taught, wretched child, that you should be kind to the animals that
crave your compassion? Has no one ever told you that he prayeth best
who loveth best all things both great and small? For shame, Wilfred,
for shame!"
Charlotte had come up, and was standing there, looking at them
inquiringly.
"What's all this about?" she asked.
Aubrey started dramatically.
"Miss Mulliner! I was not aware that you were there. All this? Oh,
nothing. I found this lad here on his way to shoot sparrows with his
air-gun, and I am taking the thing from him. It may seem to you a
high-handed action on my part. You may consider me hyper-sensitive.
You may ask, Why all this fuss about a few birds? But that is Aubrey
Bassinger. Aubrey Bassinger will not lightly allow even the merest
sparrow to be placed in jeopardy. Tut, Wilfred," he said. "Tut! Cannot
you see now how wrong it is to shoot the poor sparrows?"
"But I wasn't going to shoot sparrows," said the boy. "I was going to
shoot Uncle Francis while he is having his sun-bath."
"It is also wrong," said Aubrey, after a slight hesitation, "to shoot
Uncle Francis while he is having his sun-bath."
Charlotte Mulliner uttered an impatient exclamation. And Aubrey,
looking at her, saw that her eyes were glittering with a strange
light. She breathed quickly through her delicately-chiselled nose. She
seemed feverish, and a medical man would have been concerned about her
blood-pressure.
"Why?" she demanded vehemently. "Why is it wrong? Why shouldn't he
shoot his Uncle Francis while he is having his sun-bath?"
Aubrey stood for a moment, pondering. Her razor-like feminine
intelligence had cut cleanly to the core of the matter. After all, now
that she put it like that, why not?
"Think how it would tickle him up."
"True," said Aubrey, nodding. "True."
"And his uncle Francis is precisely the sort of man who ought to have
been shot at with air-guns incessantly for the last thirty years. The
moment I met him, I said to myself, 'That man ought to be shot at with
air-guns.'"
Aubrey nodded again. Her girlish enthusiasm had begun to infect him.
"There is much in what you say," he admitted.
"Where is he?" asked Charlotte, turning to the boy.
"On the roof of the boathouse."
Charlotte's face clouded.
"H'm!" she said. "That's awkward. How is one to get at him?"
"I remember Uncle Francis telling me once," said Aubrey, "that, when
you went shooting tigers, you climbed a tree. There are plenty of trees
by the boathouse."
"Admirable!"
For an instant there came to disturb Aubrey's hearty joy in the chase a
brief, faint flicker of prudence.
"But.... I say.... Do you really think.... Ought we...?"
Charlotte's eyes flashed scornfully.
"Infirm of purpose," she said. "Give me the air-gun!"
"I was only thinking...."
"Well?"
"I suppose you know he'll have practically nothing on?"
Charlotte Mulliner laughed lightly.
"He can't intimidate _me_," she said. "Come! Let us be going."
* * * * *
Up on the roof of the boathouse, the beneficent ultra-violet rays of
the afternoon sun pouring down on his globular surface, Colonel Sir
Francis Pashley-Drake lay in that pleasant half-waking, half-dreaming
state that accompanies this particular form of lumbago-treatment. His
mind flitted lightly from one soothing subject to another. He thought
of elks he had shot in Canada, of moufflon he had shot in the Grecian
Archipelago, of giraffes he had shot in Nigeria. He was just on the
point of thinking of a hippopotamus which he had shot in Egypt, when
the train of his meditations was interrupted by a soft popping sound
not far away. He smiled affectionately. So little Wilfred was out with
his air-gun, eh?
A thrill of quiet pride passed through Colonel Pashley-Drake. He had
trained the lad well, he felt. With a garden-party in progress, with
all the opportunities it offered for quiet gorging, how many boys of
Wilfred's age would have neglected their shooting to hang round the
tea-table and stuff themselves with cakes. But this fine lad....
_Ping!_ There it was again. The boy must be somewhere quite close at
hand. He wished he could be at his side, giving him kindly advice.
Wilfred, he felt, was a young fellow after his own heart. What
destruction he would spread among the really worthwhile animals when he
grew up and put aside childish things and exchanged his air-gun for a
Winchester repeater.
Sir Francis Pashley-Drake started. Two inches from where he lay a
splinter of wood had sprung from the boathouse roof. He sat up, feeling
a little less affectionate.
"Wilfred!"
There was no reply.
"Be careful, Wilfred, my boy. You nearly...."
