of heavier footsteps coming along at a good pace.

"Who are?" he asked.

"Zimmy and Long Jake," she said.

To Peter these sounded pleasing names of a certain promise, but they told him nothing.

"What do they want?" he said.

The girl held up a small brown-paper packet in her left hand and said nothing. She was wasting none of the little breath she had left.

They ran on another twenty steps and the steps of the pursuers grew ominously louder. It might be a stern chase, but it was not going to be a long one. An idea came to Peter.

"Give it to me," he said quickly, "I'll cut on and meet you somewhere later and give it back to you. They won't catch me."

The girl ran on another five or six steps, frowning in perplexity. The louder sound of her pursuers' feet made up her mind for her. She handed him the packet and dropped into a walk.

"Chalk Farm Station at nine o'clock to-morrow night. Hop it!"

From her last words and the naturalness with which they came from her he gathered that she was not a lady. As he was gathering it he vanished in the dusk ahead of her.

As he came out of the gate into King Henry's Road he nearly ran into Police Constable Robinson, a friendly policeman. He loved Martha Jennings, the Stixwould cook. Peter slackened his pace and cried:

"There are a couple of hooligans annoying a lady on the lower path!"

A shrill cry from the hill confirmed the statement. Police Constable Robinson left like the wind.

Peter had intended to run straight up Eton Place. But he changed his mind and ran to the end of King Henry's Road, turned the corner into Primrose Hill Road, and walked quietly into the Adelaide Road. As he did so he stuck the little packet into his jacket pocket out of sight. Then he walked up to the top of Eton Place and peeped round the corner. Eton Place was empty. He crossed the Adelaide Road to 120. Though he had his latchkey, he did not go up the steps to the front door. They were lighted brightly by the street lamp and he would be visible from the bottom of Eton Place. He went to the back door in the basement, hidden by the garden hedge. The paradigms of the irregular Greek verbs might have found no place in his memory; he could have gained nearly full marks in a paper on all the detective stories he had ever read. In answer to his somewhat imperative knock, Martha opened the door.

"Now why do you come disturbing me when all you've got to do is to walk up the steps and let yourself in, Master Peter?" she said with that curiosity which to Peter seemed the outstanding and frequently the most vexatious womanly characteristic.

"Dick Robinson is on duty to-night. I thought you'd like to know," he said evasively.

Martha blushed, but she said loftily, "And what odds does it make to me?"

Since Peter had seen Police Constable Robinson kiss Martha in that very passage he was not deceived. But he did not tell her so. He went lightly up to his bedroom on the second floor, took the packet out of his pocket, and examined it. He could easily have untied the knot and opened it. But he supposed that since it had been entrusted to him he ought not to do so. He did not. But he felt it carefully. He found that there was a softer wrapping under the brown paper and under that small lumps. His detective instinct at work, he perceived at once that it must contain diamonds. He put it at the back of the bottom drawer of his chest of drawers, and came down to supper.

He awoke next morning to a bright world, though the London sky was of the most dismal grey. His first act was to take the packet from the drawer to feast his eyes on it. It occurred to him that probably he ought to consult the police about it. He did not let the thought trouble him. The police were always there—often when they were not wanted. Crooks were much rarer. He was not going to sever a pleasing connection with crooks by any foolish step of that kind.

The day passed slowly. Peter's form master found him even more distrait than usual. Even his thick-witted young companions perceived that he was not quite himself.

He missed opportunities. At dinner his sister Sarah Ann, a very superior young girl of thirteen, one of the most promising of the younger pupils of the Hampstead High School for Girls, was permitted to give herself airs unreproved by him. It was strange and she suggested that he was ill and had better have a dose of castor oil. Peter had often remarked on the morbidity of her mind. On this occasion he was too preoccupied to tell her what he thought of the suggestion.

But at last the evening came and he went quietly out of the house at ten minutes to nine. He walked briskly down the road to Chalk Farm Station, which stands on the corner at the bottom, and round it and a little way up Haverstock Hill. He had decided to arrive at the tryst punctually, not to hang about the station. At the first stroke of nine from a neighboring church clock he started down the hill and entered the station on the seventh stroke.

The pretty girl stood by the book-stall close to the lift. An anxious frown was on her face. The sight of Peter swept it right away. She took a step toward him with the beginning of a smile on her face. Of a sudden she frowned again, or rather she scowled, at something over Peter's head, and sprang through the closing gate of the lift with precious little to spare.

