1
If there is one thing more than another which weighs upon the mind of a
story-teller as he chronicles the events which he has set out to
describe, it is the thought that the reader may be growing impatient
with him for straying from the main channel of his tale and devoting
himself to what are after all minor developments. This story, for
instance, opened with Mrs. Horace Hignett, the world-famous writer on
Theosophy, going over to America to begin a lecture-tour; and no one
realises more keenly than I do that I have left Mrs. Hignett flat. I
have thrust that great thinker into the background and concentrated my
attention on the affairs of one who is both her mental and moral
inferior, Samuel Marlowe. I seem at this point to see the reader--a
great brute of a fellow with beetling eyebrows and a jaw like the ram
of a battleship, the sort of fellow who is full of determination and will
stand no nonsense--rising to remark that he doesn't care what happened
to Samuel Marlowe and that what he wants to know is, how Mrs. Hignett
made out on her lecturing-tour. Did she go big in Buffalo? Did she have
'em tearing up the seats in Schenectady? Was she a riot in Chicago and
a cyclone in St. Louis? Those are the points on which he desires
information, or give him his money back.
I cannot supply the information. And, before you condemn me, let me
hastily add that the fault is not mine but that of Mrs. Hignett
herself. The fact is, she never went to Buffalo. Schenectady saw
nothing of her. She did not get within a thousand miles of Chicago, nor
did she penetrate to St. Louis. For the very morning after her son
Eustace sailed for England in the liner _Atlantic_, she happened
to read in the paper one of those abridged passenger-lists which the
journals of New York are in the habit of printing, and got a nasty
shock when she saw that, among those whose society Eustace would enjoy
during the voyage was Miss Wilhelmina Bennett, daughter of J. Rufus
Bennett, of Bennett, Mandelbaum and Co. And within five minutes of
digesting this information, she was at her desk writing out
telegrams cancelling all her engagements. Iron-souled as this woman
was, her fingers trembled as she wrote. She had a vision of Eustace and
the daughter of J. Rufus Bennett strolling together on moonlit decks,
leaning over rails damp with sea-spray, and, in short, generally
starting the whole trouble over again.
In the height of the tourist season it is not always possible for one
who wishes to leave America to spring on to the next boat. A long
morning's telephoning to the offices of the Cunard and the White Star
brought Mrs. Hignett the depressing information that it would be a full
week before she could sail for England. That meant that the inflammable
Eustace would have over two weeks to conduct an uninterrupted wooing,
and Mrs. Hignett's heart sank, till suddenly she remembered that so
poor a sailor as her son was not likely to have had leisure for any
strolling on the deck during the voyage of the _Atlantic_.
Having realised this, she became calmer and went about her preparations
for departure with an easier mind. The danger was still great, but
there was a good chance that she might be in time to intervene. She
wound up her affairs in New York and, on the following Wednesday,
boarded the _Nuronia_ bound for Southampton.
The _Nuronia_ is one of the slowest of the Cunard boats. It was
built at a time when delirious crowds used to swoon on the dock if an
ocean liner broke the record by getting across in nine days. It rolled
over to Cherbourg, dallied at that picturesque port for some hours,
then sauntered across the Channel and strolled into Southampton Water
in the evening of the day on which Samuel Marlowe had sat in the lane
plotting with Webster, the valet. At almost the exact moment when Sam,
sidling through the windows of the drawing-room, slid into the cupboard
behind the piano, Mrs. Hignett was standing at the Customs barrier
telling the officials that she had nothing to declare.
Mrs. Hignett was a general who believed in forced marches. A lesser
woman might have taken the boat-train to London and proceeded to
Windles at her ease on the following afternoon. Mrs. Hignett was made
of sterner stuff. Having fortified herself with a late dinner, she
hired an automobile and set out on the cross-country journey. It was
only when the car, a genuine antique, had broken down three times in
the first ten miles, that it became evident to her that it would be much
too late to go to Windles that night, and she directed the driver to take
her instead to the "Blue Boar" in Windlehurst, where she arrived, tired
but thankful to have reached it at all, at about eleven o'clock.
At this point many, indeed most, women, having had a tiring journey,
would have gone to bed: but the familiar Hampshire air and the
knowledge that half an hour's walking would take her to her beloved
home acted on Mrs. Hignett like a restorative. One glimpse of Windles
she felt that she must have before she retired for the night, if only
to assure herself that it was still there. She had a cup of coffee and
a sandwich brought to her by the night-porter, whom she had roused from
sleep, for bedtime is early in Windlehurst, and then informed him that
she was going for a short walk and would ring when she returned.
Her heart leaped joyfully as she turned in at the drive gates of her
home and felt the well-remembered gravel crunching under her feet. The
silhouette of the ruined castle against the summer sky gave her the
feeling which all returning wanderers know. And, when she stepped
on to the lawn and looked at the black bulk of the house, indistinct
and shadowy with its backing of trees, tears came into her eyes. She
experienced a rush of emotion which made her feel quite faint, and
which lasted until, on tiptoeing nearer to the house in order to gloat
more adequately upon it, she perceived that the French windows of the
drawing-room were standing ajar. Sam had left them like this in order
to facilitate departure, if a hurried departure should by any mischance
be rendered necessary, and drawn curtains had kept the household from
noticing the fact.
All the proprietor in Mrs. Hignett was roused. This, she felt
indignantly, was the sort of thing she had been afraid would happen the
moment her back was turned. Evidently laxity--one might almost say
anarchy--had set in directly she had removed the eye of authority. She
marched to the window and pushed it open. She had now completely
abandoned her kindly scheme of refraining from rousing the sleeping
house and spending the night at the inn. She stepped into the drawing-room
with the single-minded purpose of rousing Eustace out of his sleep and
giving him a good talking to for having failed to maintain her own
standard of efficiency among the domestic staff. If there was one thing
on which Mrs. Horace Hignett had always insisted it was that every window
in the house must be closed at lights-out.
She pushed the curtains apart with a rattle and, at the same moment,
from the direction of the door there came a low but distinct gasp which
made her resolute heart jump and flutter. It was too dark to see
anything distinctly, but, in the instant before it turned and fled, she
caught sight of a shadowy male figure, and knew that her worst fears
had been realised. The figure was too tall to be Eustace, and Eustace,
she knew, was the only man in the house. Male figures, therefore, that
went flitting about Windles, must be the figures of burglars.
Mrs. Hignett, bold woman though she was, stood for an instant
spellbound, and for one moment of not unpardonable panic, tried to tell
herself that she had been mistaken. Almost immediately, however, there
came from the direction of the hall a dull chunky sound as though
something soft had been kicked, followed by a low gurgle and the noise
of staggering feet. Unless he was dancing a _pas seul_ out of
sheer lightness of heart, the nocturnal visitor must have tripped over
something.
