The _De Vere Arms_ at Pebworth, fourth-rate hotel though it necessarily
was in a place where any hotel of the first or even of the second
magnitude would have been as an oak in a flower-pot, was well and
neatly kept. There was the commercial connection, and there was the
county connection, both dear to the landlord, but on grounds wholly
dissimilar. Biggles had been butler to the present, under-butler and
knife-boy to the late Earl of Wolverhampton; and had he but had his own
way, the _De Vere Arms_ would have been strictly the family hotel which
its address-cards proclaimed it, and the obnoxious word ‘commercial’
would have found no place there.
Mr Biggles, however, was in the position of one of those unfortunate
managers of English country theatres who tell their friends, perhaps
truly, that they would play nothing, save the legitimate drama, if they
could help it. They cannot help it, and scared by the dismal spectre
of Insolvency, they shelve Shakspeare in favour of newer idols of the
public. So did Biggles and worthy Mrs B. to boot lay themselves out in
practice to secure the lucrative custom of the ready-money, constantly
moving, commercial gentlemen, while in theory devoting all their
loyalty to those of their patrons who came in their own carriages,
with armorial bearings on their panels and liveried servants on the
driving-seat.
To this hostelry was borne, in Sir Gruntley Pigbury’s carriage, the
insensible form of Jasper Denzil, supported by the sturdy arm of
Captain Prodgers, while little Dr Aulfus, on the opposite seat, kept
the patient’s nerveless wrist between his own thin fingers all the way
from the race-course to the inn. Then Jasper, amidst spasmodic gaspings
from the landlady and sympathetic exclamations from the chambermaids,
was carried into the _De Vere Arms_ and established in one of the best
rooms, whence were summarily dislodged the effects of some well-to-do
customer who had had a horse in the race, but who was unlikely under
the circumstances to resent the invasion of his apartment. Jack
Prodgers and the doctor seemed to have taken joint possession of the
invalid; the former as _prochain ami_ (and it is to the credit of such
ne’er-do-wells as Captain Prodgers that the very wildest of them never
do leave a friend untended in a scrape), and the other professionally.
Other friends came not. Lord Harrogate did indeed tap at the door, and
so did four or five officers of the Lancer regiment, but contented
themselves with an assurance that Jasper was in no immediate danger.
And when Blanche Denzil’s tearful entreaties induced the Earl to
solicit admittance to the sick-room for her at least, the surgeon went
out and politely deprecated her entrance. Anything which might excite
the patient should, he truly said, be as far as possible avoided. It
was not exactly possible just yet to ascertain the amount of damage
done; but he, the doctor, anticipated no serious consequences. And
with this assurance the poor sister was compelled to be content. They
say that every educated man of fifty is a fool or a physician. Jack
Prodgers had seen the light some half-century since, and his worst
enemies—the men whose cash he pouched at play—would not have taxed him
with folly.
‘Now, doctor,’ he said quietly, ‘don’t you think the best we can do
for the poor fellow is to get his left shoulder into the socket again
before the muscles stiffen?’
The surgeon winced. He knew by the cursory examination he had made
that no bones—unless it might be the collar-bone, an injury to which
is not always promptly ascertained—were broken; but here, annoying
circumstance! was a dislocation which he had left to be discovered by
an outsider to the profession.
‘Bless my soul!’ he exclaimed, adjusting his spectacles, ‘so it is. We
have no time to lose.’
As it was, time enough had been lost to bring about a contraction of
the muscles, that rendered it necessary to call in the aid of James the
waiter and Joe the boots, before the hurt shoulder could be reinstated
in its normal position.
The pain of the operation roused Jasper from his stupor. He moaned
several times and stirred feebly to and fro, and when the wrench was
over, opened his eyes and gazed with a bewildered stare about him. Very
pale and ghastly he looked, lying thus, with the blood slowly oozing
from a cut on his right temple, and his hair stained and matted. They
sprinkled water on his face and put brandy to his lips; but he merely
groaned again, and his eyes closed.
‘That’s a very ugly knock on the temple; I hope there’s no more
mischief,’ said the doctor in a whisper, but speaking more openly than
medicine-men, beside a patient’s bed, often speak to the laity.
Jack Prodgers shook his head. He was a man of experience, and had in
his time seen some prompt and easy recoveries, and other cases in which
there was no recovery at all. It was with some remorse that he looked
down at the bruised and helpless form lying on the bed. His heart had
been case-hardened by the rubs of a worldly career, but there was a
soft spot in it after all, and it was with sincere joy that he saw at
length the sick man’s eyes open with a glance of evident recognition,
while a wan smile played about his lips.
‘I say, Jack,’ said Jasper feebly, ‘we’re in a hole, old man, after
all’—— Then he fainted.
‘Nothing the matter with his reason, thank goodness! It was the shock
to the brain I feared the most for him,’ said the doctor, as again
brandy was administered.
