Station when Dudley flung himself and suit-case into it that evening.
He had rather imprudently stepped in at the Drones Club on his way and,
while having a brief refresher at the bar, had got into an interesting
argument with a couple of the lads. There had only just been time for
him to race to the cloak-room, retrieve his suit-case, and make a dash
for the train. Fortunately, he had chanced upon an excellent taxi, and
here he was, a little out of breath from the final sprint down the
platform, but in every other respect absolutely all-righto. He leaned
back against the cushions and gave himself up to thought.
From thinking of Bobbie he drifted shortly into meditation on her
mother. If all went well, he felt this up-to-the-present-unmet mater
was destined to be an important figure in his life. It was to her
that he would have to go after Bobbie, hiding her face shyly on his
waistcoat, had whispered that she had loved him from the moment they
had met.
"Lady Wickham," he would say. "No, not Lady Wickham--mother!"
Yes, that was undoubtedly the way to start. After that it would be
easy. Providing, of course, that the mater turned out to be one of the
better class of maters and took to him from the beginning. He tried to
picture Lady Wickham, and had evolved a mental portrait of a gentle,
sweet-faced woman of latish middle-age when the train pulled up at a
station, and a lucky glimpse of a name on one of the lamps told Dudley
that this was where he alighted.
Some twenty minutes later he was being relieved of his suit-case and
shown into a room that looked like a study of sorts.
"The gentleman, m'lady," boomed the butler, and withdrew.
It was rather a rummy way of announcing the handsome guest, felt
Dudley, but he was not able to give much thought to the matter, for
from a chair in front of the desk at which she had been writing there
now rose a most formidable person, at the sight of whom his heart
missed a beat. So vivid had been that image of sweet-faced womanhood
which he had fashioned that his hostess in the flesh had the effect of
being a changeling.
Beauty, as it has been well said, is largely in the eye of the
beholder, and it may be stated at once that Lady Wickham's particular
type did not appeal to Dudley. He preferred the female eye to be a
good deal less like a combination of gimlet and X-ray, and his taste
in chins was something a little softer and not quite so reminiscent of
a battleship going into action. Bobbie's mater might, as Bobbie had
predicted, be awfully glad to see him, but she did not look it. And
suddenly there came over him like a wave the realization that the check
suit which he had selected so carefully was much too bright. At the
tailor's, and subsequently at the Drones Club, it had had a pleasing
and cheery effect, but here in this grim study he felt that it made him
look like an absconding bookmaker.
"You are very late," said Lady Wickham.
"Late?" quavered Dudley. The train had seemed to him to be making more
or less good going.
"I supposed you would be here early in the afternoon. But perhaps you
have brought a flashlight apparatus?"
"Flashlight apparatus?"
"Have you not brought a flashlight apparatus?"
Dudley shook his head. He prided himself on being something of
an authority on what the young visitor should take with him on
country-house visits, but this was a new one.
"No," he said, "no flashlight apparatus."
"Then how," demanded Lady Wickham, with some heat, "do you imagine that
you can take photographs at this time of night?"
"Ah!" said Dudley, vaguely. "See what you mean, of course. Take a bit
of doing, what?"
Lady Wickham seemed to become moderately resigned.
"Oh, well, I suppose they can send someone down to-morrow."
"That's right," said Dudley, brightening.
"In the meantime--this is where I work."
"No, really?"
"Yes. All my books have been written at this desk."
"Fancy that!" said Dudley. He remembered having heard Bobbie mention
that Lady Wickham wrote novels.
"I get my inspirations, however, in the garden for the most part.
Generally the rose-garden. I like to sit there in the mornings and
think."
"And what," agreed Dudley, cordially, "could be sweeter?"
His hostess regarded him curiously. A sense of something wrong seemed
to come upon her.
"You _are_ from _Milady's Boudoir_?" she asked, suddenly.
"From what was that, once again?" asked Dudley.
"Are you that man the editor of _Milady's Boudoir_ was sending down to
interview me?"
Dudley could answer this one.
"No," he said.
"No?" echoed Lady Wickham.
"Most absolutely not-o," said Dudley, firmly.
"Then who," demanded Lady Wickham, "are you?"
"My name's Dudley Finch."
"And to what," asked his hostess in a manner so extraordinarily like
that of his late grandmother that Dudley's toes curled in their shoes,
"am I to attribute the honour of this visit?"
Dudley blinked.
"Why, I thought you knew all about it."
