Jeff Legge reclined in a long cane chair on a lawn which stretched
to the edge of a cliff. Before him were the blue waters of the
Channel, and the more gorgeous blue of an unflecked sky. He reached
out his hand and took a glass that stood on the table by his side,
sipped it with a wry face and called a name pettishly.
It was Lila who came running to his side.
“Take this stuff away, and bring me a whisky-and-soda,” he said.
“The doctor said you weren’t to have anything but lime juice. Oh,
Jeff, you must do as he tells you,” she pleaded.
“I’ll break your head for you when I get up,” he snarled. “Do as
you’re told. Where’s the governor?”
“He’s gone into the village to post some letters.”
He ruminated on this, and then:
“If that busy comes, you can tell him I’m too ill to be seen.”
“Who--Craig?”
“Yes,” he growled, “the dirty, twisting thief! Johnny would have been
in boob for this if he hadn’t straightened Craig. If he didn’t drop a
thousand to keep off the moor, I’m a dead man!”
She pulled up a low chair to his side.
“I don’t think Johnny did it,” she said. “The old man thinks it was
Peter. The window was found open after. He could have come in by the
fire-escape--he knows the way.”
He grumbled something under his breath, and very discreetly she did
not press home her view.
“Where’s Marney--back with her father?”
She nodded.
“Who told him I was married to you?”
“I don’t know, Jeff,” she said.
“You liar! You told him; nobody else could have known. If I get ‘bird’
for this marriage, I’ll kill you, Lila. That’s twice you’ve squeaked
on me.”
“I didn’t know what I was saying. I was half mad with worry.”
“I wish you’d gone the whole journey,” he said bitterly. “It isn’t the
woman--I don’t care a darn about that. It’s the old man’s quarrel, and
he’s got to get through with it. It’s the other business being
disorganised that’s worrying me. Unless it’s running like clockwork,
you’ll get a jam; and when you’ve got a jam, you collect a bigger
crowd than I want to see looking at my operations. You didn’t squeak
about that, I suppose?”
“No, Jeff, I didn’t know.”
“And that’s the reason you didn’t squeak, eh?”
He regarded her unfavourably. And now she turned on him.
“Listen, Jeff Legge. I’m a patient woman, up to a point, and I’ll
stand for all your bad temper whilst you’re ill. But you’re living in
a new age, Jeff, and you’d better wake up to the fact. All that Bill
Sikes and Nancy stuff never did impress me. I’m no clinger. If you got
really rough with me, I’d bat you, and that’s a fact. It may not be
womanly, but it’s wise. I never did believe in the equality of the
sexes, but no girl is the weaker vessel if she gets first grip of the
kitchen poker.”
Very wisely he changed the subject.
“I suppose they searched the club from top to bottom?” he said.
“They did.”
“Did they look in the loft?”
“I believe they did. Stevens told me that they turned everything
inside out.”
He grunted.
“They’re clever,” he said. “It must be wonderful to be clever. Who’s
this?” He scowled across the lawn at a strange figure that had
appeared, apparently by way of the cliff gate.
She rose and walked to meet the stooping stranger, who stood, hat in
hand, waiting for her and smiling awkwardly.
“I’m so sorry to intrude,” he said. “This is a beautiful place, is it
not? If I remember rightly, this is the Dellsea Vicarage? I used to
know the vicar--a very charming man. I suppose you have taken the
house from him?”
She was half amused, half annoyed.
“This is Dellsea Vicarage,” she said curtly. “Do you want to see
anybody?”
“I wanted to see Mr. Jeffrey”--he screwed up his eyes and stared at
the sky, as though trying to withdraw from some obscure cell of memory
a name that would not come without special effort--“Mr. Jeffrey
Legge--that is the name--Mr. Jeffrey Legge.”
“He is very ill and can’t be seen.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said the stranger, his mild face expressing
the intensest sympathy. “Very sorry indeed.”
He fixed his big, round glasses on the tip of his nose, for effect
apparently, because he looked over them at her.
“I wonder if he would see me for just a few minutes. I’ve called to
inquire about his health.”
“What is your name?” she asked.
“Reeder--J.G. Reeder.”
The girl felt her colour go, and turned quickly.
“I will ask him,” she said.
Jeff heard the name and pursed his lips.
“That’s the man the bank are running--or maybe it’s the Government--to
trail me,” he said in a low tone. “Slip him along, Lila.”
Mr. Reeder was beckoned across the lawn, and came with quick, mincing
steps.
“I’m so sorry to see that you’re in such a deplorable condition, Mr.
Legge,” he said. “I hope your father is well?”
“Oh, you’ve met the old man, have you?” said Jeffrey in surprise.
Mr. Reeder nodded.
“Yes; I have met your father,” he said. “A very entertaining and a
very ingenious man. Very!” The last word was spoken with emphasis.
Jeff was silent at this tribute to his parent’s amiability.
“There has been a lot of talk in town lately about a certain nefarious
business that is being carried on--surreptitiously, of course,” said
Mr. Reeder, choosing his words with care. “I, who live out of the
world, and in the backwater of life, hear strange rumours about the
distribution of illicit money--I think the cant term is ‘slush’ or
‘slosh’--probably it is ‘slush.’”
