he resented their bullying talk, and he determined to get even in the matter of the music. He resolved to make up a piece of paper, folded as like the slip as possible, and substitute one for the other at their next meeting. Then he would put the “Flitterbat Lancers” in some safe place, and face his fellow-conspirators with a hand of cards equal to their own. He carried out his plan the next evening with perfect success, thanks to a trick of “passing” cards which he had learned in his youth, and thanks also to the contemptuous indifference with which Luker and Birks had begun to regard him. He got the slip in his pocket, and left the bar. He had not gone far, however, before Luker discovered the trick, and soon he became conscious of being followed. He looked for a cab, but he was in a dark street, and no cab was near. Luker and Birks turned the corner and began to run. He saw they must catch him, and felt no doubt that it they did he would lose the slip of paper, the £50, and everything. They were big, active fellows, and could probably do as they liked with him—especially since he could not call for help without risking an exposure of their joint enterprise. Everything depended now on his putting the “Flitterbat Lancers” out of their reach, but where he could himself recover it. Then it would form a sort of security for his share of the venture. He ran till he saw a narrow passage-way on his right, and into this he darted. It led into a yard where stones were lying about, and in a large building before him he saw the window of a lighted room a couple of floors up. It was a desperate expedient, but there was no time for consideration. He wrapped a stone in the paper and flung it with all his force through the lighted window. Even as he did it he heard the feet of Luker and Birks as they hurried down the street. The rest of the adventure in the court I myself saw.
Luker and Birks kept Hoker in their lodgings all that night. They searched him unsuccessfully for the paper; they bullied, they swore, they cajoled, they entreated, they begged him to play the game square with his pals. Hoker merely replied that he had put the “Flitterbat Lancers” where they couldn’t easily find it, and that he intended playing the game square so long as they did the same. In the end they released him, apparently with more respect for his cuteness than they had before entertained, advising him, at any rate, to get the paper into his possession as soon as he could. With this view he repaired again to the scene of his window-smashing exploit, and having ascertained the exact position of the window in the building, began his morning’s attack on my outer door.
“And now,” said Mr. Hoker, in conclusion of his narrative, “perhaps you’ll give me a bit of Christian advice. You’re up to as many moves as most people over here. Am I playin’ a fool-game running after these toughs, or ain’t I? I wouldn’t have told you what I have, of course, if it wasn’t clear that you’d got hold of the hang of the scheme somehow. Say, now, is it all a swindle?”
Hewitt shrugged his shoulders. “It all depends,” he said, “on your friends Luker and Birks, as you may easily see for yourself. They may want to swindle you of your money and of the proceeds of the speculation, as you call it, or they may not. I’m afraid they’d like to, at any rate. But perhaps you’ve got some little security in this piece of paper. One thing is plain: they certainly believe in the deposit of jewels themselves, else they wouldn’t have taken so much trouble to get the paper back, on the chance of seeing some way of using it after they had got into the house they speak of.”
“Then I guess I’ll go on with the thing, if that’s it.”
“That depends, of course, on whether you care to take trouble to get possession of what, after all, is somebody else’s lawful property.”
Hoker looked a little uneasy. “Well,” he said, “there’s that, of course. I didn’t know nothin’ about that at first, and when I did I’d parted with my money and felt entitled to get something back for it. Anyway, the stuff ain’t found yet. When it is, why then, you know, I might make a deal with the owner. But, say, how did you find out my name, and about this here affair being jined up with the Wedlake jewels?”
Hewitt smiled. “As to the name and address, you just think it over a little when you’ve gone away, and if you don’t see how I did it, you’re not so cute as I think you are. In regard to the jewels—well, I just read the message of the ‘Flitterbat Lancers,’ that’s all.”
“You read it? Whew! That beats! And what does it say, and where? How did you fix it?” Hoker turned the paper over eagerly in his hands as he spoke.
“See, now,” said Hewitt, “I won’t tell you all that, but I’ll tell you something, and it may help you to test the real knowledge of Luker and Birks. Part of the message is in these words, which you had better write down: ‘Over the coals the fifth dancer slides, says Jerry Shiels the horney.’ ”
“What?” Hoker exclaimed, “fifth dancer slides over the coals? That’s a mighty odd dance-figure, anyway, lancers or not. What’s it all about?”
“About the Wedlake jewels, as I said. Now you can go and make a bargain with Luker and Birks. The only other part of the message is an address, and that they already know, if they have been telling the truth about the house they intend taking. You can offer to tell them what I have told you of the message, after they have told you where the house is, and proved to you that they are taking the steps they talk of. If they won’t agree to that, I think you had best treat them as common rogues (which they are), and charge them with obtaining your money under false pretences. But in any case don’t be disappointed if you see very little of the Wedlake jewels.”
Nothing more would Hewitt say than that, despite Hoker’s many questions; and when at last Hoker had gone, almost as troubled and perplexed as ever, my friend turned to me and said, “Now, Brett, if you haven’t lunched, and would like to see the end of this business, hurry up!”
“The end of it?” I said. “Is it to end so soon? How?”
“Simply by a police raid on Jerry Shiels’s old house with a search warrant. I communicated with the police this morning before I came here.”
“Poor Hoker!” I said.
“Oh, I had told the police before I saw Hoker, or heard of him, of course. I just conveyed the message on the music slip—that was enough. But I’ll tell you all about it when there’s more time; I must be off now. With the information I have given him, Hoker and his friends may make an extra push and get into the house soon, but I couldn’t resist the temptation to give the unfortunate Hoker some sort of a sporting chance—though it’s a poor one, I fear. Get your lunch as quickly as you can, and go at once to Colt Row, Bankside—Southwark way, you know. Probably we shall be there before you. If not, wait.”
Hewitt had assumed his hat and gloves as he spoke, and now hurried away. I took such lunch as I could in twenty minutes, and hurried in a cab towards Blackfriars Bridge. The cabman knew nothing of Colt Row, but had a notion of where to find Bankside. Once in the region I left him, and then Colt Row was not difficult to find. It was one of those places that decay with an access of respectability, like Drury Lane and Clare Market. Once, when Jacob’s Island was still an island, a little farther down the river, Colt Row had evidently been an unsafe place for a person with valuables about him, and then it probably prospered, in its own way. Now it was quite respectable, but very dilapidated and dirty, and looked as unprosperous as a street well can. It was too near the river to be a frequented thoroughfare, and too far from it to be valuable for wharfage purposes. It was a stagnant backwater in the London tide, close though it stood to the full rush of the stream. Perhaps it was sixty yards long—perhaps a little more. It was certainly very few yards wide, and the houses at each side had a patient and forlorn look of waiting for a metropolitan improvement to come along and carry them away to their rest. Many seemed untenanted, and most threatened soon to be untenable. I could see no signs as yet of Hewitt, nor of the police, so I walked up and down the narrow pavement for a little while. As I did so, I became conscious of a face at a window of the least ruinous house in the row, a face that I fancied expressed particular interest in my movements. The house was an old gabled structure, faced with plaster. What had apparently once been a shop-window, or at any rate a wide one, on the ground floor, was now shuttered up, and the face that watched me—an old woman’s—looked from a window next above. I had noted these particulars with some curiosity, when, arriving again at the street