The Tinted Venus: A Farcical Romance, F. Anstey [best novels in english txt] 📗

driven to Scotland Yard just in time to save himself, for the Inspector did not make his threatened search that evening.

Two or three days later, however, to Leander's secret alarm, he entered the shop. After all, he felt, it was hopeless to think of deceiving these sleuth-hounds of the Law: this detective had been making inquiries, and identified him as the man who had shared the hansom with that statue!

His knees trembled as he stood behind his glass-topped counter. "Come to make the search, sir?" he said, as cheerfully as he could. "You'll find us ready for you."

"Well," said Inspector Bilbow, with a queer mixture of awkwardness and complacency, "no, not exactly. Tweddle, my good fellow, circumstances have recently assumed a shape that renders a search unnecessary, as perhaps you are aware?"

He looked very hard at Tweddle as he spoke, and the hairdresser felt that this was a crucial moment—the detective was still uncertain whether he had been mixed up with the affair or not. Leander's faculty of ready wit served him better here than on past occasions.

"Aware? No, sir!" he said, with admirable simplicity. "Then that's why you didn't come the other evening! I sat up for you, sir; all night I sat up."

"The fact of the matter is, Tweddle," said Bilbow, who had become suddenly affable and condescending, "I found myself reduced, so to speak, to make use of you as a false clue, if you catch my meaning?"

"I can't say I do quite understand, sir."

"I mean—of course, I saw with half an eye, bless your soul, that you'd had nothing to do with it—it wasn't likely that a poor chap like you had any[Pg 286] knowledge of a big plant of that description. No, no; don't you go away with that idea. I never associated you with it for a single instant."

"I'm truly glad to hear it, Mr. Inspector," said Leander.

"It was owing to the line I took up. There were the real parties to put off their guard, and to do that, Tweddle—to do that, it was necessary to appear to suspect you. D'ye see?"

"I think it was a little hard on me, sir," he said; "for being suspected like that hurts a man's feelings, sir. I did feel wounded to have that cast up against me!"

"Well, well," said the Inspector, "we'll go into that later. But, to go on with what I was saying. My tactics, Tweddle, have been crowned with success—the famous Venus is now safe in my hands! What do you say to that?"

"Say? Why, what clever gentlemen you detective officers are, to be sure!" cried Leander.

"Well, to be candid, there's not many in the Department that would have managed the job as neatly; but, then, it was a case I'd gone into, and thoroughly got up."

"That I'm sure you must have done, sir," agreed Leander. "How ever did you come on it?" He felt a kind of curiosity to hear the answer.

"Tweddle," was the solemn reply, "that is a thing you must be content to leave in its native mystery" (which Leander undoubtedly was). "We in the Criminal Investigation Department have our secret channels and our underground sources for obtaining information, but to lay those channels and sources bare to the public would serve no useful end, nor would it be an expedient act on my part. All you have any claim to be told is,[Pg 287] that, however costly and complicated, however dangerous even, the means employed may have been (that I say nothing about), the ultimate end has been obtained. The Venus, sir, will be restored to her place in the Gallery at Wricklesmarsh Court, without a scratch on her!"

"You don't say so! Lor!" cried Leander, hoping that his countenance would keep his secret, "well, there now! And my ring, sir, if you remember—isn't that on her?"

"You mustn't expect us to do everything. Your ring was, as I had every reason to expect it would be, missing. But I shall be talking the matter over with Sir Peter Purbecke, who's just come back to Wricklesmarsh from the Continent, and, provided—ahem!—you don't go talking about this affair, I should feel justified in recommending him to make you some substantial acknowledgment for any—well, little inconvenience you may have been put to on account of your slight connection with the business, and the steps I may have thought proper to take in consequence. And, from all I hear of Sir Peter, I think he would be inclined to come down uncommonly handsome."

"Well, Mr. Inspector," said Leander, "all I can say is this: if Sir Peter was to know the life his statue has led me for the past few days, I think he'd say I deserved it—I do, indeed!"

CONCLUSION.

The narrow passage off Southampton Row is at present without a hairdresser's establishment, Leander having resigned his shop, long since, in favour of either a fruiterer or a stationer.[Pg 288]

But, in one of the leading West End thoroughfares there is a large and prosperous hair-cutting saloon, over which the name of "Tweddle" glitters resplendent, and the books of which would prove too much for Matilda, even if more domestic duties had not begun to claim her attention.

Leander's troubles are at end. Thanks to Sir Peter Purbecke's munificence, he has made a fresh start; and, so far, Fortune has prospered him. The devices he has invented for correcting Nature's more palpable errors in taste are becoming widely known, while he is famous, too, as the gifted author of a series of brilliant and popular hairwashes. He is accustoming his clients to address him as "Professor"—a title which he has actually had conferred upon him from a quarter in which he is, perhaps, the most highly appreciated—for prosperity has not exactly lessened his self-esteem.

Mr. Jauncy, too, is a married man, although he does not respond so heartily to congratulations. There is no intimacy between the two households, the heads of which recognise that, as Leander puts it, "their wives harmonise better apart."

To the new collection of Casts from the Antique, at South Kensington, there has been recently added one which appears in the official catalogue under the following description:—

"The Cytherean Venus.—Marble statue. Found in a grotto in the Island of Cerigo. Now in the collection of Sir Peter Purbecke, at Wricklesmarsh Court, Black-heath.

"This noble work has been indifferently assigned to various periods; the most general opinion, however, pronounces it to be a copy of an earlier work of Alkamenes, or possibly Kephisodotos.[Pg 289]

"The unusual smallness of the extremities seems to betray the hand of a restorer, and there are traces of colour in the original marble, which are supposed to have been added at a somewhat later period."

Should Professor Tweddle ever find himself in the Museum on a Bank Holiday, and enter the new gallery, he could hardly avoid seeing the magnificent cast numbered 333 in the catalogue, and reviving thereby recollections he has almost succeeded in suppressing.

But this is an experience he will probably spare himself; for he is known to entertain, on principle, very strong prejudices against sculpture, and more particularly the Antique.

THE END. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Tinted Venus, by F. Anstey