“They can’t do both!” I coldly replied. “They’d much better put up with their loss; we shall put the money to much better use than they could ever have done. If they are going to make themselves unpleasant over it, you may tell them from me we’ll come back and do precisely the same thing next year.”
“You impudent young feller!” cried the angry old woman, “you forget that one of the sharpest detectives in England is after you.”
“He’s taking a mighty circuitous route!”
“But he’ll catch you, all the same, at last.”
“Will he?” I answered, eying her with cold amusement. “Now look here, missus, if you say much more I’ll communicate with Van Ginkel, and direct him to take the yacht across to Cuba and have James landed and shot there as a filibuster.”
Whereupon the poor old soul fell to whimpering again, though at the same time she couldn’t help laughing a little at my readiness.
Teddy was soon fitted out at the tailor’s, and a sight he looked in what they called the dernier cri of a French travelling costume; more like a young man out of the Petit Journal pour rire than anything.
“Adieu, Madame Ving-ham!” I laughed, as we got outside. “Your nephew and I are going to get bicycles and be off down the Corniche, over the Italian frontier. Say good-bye to him, and be off home to Brixton yourself as soon as possible, or you may get into trouble with the police here for using a false title of nobility. Now, you did, you know! it’s no use your denying it. Take my advice; the quieter you keep for the next few months the better.”
She was so angry she wouldn’t say good-bye to me, but she overwhelmed poor Parsons. And she implored him as soon as possible to give up my desperate bad company, which, sooner or later, could only bring him to ruin—I, if you please, who at so much risk had just rescued him!—and to write to her soon to Brixton, and come and see her directly he got back.
She stood watching us as we went off to the bicycle man’s in the Arcade, near Ciro’s, and kept on waving her handkerchief till we got into the gardens across the road and were lost to view.