“Pity he saw Freda!” remarked the wily old fellow. “Jimmie, the butler” was well known in Sing-Sing Prison as one of the shrewdest and cleverest of crooks and card-sharpers who had ever “worked” the transatlantic liners.
In the underworld of New York, Paris and London marvellous stories had been and were still told of his alertness, of the several bold coups he had made, and the great sums he had filched from the pockets of the unwary in conjunction, be it said, with Gordon Gray, alias Commander George Tothill, late of the British Navy, who was also known to certain of his pals as “Toby” Jackson. At Parkhurst Prison “Joyous Jimmie” was also well known, for he had enjoyed the English air for seven years less certain good conduct remission. But both master and man were crooks, clever cultured men who could delude anybody, who could adapt themselves to any surroundings, who knew life in all its phases, and could, with equanimity, eat a portion of oily fried fish-and-chips for their dinner or enjoy a Sole Colbert washed down with a glass of Imperial Tokay.
The pair, with a man named Arthur Porter, known to his criminal friends as “Guinness”—whom, by the way, Roddy had seen entering Mr Sandys’ house in Park Lane—and the handsome woman Freda Crisp were indeed parasites upon London society.
Their daring was colossal, their ingenuity astounding, and the ramifications of their friends bewildering.
“Get me a drink, Jimmie,” said the man who posed as his master. “I’m cold. Why the devil don’t you keep a better fire than this?”
“The missus is out. Went to the parson’s wife’s tea-party half an hour ago. Mary goes to church here. It’s better.”
“Of course it is—gives us a hall-mark of respectability,” laughed Gray. “Freda goes now and then. But she gives money to the old parson and excuses herself for non-attendance on Sunday mornings. Oh! my dear Jimmie!” he laughed. “These people want a lot of moss scraping off them, don’t they—eh?”
“Moss! Why, it’s that hard, grey lichen with hairy flowers that grows on trees! They want it all scraped off, then rubbed with sandpaper and a rag and acid applied to put a bit of vim in them. It’s the same over all this faded old country—that’s my belief.”
“And yet some of them are infernally cute. That old man Homfray, for instance, he’s got his eyes skinned. He doesn’t forget that silly young ass Hugh Willard, you know!”
“No, Gordon! Don’t mention him. That’s one of our failures—one of our false steps,” declared Jimmie. “I don’t like to hear any mention of his name—nor of Hyde Park Square either.”