"I know nothing whatever about it."
"Didn't Bobbie send you a wire?"
"He did not. Nor do I know who Bobbie may be."
"Miss Wickham, I mean. Your daughter Roberta. She told me to buzz down
here for the night, and said she would send you a wire paving the way,
so to speak. Oh, I say, this is a bit thick. Fancy her forgetting!"
For the second time that day a disagreeable feeling that his idol was
after all not entirely perfect stole upon Dudley. A girl, he meant,
oughtn't to lure a bloke down to her mater's house and then forget
to send a wire tipping the old girl off. No, he meant to say! Pretty
dashed casual, he meant.
"Oh," said Lady Wickham, "you are a friend of my daughter?"
"Absolutely."
"I see. And where is Roberta?"
"She's tooling down in the car."
Lady Wickham clicked her tongue.
"Roberta is becoming too erratic for endurance," she said.
"I say, you know," said Dudley, awkwardly, "if I'm in the way, you
know, just speak the word and I'll race off to the local pub. I mean to
say, don't want to butt in, I mean."
"Not at all, Mr.----"
"Finch."
"Not at all, Mr. Finch. I am only too delighted," said Lady Wickham,
looking at him as if he were a particularly loathsome slug which had
interrupted some beautiful reverie of hers in the rose-garden, "that
you were able to come." She touched the bell. "Oh, Simmons," she said,
as the butler appeared, "in which room did you put Mr. Finch's luggage?"
"In the Blue Room, m'lady."
"Then perhaps you will show him the way there. He will wish to dress.
Dinner," she added to Dudley, "will be at eight o'clock."
"Righto!" said Dudley. He was feeling a little happier now. Formidable
old bird as this old bird undoubtedly was, he was pretty confident that
she would melt a bit when once he had got the good old dress-clothes
draped about his person. He was prepared to stand or fall by his
dress-clothes. There are a number of tailors in London who can hack
up a bit of broadcloth and sew it together in some sort of shape, but
there is only one who can construct a dress-suit so that it blends
with the figure and seems as beautiful as a summer's dawn. It was this
tailor who enjoyed the benefit of Dudley's patronage. Yes, Dudley felt
as he entered the Blue Room, in about twenty minutes old Madame Lafarge
was due to get her eye knocked out.
In the brief instant before he turned on the light he could dimly see
that perfect suit laid out on the bed, and it was with something of
the feeling of a wanderer returning home that he pressed the switch.
Light flooded the room, and Dudley stood there blinking.
But, no matter how much he blinked, the awful sight which had met
his eyes refused to change itself in the slightest detail. What was
laid out on the bed was not his dress-clothes, but the most ghastly
collection of raiment he had ever beheld. He blinked once again as a
forlorn hope, and then tottered forward.
He stood looking down at the foul things, his heart ice within him.
Reading from left to right, the objects on the bed were as follows:
A pair of short white woollen socks; a crimson made-up bow-tie of
enormous size; a sort of middy-blouse arrangement; a pair of blue
velvet knickerbockers; and finally--and it was this that seemed to
Dudley to make it all so sad and hopeless--a very small sailor-hat with
a broad blue ribbon, across which in large white letters ran the legend
_H.M.S. See-Sik_.
On the floor were a pair of brown shoes with strap-and-buckle
attachment. They seemed to be roomy number twelves.
Dudley sprang to the bell. A footman presented himself.
"Sir?" said the footman.
"What," demanded Dudley, wildly, "what is all this?"
"I found them in your suit-case, sir."
"But where are my dress-clothes?"
"No dress-clothes in the suit-case, sir."
A bright light shone upon Dudley. That argument with those two birds at
the Drones had, he now recalled, been on the subject of fancy-dress.
Both birds were dashing off to a fancy-dress ball that night, and one
bird had appealed to Dudley to support him against the other bird in
his contention that at these affairs the prudent man played for safety
and went as a Pierrot. The second bird had said that he would sooner
be dead in a ditch than don any such unimaginative costume. He was
going as a small boy, he said, and with a pang Dudley remembered having
laughed mockingly and prophesied that he would look the most priceless
ass. And then he had sprinted off and collared the man's bag in mistake
for his own.
"Look here," he said, "I can't possibly come down to dinner in those!"
"No, sir?" said the footman, respectfully, but with a really inhuman
lack of interest and sympathy.