The latter theory was the correct one. Montagu Webster was a man who at
many a subscription ball had shaken a wicked dancing-pump, and nothing
in the proper circumstances pleased him better than to exercise the
skill which had become his as the result of twelve private lessons at
half-a-crown a visit: but he recognized the truth of the scriptural
adage that there is a time for dancing, and that this was not it. His
only desire when, stealing into the drawing-room he had been confronted
through the curtains by a female figure, was to get back to his bedroom
undetected. He supposed that one of the feminine members of the
house-party must have been taking a stroll in the grounds, and he did not
wish to stay and be compelled to make laborious explanations of his
presence there in the dark. He decided to postpone the knocking on the
cupboard door, which had been the signal arranged between himself and
Sam, until a more suitable occasion. In the meantime he bounded
silently out into the hall, and instantaneously tripped over the portly
form of Smith, the bulldog, who, roused from a light sleep to the
knowledge that something was going on, and being a dog who always liked
to be in the centre of the maelstrom of events, had waddled out to
investigate.
By the time Mrs. Hignett had pulled herself together sufficiently to
feel brave enough to venture into the hall, Webster's presence of mind
and Smith's gregariousness had combined to restore that part of the
house to its normal nocturnal condition of emptiness. Webster's stagger
had carried him almost up to the green baize door leading to the
servants' staircase, and he proceeded to pass through it without
checking his momentum, closely followed by Smith who, now convinced
that interesting events were in progress which might possibly culminate
in cake, had abandoned the idea of sleep and meant to see the thing
through. He gambolled in Webster's wake up the stairs and along the
passage leading to the latter's room, and only paused when the door was
brusquely shut in his face. Upon which he sat down to think the thing
over. He was in no hurry. The night was before him, promising, as far
as he could judge from the way it had opened, excellent entertainment.
Mrs. Hignett had listened fearfully to the uncouth noises from the
hall. The burglars--she had now discovered that there were at least two
of them--appeared to be actually romping. The situation had grown beyond
her handling. If this troupe of terpsichorean marauders was to be
dislodged she must have assistance. It was man's work. She made a brave
dash through the hall, mercifully unmolested: found the stairs: raced up
them: and fell through the doorway of her son Eustace's bedroom like a
spent Marathon runner staggering past the winning-post.
2
In the moment which elapsed before either of the two could calm their
agitated brains to speech, Eustace became aware, as never before, of
the truth of that well-known line, "Peace, perfect Peace, with loved
ones far away!"
"Eustace!"
Mrs. Hignett gasped, hand on heart.
"Eustace, there are men in the house!"
This fact was just the one which Eustace had been wondering how to
break to her.
"I know," he said uneasily.
"You know!" Mrs. Hignett stared. "Did you hear them!"
"Hear them?" said Eustace, puzzled.
"The drawing-room window was left open, and there are two burglars in
the hall."
"Oh, I say, no! That's rather rotten!" said Eustace.
"I saw and heard them. Come with me and arrest them."
"But I can't. I've sprained my ankle."
"Sprained your ankle? How very inconvenient! When did you do that?"
"This morning."
"How did it happen?"
Eustace hesitated.
"I was jumping."
"Jumping! But--oh!" Mrs. Hignett's sentence trailed off into a
suppressed shriek, as the door opened.
Immediately following on Eustace's accident, Jane Hubbard had
constituted herself his nurse. It was she who had bound up his injured
ankle in a manner which the doctor on his arrival had admitted himself
unable to improve upon. She had sat with him through the long
afternoon. And now, fearing lest a return of the pain might render him
sleepless, she had come to bring him a selection of books to see him
through the night.
Jane Hubbard was a girl who by nature and training was well adapted to
bear shocks. She accepted the advent of Mrs. Hignett without visible
astonishment, though inwardly she was wondering who the visitor might
be.
"Good evening," she said, placidly.
Mrs. Hignett, having rallied from her moment of weakness, glared at the
new arrival dumbly. She could not place Jane. She had the air of a
nurse, and yet she wore no uniform.
"Who are you?" she asked stiffly.
"Who are _you_?" countered Jane.
"I," said Mrs. Hignett portentously, "am the owner of this house, and I
should be glad to know what you are doing in it. I am Mrs. Horace
Hignett."
A charming smile spread itself over Jane's finely-cut face.
"I'm so glad to meet you," she said. "I have heard so much about you."
"Indeed?" said Mrs. Hignett. "And now I should like to hear a little
about you."
"I've read all your books," said Jane. "I think they're wonderful."
In spite of herself, in spite of a feeling that this young woman was
straying from the point, Mrs. Hignett could not check a slight influx
of amiability. She was an authoress who received a good deal of incense
from admirers, but she could always do with a bit more. Besides, most
of the incense came by mail. Living a quiet and retired life in the
country, it was rarely that she got it handed to her face to face. She
melted quite perceptibly. She did not cease to look like a basilisk,
but she began to look like a basilisk who has had a good lunch.
"My favorite," said Jane, who for a week had been sitting daily in a
chair in the drawing-room adjoining the table on which the authoress's
complete works were assembled, "is 'The Spreading Light.' I _do_
like 'The Spreading Light!'"
"It was written some years ago," said Mrs. Hignett with something
approaching cordiality, "and I have since revised some of the views I
state in it, but I still consider it quite a good text-book."
"Of course, I can see that 'What of the Morrow?' is more profound,"
said Jane. "But I read 'The Spreading Light' first, and of course that
makes a difference."
"I can quite see that it would," agreed Mrs. Hignett. "One's first step
across the threshold of a new mind, one's first glimpse...."
"Yes, it makes you feel...."
"Like some watcher of the skies," said Mrs. Hignett, "when a new planet
swims into his ken, or like...."
"Yes, doesn't it!" said Jane.
Eustace, who had been listening to the conversation with every muscle
tense, in much the same mental attitude as that of a peaceful citizen in
a Wild West saloon who holds himself in readiness to dive under a table
directly the shooting begins, began to relax. What he had shrinkingly
anticipated would be the biggest thing since the Dempsey-Carpentier
fight seemed to be turning into a pleasant social and literary evening
not unlike what he imagined a meeting of old Vassar alumni must be. For
the first time since his mother had come into the room he indulged in
the luxury of a deep breath.
"But what are you doing here?" asked Mrs. Hignett, returning almost
reluctantly to the main issue.
Eustace perceived that he had breathed too soon. In an unobtrusive way
he subsided into the bed and softly pulled the sheets over his head,
following the excellent tactics of the great Duke of Wellington in his
Peninsular campaign. "When in doubt," the Duke used to say, "retire and
dig yourself in."
"I'm nursing dear Eustace," said Jane.
