"I beg your pardon, sir! May I have the honour of a moment's confidential
word with you?"
The refined, the courteous phrase, was followed by a discreet cough. The
cough was a trifle mechanical, the words a little too rapidly spoken, as
is (alas!) the common fate of words learned by heart for a set piece,
whether by front benchers or perjuring policemen. What followed was
marred by the same slight defect, but it was at least clear. It rattled
out--to quote a noble simile from the _Wallet of Kai Lung_--"like a
stream of pearls dropped into a bowl of jade."
"There has come to my knowledge sir which would grieve my 'eart to
distraction and breaking were it not overcome by the more powerful
emotion of gratitude for so many happy years passed under this 'ere roof
at Paulings I mean this roof at Paulings and formerly when we had a town
house if I may make so bold in one hundred and twelve Curzon Street
Mayfair moved by this my 'eart would not let me keep silent. Oh! sir. I
know the dread secret and if I come to speak of it it is from loyal
affection and no other cause and here and now I put at your service as
in duty bound all that has come" ... here Mr. Whaley suddenly clasped a
fat right hand against his chest: He ought to have done it at the word
"heart," but the brakes had slipped and he had run past the station ...
"all that has come to the knowledge of these poor humble ears of mine
which would rather have been closed in death than have suffered the
agony of them fatal news but told it shall not be to other human soul
nor yet only to you for the respect I bear to that 'igh name of Deeboon
which saving your honour sir ..."
Humphrey de Bohun put his lean hands on his lean knees, sat up, and
stared at this high-geared human gramophone on speed.
"What on earth ..." he began. "Look here, Whaley, have you been
drinking? ... Now, mark me, Whaley!" Humphrey de Bohun could speak with
astonishing decision when he felt quite secure that the person spoken to
was unable to answer back. "I've always made one absolute rule in this
house. Any servant of mine who is found the worse for liquor--I don't
care _where_," and he swept his feeble head down to the southwest, "I
don't care _how_"--he swept it again--"I don't ... damn it, I don't even
care on _what_! leaves me there and then!" He leaned back again,
somewhat exhausted.
"You wound me, sir," said George Whaley with dignity. "Ah, sir! you
wound me! Indeed you do!"
"Wound your what?" said the Home Secretary, without sufficient
consideration.
"My honour, sir," said George Whaley. "And a loyal heart."
This time he remembered the connection of the word "heart" with the
appropriate gesture, and he planked his hand on his merrythought with
the noise of a distant 9.2.
The Home Secretary remembered the lessons of his youth, the high
traditions of the de Bohuns.
"I owe you an apology, Whaley," he said, in the appropriate
faded-earnest manner. "But the truth is, I can't pretend to follow what
you were saying. I don't suggest that you spoke too quickly.... I was in
a reverie when you came in. The fault is mine. Proceed."
And in his turn George Whaley proceeded--but the chain was broken; he
was thrown back upon impromptu too; and a native terseness, not to say
inhibition of speech, returned to him.
"Well, sir," and he coughed, "I'm afraid it's rather a delicate matter,"
and he looked at the nails of his fingers. "Perhaps I ought to plunge
_in medias res_." He sighed. "I've 'eard it's usually the wiser plan in
cases like these."
He stood for some fifteen seconds, his bold head with its fringe of grey
hair slightly on one side, and gazing at the exalted culprit with
infinite compassion. Then did George Whaley begin to shake that head,
and there escaped him words unusual to his daily life, but native to his
reading of fiction and to his experience on the stage.
"Ah me! Ah me!" he said.
"Look here, Whaley," said his master smartly. "What's the matter? Are
you ill? Are you mad? Have you"--in a softer voice--"have you perhaps
suffered some sudden bereavement?"
"Only the bereavement of a loyal heart deceived, bewildered," moaned
George Whaley, quoting textually from _The Waifs of the Whirlwind_. He
linked his hands before his ample waistcoat and hung his saddened head.
[Illustration: _The Home Secretary's Butler taking the
liberty to observe: "Thou art
the man."_]
"Upon my word!" cried Humphrey de Bohun, moved to unexpected energy by
an intolerable boredom, "this kind of thing's got to stop. Speak out,
man, and don't make a fool of yourself!" He pulled out his watch. "I've
not got all the time there is! Hurry up, now! Surely you can speak
plainly!"
