"KUK-KUK-KUK-KATIE."
Soft, even light filled the wide entrance hall of No. -- Park Lane.
The single, expressionless footman appeared almost hopeful, knowing his
release was near; for the time was only twenty minutes short of
midnight.
The road between the front door and the park railings was almost as
peaceful as the houses on its one side, and the grass and trees on the
other. Hardly a hoof on the wood, and but a rare motor rushing, at
intervals, with soft, apologetic speed over the thoroughfare from north
to south.
But there came at last a taxi--Charles, in spite of thick door and
perfect roadway, recognised its venal characteristics--a taxi which
hesitated, stopped, started again, and came to rest at the very door of
No. --.
Though his ears could scarce believe it on that Saturday night, when
there was not within earshot any function or reception going on, there
came feet up those splendid, shallow steps--feet which seemed to halt,
and even vacillate beneath a swaying body.
The mere suspicion was shocking; but even worse, to that cultivated ear,
was the clamour of the bell which followed.
But when, having opened the door, Charles examined the ringer, he was
astounded, not to say appalled.
The man, though his eyes were heavy and his voice that of one driving
himself to the limit of his strength, was certainly not intoxicated; for
in that matter, Charles the footman knew and trusted the nicety of his
own judgment. But the condition of the dress, the cut cheek-bone, the
puffy eye above it, the dirty hands with raw knuckles, and the pockets
grotesquely bulging, made a picture so painfully in contrast with the
house and its quarter, that the footman's face lost its habitual
expression of restrained good-humour under a mask of severity altogether
tragic.
For a moment he hesitated: to ask this scarecrow his business would
concede him the right to exist; and the ruffian's undamaged eye and his
assured carriage were plain warning against any concession whatsoever.
The visitor, therefore, spoke first, even as if he had been respectable.
"I want to see Mr. Bruffin," he said.
"Not at home," replied Charles, trying to boom like a butler.
"Then I'll wait till he comes," said Dick Bellamy, taking a step forward
in spite of the door and the footman's hand upon it.
"Impossible to see Mr. Bruffin to-night--sir," said Charles. "I'm afraid
I must ask you to step outside."
His vision of what might be in those bloated pockets was only a little
less alarming than the reality.
But Dick felt he had only a drop or so of physical energy left; and so,
lest they should trickle from him, he used them now.
And Charles, lifted most disconcertingly by the slack of his breeches
and the stiffness of his resisting neck, was shifted quickly and
painfully to the doorstep, to hear the door close upon him before he
could turn to face it.
The house was new, even to its owners. Its rebuilding and exquisite
refitting had been a marvel for the magpie chorus of the occasional
column. The public already knew more of his new house than George
Bruffin could ever forget.
But Dick, who never read more of a newspaper than he must, knew only its
address and the day when George and his wife should go into residence.
This, he had remembered, was the first day of their second week, and,
even if George had already learned his way to his own study, Dick must
find means to reach him more expeditious than geographical exploration.
He looked about him, and his eye fell upon a thing of which George had
told him with pride almost boyish; a framework of shell-cases, graduated
from the slender treble of a shortened soizante-quinze to the deepest
base of a full-length monster from some growling siege-gun.
For George had done his portion of fighting and had collected this
material for a dinner gong, on which one might play with padded stick
anything from the "Devil's Tattoo" to "Caller Herrin'" or the "Wedding
March."
From the doorstep, the frantic Charles, with eyes rolling, saw the taxi.
What was in it he could not see, for the chauffeur stood blocking the
open window, watching, it appeared, whatever the cab might contain--wild
Bolshevists with bombs, perhaps, or soft litters of pedigree pups.
From Apsley House to Marble Arch, he felt, was never a policeman. He
could have embraced the hoariest of specials.
The service entrance was too far round. Before he could reach it all
might be over.
So, forgetting the bell, he turned and beat, with fists none too hard,
upon the door that was anything but soft. And cursed, as he had never
cursed man before, the architect whose enlightened scheme had found no
place for a knocker.
And with his first blow there burst out in the hall the wild, indecorous
strains of "Kuk-kuk kuk-Katie," pealing out louder and ever louder as
the musician found confidence.
