"What kind of toys?" he bargained. "Tanks and motor cars that go?"
"Rather! And marching soldiers, and a gramophone."
"Righto, I'll come! And I don't care a darn if I never see Mother or Father again!" decided the cherub.
I would have given as much for a taxi as Richard the Third for a horse; but I'd walked from the village, and must return in the same way. We started at once, hand in hand, stepping out as Bertie Scarlett the second had never, perhaps, stepped before. It was only a mile to Dawley St. Ann, and in twenty minutes I had smuggled my treasure into the inn by a little-used side door. This led straight to my rooms, and I whisked the boy in without being seen. So far, so good. But what to do with him next was the question!
I saw that, in such an emergency, Terry Burns would hinder more than help. He was cured of the listlessness, the melancholia, which had been the aftermath of shell shock; but he was rather like a male Sleeping Beauty just roused from a hundred years' nap—full of reawakened fire and vigour, though not yet knowing what use to make of his brand-new energy. It was my job to advise him, not his to counsel me! And if I flung at his head my version of the "Cecil" story, his one impulse would be to batter down the sported oak of the garden court suite.
He and I had agreed, in calm moments, that it would be vain and worse than vain to appeal to the police. But calm moments were ended, especially for Terry. He might think that the police would act on the story we could now patch together. I didn't think so, or I wouldn't have stolen the heir of all the Scarletts.
Well, I had stolen him. Here he was in my small sitting room, stuffing chocolates bestowed on me by Terry. On top of uncounted cakes they would probably make him sick; and I couldn't send for a doctor without endangering the plot.
No! the child must be disposed of, and there wasn't a minute to waste. Terry's lodgings were as unsuited for a hiding-place as my rooms at the inn. Both of us were likely to be suspected when Bertie was missed. I didn't much care for myself, but I did care for Terry, because my business was to keep him out of trouble, not to get him into it, even for his love's sake.
Suddenly, as I concentrated on little Fox-face, and how to camouflage him for my purpose, Jim Courtenaye's description of the child drifted into my head.
Jim! The thought of Jim just then was like picking up a pearl on the way to the poor-house!