Mrs. Hignett quivered, and cast an eye on the hump in the bed-clothes
which represented dear Eustace. A cold fear had come upon her.
"'Dear Eustace'!" she repeated mechanically.
"We're engaged," said Jane. "We got engaged this morning. That's how he
sprained his ankle. When I accepted him, he tried to jump a holly-bush."
"Engaged! Eustace, is this true?"
"Yes," said a muffled voice from the interior of the bed.
"And poor Eustace is so worried," continued Jane, "about the house."
She went on quickly. "He doesn't want to deprive you of it, because he
knows what it means to you. So he is hoping--we are both hoping--that
you will accept it as a present when we are married. We really shan't
want it, you know. We are going to live in London. So you will take it,
won't you--to please us?"
We all of us, even the greatest of us, have our moments of weakness.
Let us then not express any surprise at the sudden collapse of one of
the world's greatest female thinkers. As the meaning of this speech
smote on Mrs. Horace Hignett's understanding, she sank weeping into a
chair. The ever-present fear that had haunted her had been exorcised.
Windles was hers in perpetuity. The relief was too great. She sat in
her chair and gulped: and Eustace, greatly encouraged, emerged slowly
from the bedclothes like a worm after a thunderstorm.
How long this poignant scene would have lasted, one cannot say. It is a
pity that it was cut short, for I should have liked to dwell upon it.
But at this moment, from the regions downstairs, there suddenly burst
upon the silent night such a whirlwind of sound as effectually
dissipated the tense emotion in the room. Somebody had touched off the
orchestrion in the drawing-room, and that willing instrument had begun
again in the middle of a bar at the point where it had been switched
off. Its wailing lament for the passing of Summer filled the whole
house.
"That's too bad!" said Jane, a little annoyed. "At this time of night!"
"It's the burglars!" quavered Mrs. Hignett. In the stress of recent
events she had completely forgotten the existence of those enemies of
society. "They were dancing in the hall when I arrived, and now they're
playing the orchestrion!"
"Light-hearted chaps!" said Eustace, admiring the sang-froid of the
criminal world. "Full of spirits!"
"This won't do," said Jane Hubbard, shaking her head. "We can't have
this sort of thing. I'll go and fetch my gun."
"They'll murder you, dear!" panted Mrs. Hignett, clinging to her arm.
Jane Hubbard laughed.
"Murder _me_!" she said, amusedly. "I'd like to catch them at it!"
Mrs. Hignett stood staring at the door as Jane closed it safely behind
her.
"Eustace," she said, solemnly, "that is a wonderful girl!"
"Yes! She once killed a panther--or a puma, I forget which--with a
hat-pin!" said Eustace with enthusiasm.
"I could wish you no better wife!" said Mrs. Hignett.
She broke off with a sharp wail.... Out in the passage something like a
battery of artillery had roared.
The door opened and Jane Hubbard appeared, slipping a fresh cartridge
into the elephant-gun.
"One of them was popping about outside here," she announced. "I took a
shot at him, but I'm afraid I missed. The visibility was bad. At any
rate he went away."
In this last statement she was perfectly accurate. Bream Mortimer, who
had been aroused by the orchestrion and who had come out to see what
was the matter, had gone away at the rate of fifty miles an hour. He
had been creeping down the passage when he found himself suddenly
confronted by a dim figure which, without a word, had attempted to slay
him with an enormous gun. The shot had whistled past his ears and gone
singing down the corridor. This was enough for Bream. He had returned
to his room in three strides, and was now under the bed. The burglars
might take everything in the house and welcome, so that they did not
molest his privacy. That was the way Bream looked at it. And very
sensible of him, too, I consider.
"We'd better go downstairs," said Jane. "Bring the candle. Not you,
Eustace, darling. Don't you stir out of bed!"
"I won't," said Eustace obediently.
3
Of all the leisured pursuits, there are few less attractive to the
thinking man than sitting in a dark cupboard waiting for a house-party
to go to bed: and Sam, who had established himself in the one behind
the piano at a quarter to eight, soon began to feel as if he had been
there for an eternity. He could dimly remember a previous existence in
which he had not been sitting in his present position, but it seemed so
long ago that it was shadowy and unreal to him. The ordeal of spending
the evening in this retreat had not appeared formidable when he had
contemplated it that afternoon in the lane: but, now that he was
actually undergoing it, it was extraordinary how many disadvantages it
had.
Cupboards, as a class, are badly ventilated, and this one seemed to
contain no air at all: and the warmth of the night, combined with the
cupboard's natural stuffiness, had soon begun to reduce Sam to a
condition of pulp. He seemed to himself to be sagging like an ice-cream
in front of a fire. The darkness, too, weighed upon him. He was
abominably thirsty. Also he wanted to smoke. In addition to this, the
small of his back tickled, and he more than suspected the cupboard of
harboring mice. Not once nor twice but many hundred times he wished
that the ingenious Webster had thought of something simpler.
His was a position which would just have suited one of those Indian
mystics who sit perfectly still for twenty years, contemplating the
Infinite; but it reduced Sam to an almost imbecile state of boredom. He
tried counting sheep. He tried going over his past life in his mind
from the earliest moment he could recollect, and thought he had never
encountered a duller series of episodes. He found a temporary solace by
playing a succession of mental golf-games over all the courses he could
remember, and he was just teeing up for the sixteenth at Muirfield, after
playing Hoylake, St. Andrews, Westward Ho, Hanger Hill, Mid-Surrey,
Walton Heath, Garden City, and the Engineers' Club at Roslyn, L. I.,
when the light ceased to shine through the crack under the door,
and he awoke with a sense of dull incredulity to the realisation that
the occupants of the drawing-room had called it a day and that his
vigil was over.
But was it? Once more alert, Sam became cautious. True, the light
seemed to be off, but did that mean anything in a country-house, where
people had the habit of going and strolling about the garden at all
hours? Probably they were still popping about all over the place. At any
rate, it was not worth risking coming out of his lair. He remembered that
Webster had promised to come and knock an all-clear signal on the door.
It would be safer to wait for that.
But the moments went by, and there was no knock. Sam began to grow
impatient. The last few minutes of waiting in a cupboard are always the
hardest. Time seemed to stretch out again interminably. Once he thought
he heard foot-steps, but that led to nothing. Eventually, having
strained his ears and finding everything still, he decided to take a
chance. He fished in his pocket for the key, cautiously unlocked the
door, opened it by slow inches, and peered out.
The room was in blackness. The house was still. All was well. With the
feeling of a life-prisoner emerging from the Bastille, he began to
crawl stiffly forward: and it was just then that the first of the
disturbing events occurred which were to make this night memorable to
him. Something like a rattlesnake suddenly went off with a whirr, and
his head, jerking up, collided with the piano. It was only the
cuckoo-clock, which now, having cleared its throat as was its custom
before striking, proceeded to cuck eleven times in rapid succession
before subsiding with another rattle: but to Sam it sounded like the end
of the world.
