Money in the Bank Read Free Page A

don't like the way he's acting. I think there's compus-boompus going on."
    "What dame?"
    "This dame he keeps sauntering in the rose garden with at this Shipley Hall place down in Kent, where we're visiting. They go off into this rose garden together, and she pins fragrant blooms in his buttonhole."
    Mr. Twist seemed incredulous.
    "She pins fragrant blooms in Soapy's buttonhole?"
    "That's right."
    "In Soapy's buttonhole?"
    "That's what she does."
    "She must be nuts."
    Again, Mrs. Molloy was forced to bite her lip, and again she reminded herself how sorely she needed this man's advice.
    "Twice I've caught her at it. I didn't like the look on his face, neither. Sort of soppy. Her name's Cork," said Dolly, in an aggrieved voice, as if this somehow made it worse. "Mrs. Wellesley Cork. Soapy met her somewheres, and she told him about this joint she was running at this place she's rented from some lord or other, and Soapy would have it that we go visit there. It's a sort of crazy joint. You eat vegetables and breathe deep and dance around in circles. It's supposed to be swell for the soul."
    The description of the Clarissa Cork colony for the promotion of plain living and high thinking was not a very lucid one, but Chimp nodded understandingly.
    "I know the sort of thing you mean. Yogi stuff."
    "Please yourself. Your guess is as good as mine. The place seems to me like a booby-hatch. I wouldn't mind breathing deep, if I was allowed to stoke up first, but all these vegetables are getting me down. When I reach for the knife and fork, I like to feel there's something in the old nosebag I can dig my teeth into. A little more of it, and I'll be cutting out paper dolls and sticking straws in my hair. The butler's gone bugs already."
    "I've sometimes thought of starting a racket like that myself," said Mr. Twist reflectively. "There's money in it. But tell me more. Does Soapy dance around in circles?"
    "Sure."
    "The big stiff. I hope he strains a muscle. What's that youwere saying about the butler? Gone bugs, has he?"
    "He could step straight into Bloomingdale, and no questions asked. He wanders around the place like a lost spirit, with a strange, fixed look on his pan, like he was seeing visions or sump'n. And guess what. I found him in my room yesterday, burrowing under the dressing-table. Yessir, sticking up from under the dressing-table like Pike's Peak, and had the nerve to say he was looking for a funny smell. Funny smell, my foot. There wasn't a sign of any funny smell."
    Mr. Twist agreed that this sounded, at the most charitable estimate, borderline stuff. He said with some interest that he had never seen a loony butler—adding, in this connection, that he would rather see than be one.
    "Yay," said Doily. "It's certainly the by-Goddest joint I was ever in. But I didn't come here to talk about that. What do you make of this thing of Soapy and this dame? Talk quick. I've got to get a train in a minute."
    Mr. Twist gave his verdict without hesitation. He had little faith in his fellow men and none in Soapy Molloy.
    "The sooner you form a flying wedge and break up the play, the better off you'll be," he replied, with all the emphasis at his disposal. "He is your man, and he's doing you wrong."
    Dolly nodded sombrely. He had but confirmed her own view.
    "That's the way I feel. This Cork dame is rich. Got it in gobs. And what I've been asking myself is, what's to prevent Soapy ditching me and making a pass at her? She. would be a pushover for him. He's full of sex appeal, the sweet old pieface," said Dolly, with a sort of mournful wifely pride. "And he's just at what you might call the dangerous age. Young enough to have preserved that schoolgirl complexion, and old enough to have gotten tired of work and be looking around for a rich wife to take him away from it all."
    "You watch him like a hawk, and if you get the goods on him, jump on his neck."
    "You don't think it's just that he's sort of being civil, what with her being his hostess