I
McAllister was in the tank. His puffing and blowing as he dove and
tumbled like a contented, rubicund porpoise, reverberated loudly among
the marble pillars of the bath at the club. It was all part of a
carefully adjusted and as rigorously followed regimen, for McAllister
was a thorough believer in exercise (provided it was moderate), and took
it regularly, averring that a fellow couldn't expect to eat and drink as
much as he naturally wanted to unless he kept in some sort of condition,
and if he didn't he would simply get off his peck, that was all. Hence
"Chubby" arose regularly at nine-thirty, and wrapping himself in a
padded Japanese silk dressing-gown, descended to the tank, where he dove
six times and swam around twice, after which he weighed himself and had
Tim rub him down. Tim felt a high degree of solicitude for all this
procedure, since he was a personal discovery of McAllister's, and owed
his present exalted position entirely to the clubman's interest, for
the latter had found him at Coney Island earning his daily bread by
diving, in the presence of countless multitudes, into a six-foot glass
tank, where he seated himself upon the bottom and nonchalantly consumed
a banana. McAllister's delight and enthusiasm at this elevating
spectacle had been boundless.
"Wish I could do any one thing as well as that feller dives down and
eats that banana!" he had confided to his friend Wainwright. "Sometimes
I feel as if my life had been wasted!" The upshot of the whole matter
was that Tim had been forthwith engaged as rubber and swimming teacher
at the club.
McAllister had just taken his fifth plunge, and was floating lazily
toward the steps, when Tim appeared at the door leading into the
dressing-rooms and announced that a party wanted to speak to him on the
'phone, the Lady somebody, evidently a very cantankerous old person, who
was in the devil of a hurry, and wouldn't stand no waitin'.
The clubman turned over, sputtered, touched bottom, and arose dripping
to his feet. The "old person" on the wire was clearly his aunt, Lady
Lyndhurst, and he knew very much better than to irritate her when she
was in one of her tantrums. Still, he couldn't imagine what she wanted
with him at that hour of the morning. She'd been placid enough the
evening before when he'd left her after the opera. But ever since she
had married Lord Lyndhurst for her second husband ten years before she'd
been getting more and more dictatorial.
"Tell her I'm in this beastly tank; awful sorry I can't speak with her
myself, don'cher know, and find out what she wants. And _Tim_--handle
her gently--it's my aunt."
Tim grinned and winked a comprehending eye. As McAllister hurried into
his bath-robe and slippers he wondered more and more why she had rung
him up so early. He had intended calling on her after breakfast, any
way, but "after breakfast" to McAllister meant in the neighborhood of
twelve o'clock, for the meal was always carefully ordered the evening
before for half-past ten the next morning, after which came the paper
and a long, light Casadora, crop of '97, which McAllister had bought up
entire. Something must be up--that was certain. He could imagine her in
her wrapper and curl-papers holding converse with Tim over the wire. The
language of his _protégé_ might well assist in the process for which the
curl-papers were required. There was nobody in the world, in
McAllister's opinion, so queer as his aunt, except his aunt's husband.
The latter was a stout, beefy nobleman of sixty-five, with a
walrus-like countenance, an implicit faith in the perfection of British
institutions, and about enough intelligence to drive a watering-cart. He
had been rewarded for his unswerving fidelity to party with the post of
Governor-General at a small group of islands somewhere near the equator,
and had assumed his duties solemnly and ponderously, establishing the
Bertillon system of measurements for the seven criminals which his
islands supported, and producing quarterly monographs on the flora,
fauna, and conchology of his dominion. Just now they were _en route_ for
England (via Quebec, of course), and were stopping at the Waldorf.
Tim presently reappeared.
"She says you've got to hike right down to the hotel as fast as you can.
She's terrible upset. My, ain't she a tiger?"
"But what's the bloomin' row?" exclaimed McAllister.
Tim looked round cautiously and lowered his voice.
"The Lyndhurst Jewels has been stole!" said he.