He sat in the darkness, massaging his bruised skull. His hours of
imprisonment in the cupboard had had a bad effect on his nervous
system, and he vacillated between tears of weakness and a militant
desire to get at the cuckoo-clock with a hatchet. He felt that it had
done it on purpose and was now chuckling to itself in fancied security.
For quite a minute he raged silently, and any cuckoo-clock which had
strayed within his reach would have had a bad time of it. Then his
attention was diverted.
So concentrated was Sam on his private vendetta with the clock that no
ordinary happening would have had the power to distract him. What
occurred now was by no means ordinary, and it distracted him like an
electric shock. As he sat on the floor, passing a tender hand over the
egg-shaped bump which had already begun to manifest itself beneath his
hair, something cold and wet touched his face, and paralysed him so
completely both physically and mentally that he did not move a muscle
but just congealed where he sat into a solid block of ice. He felt
vaguely that this was the end. His heart stopped beating and he simply
could not imagine it ever starting again, and, if your heart refuses to
beat, what hope is there for you?
At this moment something heavy and solid struck him squarely in the
chest, rolling him over. Something gurgled asthmatically in the
darkness. Something began to lick his eyes, ears, and chin in a sort of
ecstasy: and, clutching out, he found his arms full of totally
unexpected bulldog.
"Get out!" whispered Sam tensely, recovering his faculties with a jerk.
"Go away!"
Smith took the opportunity of his lips having opened to lick the roof
of his mouth. Smith's attitude in the matter was that providence in its
all-seeing wisdom had sent him a human being at a moment when he had
reluctantly been compelled to reconcile himself to a total absence of
such indispensable adjuncts to a good time, and that now the revels
might commence. He had just trotted downstairs in rather a disconsolate
frame of mind after waiting with no result in front of Webster's
bedroom door, and it was a real treat to him to meet a man, especially
one seated in such a jolly and sociable manner on the floor. He welcomed
Sam like a long-lost friend.
Between Smith and the humans who provided him with dog-biscuits and
occasionally with sweet cakes there had always existed a state of
misunderstanding which no words could remove. The position of the
humans was quite clear. They had elected Smith to his present position
on a straight watch-dog ticket. They expected him to be one of those
dogs who rouse the house and save the spoons. They looked to him to pin
burglars by the leg and hold on till the police arrived. Smith simply
could not grasp such an attitude of mind. He regarded Windles not as a
private house but as a social club, and was utterly unable to see any
difference between the human beings he knew and the strangers who
dropped in for a late chat after the place was locked up. He had no
intention of biting Sam. The idea never entered his head. At the
present moment what he felt about Sam was that he was one of the best
fellows he had ever met and that he loved him like a brother.
Sam, in his unnerved state, could not bring himself to share these
amiable sentiments. He was thinking bitterly that Webster might have
had the intelligence to warn him of bulldogs on the premises. It was
just the sort of woollen-headed thing fellows did, forgetting facts
like that. He scrambled stiffly to his feet and tried to pierce the
darkness that hemmed him in. He ignored Smith, who snuffled sportively
about his ankles, and made for the slightly less black oblong which he
took to be the door leading into the hall. He moved warily, but not
warily enough to prevent him cannoning into and almost upsetting a
small table with a vase on it. The table rocked and the vase jumped,
and the first bit of luck that had come to Sam that night was when he
reached out at a venture and caught it just as it was about to bound on
to the carpet.
He stood there, shaking. The narrowness of the escape turned him cold.
If he had been an instant later, there would have been a crash loud
enough to wake a dozen sleeping houses. This sort of thing could not go
on. He must have light. It might be a risk: there might be a chance of
somebody upstairs seeing it and coming down to investigate: but it was
a risk that must be taken. He declined to go on stumbling about in this
darkness any longer. He groped his way with infinite care to the door,
on the wall adjoining which, he presumed, the electric-light switch
would be.
It was nearly ten years since he had last been inside Windles, and it
never occurred to him that in this progressive age even a woman like
his aunt Adeline, of whom he could believe almost anything, would still
be using candles and oil-lamps as a means of illumination. His only
doubt was whether the switch was where it was in most houses, near the
door.
It is odd to reflect that, as his searching fingers touched the knob, a
delicious feeling of relief came to Samuel Marlowe. This misguided
young man actually felt at that moment that his troubles were over. He
positively smiled as he placed a thumb on the knob and shoved.
He shoved strongly and sharply, and instantaneously there leaped at him
out of the darkness a blare of music which appeared to his disordered
mind quite solid. It seemed to wrap itself round him. It was all over
the place. In a single instant the world had become one vast bellow of
Tosti's "Goodbye."
How long he stood there, frozen, he did not know: nor can one say how
long he would have stood there had nothing further come to invite his
notice elsewhere. But, suddenly, drowning even the impromptu concert,
there came from somewhere upstairs the roar of a gun, and, when he heard
that, Sam's rigid limbs relaxed and a violent activity descended upon
him. He bounded out into the hall, looking to right and to left for a
hiding-place. One of the suits of armour which had been familiar to him
in his boyhood loomed up in front of him, and with the sight came the
recollection of how, when a mere child on his first visit to Windles,
playing hide and seek with his cousin Eustace, he had concealed himself
inside this very suit and had not only baffled Eustace through a long
summer evening but had wound up by almost scaring him into a decline by
booing at him through the vizor of the helmet. Happy days, happy days!
He leaped at the suit of armour. The helmet was a tight fit, but he
managed to get his head into it at last, and the body of the thing was
quite roomy.
"Thank heaven!" said Sam.
He was not comfortable, but comfort just then was not his primary need.
Smith, the bulldog, well satisfied with the way things had happened,
sat down, wheezing slightly, to await developments.
4
He had not long to wait. In a few minutes the hall had filled up
nicely. There was Mr. Mortimer in his shirt-sleeves, Mr. Bennett in his
pyjamas and a dressing-gown, Mrs. Hignett in a travelling costume, Jane
Hubbard with her elephant-gun, and Billie in a dinner dress. Smith
welcomed them all impartially.
Somebody lit a lamp, and Mrs. Hignett stared speechlessly at the mob.
"Mr. Bennett! Mr. Mortimer!"
"Mrs. Hignett! What are you doing here?"
Mrs. Hignett drew herself up stiffly.
"What an odd question, Mr. Mortimer! I am in my own house!"
"But you rented it to me for the summer. At least, your son did."
"Eustace let you Windles for the summer!" said Mrs. Hignett,
incredulously.