Peter's eyes turned into the lift in a stare of astonishment, and turned again to follow a tall, slim, narrow-faced hook-nosed, black-eyed man, who dashed past him to the stairs to the platform and went fairly leaping down them. Peter's eyes turned again to the disappearing lift to catch a glimpse of the pretty girl listening with a rather scornful air to the protests of the excited liftman.

Peter walked out of the station slightly dazed. The unexpected had happened so quickly.

What was he to do? He did not know the name or the address of the girl. She did not know his name or address. How was she going to find it out and get the packet back?

He walked up the hill pondering the matter. The first conclusion he came to was that he might as well, in these circumstances, know what it was that the pretty girl had entrusted to him. On reaching home therefore he went up to his bedroom, untied the string and opened the packet. He had been wrong. The stones were not diamonds; they were rubies, Burmese rubies, thirty-six of them in a necklace, perfectly graduated from the center stone which was of the size and shape of a sparrow's egg to the two stones at the end which were as large as marrowfat peas.

Peter liked it very much. He gazed at it with shining eyes for quite a long while. Then he tried it on. The effect was not satisfactory—girlish. But if the girl never did find him and it became his property, it meant wealth—wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.

Then his shrewdness reasserted itself. It never would become his. It was certainly not the pretty girl's. No one who said "Hop it!" could be the possessor of a necklace like that. His knowledge of musical comedy extended only to what he saw and heard from the front of the house. He was not of an age to know that when a young aristocrat feels that the family stock would be better for the infusion of a little fresh blood he knows where to find the wife who will supply it and how to make a favorable impression on her.

He was quite aware that the necklace was not only a pleasure but a danger. He had gathered from many stirring tales a clear knowledge of the preternatural intellectuality of the crook. Sooner or later the gang adorned by Zimmy and Long Jake, who must be the tall, dark gentleman with the hook nose who had passed him so swiftly in Chalk Farm Station, would get on the track of it. Probably they would extract from the pretty girl, by torture, the fact that she had entrusted it to a boy; they would also extract from her an accurate description of that boy. The thing to do was to get rid of it before they performed these extractions.

Also there should be money in it, money in quantity if only he could hit on the right way of getting rid of it. He had splendid visions of a motor car, a four-seater that went seventy miles an hour; also of a small, useful aeroplane, at any rate of a wireless set finer than any in South Hampstead. He realized however that these were dreams. Money in quantity could never come a boy's way without his parents getting wind of it and putting it in the Savings Bank till he was grown up when, of course, it would be practically useless. He decided to content himself with getting enough money out of it to make a really good wireless set—always supposing that he did not find the girl.

He did not find the girl. Police Constable Robinson could throw no light on her. He had rushed, as Peter had seen, to her rescue; he had caught one of the men who had been molesting her, the shorter one. But when he had returned with him to the spot on which they had left her, she had gone. He said this in a gloomy tone and added:

"There was nothing to be done. So I cautioned 'im and 'elped 'im a bit of the way down the 'ill—with my foot."

"Well that was better than nothing," said Peter in a judicial tone.

"What I wanted was a conviction," said Police Constable Robinson in a discontented voice. At the moment promotion was very dear to him. He desired to become a blushing bridegroom at an early date.

That removed the girl further than ever and left Peter still freer to get that wireless set out of the necklace. But he could not discover any way of doing so. Obviously he could not take it to a jeweller and sell it by ordinary process. He did not for a moment dream of taking it to the police and letting them find the owner. It was his experience that in this world a boy gets very little justice and that a police station is one of the very worst places in which to look for it.

He became a reader of newspapers; not of much of them, only of the personal and advertising columns. In vain. No one advertised a reward for a ruby necklace. It almost began to prey upon his spirit. There it was, eating its head off so to speak, and no way of making half a crown out of it. It was disheartening.

Then his Uncle George came to London and lightened his gloom. As uncles go, he was young—only twenty-eight—and uncommonly friendly. He it was who looked to Peter's lawn tennis and golf and had him spend his holidays at Stixwould Manor, from which he farmed a thousand acres. Peter had thoughts of taking him into his confidence. But he hesitated. Friendly as his uncle was, if there was money in quantity in the necklace, into the Savings Bank it would go.

Then his uncle led him to the girl.

He took him to dine at the Olympian Club. After dinner the champions of the divisions of the London Police would box for a cup offered by the club. Peter went in the unstained Eton suit and white waistcoat of the young English gentleman, feeling remarkably it.