“It is ‘slush,’” agreed Jeff, not knowing whether to be amused or
alarmed, and watching the man all the time.
“Now I feel sure that the persons who are engaged in this practice
cannot be aware of the enormously serious nature of their offence,”
said Mr. Reeder confidentially.
He broke off his lecture to look around the lawn and well-stocked
garden that flanked it on either side.
“How beautiful is the world, Mr. Jeff--I beg your pardon, Mr. Legge,”
he said. “How lovely those flowers are! I confess that the sight of
bluebells always brings a lump to my throat. I don’t suppose they are
bluebells,” he added, “for it is rather late in the year. But that
peculiar shade of blue. And those wonderful roses--I can smell them
from here.”
He closed his eyes, raised his nose and sniffed loudly--a ludicrous
figure; but Jeff Legge did not laugh.
“I know very little, but I understand that in Dartmoor Prison there
are only a few potted flowers, and that those are never seen by the
prisoners, except by one privileged man whose task it is to tend them.
A lifer, generally. Life without flowers must be very drab, Mr.
Legge.”
“I’m not especially fond of flowers,” said Jeffrey.
“What a pity!” said the other regretfully. “What a thousand pities!
But there is no sea view from that establishment, no painted ships
upon a painted ocean--which is a quotation from a well-known poem; no
delightful sense of freedom; nothing really that makes life durable
for a man under sentence, let us say, of fifteen or twenty years.”
Jeff did not reply.
“Do you love rabbits?” was the surprising question that was put to
him.
“No, I can’t say that I do.”
Lila sat erect, motionless, all her senses trained to hear and
understand.
Mr. Reeder sighed.
“I am very fond of rabbits. Whenever I see a rabbit in a cage or in a
hutch, I buy it, take it to the nearest wood and release it. It may be
a foolish kindness, because, born and reared in captivity, it may not
have the necessary qualities to support itself amongst its wilder
fellows. But I like letting rabbits loose; other people like putting
rabbits in cages.” He shook his finger in Jeffrey’s face. “Never be a
rabbit in a cage, Mr. Jeffrey--or is it Mr. Legge? Yes, Mr. Legge.”
“I am neither a rabbit, nor a chicken, nor a fox, nor a skylark,” said
Jeffrey. “The cage hasn’t been built that could hold me.”
Again Mr. Reeder sighed.
“I remember another gentleman saying that some years ago. I forget in
what prison he was hanged. Possibly it was Wandsworth--yes, I am sure
it was Wandsworth. I saw his grave the other day. Just his initials.
What a pity! What a sad end to a promising career! He is better off, I
think, for twenty long years in a prison cell, that is a dreadful
fate, Mr. Legge! And it is a fate that would never overtake a man who
decided to reform. Suppose, let us say, he was forging Bank of England
notes, and decided that he would burn his paper and his water-markers,
dismiss all his agents… I don’t think we should worry very much about
that type of person. We should meet him generously and liberally,
especially if his notes were of such excellent quality that they were
difficult for the uninitiated to detect.”
“What has happened to Golden?” asked Jeffrey boldly.
The eyes of the elderly man twinkled.
“Golden was my predecessor,” he said. “A very charming fellow, by some
accounts----”
Again Jeffrey cut him short.
“He used to be the man who was looking after the ‘slush’ for the
police. Is he dead?”
“He has gone abroad,” said Mr. Reeder gravely. “Yes, Mr. Golden could
not stand this climate. He suffered terribly from asthma, or it may
have been sciatica. I know there was an ‘a’ at the end of it. Did you
ever meet him? Ah! You missed a very great opportunity,” said Mr.
Reeder. “Golden was a nice fellow--not as smart, perhaps, as he might
have been, or as he should have been, but a very nice fellow. He did
not work, perhaps, so much in the open as I do; and there I think he
was mistaken. It is always an error to shut yourself up in an office
and envelop yourself in an atmosphere of mystery. I myself am prone to
the same fault. Now, my dear Mr. Legge, I am sure you will take my
parable kindly, and will give it every thought and consideration.”
“I would, if I were a printer of ‘slush,’ but, unfortunately, I’m
not,” said Jeffrey Legge with a smile.
“You’re not, of course,” the other hastened to say. “I wouldn’t dream
of suggesting you were. But with your vast circle of
acquaintances--and, I’m sure, admirers--you may perhaps be able to
convey my simple little illustration. I don’t like to see rabbits in
cages, or birds in cages, or anything else behind bars. And I think
that Dartmoor is so--what shall I say?--unæsthetic. And it seems
_such_ a pity to spend all the years in Devonshire. In the spring, of
course, it is delightful; in the summer it is hot; in the winter,
unless you’re at Torquay, it is deplorable. Good morning, Mr. Legge.”
He bowed low to the girl, and, bowing, his spectacles fell off.
Stooping, he picked them up with an apology and backed away, and they
watched him in silence till he had disappeared from view.