Jane Hubbard returned from the drawing-room, where she had been
switching off the orchestrion.
"Let us talk all that over cosily to-morrow," she said. "The point now
is that there are burglars in the house."
"Burglars!" cried Mr. Bennett aghast. "I thought it was you playing
that infernal instrument, Mortimer."
"What on earth should I play it for at this time of night?" said Mr.
Mortimer irritably.
It appeared only too evident that the two old friends were again on the
verge of one of their distressing fallings-out: but Jane Hubbard
intervened once more. This practical-minded girl disliked the
introducing of side-issues into the conversation. She was there to talk
about burglars, and she intended to do so.
"For goodness sake stop it!" she said, almost petulantly for one
usually so superior to emotion. "There'll be lots of time for
quarrelling to-morrow. Just now we've got to catch these...."
"I'm not quarrelling," said Mr. Bennett.
"Yes, you are," said Mr. Mortimer.
"I'm not!"
"You are!"
"Don't argue!"
"I'm not arguing!"
"You are!"
"I'm not!"
Jane Hubbard had practically every noble quality which a woman can
possess with the exception of patience. A patient woman would have
stood by, shrinking from interrupting the dialogue. Jane Hubbard's
robuster course was to raise the elephant-gun, point it at the front
door, and pull the trigger.
"I thought that would stop you," she said complacently, as the echoes
died away and Mr. Bennett had finished leaping into the air. She
inserted a fresh cartridge, and sloped arms. "Now, the question is...."
"You made me bite my tongue!" said Mr. Bennett, deeply aggrieved.
"Serves you right!" said Jane placidly. "Now, the question is, have the
fellows got away or are they hiding somewhere in the house? I think
they're still in the house."
"The police!" exclaimed Mr. Bennett, forgetting his lacerated tongue
and his other grievances. "We must summon the police!"
"Obviously!" said Mrs. Hignett, withdrawing her fascinated gaze from
the ragged hole in the front door, the cost of repairing which she had
been mentally assessing. "We must send for the police at once."
"We don't really need them, you know," said Jane. "If you'll all go to
bed and just leave me to potter round with my gun...."
"And blow the whole house to pieces!" said Mrs. Hignett tartly. She had
begun to revise her original estimate of this girl. To her, Windles was
sacred, and anyone who went about shooting holes in it forfeited her
esteem.
"Shall I go for the police?" said Billie. "I could bring them back in
ten minutes in the car."
"Certainly not!" said Mr. Bennett. "My daughter gadding about all over
the countryside in an automobile at this time of night!"
"If you think I ought not to go alone, I could take Bream."
"Where _is_ Bream?" said Mr. Mortimer.
The odd fact that Bream was not among those present suddenly presented
itself to the company.
"Where can he be?" said Billie.
Jane Hubbard laughed the wholesome, indulgent laugh of one who is
broad-minded enough to see the humor of the situation even when the
joke is at her expense.
"What a silly girl I am!" she said. "I do believe that was Bream I shot
at upstairs. How foolish of me making a mistake like that!"
"You shot my only son!" cried Mr. Mortimer.
"I shot _at_ him," said Jane. "My belief is that I missed him.
Though how I came to do it beats me. I don't suppose I've missed a
sitter like that since I was a child in the nursery. Of course," she
proceeded, looking on the reasonable side, "the visibility wasn't good,
and I fired from the hip, but it's no use saying I oughtn't at least to
have winged him, because I ought." She shook her head with a touch of
self-reproach. "I shall be chaffed about this if it comes out," she
said regretfully.
"The poor boy must be in his room," said Mr. Mortimer.
"Under the bed, if you ask me," said Jane, blowing on the barrel of her
gun and polishing it with the side of her hand. "_He's_ all right!
Leave him alone, and the housemaid will sweep him up in the morning."
"Oh, he can't be!" cried Billie, revolted.
A girl of high spirit, it seemed to her repellent that the man she was
engaged to marry should be displaying such a craven spirit. At that
moment she despised and hated Bream Mortimer. I think she was wrong,
mind you. It is not my place to criticise the little group of people
whose simple annals I am relating--my position is merely that of a
reporter--: but personally I think highly of Bream's sturdy common-sense.
If somebody loosed off an elephant gun at me in a dark corridor, I would
climb on to the roof and pull it up after me. Still, rightly or wrongly,
that was how Billie felt: and it flashed across her mind that Samuel
Marlowe, scoundrel though he was, would not have behaved like this. And
for a moment a certain wistfulness added itself to the varied emotions
then engaging her mind.
"I'll go and look, if you like," said Jane agreeably. "You amuse
yourselves somehow till I come back."
She ran easily up the stairs, three at a time. Mr. Mortimer turned to
Mr. Bennett.
"It's all very well your saying Wilhelmina mustn't go, but, if she
doesn't, how can we get the police? The house isn't on the 'phone, and
nobody else can drive the car."
"That's true," said Mr. Bennett, wavering.
"I'm going," said Billie resolutely. It occurred to her, as it has
occurred to so many women before her, how helpless men are in a crisis.
The temporary withdrawal of Jane Hubbard had had the effect which the
removal of a rudder has on a boat. "It's the only thing to do. I shall
be back in no time."
She stepped firmly to the coat-rack, and began to put on her
motoring-cloak. And just then Jane Hubbard came downstairs, shepherding
before her a pale and glassy-eyed Bream.
"Right under the bed," she announced cheerfully, "making a noise like a
piece of fluff in order to deceive burglars."
Billie cast a scornful look at her fiancee. Absolutely unjustified, in
my opinion, but nevertheless she cast it. But it had no effect at all.
Terror had stunned Bream Mortimer's perceptions. His was what the
doctors call a penumbral mental condition. He was in a sort of trance.
"Bream," said Billie, "I want you to come in the car with me to fetch
the police."
"All right," said Bream.
"Get your coat."
"All right," said Bream.
"And cap."
"All right," said Bream.
He followed Billie in a docile manner out through the front door, and they
made their way to the garage at the back of the house, both silent. The
only difference between their respective silences was that Billie's was
thoughtful, while Bream's was just the silence of a man who has unhitched
his brain and is getting along as well as he can without it.
In the hall they had left, Jane Hubbard once more took command of
affairs.
"Well, that's something done," she said, scratching Smith's broad back
with the muzzle of her weapon. "Something accomplished, something done,
has earned a night's repose. Not that we're going to get it yet. I
think those fellows are hiding somewhere, and we ought to search the
house and rout them out. It's a pity Smith isn't a bloodhound. I like
you personally, Smithy, but you're about as much practical use in a
situation like this as a cold in the head. You're a good cake-hound,
but as a watch-dog you don't finish in the first ten."
The cake-hound, charmed at the compliment, frisked about her feet like
a young elephant.
