Joe Runner was a quick thinker. ‘Jump up in the truck,’ he commanded roughly. ‘Where do you live?’
‘About three miles from here,’ began Mr Timmins.
Joe leaned over, and pulled him up, parcel, bag and turkey.
‘Get through into the back, and keep quiet.’
He leapt down, cranked up the engine with some difficulty, and sent the little trolley lumbering on to the main road. When he passed three officers in a police car speeding towards Carfane Hall his heart was in his mouth, but he was not challenged. Presently, at the urgent desire of the old man, he stopped at the end of a row of cottages.
‘Gawd bless you, mister!’ whimpered Mr Timmins. ‘I’ll never do a thing like this again.’
‘Hi!’ said Joe sternly. ‘What do I get out of this?’
And then, as the recollection of a debt came to him:
‘Leave the turkey—and hop!’
Mr Timmins hopped.
It was nine o’clock on Christmas morning, and Angela Willett had just finished her packing.
Outside the skies were dark and cheerless, snow and rain were falling together, so that this tiny furnished room had almost a palatial atmosphere in comparison with the drear world outside.
‘I suppose it’s too early to cook the sausages—by the way, our train leaves at ten tonight, so we needn’t invent ways of spending the evening—come in.’
It was Joe the Runner, rather wet but smiling. He carried under his arm something wrapped in an old newspaper.
‘Excuse me, miss,’ he said, as he removed the covering, ‘but a gent I met in the street asked me to give you this.’
‘A turkey!’ gasped Angela. ‘How wonderful…who was it?’
‘I don’t know, miss—an old gentleman,’ said Joe vaguely. ‘He said “Be sure an’ give it to the young lady herself—wishin’ her a happy Christmas”.’
They gazed on the carcase in awe and ecstasy. As the front door slammed, announcing Joe’s hasty departure:
‘An old gentleman,’ said Angela slowly. ‘Uncle Peter!’
‘Uncle grandmother!’ smiled John. ‘I believe he stole it!’
‘How uncharitable you are!’ she reproached him. ‘It’s the sort of thing Uncle Peter would do. He always had that Haroun al Raschid complex—I wrote and told him we were leaving for Canada tonight. I’m sure it was he.’
Half-convinced, John Willett prodded at the bird. It seemed a little tough.
‘Anyway, it’s turkey,’ he said, ‘And, darling, I adore turkey stuffed with chestnuts. I wonder if there are any shops open
There was a large cavity at one end of the bird, and as he lifted the turkey up by the neck, the better to examine it, something dropped to the table with a flop. It was a tight roll of paper. He shook the bird again and a second fell from its unoffending body.
‘Good God!’ gasped John.
With trembling hands he cut the string that bound the roll
‘It’s money!’ she whispered.
John nodded.
‘Hundred dollar bills…five hundred of them at least!’ he said hollowly.
Their eyes met.
‘Uncle Peter!’ she breathed. ‘The darling!’
Mr Peter Elmer, the eminent ship owner, received the following day a telegram which was entirely meaningless:
Thank you a thousand times for your thought and generosity. You have given us a wonderful start and we shall be worthy of your splendid kindness.
It was signed ‘Angela’. Mr Peter Elmer scratched his head.
And at that moment Inspector Mailing was interrogating Harry the Valet in the little police station at Carfane.
‘Now come across, Harry,’ he said kindly. ‘We know you got the money out of the safe. Where did you plant it? You couldn’t have taken it far, because the butler saw you leaving the room. Just tell us where the money is, and I’ll make it all right for you when you come up in front of the old man.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Harry the Valet, game to the last.
Mr Wray’s Cash Box or, the Mask and the Mystery
(Wilkie Collins)
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The main incident on which the following story turns, is founded on a fact which many readers of these pages will probably recognise as having formed a subject of conversation, a few years back, among persons interested in Literature and Art. I have endeavoured, in writing my little book, to keep the spirit of its title-page motto in view, and tell my “honest tale” as “plainly” as I could — or, in other words, as plainly as if I were only relating it to an audience of friends at my own fireside.
W. W. C.
Hanover Terrace, Regent’s Place January, 1852
I
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