"I can," said George Whaley, in tones of gloom, and moved by a mighty
resolution. He was standing upright now; he fixed his employer with a
steady glance, and each hand was half clenched at his side. "The
emerald, sir!"
And he waited for his effect.
"Oh, damn the emerald!" shouted Humphrey de Bohun. "If you think this is
the time, after all these two days ..."
"It is the time," said George Whaley firmly, with a reminiscence of the
worthy mother who had brought him up in the Countess of Huntingdon's
connection and under all the discipline of the Jacobean Scriptures.
"Yea, now is the acceptable time."
"By God!" shouted the now inflamed minister, "this has got to stop! I'll
have you certified! I'll ... I'll ..."
But he got the thing full in the face. In a key nearly an octave lower
than that he had been using for the purposes of the great interview,
George Whaley stretched out a rigid solemn arm towards his master and
spoke the words of doom.
"I know all... Thou art the man! It is you, sir, that have on you the
lost emerald!"
Let me not do Humphrey de Bohun injustice. He had never yet in his life
taken an initiative. He had never tackled any one of the human species.
But there is a god latent in us all, and his name is Pan.
"The emerald!" he shrieked. "Blackmail, eh, you damned lousy son of
a ----!" He sprang at the astonished servitor, seized him round the
neck--a dangerous gambit between elderly men, for it leads to strokes on
both sides--shook him madly from side to side, then dug his right hand
into his collar behind, swerved him round, and gave him one of those
enormous kicks which form epochs in the history of Britain. Savagely did
the unrestrained elder statesman, all the repressed manhood of half a
century bursting forth, plant his foot upon what should properly be
called the person of his unfortunate dependant and with a second gesture
sent him sprawling through the open door into the hall.
"The emerald!" he kept on shouting, as George Whaley, groaning, pulled
himself up miserably, like a wounded sea lion. "When the hell am I to
hear the last of the emerald ... you and your emerald! ... all of you
and your emeralds! ... I wish to God! ..." A blasphemy was almost on his
lips; he had almost said that he wished the emerald had been strangled
at birth, and by such a phrase would he have forfeited the luck of the
Boneses.
"Get out!" he continued, in a somewhat milder because exhausted tone, as
the ill-treated Good Samaritan hobbled towards the door which led to the
offices, rubbing the affected portions of his frame. "Out! Out! Out!
Never let me see your face again!"
And they parted to meet no more. The conclusion of their mutual
relations was concluded by correspondence.
* * * * * * *
It is not with impunity that men between fifty and sixty, especially if
they have lived under constant self-repression--which doesn't apply to
colonels--let their angry passions rise. The Home Secretary was badly
blown. He felt groggy. His exertion was already beginning to make him a
little stiff. He halted towards the dining-room and groped for a pint of
champagne which he knew to stand by. He pulled the cork with his last
strength. He took a mighty draught. He felt better. He took another.
Then he saw the world sanely, and he saw it whole--such is the power of
the god. There was hardly a drain left. He glanced over his shoulder,
found himself alone, put the neck of the bottle to his lips and sucked
it down.
"Ah!" said the arbiter of Wormwood Scrubbs and Lord of Pentonville.
"That's better."
He felt almost genial--normal, anyhow, at last. Even a trifle
super-normal. With sprightlier step he regained that comfortable chair
wherein he had been relaxing his overstrained mind when George Whaley
had so imprudently intruded.
It was not once in a blue moon that Humphrey de Bohun thought tobacco a
boon, but the occasion called for it. For the matter of that, it was not
once in a blue moon that he drank more than half a glass of wine at a
sitting--let alone of a Sunday morning during church time--and bubbling
wine in plenty leads to smoking: hence the fortunes made by Greeks and
Egyptians in their sales of hay cigarettes to the young bloods. Humphrey
de Bohun groped in his daughter's open box for a cigarette, tapped it,
with a surprisingly modern gesture, on his thumbnail, and as he lit it
sank back into the chair he had left and wondered whether indeed he had
reached repose.