"The first thing to do," continued Jane, "is to go through the
ground-floor rooms...." She paused to strike a match against the suit
of armour nearest to her, a proceeding which elicited a sharp cry of
protest from Mrs. Hignett, and lit a cigarette. "I'll go first, as I've
got a gun...." She blew a cloud of smoke. "I shall want somebody with me
to carry a light, and...."
"Tchoo!"
"What?" said Jane.
"I didn't speak," said Mr. Mortimer. "Who am I to speak?" he went on
bitterly. "Who am I that it should be supposed that I have anything
sensible to suggest?"
"Somebody spoke," said Jane. "I...."
"Achoo!"
"Do you feel a draught, Mr. Bennett?" cried Jane sharply, wheeling
round on him.
"There _is_ a draught," began Mr. Bennett.
"Well, finish sneezing and I'll go on."
"I didn't sneeze!"
"Somebody sneezed."
"It seemed to come from just behind you," said Mrs. Hignett nervously.
"It couldn't have come from just behind me," said Jane, "because there
isn't anything behind me from which it could have...." She stopped
suddenly, in her eyes the light of understanding, on her face the set
expression which was wont to come to it on the eve of action. "Oh!" she
said in a different voice, a voice which was cold and tense and
sinister. "Oh, I see!" She raised her gun, and placed a muscular
forefinger on the trigger. "Come out of that!" she said. "Come out of
that suit of armour and let's have a look at you!"
"I can explain everything," said a muffled voice through the vizor of
the helmet. "I can--achoo." The smoke of the cigarette tickled Sam's
nostrils again, and he suspended his remarks.
"I shall count three," said Jane Hubbard. "One--two--"
"I'm coming! I'm coming!" said Sam petulantly.
"You'd better!" said Jane.
"I can't get this dashed helmet off!"
"If you don't come quick, I'll blow it off."
Sam stepped out into the hall, a picturesque figure which combined the
costumes of two widely separated centuries. Modern as far as the neck,
he slipped back at that point to the Middle Ages.
"Hands up!" commanded Jane Hubbard.
"My hands _are_ up!" retorted Sam querulously, as he wrenched at
his unbecoming head-wear.
"Never mind trying to raise your hat," said Jane. "If you've lost the
combination, we'll dispense with the formalities. What we're anxious to
hear is what you're doing in the house at this time of night, and who
your pals are. Come along, my lad, make a clean breast of it and
perhaps you'll get off easier. Are you a gang?"
"Do I look like a gang?"
"If you ask me what you look like...."
"My name is Marlowe ... Samuel Marlowe...."
"Alias what?"
"Alias nothing! I say my name is Samuel Marlowe...."
An explosive roar burst from Mr. Bennett. "The scoundrel! I know him! I
forbade him the house, and...."
"And by what right did you forbid people my house, Mr. Bennett?" said
Mrs. Hignett with acerbity.
"I've rented the house, Mortimer and I rented it from your son...."
"Yes, yes, yes," said Jane Hubbard. "Never mind about that. So you know
this fellow, do you?"
"I don't know him!"
"You said you did."
"I refuse to know him!" went on Mr. Bennett. "I won't know him! I
decline to have anything to do with him!"
"But you identify him?"
"If he says he's Samuel Marlowe," assented Mr. Bennett grudgingly, "I
suppose he is. I can't imagine anybody saying he was Samuel Marlowe if
he didn't know it could be proved against him."
"_Are_ you my nephew Samuel?" said Mrs. Hignett.
"Yes," said Sam.
"Well, what are you doing in my house?"
"It's _my_ house," said Mr. Bennett, "for the summer, Henry
Mortimer's and mine. Isn't that right, Henry?"
"Dead right," said Mr. Mortimer.
"There!" said Mr. Bennett. "You hear? And when Henry Mortimer says a
thing, it's so. There's nobody's word I'd take before Henry
Mortimer's."
"When Rufus Bennett makes an assertion," said Mr. Mortimer, highly
flattered by these kind words, "you can bank on it, Rufus Bennett's
word is his bond. Rufus Bennett is a white man!"
The two old friends clasped hands with a good deal of feeling.
"I am not disputing Mr. Bennett's claim to belong to the Caucasian
race," said Mrs. Hignett, "I merely maintain that this house is...."
"Yes, yes, yes, yes!" interrupted Jane. "You can thresh all that out
some other time. The point is, if this fellow is your nephew, I don't
see what we can do. We'll have to let him go."
"I came to this house," said Sam, raising his vizor to facilitate
speech, "to make a social call...."
"At this hour of the night!" snapped Mrs. Hignett. "You always were
an inconsiderate boy, Samuel."
"I came to enquire after poor Eustace's ankle. I've only just heard
that the poor chap was ill."
"He's getting along quite well," said Jane, melting. "If I had known
you were so fond of Eustace...."
"All right, is he?" said Sam.
"Well, not quite all right, but he's going on very nicely."
"Fine!"
"Eustace and I are engaged, you know!"
"No, really? Splendid! I can't see you very distinctly--how those
Johnnies in the old days ever contrived to put up a scrap with things like
this on their heads beats me--but you sound a good sort. I hope you'll
be very happy."
"Thank you ever so much, Mr. Marlowe. I'm sure we shall."
"Eustace is one of the best."
"How nice of you to say so."
"All this," interrupted Mrs. Hignett, who had been a chafing auditor of
this interchange of courtesies, "is beside the point. Why did you dance
in the hall, Samuel, and play the orchestrion?"
"Yes," said Mr. Bennett, reminded of his grievance, "waking people up."
"Scaring us all to death!" complained Mr. Mortimer.
"I remember you as a boy, Samuel," said Mrs. Hignett, "lamentably
lacking in consideration for others and concentrated only on your
selfish pleasures. You seem to have altered very little."
"Don't ballyrag the poor man," said Jane Hubbard. "Be human! Lend him a
can-opener!"
"I shall do nothing of the sort," said Mrs. Hignett. "I never liked him
and I dislike him now. He has got himself into this trouble through his
own wrong-headedness."
"It's not his fault his head's the wrong size," said Jane.
"He must get himself out as best he can," said Mrs. Hignett.
"Very well," said Sam with bitter dignity. "Then I will not trespass
further on your hospitality, Aunt Adeline. I have no doubt the local
blacksmith will be able to get this damned thing off me. I shall go to
him now. I will let you have the helmet back by parcel-post at the
earliest possible opportunity. Good night!" He walked coldly to the
front door. "And there are people," he remarked sardonically, "who say
that blood is thicker than water! I'll bet they never had any aunts!"