The regular clock-work routine of social machinery must go on in
despite of accidents, and accordingly the down-train reached Pebworth
at 3.40 (or, to tell the truth, a few minutes behind time) with its
usual punctuality. There was no omnibus, whether from the _De Vere
Arms_ or from the opposition or _White Hart_ hotel, in waiting at the
station, wherefore the few arrivals had to consign their bales and bags
and boxes of samples to the wheelbarrows of porters, for conveyance
to whichever house of entertainment they designed to patronise.
Amongst these was a thickset middle-aged man, with trim whiskers, a
dust-coloured overcoat, a slim umbrella, and a plump black bag, which
he preferred to carry as he trudged from the station to the hotel.
There was nothing very noteworthy about the new-comer, who was neatly
dressed in black, and wore a hat that was just old enough to have lost
its first tell-tale gloss, except that he had evidently striven to
look some years younger than the parish register would have proclaimed
him. Thus the purplish tint of his thick whiskers and thinned hair,
heedfully brushed and parted so as to make the most of it, savoured of
art rather than nature. His cravat too, instead of being black, was
what haberdashers call a scarf of blue silk, of a dark shade certainly,
but still blue, and was secured by a massive golden horse-shoe.
Glittering trinkets rattled at his watch-chain, and his boots were
tighter and brighter than the boots of men of business usually are.
There is or ought to be a sort of fitness between clothes and their
wearer, but in the case of this traveller, obviously bound for the
_De Vere Arms_, no such fitness existed. That cold gray eye, those
deeply marked crow’s-feet, the coarse mouth, and mottled complexion,
consorted ill with the pretensions to dandyism indicated by a portion
of their owner’s attire. Altogether, the man might have been set down
as a corn-doctor, a quack, a projector of bubble companies, or possibly
an auctioneer whose hammer seldom fell to a purely legitimate bid in a
fair market.
As the stranger drew near to the hotel, having inquired his way once
or twice from such of the natives as the great attraction of the day
had not allured to the race-course, a carriage dashed past him at a
very fast pace indeed, and drew up with a jerk in front of the _De
Vere Arms_. The gentleman who alighted from it, tall, and of a goodly
presence, lingered for an instant in the doorway to give some order to
his servants. As he did so, his eyes encountered those of the traveller
freshly arrived by the train, and who by this time was beneath the
pillars of the porch. Sir Sykes Denzil, for it was he whose carriage
had just brought him in hot haste to the place where his son lay ill,
started perceptibly and hesitated, then turned abruptly on his heel
and disappeared within the hotel, greeted by the obsequious Mr and Mrs
Biggles.
Recognition, as we can all avouch, is in the immense majority of cases
simultaneous, one memory seeming as it were to take fire at the spark
of recollection kindled in the other. In this instance such was not
exactly what occurred. Yet the traveller with the bag was perfectly
certain that he had seen before the tall gentleman who had started at
the sight of him, and that a diligent searching of the mental archives
would elicit the answer to the riddle.
‘Have I written or telegraphed to order rooms here?’ repeated the new
arrival testily, after the flippant waiter who came, flourishing his
napkin, to see what the stranger wanted. ‘No, I have not. And to judge
by the size of your town, my friend, and the general look of affairs, I
should say that on any other day of the year but this such a precaution
would be wholly superfluous.’
The waiter, who had been slightly puffed up by the ephemeral vogue
of Pebworth and its chief hotel, took the rebuke meekly. ‘Would you
step into the coffee-room, sir?’ he said. ‘I’ll ask Mrs Biggles about
accommodation likely to be vacant. Any name I could mention, sir?’
‘Name—yes, Wilkins,’ returned the traveller, pushing open the door
of the coffee-room, in which, at various tables, some dozen of
sporting-men were making a scrambling meal. One or two of these
looking up from their plates, nodded a greeting, with a ‘How d’ ye do,
Wilkins?’ or ‘How goes it, old fellow?’ salutations which the recipient
of them returned in kind. Then the waiter bustled in to say, more
respectfully than before, that so soon as No. 28 should be vacated by
a gentleman leaving by the 6.25 train, it would be at the disposal
of Mr Wilkins. Further, here was a note for Mr Wilkins; into whose
hand he proceeded to thrust a half-sheet of letter-paper, roughly
folded in four, and containing but some two or three lines of blotted
handwriting. ‘If you will so far oblige me’—thus ran the words, shaky
and blurred as to their caligraphy, but tolerably legible—‘I shall be
glad of a few moments’ interview with you, at once if not inconvenient,
in No. 11. I will not detain you.’
There was no signature, but no reasonable doubt could exist in the mind
of Mr Wilkins as to the note having been penned by the owner of the
carriage that had so lately driven up to the door of the _De Vere Arms_.
‘Why, this is taking the bull by the horns,’ said Mr Wilkins, as he
rose to obey the summons.