His remark was so puerile, so devoid of sense, that I hardly knew how to take it.
I said so.
“I don’t know if you wish me to take you seriously, Mr. Stewart: I scarcely imagine that you are proposing to pay me five hundred pounds for taking a case of pills to America.”
It was a second or two before he answered, but when an answer did come it was drawled, his face being illuminated with what I will call a whimsical smile.
“Well, Mr. Beckwith, we will call them pills what’s in a name? If I choose to pay you five hundred pounds to convey a case of pills or a case of poisons to the United States of North America what difference does it make to you?”
“I should be unwilling, even for the sum you name, which to me represents a fortune, to carry your poisons.”
The girl spoke. “They are not poisons, Mr. Beckwith. Mr. Stewart jests; he does not always mean exactly what he says.”
Mr. Stewart’s smile became more whimsical.
“What this lady says is the plumb truth; I’m a humorist, Mr. Beckwith. This is what I want you to carry across the pond this and others like it.” He drew from his waistcoat pocket what I took to be the small brown pellet which had been concealed in the lining of the drosky driver’s coat. “It looks like a pill why shouldn’t we call it a pill?”
“But it is not a pill. Have you any objection to telling me what it is?”
He and the girl looked at each other. He said to her:
“You might explain, Darya, how the matter appears to us.”
She acted upon his suggestion.
“We think, Mr. Beckwith, that it is just as well you should not know. Then if anyone puts to you inquisitive questions you need not commit yourself. Your ignorance will be a defence.”
“A defence? You think a defence will be needed?”
“My good Mr. Beckwith,” this was the man “do you suppose that I’m willing to pay you five hundred pounds for nothing? I will tell you just how the situation lies. It is of the first importance that these pills should reach America and be delivered at an address which I will give you, before a certain date. They are, as you perceive, not large: at this moment they are all in my waistcoat pocket but they are of interest to a good many people. You know for yourself what means were used to get them to England so that they might escape notice. They might have been sent by post: it is doubtful if they would have reached their destination if they had been. A good many people are on the look-out for them: I daresay some of them suspect that they are in this house at this moment.”
An exclamation came from the girl. She was standing up, looking through the window, from which she was distant perhaps six or seven feet, He, moving to her, followed the direction of her glance. I, also, turned and looked. As I did so an uncomfortable little shiver went up and down my back. In the street, on the opposite side of the road, was a man. I had only caught a glimpse of him for perhaps two or three seconds, but I knew him again it was the man who had rushed at me from across the street when the canvas bag fell on my head, and who, when I turned and saw him, fled as if for life. He was motionless, his hands in his jacket pockets, his head hunched between his shoulders a bird of ill omen.
“That,” I informed them, “is the fellow for whom I believe the canvas bag which fell from the window above on to my hat was intended.”
They asked me what I meant. I explained. When I had finished they exchanged glances which conveyed something which I did not understand. They spoke to each other in that guttural foreign tongue; then he said his laughter could not hide the fact that he was serious enough inside:
“You see it begins. There is a gentleman whom it appears you have met before who is, I fancy, interested in these we will call them pills. He would cut my throat for one of them if he had what he would judge to be a reasonable
expectation of getting safely away with it.”
“Who is the man? I don’t like the look of him at all.”
“Who does? My good Mr. Beckwith, ask no questions; notice nothing, if you can help it especially do not notice people like the one across the road. Will you finally yes or no for five hundred pounds take the pills to New York? starting tonight?”
“Where am I to carry them? I mean, am I to have them on my person, or where are they to be hidden if they are to be hidden.”
“Oh, yes, you may take it they are to be hidden, but where is for you to say. You have a certain amount of intelligence, I presume. If you had something of your own which you wished to take to New York without letting people guess that you had it, what would be the best hiding-place you could find?” As he saw that I was about to speak he held up his hand. “I’m not asking for an answer. I don’t want one. I don’t wish to know where you propose to hide the pills. There are twenty-two of them. I ask you to take them with you to New York. I trust you completely. Again will you or won’t you act as my messenger?”