A sharp, agonizing twinge caused him to break off abruptly. He sprang
to his feet and began to address the surrounding landscape passionately
in one of the lesser-known dialects of the Congo basin. He no longer
thought of Wilfred with quiet pride. Few things so speedily modify
an uncle's love as a nephew's air-gun bullet in the fleshy part of
the leg. Sir Francis Pashley-Drake's plans for this boy's future had
undergone in one brief instant a complete change. He no longer desired
to stand beside him through his formative years, teaching him the
secrets of shikarri. All he wanted to do was to get close enough to him
to teach him with the flat of his right hand to be a bit more careful
where he pointed his gun.
He was expressing a synopsis of these views in a mixture of Urdu and
Cape Dutch, when the words were swept from his lips by the sight of a
woman's face, peering from the branches of a near-by tree.
Colonel Pashley-Drake reeled where he stood. Like so many out-door men,
he was the soul of modesty. Once, in Bechuanaland, he had left a native
witch-dance in a marked manner because he considered the chief's third
supplementary wife insufficiently clad. An acute consciousness of the
sketchiness of his costume overcame him. He blushed brightly.
"My dear young lady ..." he stammered.
He had got thus far when he perceived that the young woman was aiming
at him something that looked remarkably like an air-gun. Her tongue
protruding thoughtfully from the corner of her mouth, she had closed
one eye and with the other was squinting tensely along the barrel.
Colonel Sir Francis Pashley-Drake did not linger. In all England
there was probably no man more enthusiastic about shooting: but the
fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether
you are at the right or wrong end of the gun. With an agility which
no gnu, unless in the very pink of condition, could have surpassed, he
sprang to the side of the roof and leaped off. There was a clump of
reeds not far from the boathouse. He galloped across the turf and dived
into them.
Charlotte descended from her tree. Her expression was petulant. Girls
nowadays are spoiled, and only too readily become peevish when baulked
of their pleasures.
"I had no idea he was so nippy," she said.
"A quick mover," agreed Aubrey. "I imagine he got that way from dodging
rhinoceroses."
"Why can't they make these silly guns with two barrels? A single barrel
doesn't give a girl a chance."
Nestling among the reeds, Colonel Sir Francis Pashley-Drake, in spite
of the indignation natural to a man in his position, could not help
feeling a certain complacency. The old woodcraft of the hunter had
stood him, he felt, in good stead. Not many men, he told himself, would
have had the initiative and swift intelligence to act so promptly in
the face of peril.
He was aware of voices close by.
"What do we do now?" he heard Charlotte Mulliner say.
"We must think," said the voice of his nephew Aubrey.
"He's in there somewhere."
"Yes."
"I hate to see a fine head like that get away," said Charlotte, and her
voice was still querulous. "Especially after I winged him. The very
next poem I write is going to be an appeal to air-gun manufacturers to
use their intelligence, if they have any, and turn out a line with two
barrels."
"I shall write a Pastel in Prose on the same subject," agreed Aubrey.
"Well, what shall we do?"
There was a short silence. An insect of unknown species crept up
Colonel Pashley-Drake and bit him in the small of the back.
"I'll tell you what," said Aubrey. "I remember Uncle Francis mentioning
to me once that when wounded zebus take cover by the reaches of the
Lower Zambesi, the sportsman despatches a native assistant to set fire
to...."
Sir Francis Pashley-Drake emitted a hollow groan. It was drowned by
Charlotte's cry of delight.
"Why, of course! How clever you are, Mr. Bassinger."
"Oh no," said Aubrey modestly.
"Have you matches?"
"I have a cigarette-lighter."
"Then would it be bothering you too much to go and set light to those
reeds--about there would be a good place--and I'll wait here with the
gun."
"I should be charmed."
"I hate to trouble you."
"No trouble, I assure you," said Aubrey. "A pleasure."
Three minutes later the revellers on the lawn were interested to
observe a sight rare at the better class of English garden-party. Out
of a clump of laurel-bushes that bordered the smoothly mown turf there
came charging a stout, pink gentleman of middle-age who hopped from
side to side as he ran. He was wearing a loin-cloth, and seemed in a
hurry. They had just time to recognize in this newcomer their hostess's
brother, Colonel Sir Francis Pashley-Drake, when he snatched a cloth
from the nearest table, draped it round him, and with a quick leap
took refuge behind the portly form of the Bishop of Stortford, who was
talking to the local Master of Hounds about the difficulty he had in
keeping his vicars off the incense.
Charlotte and Aubrey had paused in the shelter of the laurels. Aubrey,
peering through this zareba, clicked his tongue regretfully.