They had finished their soup when there came to a table a little way from them—the best table in the big room, directly above the ring—a lady and a man. The lady was the girl of the necklace.

Peter recognized her at once and his heart jumped in him. Sitting sideways to him, she did not see him. She talked to the man with her, a vigorous, heavily-built man of fifty. Peter studied him. He observed that his heavy face was impassive and expressionless, that his thin lips hardly moved as he talked, that his sunken brown eyes were piercing under his jutting brow, and that his complexion was of a curious brownish-gray—evidently a master criminal.

The girl turned to look around the room and saw him. Her eyes slowly opened wide in an astonished stare of recognition. Then she smiled at him and nodded. Peter nodded gravely in return.

Peter had thought her smile a nice smile. His uncle George thought it ravishing and he said quickly, in a tone of considerable interest: "Who's your charming friend?"

Not knowing who his charming friend was, Peter hesitated, then he said: "It's a girl I met on Primrose Hill—I don't know her name."

"Then you can't introduce me to her," said his uncle in a tone of regret.

"I might get the chance," said Peter cautiously.

The girl spoke to her companion and he looked at Peter with interest.

George Stixwould seemed to be in a state of lively curiosity. He questioned Peter about his meeting with the girl. Peter was in a secretive vein. He omitted the stirring incidents which had distinguished that meeting. He conveyed to his uncle the impression that he and the girl had but talked casually—ships that pass in the night.

He wondered all the while what she was going to do. This was not the meeting he had expected. He had always seen them meeting alone. He noticed that she kept glancing at him with little thoughtful frowns, as if she had not hit upon the right course to take. He left it to her. Thought would take too much of his attention from his excellent dinner. Then at the end of it, just as he had heaved his second deep sigh of satisfaction she rose and came to the table and held out her hand. Peter rose and took it, and his uncle rose, too.

"You've forgotten me—Jenny Helston—I thought you were coming to tea with me at 71 Endsleigh Gardens," she said, giving Peter the fullest possible information.

"Oh, no, I haven't forgotten you at all," said Peter, and there came a gentle, suggestive kick on the back of his leg from his uncle. He responded to it on the instant and added, "Let me introduce my Uncle George—Mr. Stixwould, Miss Helston."

That was what Jenny Helston had desired. She smiled upon George Stixwould a smile quite as ravishing as that she had bestowed upon Peter and said, "Won't you come and drink your coffee with us? You'll get a much better view of the boxing from our table."

George accepted the invitation with manifest briskness. They went to the other table, and she introduced them to her companion, her father. He welcomed them with a heavy urbanity, ordered coffee and liqueurs, and gave George a large and excellent cigar. They talked, at least George and Miss Helston talked, about the topics of the hour, dancing, lawn tennis and musical comedy. Then the boxing began. They drew their chairs nearer the balustrade of the balcony. Jenny contrived to get George on her right, Peter on her left. Two large policemen began to punch one another with enthusiasm.

In the middle of the second round Jenny Helston squeezed Peter's arm and whispered, "Don't look around. Have you still got my parcel?"

Peter nodded.

"Does anybody know about it?"

Peter shook his head.

"You are a clever boy!" she said in a tone of admiration. "Let's see. You musn't bring it to the house. It's watched. I tell you what, can you meet me half-way up Haverstock Hill at nine to-morrow night?"

Peter nodded.

"On the left-hand side. You walk up the hill, and I'll come down it. If anything goes wrong, you know my address, 71 Endsleigh Gardens. Come to tea the day after to-morrow. But don't bring the parcel there."

Peter nodded. She squeezed his arm gratefully and turned her attention to the boxing.

They spent a pleasant and profitable evening observing the strenuous efforts of those worthy men.

Between the bouts Peter observed that his Uncle George and Jenny Helston grew more and more friendly. They established an identity of taste in many matters of the greatest importance. Mr. Helston appeared to be of a phlegmatic temperament. He must have had views on these important matters. But he did not divulge them. Peter studied him with extraordinary interest. He might never again in his life come across a master criminal. The curious angle at which the big man's cigar stuck, with apparent precariousness, in the corner of his mouth—the obvious cynical distrust with which he watched the battling policemen—his lapses into profound thought about nefarious enterprises with his eyes half-closed—nothing was lost on him. With an ingenious boy's proneness to hero-worship he would have backed him against Sherlock Holmes for a week's pocket money.