"You'd better leg it to the old girl's room----I mean," said Dudley,
recollecting himself, "you had better go to Lady Wickham and inform
her that Mr. Finch presents his compliments and I'm awfully sorry but
he has mislaid his dress-clothes, so he will have to come down to
dinner in what I've got on at present."
"Very good, sir."
"I say!" A horrid thought struck Dudley. "I say, we shall be alone,
what? I mean to say, nobody else is coming to dinner?"
"Yes, sir," said the footman, brightly. "A number of guests are
expected, sir."
It was a sagging and demoralized Dudley who crawled into the
dining-room a quarter of an hour later. In spite of what moralists
say, a good conscience is not enough in itself to enable a man to
bear himself jauntily in every crisis of life. Dudley had had a good
upbringing, and the fact that he was dining at a strange house in a
bright check suit gave him a consciousness of sin which he strove
vainly to overcome.
The irony of it was that in a normal frame of mind he would have
sneered loftily at the inferior garments which clothed the other male
members of the party. On the left sleeve of the man opposite him was
a disgraceful wrinkle. The fellow next to the girl in pink might have
a good heart, but the waistcoat which covered it did not fit by a
mile. And as for the tie of that other bloke down by Lady Wickham, it
was not a tie at all in the deeper meaning of the word; it was just a
deplorable occurrence. Yet, situated as he was, his heart ached with
envy of all these tramps.
He ate but little. As a rule his appetite was of the heartiest, and
many a novel had he condemned as untrue to life on the ground that its
hero was stated to have pushed his food away untasted. Until to-night
he had never supposed that such a feat was possible. But as course
succeeded course he found himself taking almost no practical interest
in the meal. All he asked was to get it over, so that he could edge
away and be alone with his grief. There would doubtless be some sort
of binge in the drawing-room after dinner, but it would not have the
support of Dudley Finch. For Dudley Finch the quiet seclusion of the
Blue Room.
It was as he was sitting there some two hours later that there drifted
into his mind something Roberta had said about Roland Attwater leaving
on the milk-train. At the time he had paid little attention to the
remark, but now it began to be borne in upon him more and more strongly
that this milk-train was going to be of great strategic importance in
his life. This ghastly house was just the sort of house that fellows
did naturally go away from on milk-trains, and it behoved him to be
prepared.
He rang the bell once more.
"Sir?" said the footman.
"I say," said Dudley, "what time does the milk-train leave?"
"Milk-train, sir?"
"Yes. Train that takes the milk, you know."
"Do you wish for milk, sir?"
"No!" Dudley fought down a desire to stun this man with one of the
number twelve shoes. "I just want to know what time the milk-train goes
in the morning--in case--in--er--case I am called away unexpectedly I
mean to say."
"I will inquire, sir."
The footman made his way to the servants' hall, the bearer of great
news.
"Guess what," said the footman.
"Well, Thomas?" asked Simmons the butler, indulgently.
"That bloke--the Great What-is-it," said Thomas--for it was by this
affectionate sobriquet that Dudley was now known below stairs--"is
planning to go off on the milk-train!"
"What?" Simmons heaved his stout form out of his chair. His face did
not reflect the gay mirth of his subordinate. "I must inform her
ladyship. I must inform her ladyship at once."
The last guest had taken his departure, and Lady Wickham was preparing
to go to a well-earned bed when there entered to her Simmons, grave and
concerned.
"Might I speak to your ladyship?"
"Well, Simmons?"
"Might I first take the liberty of inquiring, m'lady, if the--er--the
young gentleman in the tweed suit is a personal friend of your
ladyship's?"
Lady Wickham was surprised. It was not like Simmons to stroll in and
start chatting about her guests, and for a moment she was inclined to
say as much; then something told her that by doing so she would miss
information of interest.
"He says he is a friend of Miss Roberta, Simmons," she said graciously.
"Says!" said the butler, and there was no eluding the sinister meaning
in his voice.
"What do you mean, Simmons?"
"Begging your pardon, m'lady, I am convinced that this person is
here with some criminal intention. Thomas reports that his suit-case
contained a complete disguise."
"Disguise! What sort of disguise?"
"Thomas did not convey that very clearly, your ladyship, but I
understand that it was of a juvenile nature. And just now, m'lady,
the man has been making inquiries as to the time of departure of the
milk-train."
"Milk-train!"