"He's taken cover again," he said. "I'm afraid we shall find it
difficult to dig him out of there. He's gone to earth behind a bishop."
Receiving no reply, he turned.
"Miss Mulliner!" he exclaimed. "Charlotte! What is the matter?"
A strange change had come over the girl's beautiful face since he had
last gazed at it. The fire had died out of those lovely eyes, leaving
them looking like those of a newly awakened somnambulist. She was pale,
and the tip of her nose quivered.
"Where am I?" she murmured.
"Bludleigh Manor, Lesser Bludleigh, Goresby-on-the-Ouse, Bedfordshire.
Telephone 28 Goresby," said Aubrey quickly.
"Have I been dreaming? Or did I really.... Ah, yes, yes!" she moaned,
shuddering violently. "It all comes back to me. I shot Sir Francis with
the air-gun!"
"You certainly did," said Aubrey, and would have gone on to comment
with warm approbation on the skill she had shown, a skill which--in an
untrained novice--had struck him as really remarkable. But he checked
himself. "Surely," he said, "you are not letting the fact disturb you?
It's the sort of thing that might have happened to anyone."
She interrupted him.
"How right you were, Mr. Bassinger, to warn me against the spell of
Bludleigh. And how wrong I was to blame you for borrowing my parasol to
chase a rat. Can you ever forgive me?"
"Charlotte!"
"Aubrey!"
"Charlotte!"
"Hush!" she said. "Listen."
On the lawn, Sir Francis Pashley-Drake was telling his story to an
enthralled audience. The sympathy of the meeting, it was only too
plain, was entirely with him. This shooting of a sitting sun-bather had
stirred the feelings of his hearers deeply. Indignant exclamations came
faintly to the ears of the young couple in the laurels.
"Most irregular!"
"Not done!"
"Scarcely cricket!"
And then, from Sir Alexander Bassinger, a stern "I shall require a full
explanation."
Charlotte turned to Aubrey.
"What shall we do?"
"Well," said Aubrey, reflecting, "I don't think we had better just
go and join the party and behave as if nothing had happened. The
atmosphere doesn't seem right. What I would propose is that we take
a short cut through the fields to the station, hook up with the
five-fifty express at Goresby, go to London, have a bit of dinner, get
married and...."
"Yes, yes," cried Charlotte. "Take me away from this awful house."
"To the ends of the world," said Aubrey fervently. He paused. "Look
here," he said suddenly. "If you move over to where I'm standing, you
get the old boy plumb spang against the sky-line. You wouldn't care for
just one last...."
"No, no!"
"Merely a suggestion," said Aubrey. "Ah well, perhaps you're right.
Then let's be shifting."
VI
THOSE IN PERIL ON THE TEE
I think the two young men in the chess-board knickerbockers were
a little surprised when they looked up and perceived Mr. Mulliner
brooding over their table like an affable Slave of the Lamp. Absorbed
in their conversation, they had not noticed his approach. It was their
first visit to the Anglers' Rest, and their first meeting with the Sage
of its bar-parlour: and they were not yet aware that to Mr. Mulliner
any assemblage of his fellow-men over and above the number of one
constitutes an audience.
"Good evening, gentlemen," said Mr. Mulliner. "You have been playing
golf, I see."
They said they had.
"You enjoy the game?"
They said they did.
"Perhaps you will allow me to request Miss Postlethwaite, princess of
barmaids, to re-fill your glasses?"
They said they would.
"Golf," said Mr. Mulliner, drawing up a chair and sinking smoothly into
it, "is a game which I myself have not played for some years. I was
always an indifferent performer, and I gradually gave it up for the
simpler and more straightforward pastime of fishing. It is a curious
fact that, gifted though the Mulliners have been in virtually every
branch of life and sport, few of us have ever taken kindly to golf.
Indeed, the only member of the family I can think of who attained to
any real proficiency with the clubs was the daughter of a distant
cousin of mine--one of the Devonshire Mulliners who married a man named
Flack. Agnes was the girl's name. Perhaps you have run across her? She
is always playing in tournaments and competitions, I believe."
The young men said No, they didn't seem to know the name.
"Ah?" said Mr. Mulliner. "A pity. It would have made the story more
interesting to you."
The two young men exchanged glances.
"Story?" said the one in the slightly more prismatic knickerbockers,
speaking in a voice that betrayed agitation.
"Story?" said his companion, blenching a little.
"The story," said Mr. Mulliner, "of John Gooch, Frederick Pilcher,
Sidney McMurdo and Agnes Flack."