Was there anyone left, he thought drowsily, who could come with yet
another story of the blasted gem? He was already half asleep, but there
passed before his drooping eyes what seemed a regiment: Galton had been
sure of it--he had seen it, seen it on Bill; Bill had been sure of
it--he had tested it, tested it on McTaggart; McTaggart had been sure of
it--he had got it by second sight, and was absolutely certain of Collop;
and Collop--oh well! God bless Collop! For after all he had _produced_
it--snatched from the talons of a fowl. The elderly gentleman's head
drooped and nodded; the cigarette fell from his lax fingers; it set fire
to the Aubusson carpet, which smouldered in faint wreaths, but did no
harm, and soon went out. Thus did the adventure of the Emerald of
Catherine the Great end, as all things end, in smoke.
* * * * * * *
Far, far, in the less pretentious but roomy apartments of the East Wing,
George Whaley, suffering untold things, sought for and found the Boy,
the culprit, Ethelbert.
They met in the passage that leads from the servants' hall to the Yard;
but when I say met, I rather mean that their visages encountered the one
the other at the turn of a corner separated by a space of some five
yards.
The countenance of George Whaley at that moment was not one to inspire
confidence in the young. There was blood on his cheek-bone. His collar
was torn, and all adrift upon the starboard side; his tie was under his
ear; there was a gaping tear in his coat.
"Ow! You young dose of poison!" bawled the injured man, as he lunged
forward upon his prey, and with a loud cry Ethelbert fled. He fled
through the open door into the coal yard, George Whaley limping after.
There stood against the wall of the yard, leaning to its summit, a crazy
old ladder. The light boy Ethelbert nipped up it, and at its foot stood
the unhappy and ponderous victim of his misleading confidences, shaking
an impotent fist.
[Illustration: _Dialogue between the Boy Ethelbert and his
fallen superior._]
Security lent courage to the youth.
"You look hot," he said kindly.
"You come down!" hissed Whaley, clenching his teeth, "and I'll flay you
alive--slowly--inch by inch!"
"Sounds good," grinned Ethelbert; with thoughtful prevision he kicked
the ladder down. Its rotten wood smashed into a dozen pieces as it fell,
and the youth was delighted to note that a flying fragment had caught
his superior a fine smack on the side of the jaw.
For to him that hath, more shall be added.
Ethelbert feared not the future; his judgment told him, not insecurely,
that the butler's powers were at an end.
"Been havin' a scrap?" continued Ethelbert, by way of making
conversation. "'Ow's the other man?"
George Whaley's cup was full. "Come down," he groaned stupidly. "Come
down!"
"Me come down?" answered his former subaltern with an air. "Why, what
can you be thinking of? It's only just over church time yet. You can
hear the sweet bells ringing--'ark!" and he lifted an ecstatic
forefinger with heavenward-lifted eyes.
The butler put his hand upon the old red brick wall. His adventures were
beginning to tell upon him. He felt sick.
"It's all along o' you!" he said thickly, spat, to see whether his lungs
were injured, was pleased to find they were not; then, still suffering,
repeated, "It's all along o' you! What," he added in a higher key of
tragic indignation, "what the burning hell did yer mean by telling me
the boss had pinched the emerald?"
"_I_ tell you the boss had pinched the emerald?" sneered Ethelbert from
his high place. "Oh, chase me, Ananias!"
"Yes, yer did!" came again from the uplifted purple face. "Yer told me
with yer own lips that you knew yerself it was in the 'ands of the
'ighest."
"I never! You dare say I did!" cried the indignant whelp. "Liar! What I
may have _thought_ was that his lordship ..."
"His lordship?" groaned the suffering man, a light breaking in upon him.
"Yes, mubbe! Don't you dare go to say as I said so. Otherwise I'll have
the lor on yer! So mind your fat feet! I'll be treading on 'em. I never
said nuffing. I didn't. 'Sides which, it's all one now. The emerald's
been found."
"Found?" gasped Whaley with a stare.
"Yes, found," nodded Ethelbert, from his dominion of vantage loftily.
"Then ..." groaned his unfortunate elder, "I'm done!"
"That's true, anyways! Congrats!"
Whaley had already picked up half a brick, but his tormenter had seen
the gesture, and had dropped on the far side of the wall to the high
bank below, and was off to rejoin his quarters. He knew that the mighty
had fallen and would trouble him no more.
So ends the saga.