5
Billie, meanwhile, with Bream trotting docilely at her heels, had
reached the garage and started the car. Like all cars which have been
spending a considerable time in secluded inaction, it did not start
readily. At each application of Billie's foot on the self-starter, it
emitted a tinny and reproachful sound and then seemed to go to sleep
again. Eventually, however, the engines began to revolve and the
machine moved reluctantly out into the drive.
"The battery must be run down," said Billie.
"All right," said Bream.
Billie cast a glance of contempt at him out of the corner of her eyes.
She hardly knew why she had spoken to him except that, as all
automobilists are aware, the impulse to say rude things about their
battery is almost irresistible. To an automobilist the art of
conversation consists in rapping out scathing remarks either about the
battery or the oiling-system.
Billie switched on the head-lights and turned the car down the dark
drive. She was feeling thoroughly upset. Her idealistic nature had
received a painful shock on the discovery of the yellow streak in
Bream. To call it a yellow streak was to understate the facts. It was a
great belt of saffron encircling his whole soul. That she, Wilhelmina
Bennett, who had gone through the world seeking a Galahad, should
finish her career as the wife of a man who hid under beds simply
because people shot at him with elephant guns was abhorrent to her.
Why, Samuel Marlowe would have perished rather than do such a thing.
You might say what you liked about Samuel Marlowe--and, of course, his
habit of playing practical jokes put him beyond the pale--but nobody
could question his courage. Look at the way he had dived overboard that
time in the harbour at New York! Billie found herself thinking hard
about Samuel Marlowe.
There are only a few makes of car in which you can think hard about
anything except the actual driving without stalling the engines, and
Mr. Bennett's Twin-Six Complex was not one of them. It stopped as if it
had been waiting for the signal. The noise of the engine died away. The
wheels ceased to revolve. The automobile did everything except lie
down. It was a particularly pig-headed car and right from the start it
had been unable to see the sense in this midnight expedition. It seemed
now to have the idea that if it just lay low and did nothing, presently
it would be taken back to its cosy garage.
Billie trod on the self-starter. Nothing happened.
"You'll have to get down and crank her," she said curtly.
"All right," said Bream.
"Well, go on," said Billie impatiently.
"Eh?"
"Get out and crank her."
Bream emerged for an instant from his trance.
"All right," he said.
The art of cranking a car is one that is not given to all men. Some of
our greatest and wisest stand helpless before the task. It is a job
towards the consummation of which a noble soul and a fine brain help
not at all. A man may have all the other gifts and yet be unable to
accomplish a task the fellow at the garage does with one quiet quick
flick of the wrist without even bothering to remove his chewing gum.
This being so, it was not only unkind but foolish of Billie to grow
impatient as Bream's repeated efforts failed of their object. It was
wrong of her to click her tongue, and certainly she ought not to have
told Bream that he was not fit to churn butter. But women are an
emotional sex and must be forgiven much in moments of mental stress.
"Give it a good sharp twist," she said.
"All right," said Bream.
"Here, let me do it," cried Billie.
She jumped down and snatched the thingummy from his hand. With bent
brows and set teeth she wrenched it round. The engine gave a faint
protesting mutter, like a dog that has been disturbed in its sleep, and
was still once more.
"May I help?"
It was not Bream who spoke but a strange voice--a sepulchral voice,
the sort of voice someone would have used in one of Edgar Allen Poe's
cheerful little tales if he had been buried alive and were speaking
from the family vault. Coming suddenly out of the night it affected
Bream painfully. He uttered a sharp exclamation and gave a bound which,
if he had been a Russian dancer, would probably have caused the
management to raise his salary. He was in no frame of mind to bear up
under sudden sepulchral voices.
Billie, on the other hand, was pleased. The high-spirited girl was just
beginning to fear that she was unequal to the task which she had chided
Bream for being unable to perform and this was mortifying her.
"Oh, would you mind? Thank you so much. The self-starter has gone
wrong."
Into the glare of the head-lights there stepped a strange figure,
strange, that is to say, in these tame modern times. In the Middle Ages
he would have excited no comment at all. Passers-by would simply have
said to themselves, "Ah, another of those knights off after the
dragons!" and would have gone on their way with a civil greeting. But
in the present age it is always somewhat startling to see a helmeted
head pop up in front of your automobile. At any rate, it startled
Bream. I will go further. It gave Bream the shock of a lifetime. He had
had shocks already that night, but none to be compared with this. Or
perhaps it was that this shock, coming on top of those shocks, affected
him more disastrously than it would have done if it had been the first
of the series instead of the last. One may express the thing briefly by
saying that, as far as Bream was concerned, Sam's unconventional
appearance put the lid on it. He did not hesitate. He did not pause to
make comments or ask questions. With a single cat-like screech which
took years off the lives of the abruptly wakened birds roosting in the
neighbouring trees, he dashed away towards the house and, reaching his
room, locked the door and pushed the bed, the chest of drawers, two
chairs, the towel stand, and three pairs of boots against it. Only then
did he feel comparatively safe.
Out on the drive Billie was staring at the man in armour who had now,
with a masterful wrench which informed the car right away that he would
stand no nonsense, set the engine going again.
"Why--why," she stammered, "why are you wearing that thing on your
head?"
"Because I can't get it off."
Hollow as the voice was, Billie recognised it.
"S--Mr. Marlowe!" she exclaimed.
"Get in," said Sam. He had seated himself at the steering wheel. "Where
can I take you?"
"Go away!" said Billie.
"Get in!"
"I don't want to talk to you."
"I want to talk to _you!_ Get in!"
"I won't."
Sam bent over the side of the car, put his hands under her arms, lifted
her like a kitten and deposited her on the seat beside him. Then
throwing in the clutch, he drove at an ever increasing speed down the
drive and out into the silent road. Strange creatures of the night came
and went in the golden glow of the head-lights.
6
"Put me down," said Billie.
"You'd get hurt if I did, travelling at this pace."
"What are you going to do?"
"Drive about till you promise to marry me."
"You'll have to drive a long time."
"Right ho!" said Sam.
The car took a corner and purred down a lane. Billie reached out a hand
and grabbed at the steering wheel. "Of course, if you _want_ to
smash up in a ditch!" said Sam, righting the car with a wrench.
"You're a brute!" said Billie.
"Cave-man stuff," explained Sam, "I ought to have tried it before."
"I don't know what you expect to gain by this."
"That's all right," said Sam, "I know what I'm about."
"I'm glad to hear it."
"I thought you would be."
"I'm not going to talk to you."
"All right. Lean back and doze off. We've the whole night before us."
"What do you mean?" cried Billie, sitting up with a jerk.
"Have you ever been to Scotland?"
"What do you mean?"
"I thought we might push up there. We've got to go somewhere and, oddly
enough, I've never been to Scotland."
Billie regarded him blankly.
"Are you crazy?"
