Rex Dillot was nearly twenty-four, almost good-looking and quite
penniless. His mother was supposed to make him some sort of an allowance
out of what her creditors allowed her, and Rex occasionally strayed into
the ranks of those who earn fitful salaries as secretaries or companions
to people who are unable to cope unaided with their correspondence or
their leisure. For a few months he had been assistant editor and
business manager of a paper devoted to fancy mice, but the devotion had
been all on one side, and the paper disappeared with a certain abruptness
from club reading-rooms and other haunts where it had made a gratuitous
appearance. Still, Rex lived with some air of comfort and well-being, as
one can live if one is born with a genius for that sort of thing, and a
kindly Providence usually arranged that his week-end invitations
coincided with the dates on which his one white dinner-waistcoat was in a
laundry-returned condition of dazzling cleanness. He played most games
badly, and was shrewd enough to recognise the fact, but he had developed
a marvellously accurate judgement in estimating the play and chances of
other people, whether in a golf match, billiard handicap, or croquet
tournament. By dint of parading his opinion of such and such a player’s
superiority with a sufficient degree of youthful assertiveness he usually
succeeded in provoking a wager at liberal odds, and he looked to his
week-end winnings to carry him through the financial embarrassments of
his mid-week existence. The trouble was, as he confided to Clovis
Sangrail, that he never had enough available or even prospective cash at
his command to enable him to fix the wager at a figure really worth
winning.
“Some day,” he said, “I shall come across a really safe thing, a bet that
simply can’t go astray, and then I shall put it up for all I’m worth, or
rather for a good deal more than I’m worth if you sold me up to the last
button.”
“It would be awkward if it didn’t happen to come off,” said Clovis.
“It would be more than awkward,” said Rex; “it would be a tragedy. All
the same, it would be extremely amusing to bring it off. Fancy awaking
in the morning with about three hundred pounds standing to one’s credit.
I should go and clear out my hostess’s pigeon-loft before breakfast out
of sheer good-temper.”
“Your hostess of the moment mightn’t have a pigeon-loft,” said Clovis.
“I always choose hostesses that have,” said Rex; “a pigeon-loft is
indicative of a careless, extravagant, genial disposition, such as I like
to see around me. People who strew corn broadcast for a lot of feathered
inanities that just sit about cooing and giving each other the glad eye
in a Louis Quatorze manner are pretty certain to do you well.”
“Young Strinnit is coming down this afternoon,” said Clovis reflectively;
“I dare say you won’t find it difficult to get him to back himself at
billiards. He plays a pretty useful game, but he’s not quite as good as
he fancies he is.”
“I know one member of the party who can walk round him,” said Rex softly,
an alert look coming into his eyes; “that cadaverous-looking Major who
arrived last night. I’ve seen him play at St. Moritz. If I could get
Strinnit to lay odds on himself against the Major the money would be safe
in my pocket. This looks like the good thing I’ve been watching and
praying for.”
“Don’t be rash,” counselled Clovis, “Strinnit may play up to his
self-imagined form once in a blue moon.”
“I intend to be rash,” said Rex quietly, and the look on his face
corroborated his words.
“Are you all going to flock to the billiard-room?” asked Teresa
Thundleford, after dinner, with an air of some disapproval and a good
deal of annoyance. “I can’t see what particular amusement you find in
watching two men prodding little ivory balls about on a table.”
“Oh, well,” said her hostess, “it’s a way of passing the time, you know.”
“A very poor way, to my mind,” said Mrs. Thundleford; “now I was going to
have shown all of you the photographs I took in Venice last summer.”
“You showed them to us last night,” said Mrs. Cuvering hastily.
“Those were the ones I took in Florence. These are quite a different
lot.”
“Oh, well, some time to-morrow we can look at them. You can leave them
down in the drawing-room, and then every one can have a look.”
“I should prefer to show them when you are all gathered together, as I
have quite a lot of explanatory remarks to make, about Venetian art and
architecture, on the same lines as my remarks last night on the
Florentine galleries. Also, there are some verses of mine that I should
like to read you, on the rebuilding of the Campanile. But, of course, if
you all prefer to watch Major Latton and Mr. Strinnit knocking balls
about on a table—”
“They are both supposed to be first-rate players,” said the hostess.