Something in my very bones seemed to warn me to be careful before I committed myself to a definite statement. I was full of all sorts of fears and fancies lest the man might be using me as a cat’s-paw in an affair from which I should derive neither advantage nor credit.
“I don’t understand,” I told him, “why you won’t send what you call your pills by post. There is such a thing as a registered post which is used by hundreds of thousands of people every day. Surely they would be much safer with it than me.”
“Sometimes, Mr. Beckwith, trifles sent by your registered post are apt to go astray; several registered packets in which I have had an interest have lately reached their destinations in America safely enough in one sense, but with the packets empty. What is the use of receiving a boxful of pills when the box is found to be empty?”
“Could not the police recover the pills?”
“They are not asked. There are pills with which one would rather the police had
nothing to do even if they are lost. Better to ‘bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.’ That is a quotation, Mr. Beckwith, of which you may have heard. But we’ll leave all that alone. Now play the man speak out!
Will you earn that five hundred pounds yes or no?”
I was still reluctant; I felt that I was committing myself to a business altogether out of my line and of which I knew nothing. The mention of the five hundred pounds tipped the beam. It was a sum of which I had dreamt for years. Only a few hours before I had been driven to the conclusion that it was further from me than it ever had been. Now the idea that I could win it in a month or three weeks was a temptation I could not resist. It was a chance which might never recur again; I could not afford to let it slip I would not.
“I will take your pills to New York if you will satisfy me that the five hundred pounds are sure to be mine when I get there.”
“That is a point on which it will afford me the greatest possible pleasure to give you entire satisfaction, Mr. Beckwith. You see these look at them; they are genuine English bank-notes.”
He produced from an inner pocket in his coat a roll of what looked like bank- notes and which were bank-notes; he placed them in my hands for examination and I proved it. They were of various denominations fives, tens, fifties, and hundreds. There must have been three or four thousand pounds worth. I won’t say that I looked at each separate one, but I took careful stock of several. On their genuineness there could not be the faintest possible shadow of a shade of doubt.
The idea that he carried about with him, in such a careless fashion, such a huge sum of money impressed me almost more than anything which had gone before.
The individual who would carry about a small fortune in his jacket pocket, and treat it as if it were nothing at all, must either be a very rich or a very remarkable person. I had been taught, in a hard school, to treat money with respect. How anyone could walk about the streets with thousands of pounds lying loose in his jacket pocket was beyond my comprehension. I should have rushed to the
nearest bank to ensure its safety. As with his face still lighted by a smile he stood and watched I fancy he understood something of what I felt as I assured myself that those notes of his were genuine.
“If you like,” he said, “I will deposit your five hundred pounds in any bank you choose to name, as the property of Hugh Beckwith, to be handed over to you on your return from New York, if you will give me a written agreement to fulfil your share of the bargain I am proposing. More, I will add this; if you fail you shall still have your five hundred pounds if you satisfy me that you have done your best to achieve success.”
“I think that is only fair,” said the girl, “because Mr. Beckwith may fail through what is really no fault of his.”
“Exactly,” returned Mr. Stewart, “that is what I had in my mind. So you
perceive, Mr. Beckwith, on the lines of this lady’s suggestion you stand to win five hundred pounds and to lose nothing.”
“Except his life,” struck in the girl. “I think it only right that he should be informed that he runs a certain risk of losing that.” As she spoke she glanced through the window. “He has gone,” she said to the man.
Mr. Stewart laughed, as if she had perpetrated some joke,
“Precisely just as shadows go. You talk of risk? What’s risk? You risk your life when you cross the street, because you may be knocked down and killed by a runaway or a skidding motor car.”
The girl, who was still looking through the window, observed, “There’s a policeman come instead.”
CHAPTER VIII