The policemen ceased to battle. The party rose. George and Jenny Helston, still intent on establishing the fulness of their identity of taste, went off to continue the process at Giro's over a fox trot or two. Mr. Helston murmured something about the R. A. C. and a game of poker. At the door of the club they parted.

Peter took his solitary way home a little depressed by the fact that the owner of the necklace had emerged to claim it. Yet he was not greatly depressed. Of course his dreams had come to nothing, but he had always felt that the necklace was too good to be true. His Uncle George was grateful to him for the introduction to Jenny Helston—so grateful that next morning he presented him with five shillings. Peter accepted it a little doubtfully. He could not but wonder whether his Uncle George would have been so pleased to make Jenny Helston's acquaintance if he had known as much about her as he did. He found the situation rather awkward. He felt that he ought to tell his uncle about her activities and acquaintances, but he did not feel justified in divulging her secret. After all he had asked her to entrust him with the packet. He decided to wait and see.

At ten minutes to nine the next night he started to walk up Haverstock Hill. The sky was heavy with dark clouds; it was warm for April, muggy in fact. It was a good dark night for returning the necklace unobserved. A hundred yards south of Belsize Park Station Jenny met him. They greeted one another and he gave her the precious packet.

"Thank you ever so much," she said, slipping it into her vanity bag. Then she paused before closing the bag and asked, "Have you told anybody about it?"

"Rather not," said Peter.

"But how nice of you!" she exclaimed. "And how sensible! You really deserve——"

She took from the vanity bag a gold-mesh purse, and from that purse a note that really crinkled.

"Here, will you buy yourself something nice—something you really want," she said, holding it out to him.

Peter hesitated. There was a conflict. His better nature prevailed. No, you couldn't take money for helping a damsel in distress—and such distress—Long Jake and Zimmy.

"No thank you," he said manfully. "I was—I was—I mean—only too happy to oblige."

"But you must—just for a memento, you know," she said in an extremely persuasive voice and she veritably thrust the note on him.

Peter yielded.

"Thanks awfully," he said and put it into his pocket with a thrill at the feel of it. It indeed was no Bradbury.

Then impulsively she kissed him. Peter blushed to his ears. But, oddly enough, he rather liked it. There was a strain of romance in him.

That kiss involved him yet further in the affair; it delayed his parting with Jenny just a few seconds. A big limousine was coming noiselessly and slowly down the hill. The light of its lamps illuminated the embrace. It drew to the curb. A tall, slim man sprang from it and dashed at them.

"I've got you!" he cried triumphantly as he gripped Jenny.

She screamed. He picked her up, and before Peter could act, had bundled her into the car and stepped in after her.

"Tell dad! At once!" she cried from its depths.

Peter bolted down the hill. There was a shout and the car came after him. Seventy yards down the hill it ran a dozen yards past him and stopped in little more than twice its length. The driver threw his legs over the wheel and jumped with a vigor which landed him ten feet away on the pavement and Peter nearly ran into him. He dodged smartly but the man caught his arm, swung him towards the limousine, and thrust him through the door of it.

Long Jake gripped him and jammed him down hard on the seat beside Jenny, saying in a soft, very vicious voice, "Stay quiet, you cub!"

Peter stayed quiet. Jenny gripped his hand and squeezed it in a reassuring fashion.

The car turned and went up the hill.

Long Jake snatched Jenny's vanity bag from her, took the packet from it and fairly tore it open. The rubies gleamed dully in the light of the street lamps.

"Got it at last!" he said in a tone of immense triumph.

"Dad will have a word to say about that. He'll teach you to double-cross him," said Jenny quickly.

"There'll be a nice bit of blue water between me and Sam Helston before he learns that I've got it," said Long Jake and he sneered.

"He'll know you've got it directly I don't come home," she said.

"That'll give me three or four good hours. You weren't taking it straight back, I know. And my getaway is all ready," he said confidently.

"He'll get you—sooner or later' said Jenny with cold certainty.

"Oh, shut up!" snapped Long Jake.

Jenny shut up and for three or four minutes there was silence.

Long Jake broke it. He said in a venomous tone, "As I size it up, it was this young cub who made all the extra trouble for us. You must have passed it on to him that evening on the hill."

"Likely, isn't it? A boy like him," said Jenny in a scoffing tone.

"It is," said Long Jake with conviction. "And I'll lay that he set that copper on us. Ah—well."

Two simple words, but Peter did not like the tone.