The first young man said he didn't know it was so late. The second
young man said it was extraordinary how time went. They began to talk
confusedly about trains.
"The story," repeated Mr. Mulliner, holding them with the effortless
ease which makes this sort of thing such child's play to him, "of Agnes
Flack, Sidney McMurdo, Frederick Pilcher and John Gooch."
* * * * *
It is an odd thing (said Mr. Mulliner) how often one finds that those
who practise the Arts are quiet, timid little men, shy in company and
unable to express themselves except through the medium of the pencil or
the pen. I have noticed it again and again. John Gooch was like that.
So was Frederick Pilcher. Gooch was a writer and Pilcher was an artist,
and they used to meet a good deal at Agnes Flack's house, where they
were constant callers. And every time they met John Gooch would say to
himself as he watched Pilcher balancing a cup of tea and smiling his
weak, propitiatory smile, "I am fond of Frederick, but his best friend
could not deny that he is a pretty dumb brick." And Pilcher, as he saw
Gooch sitting on the edge of his chair and fingering his tie, would
reflect, "Nice fellow as John is, he is certainly a total loss in mixed
society."
Mark you, if ever men had an excuse for being ill at ease in
the presence of the opposite sex, these two had. They were both
eighteen-handicap men, and Agnes was exuberantly and dynamically
scratch. Her physique was an asset to her, especially at the long game.
She stood about five feet ten in her stockings, and had shoulders and
forearms which would have excited the envious admiration of one of
those muscular women on the music-halls, who good-naturedly allow six
brothers, three sisters, and a cousin by marriage to pile themselves on
her collar-bone while the orchestra plays a long-drawn chord and the
audience hurries out to the bar. Her eye resembled the eye of one of
the more imperious queens of history: and when she laughed, strong men
clutched at their temples to keep the tops of their heads from breaking
loose.
Even Sidney McMurdo was as a piece of damp blotting-paper in her
presence. And he was a man who weighed two hundred and eleven pounds
and had once been a semi-finalist in the Amateur Championship. He loved
Agnes Flack with an ox-like devotion. And yet--and this will show you
what life is--when she laughed, it was nearly always at him. I am told
by those in a position to know that, on the occasion when he first
proposed to her--on the sixth green--distant rumblings of her mirth
were plainly heard in the club-house locker-room, causing two men who
were afraid of thunderstorms to scratch their match.
Such, then, was Agnes Flack. Such, also, was Sidney McMurdo. And such
were Frederick Pilcher and John Gooch.
Now John Gooch, though, of course, they had exchanged a word from
time to time, was in no sense an intimate of Sidney McMurdo. It was
consequently a surprise to him when one night, as he sat polishing up
the rough draft of a detective story--for his was a talent that found
expression largely in blood, shots in the night, and millionaires who
are found murdered in locked rooms with no possible means of access
except a window forty feet above the ground--the vast bulk of McMurdo
lumbered across his threshold and deposited itself in a chair.
The chair creaked. Gooch stared. McMurdo groaned.
"Are you ill?" said John Gooch.
"Ha!" said Sidney McMurdo.
He had been sitting with his face buried in his hands, but now he
looked up; and there was a red glare in his eyes which sent a thrill
of horror through John Gooch. The visitor reminded him of the Human
Gorilla in his novel, _The Mystery of the Severed Ear_.
"For two pins," said Sidney McMurdo, displaying a more mercenary spirit
than the Human Gorilla, who had required no cash payment for his
crimes, "I would tear you into shreds."
"Me?" said John Gooch, blankly.
"Yes, you. And that fellow Pilcher, too." He rose; and, striding to the
mantelpiece, broke off a corner of it and crumbled it in his fingers.
"You have stolen her from me."
"Stolen? Whom?"
"My Agnes."
John Gooch stared at him, thoroughly bewildered. The idea of stealing
Agnes Flack was rather like the notion of sneaking off with the Albert
Hall. He could make nothing of it.
"She is going to marry you."
"What!" cried John Gooch, aghast.
"Either you or Pilcher." McMurdo paused. "Shall I tear you into little
strips and tread you into the carpet?" he murmured, meditatively.
"No," said John Gooch. His mind was blurred, but he was clear on that
point.
"Why did you come butting in?" groaned Sidney McMurdo, absently taking
up the poker and tying it into a lover's knot. "I was getting along
splendidly until you two pimples broke out. Slowly but surely I was
teaching her to love me, and now it can never be. I have a message for
you. From her. I proposed to her for the eleventh time to-night; and
when she had finished laughing she told me that she could never marry
a mere mass of brawn. She said she wanted brain. And she told me to
tell you and the pest Pilcher that she had watched you closely and
realized that you both loved her, but were too shy to speak, and that
she understood and would marry one of you."