“I have yet to learn that my verses and my art _causerie_ are of
second-rate quality,” said Mrs. Thundleford with acerbity. “However, as
you all seem bent on watching a silly game, there’s no more to be said.
I shall go upstairs and finish some writing. Later on, perhaps, I will
come down and join you.”
To one, at least, of the onlookers the game was anything but silly. It
was absorbing, exciting, exasperating, nerve-stretching, and finally it
grew to be tragic. The Major with the St. Moritz reputation was playing
a long way below his form, young Strinnit was playing slightly above his,
and had all the luck of the game as well. From the very start the balls
seemed possessed by a demon of contrariness; they trundled about
complacently for one player, they would go nowhere for the other.
“A hundred and seventy, seventy-four,” sang out the youth who was
marking. In a game of two hundred and fifty up it was an enormous lead
to hold. Clovis watched the flush of excitement die away from Dillot’s
face, and a hard white look take its place.
“How much have you go on?” whispered Clovis. The other whispered the sum
through dry, shaking lips. It was more than he or any one connected with
him could pay; he had done what he had said he would do. He had been
rash.
“Two hundred and six, ninety-eight.”
Rex heard a clock strike ten somewhere in the hall, then another
somewhere else, and another, and another; the house seemed full of
striking clocks. Then in the distance the stable clock chimed in. In
another hour they would all be striking eleven, and he would be listening
to them as a disgraced outcast, unable to pay, even in part, the wager he
had challenged.
“Two hundred and eighteen, a hundred and three.” The game was as good as
over. Rex was as good as done for. He longed desperately for the
ceiling to fall in, for the house to catch fire, for anything to happen
that would put an end to that horrible rolling to and fro of red and
white ivory that was jostling him nearer and nearer to his doom.
“Two hundred and twenty-eight, a hundred and seven.”
Rex opened his cigarette-case; it was empty. That at least gave him a
pretext to slip away from the room for the purpose of refilling it; he
would spare himself the drawn-out torture of watching that hopeless game
played out to the bitter end. He backed away from the circle of absorbed
watchers and made his way up a short stairway to a long, silent corridor
of bedrooms, each with a guests’ name written in a little square on the
door. In the hush that reigned in this part of the house he could still
hear the hateful click-click of the balls; if he waited for a few minutes
longer he would hear the little outbreak of clapping and buzz of
congratulation that would hail Strinnit’s victory. On the alert tension
of his nerves there broke another sound, the aggressive, wrath-inducing
breathing of one who sleeps in heavy after-dinner slumber. The sound
came from a room just at his elbow; the card on the door bore the
announcement “Mrs. Thundleford.” The door was just slightly ajar; Rex
pushed it open an inch or two more and looked in. The august Teresa had
fallen asleep over an illustrated guide to Florentine art-galleries; at
her side, somewhat dangerously near the edge of the table, was a
reading-lamp. If Fate had been decently kind to him, thought Rex,
bitterly, that lamp would have been knocked over by the sleeper and would
have given them something to think of besides billiard matches.
There are occasions when one must take one’s Fate in one’s hands. Rex
took the lamp in his.
“Two hundred and thirty-seven, one hundred and fifteen.” Strinnit was at
the table, and the balls lay in good position for him; he had a choice of
two fairly easy shots, a choice which he was never to decide. A sudden
hurricane of shrieks and a rush of stumbling feet sent every one flocking
to the door. The Dillot boy crashed into the room, carrying in his arms
the vociferous and somewhat dishevelled Teresa Thundleford; her clothing
was certainly not a mass of flames, as the more excitable members of the
party afterwards declared, but the edge of her skirt and part of the
table-cover in which she had been hastily wrapped were alight in a
flickering, half-hearted manner. Rex flung his struggling burden on the
billiard table, and for one breathless minute the work of beating out the
sparks with rugs and cushions and playing on them with soda-water syphons
engrossed the energies of the entire company.
“It was lucky I was passing when it happened,” panted Rex; “some one had
better see to the room, I think the carpet is alight.”
As a matter of fact the promptitude and energy of the rescuer had
prevented any great damage being done, either to the victim or her
surroundings. The billiard table had suffered most, and had to be laid
up for repairs; perhaps it was not the best place to have chosen for the
scene of salvage operations; but then, as Clovis remarked, when one is
rushing about with a blazing woman in one’s arms one can’t stop to think
out exactly where one is going to put her.