"Bats," said Jenny. "Bats——"

Long Jake scorned the reply to the charge. He drew down the blinds to hide from them the country through which they were passing. Peter could feel that the car was not hurrying—about thirty miles an hour—and it was not more than ten minutes later that it came to a stop. Long Jake kept a tight hold on Peter's arm as they stepped out of the car, but he did not take the trouble to hold Jenny. Evidently he thought little of her sprinting capacity.

They had arrived at a small ugly house at the end of a lane. Their captor conducted them down the little garden. Long Jake opened the front door and thrust Peter through it. Jenny followed him.

Jake stopped on the threshold and said to the driver of the car: "Get along to Finkelstein and get to him quick. Tell him if he wants the rubies he's got to come here with the money. I'm not taking any chances at that trap of his. He'll come with it all right if he's allowed to bring Shanks to look after him, and with luck we ought to be oa our way to the boat in an hour."

"Right you are," said the driver and he hurried to the car.

Long Jake shut the door and switched on the electric light—plainly they were not far from civilization—displaying a small bare hall.

"Upstairs," he said curtly, and they went up the stairs before him.

On the landing he opened a door into a bedroom on the right, bade Jenny get into it and locked her in. Then he took hold of Peter's arm, led him into a bedroom on the other side of the landing, switched on the electric light, locked the door, put the key in his pocket, dropped the vanity bag on the dressing-table and crossed to the chest of drawers.

So far Peter, though he had looked hard for one, had not had the slightest chance. He realized that Long Jake's precautions were a tribute. He could have done without it.

Jake took from a drawer a ball of thick string and turned to Peter.

"I'm going to tie you up, you young devil," he said in an unpleasant tone and Peter thought that he had one of the most repulsive faces he had ever seen. "I'm not going to take any chance of your making any more trouble." Jake pulled a good length of string from the ball, stuck out that repulsive face towards Peter, and glaring into his eyes added, "And when I have tied you up, I'm going to give you the worst licking you ever had. I'll teach you to go interfering with me!"

All this was very unpleasant hearing. Jake paused to emphasize the threat with a hideous grin. That short delay gave Peter's mind time to work. It flashed on it that he might as well be licked for a sheep as a lamb and there was that chin sticking out at just a nice distance. At once he hit it as hard as he could.

A blow from a boy of Peter's age and weight ought hardly to have staggered the long crook, though Peter had put all his weight behind it. But Jake's pronounced chin must have been sticking out at a most convenient angle, for without even sagging, he dropped in a heap.

It was once more a case of no one being more surprised than the striker. Peter wasted a good three seconds staring at the exceedingly recumbent form, before he got to work. Then he got to work quickly. In half a minute Long Jake was lying face downwards with his hands tied behind his back and Peter was tying his ankles. He made a thorough job of it. There was plenty of string and he used all he wanted. As a final touch he thrust his handkerchief into Long Jake's mouth. It was not a clean handkerchief, but since it was marked only with his initials he thought that he might safely leave it behind him.

Then Peter went through his prisoner—he knew the right procedure. He acquired two pound notes, two ten-shilling notes, a handful of silver, which he did not pause to count, a very pleasing automatic pistol of medium size, and a bunch of keys—the lawful spoils of war. Also he acquired the key of the bedroom door and the key of the bedroom in which Jenny was prisoner.

He found that the magazine of the automatic was full of cartridges, but he was compelled to hunt for spare ones. What were ten cartridges? At once he found a box of forty in the drawer from which Jake had taken the string. Greatly relieved, he thrust it into his pocket, took Jenny's vanity bag, which still held the necklace, from the dressing-table, let himself out of the room, locked the door, put the key in his pocket, crossed the landing, and unlocked the door of Jenny's prison.

It would not open. It jammed against a chair fixed under the handle.

"You stay where you are, Jake," said Jenny in a cool, determined voice. "Try to come in here, and I'll brain you."

"It's all right," said Peter in a reassuring voice. "It's only me."

There was a sharp exclamation of surprise and she opened the door. In her hand, with the intent to brain, she held the water-jug. She stared at Peter holding out her vanity bag, as if she could not believe her eyes. Then in her impulsive way she dropped the jug, threw her arms round his neck, and kissed him. Peter blenched but he did not blush. He was growing used to it.

"Well, of all the boys I ever came across or heard of!" she said in a tone of profound admiration.

And she looked so like kissing him again that he said very sharply, "Come on, hurry up! Let's get out of this!"