* * * * *
There was a long silence.
"Pilcher is a splendid fellow," said John Gooch. "She must marry
Pilcher."
"She will, if he wins the match."
"What match?"
"The golf match. She read a story in a magazine the other day where two
men played a match at golf to decide which was to win the heroine; and
about a week later she read another story in another magazine where
two men played a match at golf to decide which was to win the heroine.
And a couple of days ago she read three more stories in three more
magazines where exactly the same thing happened; and she has decided to
accept it as an omen. So you and the hound Pilcher are to play eighteen
holes, and the winner marries Agnes."
"The winner?"
"Certainly."
"I should have thought--I forget what I was going to say."
McMurdo eyed him keenly.
"Gooch," he said, "You are not one of those thoughtless butterflies, I
hope, who go about breaking girls' hearts?"
"No, no," said John Gooch, learning for the first time that this was
what butterflies did.
"You are not one of those men who win a good girl's love and then ride
away with a light laugh?"
John Gooch said he certainly was not. He would not dream of laughing,
even lightly, at any girl. Besides, he added, he could not ride. He had
once had three lessons in the Park, but had not seemed to be able to
get the knack.
"So much the better for you," said Sidney McMurdo heavily. "Because,
if I thought that, I should know what steps to take. Even now...." He
paused, and looked at the poker in a rather yearning sort of way. "No,
no," he said, with a sigh, "better not, better not." He flung the thing
down with a gesture of resignation. "Better, perhaps, on the whole
not." He rose, frowning. "Well, good night, weed," he said. "The match
will be played on Friday morning. And may the better--or, rather, the
less impossibly foul--man win."
He banged the door, and John Gooch was alone.
But not for long. Scarcely half an hour had passed when the door opened
once more to admit Frederick Pilcher. The artist's face was pale, and
he was breathing heavily. He sat down, and after a brief interval
contrived to summon up a smile. He rose and patted John Gooch on the
shoulder.
"John," he said, "I am a man who as a general rule hides his feelings.
I mask my affections. But I want to say, straight out, here and now,
that I like you, John."
"Yes?" said John Gooch.
Frederick Pilcher patted his other shoulder.
"I like you so much, John, old man, that I can read your thoughts,
strive to conceal them though you may. I have been watching you closely
of late, John, and I know your secret. You love Agnes Flack."
"I don't!"
"Yes, you do. Ah, John, John," said Frederick Pilcher, with a gentle
smile, "why try to deceive an old friend? You love her, John. You love
that girl. And I have good news for you, John--tidings of great joy. I
happen to know that she will look favourably on your suit. Go in and
win, my boy, go in and win. Take my advice and dash round and propose
without a moment's delay."
John Gooch shook his head. He, too, smiled a gentle smile.
"Frederick," he said, "this is like you. Noble. That's what I call it.
Noble. It's the sort of thing the hero does in act two. But it must not
be, Frederick. It must not, shall not be. I also can read a friend's
heart, and I know that you, too, love Agnes Flack. And I yield my
claim. I am excessively fond of you, Frederick, and I give her up to
you. God bless you, old fellow. God, in fact, bless both of you."
"Look here," said Frederick Pilcher, "have you been having a visit from
Sidney McMurdo?"
"He did drop in for a minute."
There was a tense pause.
"What I can't understand," said Frederick Pilcher, at length,
peevishly, "is why, if you don't love this infernal girl, you kept
calling at her house practically every night and sitting goggling at
her with obvious devotion."
"It wasn't devotion."
"It looked like it."
"Well, it wasn't. And, if it comes to that, why did you call on her
practically every night and goggle just as much as I did?"
"I had a very good reason," said Frederick Pilcher. "I was studying
her face. I am planning a series of humorous drawings on the lines of
Felix the Cat, and I wanted her as a model. To goggle at a girl in
the interests of one's Art, as I did, is a very different thing from
goggling wantonly at her, like you."
"Is that so?" said John Gooch. "Well, let me tell you that I wasn't
goggling wantonly. I was studying her psychology for a series of
stories which I am preparing, entitled _Madeline Monk, Murderess_."
Frederick Pilcher held out his hand.
"I wronged you, John," he said. "However, be that as it may, the
point is that we both appear to be up against it very hard. An
extraordinarily well-developed man, that fellow McMurdo."
"A mass of muscle."