"Thomas also states, m'lady, that the man was visibly took aback when
he learned that there were guests expected here to-night. If you ask
me, your ladyship, it was the man's intention to make what I might
term a quick clean-up immediately after dinner and escape on the
nine-fifty-seven. Foiled in that by the presence of the guests, he is
going to endeavour to collect the swag in the small hours and get away
on the milk-train."
"Simmons!"
"That is my opinion, your ladyship."
"Good gracious! He told me that Miss Roberta had said to him that she
was coming down here to-night. She has not come!"
"A ruse, m'lady. To inspire confidence."
"Simmons," said Lady Wickham, rising to the crisis like the strong
woman she was, "you must sit up to-night!"
"With a gun, m'lady," cried the butler, with a sportsman's enthusiasm.
"Yes, with a gun. And if you hear him prowling about you must come and
wake me instantly."
"Very good, your ladyship."
"You must be very quiet, of course."
"Like a mouse, your ladyship," said Simmons.
* * * * *
Dudley, meanwhile, in his refuge in the Blue Room, had for some time
past been regretting--every moment more keenly--that preoccupation
with his troubles had led him to deal so sparingly with his food down
there in the dining-room. The peace of the Blue Room had soothed his
nervous system, and with calm had come the realization that he was most
confoundedly hungry. There was something uncanny in the way Fate had
worked to do him out of his proper supply of proteins and carbohydrates
to-day. Hungry as he had been when waiting at Claridge's for Bobbie,
the moment she appeared love had taken his mind off the menu, and he
had made a singularly light lunch. Since then he had had nothing but
the few scattered mouthfuls which he had forced himself to swallow at
the dinner-table.
He consulted his watch. It was later than he had supposed. Much too
late to ring the bell and ask for sandwiches--even supposing that
his standing in this poisonous house had been such as to justify the
demand.
He flung himself back on the bed and tried to doze off. That footman
had said that the milk-train left at three-fifteen, and he was firmly
resolved to catch it. The sooner he was out of this place the better.
Meanwhile, he craved food. Any sort of food. His entire interior
organism was up on its feet, shouting wildly for sustenance.
A few minutes later, Lady Wickham, waiting tensely in her room, was
informed by a knock on the door that the hour had arrived.
"Yes?" she whispered, turning the handle noiselessly and putting her
head out.
"The man, m'lady," breathed the voice of Simmons in the darkness.
"Prowling?"
"Yes, m'lady."
Dudley Finch's unwilling hostess was a woman of character and decision.
From girlhood up she had been accustomed to hunting and the other hardy
sports of the aristocracy of the countryside. And though the pursuit
of burglars had formed up to the present no part of her experience,
she approached it without a qualm. Motioning the butler to follow, she
wrapped her dressing-gown more closely about her and strode down the
corridor.
There was plenty of noise to guide her to her goal. Dudley's progress
from his bedroom to the dining-room, the fruit and biscuits on the
sideboard of which formed his objective, had been far from quiet. Once
he had tripped over a chair, and now, as his hostess and her attendant
began to descend the stairs, he collided with and upset a large screen.
He was endeavouring to remove the foot which he had inadvertently put
through this when a quiet voice spoke from above.
"Can you see him, Simmons?"
"Yes, m'lady. Dimly but adequately."
"Then shoot if he moves a step."
"Very good, m'lady."
Dudley wrenched his foot free and peered upwards, appalled.
"I say!" he quavered. "It's only me, you know!"
Light flooded the hall.
"Only me!" repeated Dudley, feverishly. The sight of the enormous gun
in the butler's hands had raised his temperature to a painful degree.
"What," demanded Lady Wickham, coldly, "are you doing here, Mr. Finch?"
An increased sense of the delicacy of his position flooded over Dudley.
He was a young man with the nicest respect for the conventions, and
he perceived that the situation required careful handling. It is not
tactful, he realized, for a guest for whose benefit a hostess has only
a few hours earlier provided a lavish banquet to announce to the said
hostess that he has been compelled by hunger to rove the house in
search of food. For a moment he stood there, licking his lips; then
something like an inspiration came to him.
"The fact is," he said, "I couldn't sleep, you know."
"Possibly," said Lady Wickham, "you would have a better chance of doing
so if you were to go to bed. Is it your intention to walk about the
house all night?"
"No, no, absolutely not. I couldn't sleep, so I--er--I thought I would
pop down and see if I could find something to read, don't you know."
"Oh, you want a book?"
"That's right. That's absolutely it. A book. You've put it in a
nutshell."
"I will show you to the library."
