Page:The Popular Magazine v72 n1 (1924-04-20).djvu/95

 effort. He made an attempt to meet Kotman Dass halfway.

“Now look here, you spineless mass,” he said truculently, “will you come as far as the door of the flat and look in—through the chink if you like—bah!—and give me what information you can glean from that? I'll give you my word that I will not use force to make you enter the room.”

“Oah, if you please, noa—I am greatlee preferring not”

The fiery Salaman ground his teeth.

“Now look here, Dass,” he shouted. “Understand me, once and for all. This man, this monster, Dragour, is an enemy to mankind and he is going to be scotched—like an adder. And I am going to scotch him—and you are going to help me. I intend to go ahead regardless of anything—I shall brush aside any opposition. I want to warn you—to warn you just as seriously as I can that if you decline to come along to this flat—as far as the open door only, I promise that—and give me the benefit of your, freak brainwork, I will go straight up to the bird room and wring the neck of your talking starling like a dog's.”

It was the most dreadful threat Salaman Chayne could think of and one which he was wholly incapable of carrying out, as Kotman Dass would have realized at once had he been less perturbed. For, like his quaking partner, Mr. Chayne was a bird man, and was as passionately fond of the host of little feathered folk inhabiting the bird room upstairs as Dass. It was, indeed, the hobby for birds which had brought them together in the first place, though it was the successful application of their combined talents to the task of making a sufficient income which kept them together.

Kotman Dass succumbed instantly to his dreadful threat to murder the starling he had so patiently and wonderfully taught to talk. He agreed to go to the flat, as their man Hollerton brought in breakfast.

“Very good, Dass,” said Salaman. “You're doing a sound thing—sound and citizenlike.”

Kotman Dass shook his mighty head sorrowfully.

“It will react seriouslee upon my general health and I shall suffer agonies. I shall be bilious again,” he stated gloomily. “I am always soa after occasions when my nerve centers have been too greatly vibrated by outside influences. I shall eat hearty breakfast for purpose of supporting my physical strength.”

“Yes, do,” said Salaman satirically. “But try to keep your meal within reasonable, human bounds—a thing you rarely do—or you certainly will be bilious. In fact, I wonder you aren't always bilious.”

Kotman Dass paused in the middle of taking a truly prodigious supply of kidneys and bacon.

“Iff it were not for my superb digestion,” he said with a nervous chuckle, “my life would be profound burden, yess, indeed.”

Breakfast seemed to have restored his equanimity a good deal—but the restoration was wholly temporary and by the time he had been towed to the door of the flat in which Sir James Argrath had shot himself the big man was in a lamentable state of nerves.

There was no difficulty about entering the flat. Salaman had kept a key found on the mantelpiece overnight. The body had been removed, and as there was ample evidence that it was a plain case of suicide no detectives were there. No doubt the silent Mr. Gregory Kiss had seen to all that when he telephoned for and remained to receive the police overnight.

The place was well, comfortably and normally furnished and the nervousness of Mr. Dass seemed to subside a little as he stood at the door of the sitting room while Salaman Chayne settled down to search the flat.

But twenty minutes' patient searching revealed nothing, and Salaman grew irritable. The glances he threw continually across to the ponderous figure blocking the doorway momentarily grew more savage and contemptuous.

Kotman Dass, however, appeared unconscious of these. His dark eyes had grown dreamy and abstracted, seeming to follow the movements of Salaman almost unconsciously. Not till the little man, having exhausted the possibilities of the ornaments and most of the furniture, scowlingly began to pull up the carpet, presumably with a view to examining the floor, did Kotman Dass speak.

“Iff you please, my dear mister, what is it you wish to find?” he asked mildly.

“Find, you fool? Find?” snarled Salaman: “Birds' nests! Lost golf balls! Why, what do you think I'm looking for? This was Dragour's flat—probably a ren-