Chapter THIRTEEN

It is a fascinating occupation to watch a powerful human brain at work upon some great problems--the face alive with mind, the tension of the muscles, the frowning eyes; and to feel behind it all that driving, compelling power of the intelligence wherein man is God-like.

But no one would have seen this sight in the case of Mr. Collop had he remained. What he would have seen was a hand pouring out whiskey for itself over and over again and adding smaller and smaller splashes of soda; and at last an obese body attempting sleep in the lounge chair which it filled.

He had comfortably made up his mind. He was going to stay in the West Room and sleep as he could, leaving his bed untouched by way of giving the impression of a long night's intellectual wrestling. Next morning he would take every one of the three in turn, tell each separately that he was from the Yard, tax them brutally with the theft, and terrify and bully the culprit, whichever of the three it might turn out to be, into confession. So decided, he chose a good chair among the mutilated victims, wheeled it close to the electric switches by the fire, settled himself down, turned off the light and shut his eyes for sleep.

Now it is paradoxically true of the substantial more than it is of the insufficient, that they must shift and turn to find that posture in which their persons can best repose, especially in chairs. Nor could Mr. Collop at once and easily fall into the arms of Morpheus. He shifted and turned, and wedged in and re-wedged in and out, and moved again and replaced those various muscles and anatomical names of which escape me--or rather I never knew them, though the things themselves I know well enough--when all of a sudden he gave a loud and piercing cry and leapt up broad awake. Something had stuck into him--something abominably sharp. His reaction had been instantaneous. He struck a match. He switched on the light.

He groped in the offending tail-coat pocket and--not the first to do so!--stared at what he found in his hand--the emerald! Its brooch setting was unclasped, the wicked steel pin of it was pointing at a challenging angle in the air. He glared viciously at the offending point which had wounded his innocent person; then his eyebrows relaxed into a stupefied stare at the stone itself.

"Great God!" he said three times, "Great God! Great God!"

There is a current impression, taken I think from the great spate of detective stories upon which we are all fed, that your professional detective has no brains whatsoever and would be no match for the sloth of the Andes, or the sluggish waddle-duck of Australian and Imperial fame. It is an error. They are men as we are and their intelligences, such as they are, work more or less under the spur of prospective advantage. Within three minutes Mr. Collop had grasped the fact that fame, security, promotion, a permanent, good, appreciated, livelihood lay in his outstretched palm. Had he not found the emerald? _How_ he had found it, why it was there at all, he knew not. But he had quickly seen how its possession might be used.

"There you are, you great blighter," he murmured, addressing the charming gem. "Damn your green eyes! I'll make you work, I will! William, my boy, here's something that's got to be thought out!"

For the first time for many months, Mr. Collop thought, really thought; "concentrated" as he would have put it.

He would have done it better perhaps if he had not been so full of whiskey. But shock is a powerful stimulus. And he was already three-quarters sober and coming to conclusions.

For a long time the effect of this unusual exercise was a blank and a confusion of mind; then there broke in upon the silence a sound which startled him horribly. A voice, somewhat muffled, uncertain, had spoken in that silence where none but him could be. He had heard it! Or was he mad?

"Attaboy!"

Was it a divine command? Had some dear wraith of the dead--his sainted mother perhaps, who could tell--come to comfort him in this dread hour of his fate? All was dead still. His hand trembled a little as he pulled out his watch. It was a quarter past two, and the silence was enormous.

Most awfully it came again.

"Attaboy!"

He hardly dared to look around. Look round he did and there he saw what he had not before grasped--that the dome of black cloth, suspended, covered a cage; thence it was that once again, but this time in a failing, drowsy manner, came the unearthly summons:

"Attaboy!"

A revelation burst upon his mind. It was a revelation indeed! The whole scheme blazed suddenly before him.

He walked boldly to the cage, took off the cover and saw what may very properly be called the blinking bird, for the sudden light had dazzled it.

"Attaboy!" croaked the parrot again in a rather peevish fashion.

"I'll Attaboy you!" hissed Mr. Collop through his teeth.

He made his preparations to capture that innocent accomplice; his scheme was now fully developed.

He had heard that this kind of fowl was of a very fierce and dangerous sort; but the plan must be pursued at all risks. He took his handkerchief from his pocket--a large bandanna of the noblest--and with a decision worthy of a better cause, whipped it round the gaudy coloured neck after the fashion of a cravat. A muffled protest proceeded from that insulted organ.

"You wait!" muttered Mr. Collop vindictively, as though the poor bird were his enemy. He looked about him. There was a large square of black cloth on his host's writing-table. With that he made a second deadener, hoodlike, entirely covering the animal's head, and tied it securely on; all that now penetrated from within was a faint, varying sound which one had to be in the closest neighbourhood to hear. Next he cut off a piece of tape from the coil neatly disposed by the side of the official papers, and bound the fierce talons securely. Then with infinite precaution he slipped off the chain from its ring, and held the exotic biped firmly in both hands.

The clipped wings fluttered a little, but they were contained by strong hands. Mr. Collop made for the window. He laid his living parcel down, where it struggled in vain; opened the shutters with infinite precautions for avoiding sound--above, Aunt Amelia, happily deaf, was deep in slumber; pulled up the sash so slowly that it seemed an age; went back on tiptoe, extinguished the light and--a stroke of genius--went noisily upstairs, bearing the parrot, to give full warning to anyone who might be still awake that he had gone to bed, after all. He tumbled his bed about. He returned.

He came down gingerly in shoeless feet, and stepped out into the night.

The stillness was awful, but all propitious to his plan. The thin snow lay even and spotless on the grass on either side of the avenue. The nearer trees were clear in the half light. The gravel walk, though well swept and clear of snow, leaving no trace of his passage, was bitterly cold to his thinly clad feet--for his socks were of silk, I am glad to say.

There was a wintry mist and beyond it the white suffused radiance of the moon.

He looked up cautiously. There was not a chink of light in any window. All slept, and the Holy One presided in the heavens above, beyond the fog in her blurred aureole of light. It was the hour for great deeds. And a great deed was done.

Mr. Collop, with infinite precautions, lifted up his captive and planted its two talons firmly upon the snow to the side of the swept alleyway and pointing at a small, most aged and somewhat stunted oak about thirty yards ahead of him on the edge of the swept path. He himself kept crouching on the swept gravel and holding poor Attaboy to the side above the snow. Then, still creeping noiselessly along, he planted the bird's claws down again about six inches further. And so on, hop by hop.

It was merciful in Providence to have spared that tropical exile any too sensitive nerves in its claws; but it protested. It thought the march an indignity, and it was abominably cold. The parrot squirmed. The parrot resisted. But the parrot was for it.

Six inches by six inches the double imprint of the claws appeared in a lengthening chain upon the thin snow until they had come to within ten feet of the oak. Then did Mr. Collop most cautiously rise from his stoop and, taking the bird under his left arm and standing upon tiptoe, stretch his right hand up to a small hollow in the stump of a branch that had decayed long ago: he felt its concavity. It would do. He carefully felt for the emerald in (now) his waistcoat pocket. It was safe. He turned back swiftly towards the great dark house in the moonlight.

The thing was accomplished.

As stealthily as he had come, but far more rapidly, thanking Heaven that still no light showed through any cranny of the mansion, he loped back, shut the window down again with infinite precautions and even then dreaded a slight sound, put his dumb confederate back, released it of its bandages, slipped on the cover of the cage, and crept up to bed.

* * * * * * *

So true it is that once in every man's life comes an opportunity and that in every man some talent, however unsuspected, lurks.