With his left hand supporting half his tired weight on the frame of
these bells, translated by some twentieth-century Tubal Cain to a music
so strangely different from the first they had uttered, Dick was
absorbed in his rendering of such bars of the vulgar melody as he could
remember, when he heard, far behind him, a slow, unimpassioned voice.
"What's all this hell's delight?" it asked.
A confused chorus of protesting explanation, interwoven with the yapping
cries and hysterical laughter of women, was all his answer.
In a fresh surge of enthusiasm "Katie" drowned it.
Then George Bruffin shouted--almost, the servants felt, as if he might
some day lose his temper.
"How did this freak minstrel get in?" he roared.
"Don't know, sir."
"Who was on duty here?"
"Charles, sir," chimed the chorus.
"Where is he?"
The music died in a last tinkling "Kuk-kuk." And then, as the minstrel
swung round to face his audience, the whole company heard the beating on
the great door.
"That," said Dick with a wave of his baton towards it, "is Charles."
While George stared heavily at the intruder's battle-worn visage, the
second footman flung open the door.
With a face livid and distorted by passion, Charles made a rush at his
enemy--to be brought up short by the sight of his master, wringing the
rascal's hand and patting his disgraceful shoulder.
"You silly goat," were all the words George could find for his laughter.
"I had to see you," said Dick. "And I do."
"Why couldn't you have me fetched decently?"
The chorus had vanished; they two were alone, with Charles, abashed.
"Your man wanted to put me out. I'm all in, George, so I just put him
out, and rang the bells for you." He sighed wearily, and added: "Anyhow,
it worked."
George turned a heavy face on the footman, but Dick spoke first.
"Charles is a damned good servant," he said. "I know what I look like.
He was in the right, so I had to evict."
"What's your trouble, Dick?" asked George, speaking, thought the
servant, as if this Dick were the first of all Dicks and all men.
"I've got a girl in a cab out there. She's worse beat than I am, George.
I want you and Liz to look after her till to-morrow."
Bruffin turned to his servant.
"Lady Elizabeth is in my study," he said. "Ask her to come to me here."
Then, to Dick, "Sit down," he went on, and disappeared, to return
quickly with a tumbler in his hand.
With half-closed eyes, Dick continued as if the other man had never left
him.
"She's mounting guard," he said, "with the shuvver to help, over our
catch--the worst blackguard unhung."
A handsome woman of some thirty years, with masses of darkest hair
cunningly disposed, neck and shoulders beautiful beyond criticism, and
dressed in a peignoir of delicate simplicity, came to her husband with a
rush smooth as the full-sailed speed of a three-masted schooner.
Charles, with recovered dignity, followed in her wake.
"George! What is it, George?" she exclaimed, before she had even time to
get her eyes focused upon his companion.
"That," answered George, with a derisive gesture.
"Why, it's--oh, _Dick_!" she cried.
With her long, slender hands on his shoulders, she peered close and
eagerly into the battered countenance.
"Oh, Dickie dear, whatever have they been doing to its good old face?"
she demanded, with tenderness for the one, and anger for the many
mingling in her voice.
"Nothing to what they got from him, Betsy--unless I'm an ass. But he'll
tell us when that whisky's worked in his veins a bit. He's got a lady
out there, waiting. Shall I fetch her in--or you?"
Dick half rose from his chair. But Lady Elizabeth Bruffin pushed him
back into it.
"I will, of course," she said, and made for the front door so quickly
that Charles only just had it open in time.
As he told the butler before he slept that night, "It'd've done your
kind heart good, Mr. Baldwin, to see how they were eating 'im with their
eyes. His word law, you know, and do what he wanted, almost before he
could say what it was, and it might be an hour before he could tell 'em
why. And the terrible object he was--but with something strong and
compelling, one might say, underneath."
He was thinking, perhaps of the hand which had lifted him over the
threshold.
Charles had followed his mistress to the taxi.
The driver, turning on her approach, stood back, touching his cap;
amazed by this condescension of jewels and silk to beauty ill-clothed,
draggled, dirty and exhausted.
Suddenly Lady Elizabeth remembered that she did not know even the girl's
name.
"Open the door, please," she said to the driver. And then, to Amaryllis,
"My dear, you're to come in," and stretched her hands out with a motion
so inviting that the girl laid her own in them, taking all their support
to rise and get out on the pavement.
"Take my arm. Poor little thing, you're tired to death," said Lady
Elizabeth, with what the girl called a coo in her voice.
