Read Online A Prince of Swindlers by Guy Boothby - Free Book Online Page A

greet him impatiently.
    â€œCome, come, Belton,” he said, “we must be quick. It is twenty minutes to twelve, and if we don’t hurry, the folk next door will become impatient. Have you succeeded in doing what I spoke to you about last night?”
    â€œI have done everything, sir.”
    â€œI am glad to hear it. Now lock that door and let us get to work. You can let me have your news while I am dressing.”
    Opening one side of a massive wardrobe, that completely filled one end of the room, Belton took from it a number of garments. They included a well-worn velvet coat, a baggy pair of trousers—so old that only a notorious pauper or a millionaire could have afforded to wear them—a flannel waistcoat, a Gladstone collar, a soft silk tie, and a pair of embroidered carpet slippers upon which no old clothes man in the most reckless way of business in Petticoat Lane would have advanced a single halfpenny. Into these he assisted his master to change.
    â€œNow give me the wig, and unfasten the straps of this hump,” said Carne, as the other placed the garments just referred to upon a neighbouring chair.
    Belton did as he was ordered, and then there happened a thing the like of which no one would have believed. Having unbuckled a strap on either shoulder, and slipped his hand beneath the waistcoat, he withdrew a large
papier-maché
hump, which he carried away and carefully placed in a drawer of the bureau. Relieved of his burden, Simon Carne stood up as straight and well-made a man as any in Her Majesty’s dominions. The malformation, for which so many, including the Earl and Countess of Amberley, had often pitied him, was nothing but a hoax intended to produce an effect which would permit him additional facilities of disguise.
    The hump discarded, and the grey wig fitted carefully to his head in such a manner that not even a pinch of his own curly locks could be seen beneath it, he adorned his cheeks with a pair of
crépu
-hair whiskers, donned the flannel vest and the velvet coat previously mentioned, slipped his feet into the carpet slippers, placed a pair of smoked glasses upon his nose, and declared himself ready to proceed about his business. The man who would have known him for Simon Carne would have been as astute as, well, shall we say, as the private detective—Klimo himself.
    â€œIt’s on the stroke of twelve,” he said, as he gave a final glance at himself in the pier-glass above the dressing-table, and arranged his tie to his satisfaction. “Should any one call, instruct Ram Gafur to tell them that I have gone out on business, and shall not be back until three o’clock.”
    â€œVery good, sir.”
    â€œNow undo the door and let me go in.”
    Thus commanded, Belton went across to the large wardrobe which, as I have already said, covered the whole of one side of the room, and opened the middle door. Two or three garments were seen inside suspended on pegs, and these he removed, at the same time pushing towards the right the panel at the rear. When this was done a large aperture in the wall between the two houses was disclosed. Through this door Carne passed, drawing it behind him.
    In No. 1 , Belverton Terrace, the house occupied by the detective, whose presence in the street Carne seemed to find so objectionable, the entrance thus constructed was covered by the peculiar kind of confessional box in which Klimo invariably sat to receive his clients, the rearmost panels of which opened in the same fashion as those in the wardrobe in the dressing-room. These being pulled aside, he had but to draw them to again after him, take his seat, ring the electric bell to inform his housekeeper that he was ready, and then welcome his clients as quickly as they cared to come.
    Punctually at two o’clock the interviews ceased, and Klimo, having reaped an excellent harvest of fees, returned to Porchester House to become Simon Carne once more.
    Possibly it