She needed no further pressing and they ran down the stairs and bustled out of the house. Peter paused to pick up a handful of fine gravel and pushed quite a lot of it into the keyhole.

"Just to keep them busy a bit," he explained.

"I tell you what, you're wasted on Hampstead," said Jenny thoughtfully and with profound conviction.

As they came down the garden path the hum of an aeroplane broke the country stillness, and above the trees to the south rose a shining machine.

"The Paris Mail—Hendon. We haven't got far from London," said Peter in a tone of satisfaction.

They started to run down the lane, but they had not gone fifty yards when he stopped short.

"Here, this won't do," he said in a tone of decision. "We shall run straight into that car coming back."

Memories of the foolishness of the heroes of his favorite books were guiding him. They always ran into the villain's arms.

He looked up the lane and down it and across the fields. Jenny looked at him anxiously awaiting his decision. He had definitely taken the lead.

"I tell you what, that wood's the place for us," he said, pointing across the field to the south. "They'll never think to look for us there, and if they do they'll never catch us. It's so easy to dodge people in a wood."

"That wood! On a dark night like this?" said Jenny with a little shiver. "I should be frightened out of my life."

"Whatever of?" asked Peter.

"A11 kinds of things," said Jenny.

Peter was surprised and rather disappointed in her. That a girl who had been so ready to brain Long Jake should be frightened of an ordinary wood seemed to him truly astonishing. He saw that she really was terrified. But the thing for them to do was to get into the wood; and into the wood they were going to get.

"I'll look after you all right," he said confidently, and taking her firmly by the arm, he hurried her to a gate in the hedge and they climbed over it.

He gave her no time to let her fears get the better of her, but hurried her across the field to the side of the wood. An easy gap in the hedge let them into it and they stopped, panting. Of course a pheasant must needs squawk deeper in the wood. Jenny uttered a faint cry, and clutched his arm.

"There they are!" she cried.

A strong suspicion that she must be a beginner, that this was the very first coup in which she had taken part, rose in Peter's mind. He was a trifle disappointed. He would have preferred her to have been the heroine of many coups.

"It's only a pheasant," he said in a reassuring voice. "And that's an owl," he added, as she jumped at the long-drawn hoot. Then he made a concession.

"We won't go any deeper into the wood," he said. "We shall be all right here unless it occurs to them to try it."

"I shall never be able to stand it!" Jenny almost wailed.

"Oh yes, you will," he said and she was trembling so that he put a reassuring arm around her, held her tight and told her what harmless birds or animals were making the noises and the rustlings that came from the undergrowth.

He had gotten her calm and considerably reassured when the car came back along the lane and diverted her attention from those fearsome sounds. It stopped at the house and three men got out of it. The house was not more than sixty yards from the edge of the wood, so that Peter and Jenny could see their earnest efforts to get into it, for the lamps of the car illumined them. They watched with great pleasure. At last the men broke into one of the lower rooms through a window. The gravel in the door-lock had done its bit, for it must have been a good half-hour after the arrival of the car before the three of them and Long Jake came through the window. They got into the car and drove off.

Jenny had been too greatly interested in the doings of her enemies to have any attention to spare for the terrors of the wood and now she seemed to have grown immune from them. She raised no objection when Peter suggested that they should work their way down through the wood to Hendon. They went along the edge of it till they came to a broad, turfed and mossy drive, running north and south, and went down it, conversing cheerfully. The moon kept breaking through and lighting up the drive.

But when they came to the end of it they suffered a check. Along its edge ran a broad high road, and on the other side of that road meadows, in which were very little cover, stretched away to the lights of Hendon.

Peter surveyed their expanse gloomily and said sadly, "We're stuck for a bit. It would be all right for me. They'd never catch me. But if they did happen to come back up this road and saw us in those fields, they'd catch you to a dead certainty."

"I certainly don't want to be caught after your knocking out Jake and tying him up," she said quickly. "He's a brute at the best of times, and after that he'll be furious. And whatever you do you mustn't let him get hold of you."

"I won't," said Peter. "After all I've got his pistol and, if I have to, I'll use it on him. Well, we may as well sit down. This bank's quite dry."

He dropped on to it. She sat down beside him and said, "Those pistols are stupid things. Over here there's always such a fuss made about shooting anybody however hard they ask for it and Dad won't let me carry one. It was different in the States, I nearly always carried one there and I've used it, too, more than once."