In spite of her stern disapproval of this scoundrel who wormed his way
into people's houses in quest of loot, a slight diminution of austerity
came to Lady Wickham as the result of this introduction of the literary
note. She was an indefatigable novelist, and it pleased her to place
her works in the hands of even the vilest. Ushering Dudley into the
library, she switched on the light and made her way without hesitation
to the third shelf from the top nearest the fireplace. Selecting one
from a row of brightly covered volumes, she offered it to him.
"Perhaps this will interest you," she said.
Dudley eyed it dubiously.
"Oh, I say," he protested, "I don't know, you know. This is one of that
chap, George Masterman's."
"Well?" said Lady Wickham, frostily.
"He writes the most frightful bilge, I mean. Don't you think so?"
"I cannot say that I do. I am possibly biased, however, by the fact
that George Masterman is the name I write under."
Dudley blinked.
"Oh, do you?" he babbled. "Do you? You do, eh? Well, I mean----" An
imperative desire to be elsewhere swept over him. "This'll do me," he
said, grabbing wildly at the nearest shelf. "This will do me fine.
Thanks awfully. Good night. I mean, thanks, thanks. I mean good night.
Good night."
Two pairs of eyes followed him as he shot up the stairs. Lady Wickham's
were cold and hard; the expression in those of Simmons was wistful.
It was seldom that the butler's professional duties allowed him the
opportunity of indulging the passion for sport which had been his since
boyhood. A very occasional pop at a rabbit was about all the shooting
he got nowadays, and the receding Dudley made his mouth water. He
fought the craving down with a sigh.
"A nasty fellow, m'lady," he said.
"Quick-witted," Lady Wickham was forced to concede.
"Full of low cunning, m'lady," emended the butler. "All that about
wanting a book. A ruse."
"You had better continue watching, Simmons."
"Most decidedly, your ladyship."
* * * * *
Dudley sat on his bed, panting. Nothing like this had ever happened to
him before, and for a while the desire for food left him, overcome by
a more spiritual misery. If there was one thing in the world that gave
him the pip, it was looking like a silly idiot; and every nerve in his
body told him that during the recent interview he must have looked the
most perfect silly idiot. Staring bleakly before him, he re-lived every
moment of the blighted scene, and the more he examined his own share in
it the worse it looked. He quivered in an agony of shame. He seemed to
be bathed from head to foot in a sort of prickly heat.
And then, faintly at first, but growing stronger every moment, hunger
began to clamour once again.
Dudley clenched his teeth. Something must be done to combat this. Mind
must somehow be enabled to triumph over matter. He glanced at the book
which he had snatched from the shelf, and for the first time that
night began to feel that Fate was with him. Out of a library which was
probably congested with the most awful tosh, he had stumbled first pop
upon Mark Twain's _Tramp Abroad_, a book which he had not read since
he was a kid but had always been meaning to read again; just the sort
of book, in fact, which would enable a fellow to forget the anguish of
starvation until that milk-train went.
He opened it at random, and found with a shock that Fate had but been
playing with him.
"_It has now been many months, at the present writing_" (read
Dudley), "_since I have had a nourishing meal, but I shall soon
have one--a modest, private affair all to myself. I have selected
a few dishes, and made out a little bill of fare, which will go
home in the steamer that precedes me and be hot when I arrive--as
follows:--_"
Dudley quailed. Memories of his boyhood came to him, of the time when
he had first read what came after those last two words. The passage
had stamped itself on his mind, for he had happened upon it at school,
at a time when he was permanently obsessed by a wolfish hunger and too
impecunious to purchase anything at the school shop to keep him going
till the next meal. It had tortured him then, and it would, he knew,
torture him even more keenly now.
Nothing, he resolved, should induce him to go on reading. So he
immediately went on.
"_Radishes. Baked apples, with cream._
"_Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs._
"_American coffee, with real cream._
"_American butter._
"_Fried chicken, Southern style._
"_Porterhouse steak._
"_Saratoga potatoes._
"_Broiled chicken, American style._"
A feeble moan escaped Dudley. He endeavoured to close the book, but it
would not close. He tried to remove his eyes from the page, but they
wandered back like homing pigeons.
"_Brook trout, from Sierra Nevada._
"_Lake trout, from Tahoe._
"_Sheephead and croakers, from New Orleans._
"_Black bass, from the Mississippi._
"_American roast beef._
"_Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style._
"_Cranberry sauce. Celery._
"_Roast wild turkey. Woodcock._