"You don't even know my name----" began Amaryllis.
"I know something better--you're Dick Bellamy's friend. That is a
passport and an introduction, my dear."
Charles followed them up the steps. On the third his mistress stopped
and turned. Charles halted on the second step.
"There's a man in the taxi?" said Lady Elizabeth interrogatively.
"Yes," replied the girl. "We're keeping him. He's drunk."
"Charles," said Lady Elizabeth, "assist the driver in keeping the person
inside from getting out."
"Yes, my lady," said Charles; and, feeling that haply he was mixing in
great matters, he went back to the cab and stood sentry very loftily
over its further exit.
When they were inside, Lady Elizabeth shut the big door.
"George!" she said; and Bruffin took his eyes from Dick, to see his wife
leading towards them a pale-faced, tear-smudged girl, with a battered
sun-bonnet flung back on her shoulders and a great halo of untidy red
hair topping a graceful, weary figure habited in clothes which, in their
present state, would have disgraced the woman they had come from.
George took a step forward, and Dick half rose in courtesy.
"This is Miss ----" said Lady Elizabeth, and stuck.
"Oh, Liz!" cried Dick. "Beginning an introduction, when you haven't been
introduced yourself! Lady Elizabeth Bruffin, you have on your arm Miss
Caldegard, daughter of the eminent Professor Caldegard. George, you
behold the same. Miss Caldegard, Lady Elizabeth Bruffin, and her
husband, Mr. George Bruffin. He is famous for immeasurable wealth which
he can't use and a few brains which he uses in all sorts of queer ways,
and hasn't yet spent."
He limped towards the two women.
"Liz, dear," he went on, "please put her to bed. She's had the deuce and
all of a day. She'll tell you, only don't let her talk too much."
Lady Elizabeth nodded.
"Would you like to go to bed now, dear?" she asked.
A smile, radiant on the tired face, illuminated Amaryllis.
"Oh, please, yes. I can see it--all white!" she answered.
And without a word from any of the four, the women left the men standing
in the hall.
It was empty when Lady Elizabeth returned. She found George in his
study.
Her eyes shone with a kind of maternal satisfaction, but she looked at
her husband without speaking.
"How's the young woman?" he asked. "She looked about done in."
"She's had a bath. Suzanne's done her hair. She's in bed, so sleepy that
I left Suzanne with her to keep her from spilling her bouillon and toast
before she's finished it. Oh, George, she's a ripper--perfectly lovely,
without all those horrid clothes."
George took his cigar from his mouth.
"I shouldn't wonder," he said.
Lady Elizabeth ignored the interruption.
"And I _believe_ she's Dick's," she went on. "Who is this Professor
Caldegard?"
"Scientific--coal-tar--big bug of the first magnitude," answered
Bruffin. "Some day he'll synthesize albumen, and then all the farmers'll
go into the workhouse."
"But are they--what sort of people are they? It's _Dick_, George."
"You've seen the girl, Betsy."
"Yes," admitted Lady Elizabeth.
"And when you catch Dick Bellamy making a break over a man, a horse, a
dog or a woman, Bet, p'r'aps you'll let me know."
Lady Elizabeth sighed contentedly, as if he had removed the last doubt
from a happy mind.
"That's quite true," she said. Then she looked round the room. "Is he in
your bath-room, or in bed, or where? You oughtn't to leave him alone."
"He's left me," replied George. "Wouldn't stay a moment after he knew
Miss Caldegard was in your clutches. He's gone off with his intoxicated
captive. He's made a conquest of Charles by pitching him out of the
house, and the taxi-man would help him do murders."
"Is he coming back to bed here?"
"Didn't ask."
"Oh, George, why not?"
"He'll come if he wants to."
"Didn't he tell you where he was taking his prisoner?"
"Only said, 'Must get a move on. Got a man to be hanged,' and went."
"Then it's Scotland Yard," said Lady Elizabeth.
"I don't think that's where they turn 'em off, Betsy, but perhaps you
know best."
"I do, this time. Have a car out at once and drive there. Somebody's got
to look after him. And, if you get on the track of the father, tell him
about Amaryllis----"
"Amaryllis!" echoed George, reflectively weighing the word.
"And bring him along too, if he wants to have just a peep at her."
George nodded and rang the bell.