"Ripping!" said Peter with enthusiasm and he forgot her astonishing, childish fear of this quite ordinary wood. "What a splendidly exciting time you must have had!"

The moon was shining on her charming, vivid face and he saw her frown.

"Oh, exciting!" she said in a tone of extreme discontent. "I'm just fed up with excitement. I've been worrying Dad for a long time to buy a quiet place in the country and settle down and keep chickens and lead a decent life."

"Or have a farm like Uncle George," suggested Peter.

"Yes, he was telling me about that farm the other night," said Jenny. "It sounded a lovely kind of place."

They were silent for a while. Then she asked him questions about his Uncle George. Peter gave him the best of characters, for he had the highest opinion of him, both as an uncle and a sportsman. Jenny seemed to receive it with interest and pleasure. She drew from him the history of his Uncle George's life as far as he knew it.

But then when he came to the end of it she sighed sharply and said, "But what's the good? There's nothing in it."

To Peter the words sounded somewhat cryptic and he said, "Nothing in what?"

She looked at him rather oddly and said, "Something I was thinking about."

Then she turned the conversation to the history of Peter's life.

They, sat there for nearly an hour—so cautious was Peter. Then they decided that it should he fairly safe to try to get to Hendon and a taxi.

They crossed the road to the gate of the field opposite. They kept along the hedge which unfortunately was a low one. Peter kept his eyes about him especially in the direction of the road. They came to the further hedge, got through it, and half-way across the second field, when away out on his left, coming from the road at an angle to cut across their course to Hendon, he saw two figures running. The crooks had driven down the road to London, stopped at a point at which they could command a view of the country, and waited quietly for them to make for home.

"Hang!" said Peter. "Here they come!"

They started to run. But it was an exercise to which Jenny was unused and their pace was poor. When they reached the further hedge of the fourth field their pursuers were a third of the way across it, Long Jake leading by twenty yards. As they scrambled through an awkward gap a briar tore Jenny's stocking and drew blood.

It seemed to be the last straw, for she stopped short and said in imperative accents: "Give me the gat!"

Peter had been thinking that the time had come to fall back on the automatic. He had meant to use it himself, but those accents were too imperative to be disobeyed. So he handed it to her reluctantly.

She crouched behind the hedge, her face white with righteous anger, her eyes shining with astonishing brightness, a very dangerous smile playing round her lips. Long Jake uttered a shout of triumph when he saw that they had come to a standstill and he sprinted.

He was not more than twenty yards from the hedge when she cried, "Take that, you Jake!" and fired.

Jake stopped short, spun round with a loud howl, and sat down with his back to them. It was not quite his evening.

His friend turned round and ran much harder than he had been running.

"And that's that," said Jenny handing the pistol to Peter

"Ripping!" said Peter from his heart.

They went a few steps and then he said in a tone of surprise, "Aren't we going to see after his wound?"

"See after Long Jake?" said Jenny in a tone of equal surprise. "You can't kill Long Jake! Besides I only got him in the shoulder and Zimmy will come back and look after him."

Peter could see nothing to be said against the arrangement and they went briskly over the fields to Hendon. There was no longer any need to run. At the corner of Bell Lane they found a motor bus on the point of starting and clambered aboard it thankfully.

"Well, you'll be able to take the necklace where you want to without being interfered with," said Peter in a tone of satisfaction. "You've certainly got rid of those two for the time being."

"Yes, thank goodness," said Jenny with a faint sigh of relief. Then she added thoughtfully: "I tell you what, you ought to have a share of that necklace. I must speak to Dad about it. They'd certainly have got it, if it hadn't been for you. In fact they did get it."

"Oh, no; thank you very much but I couldn't do that," said Peter quickly. She looked at him with thoughtful eyes, then she said, "No, I don't suppose you could."

At Golders Green they found a taxi and she told the driver to drive to 120 Adelaide Road. Peter talked of the events of the evening. She was thoughtful and monosyllabic.

Then with a manifest effort she said slowly, "I tell you what, you'd better tell your uncle all about—all about the necklace—and how you got to know me—and—and what happened to-night."

"All right," he said doubtfully, astonished by the request.

He pondered it. To a boy as well read as he in the literature of his subject, the solution was not long coming. As the taxi stopped at 120, his heart swelled within him with a noble impulse; he laid his hand on her arm and said in his manliest voice: "Look here, don't you worry about Uncle George. When I grow up I'll marry you myself."