"I'm crazy about you. If you knew what I've gone through to-night for
your sake you'd be more sympathetic. I love you," said Sam swerving to
avoid a rabbit. "And what's more, you know it."
"I don't care."
"You will!" said Sam confidently. "How about North Wales? I've heard
people speak well of North Wales. Shall we head for North Wales?"
"I'm engaged to Bream Mortimer."
"Oh no, that's all off," Sam assured her.
"It's not!"
"Right off!" said Sam firmly. "You could never bring yourself to marry
a man who dashed away like that and deserted you in your hour of need.
Why, for all he knew, I might have tried to murder you. And he ran
away! No, no, we eliminate Bream Mortimer once and for all. He won't
do!"
This was so exactly what Billie was feeling herself that she could not
bring herself to dispute it.
"Anyway, I hate _you_!" she said, giving the conversation another
turn.
"Why? In the name of goodness, why?"
"How dared you make a fool of me in your father's office that morning?"
"It was a sudden inspiration. I had to do something to make you think
well of me, and I thought it might meet the case if I saved you from a
lunatic with a pistol. It wasn't my fault that you found out."
"I shall never forgive you!"
"Why not Cornwall?" said Sam. "The Riviera of England! Let's go to
Cornwall. I beg your pardon. What were you saying?"
"I said I should never forgive you and I won't."
"Well, I hope you're fond of motoring," said Sam, "because we're going
on till you do."
"Very well! Go on, then!"
"I intend to. Of course, it's all right now while it's dark. But have
you considered what is going to happen when the sun gets up? We shall
have a sort of triumphal procession. How the small boys will laugh when
they see a man in a helmet go by in a car! I shan't notice them myself
because it's a little difficult to notice anything from inside this
thing, but I'm afraid it will be rather unpleasant for you ... I know
what we'll do. We'll go to London and drive up and down Piccadilly!
That will be fun!"
There was a long silence.
"Is my helmet on straight?" said Sam.
Billie made no reply. She was looking before her down the hedge-bordered
road. Always a girl of sudden impulse, she had just made a curious
discovery, to wit, that she was enjoying herself. There was something
so novel and exhilarating about this midnight ride that imperceptibly
her dismay and resentment had ebbed away. She found herself struggling
with a desire to laugh.
"Lochinvar!" said Sam suddenly. "That's the name of the chap I've been
trying to think of! Did you ever read about Lochinvar? 'Young
Lochinvar' the poet calls him rather familiarly. He did just what I'm
doing now, and everybody thought very highly of him. I suppose in those
days a helmet was just an ordinary part of what the well-dressed man
should wear. Odd how fashions change!"
Till now dignity and wrath combined had kept Billie from making any
enquiries into a matter which had excited in her a quite painful
curiosity. In her new mood she resisted the impulse no longer.
"_Why_ are you wearing that thing?"
"I told you. Purely and simply because I can't get it off. You don't
suppose I'm trying to set a new style in gents' headwear, do you?"
"But why did you ever put it on?"
"Well, it was this way. After I came out of the cupboard in the
drawing-room...."
"What!"
"Didn't I tell you about that? Oh yes, I was sitting in the cupboard in
the drawing-room from dinner-time onwards. After that I came out and
started cannoning about among Aunt Adeline's china, so I thought I'd
better switch the light on. Unfortunately I switched on some sort of
musical instrument instead. And then somebody started shooting. So,
what with one thing and another, I thought it would be best to hide
somewhere. I hid in one of the suits of armour in the hall."
"Were you inside there all the time we were...?"
"Yes. I say, that was funny about Bream, wasn't it? Getting under the
bed, I mean."
"Don't let's talk about Bream."
"That's the right spirit! I like to see it! All right, we won't. Let's
get back to the main issue. Will you marry me?"
"But why did you come to the house at all?"
"To see you."
"To see me! At that time of night?"
"Well, perhaps not actually to see you." Sam was a little perplexed for
a moment. Something told him that it would be injudicious to reveal his
true motive and thereby risk disturbing the harmony which he felt had
begun to exist between them. "To be near you! To be in the same house
with you!" he went on vehemently feeling that he had struck the right
note. "You don't know the anguish I went through after I read that
letter of yours. I was mad! I was ... well, to return to the point,
will you marry me?"
Billie sat looking straight before her. The car, now on the main road,
moved smoothly on.
"Will you marry me?"
Billie rested her hand on her chin and searched the darkness with
thoughtful eyes.
"Will you marry me?"
The car raced on.
"Will you marry me?" said Sam. "Will you marry me? Will you marry me?"
"Oh, don't talk like a parrot," cried Billie. "It reminds me of Bream."
"But will you?"
"Yes," said Billie.
Sam brought the car to a standstill with a jerk, probably very bad for
the tires.
"Did you say 'yes'?"
"Yes!"
"Darling!" said Sam, leaning towards her, "Oh, curse this helmet!"
"Why?"
"Well, I rather wanted to kiss you and it hampers me."
"Let me try and get it off. Bend down!"
"Ouch!" said Sam.
"It's coming. There! How helpless men are!"
"We need a woman's tender care," said Sam depositing the helmet on the
floor of the car, and rubbing his smarting ears. "Billie!"
"Sam!"
"You angel!"
"You're rather a darling after all," said Billie. "But you want keeping
in order," she added severely.
"You will do that when we're married. When we're married!" he repeated
luxuriously. "How splendid it sounds!"
"The only trouble is," said Billie, "father won't hear of it."
"No, he won't. Not till it is all over," said Sam.
He started the car again.
"What are you going to do?" said Billie. "Where are you going?"
"To London," said Sam. "It may be news to you but the old lawyer like
myself knows that, by going to Doctors' Commons or the Court of Arches
or somewhere or by routing the Archbishop of Canterbury out of bed or
something, you can get a special license and be married almost before
you know where you are. My scheme--roughly--is to dig this special
license out of whoever keeps such things, have a bit of breakfast, and
then get married at our leisure before lunch at a registrar's."
"Oh, not a registrar's!" said Billie.
"No?"
"I should hate a registrar's."
"Very well, angel. Just as you say. We'll go to a church. There are
millions of churches in London. I've seen them all over the place." He
mused for a moment. "Yes, you're quite right," he said. "A church is
the thing. It'll please Webster."
"Webster?"
"Yes, he's rather keen on the church bells never having rung out so
blithe a peal before. And we must consider Webster's feelings. After
all, he brought us together."
"Webster? How?"
"Oh, I'll tell you all about that some other time," said Sam. "Just for
the moment I want to sit quite still and think. Are you comfortable?
Fine! Then off we go."
The birds in the trees fringing the road stirred and twittered grumpily
as the noise of the engine disturbed their slumbers. But, if they had
known it, they were in luck. At any rate, the worst had not befallen
them, for Sam was too happy to sing.