husband, aghast. As for Chimp, he was completely bewildered. The theory
that his old comrade had had a change of heart--that his conscience,
putting in some rapid work after getting off to a bad start, had caused
him to regret his intention of double-crossing a friend, was too bizarre
to be tenable. Soapy Molloy was not the sort of man to have changes of
heart. Chimp, in his studies of the motion-picture drama, had once seen
a film where a tough egg had been converted by hearing a church organ,
but he knew Mr. Molloy well enough to be aware that all the organs in
all the churches in London might play in his ear simultaneously without
causing him to do anything more than grumble at the noise.
“The house has been taken,” said Soapy despondently.
“Taken? What do you mean?”
“Rented.”
“Rented? When?”
“I heard this morning. I was in a saloon down Fleet Street way, and two
fellows come in and one of them was telling the other how he’d just
rented this joint.”
Chimp Twist uttered a discordant laugh.
“So that’s what’s come of your darned smooth double-crossing act!” he
said nastily. “Yes, I guess you better had let Chimp in on it. You want
a man with brains now, not a guy that never thought up anything smarter
than gypping suckers with a phony oil stock.”
Mr. Molloy bowed his head meekly before the blast. His wife was made of
sterner stuff.
“You talk a lot, don’t you?” she said coldly.
“And I can do a lot,” retorted Mr. Twist, fingering his waxed moustache.
“So you’d best come clean, Soapy, and have a show-down, like you say.
Where is this joint?”
“Don’t you dare tell him before he tells you where the stuff is!” cried
Mrs. Molloy.
“Just as you say,” said Chimp carelessly. He scribbled a few words on a
piece of paper and covered them with his hand. “There! Now you write
down your end of it and Dolly can read them both out.”
“Have you really thought up a scheme?” asked Mr. Molloy humbly.
“I’ve thought up a dozen.”
Mr. Molloy wrote in his turn and Dolly picked up the two papers.
“In the cistern!” she read.
“And the rest of it?” inquired Mr. Twist pressingly.
“Mon Repos, Burberry Road,” said Mr. Molloy.
“Ah!” said Chimp. “And if I’d known that a week ago, we’d have been
worth a million dollars apiece by now.”
“Say, listen,” said Dolly, who was pensive and had begun to eye Mr.
Twist in rather an unpleasant manner. “This stuff old Finglass swiped
from the bank, what is it?”
“American bearer securities, sweetie,” said her husband, rolling the
words round his tongue as if they were vintage port. “As good as dollar
bills. What’s the dope you’ve thought up, Chimpie?” he asked,
deferentially removing a piece of fluff from his ally’s coat sleeve.
“Just a minute!” said Dolly sharply. “If that’s so, how can this stuff
be in any cistern? It would have melted, being all that time in the
water.”
“It’s in a waterproof case, of course,” said Chimp.
“Oh, it is, is it?”
“What’s the matter, petty?” inquired Mr. Molloy. “You’re acting
strange.”
“Am I? Well, if you want to know, I’m wondering if this guy is putting
one over on us. How are we to know he’s telling us the right place?”
“Dolly!” said Mr. Twist, deeply pained.
“Dolly!” said Mr. Molloy, not so much pained as apprehensive. He had a
very modest opinion of his own chances of thinking of any way for coping
with the situation which had arisen, and everything, it seemed to him,
depended upon being polite to Chimp Twist, who was admittedly a man of
infinite resource and sagacity.
“If you think that of me----” began Mr. Twist.
“We don’t, Chimpie, we don’t,” interrupted Mr. Molloy hastily. “The
madam is a little upset. Don’t listen to her. What is this scheme of
yours, Chimpie?”
Perhaps Mrs. Molloy’s estimate of her husband’s talents as a strategist
resembled his own. At any rate, she choked down certain words that had
presented themselves to her militant mind and stood eying Chimp
inquiringly.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Chimp. “But first let’s get the business end
straight. How do we divvy?”
“Why, fifty-fifty, Chimp,” stammered Mr. Molloy, stunned at the
suggestion implied in his words that any other arrangement could be
contemplated. “Me and the madam counting as one, of course.”
Chimp laughed sardonically.
“Fifty-fifty nothing! I’m the brains of this concern, and the brains of
a concern always gets paid highest. Look at Henry Ford! Look at the
Archbishop of Canterbury!”
“Do you mean to say,” demanded Dolly, “that if Soapy was sitting in with
the Archbishop of Canterbury on a plan for skinning a sucker the
archbish wouldn’t split Even Stephen?”
“It isn’t like that at all,” retorted Mr. Twist with spirit. “It’s more
as if Soapy went to the Archbishop of Canterbury and asked him to slip
him a scheme for skinning the mug.”
“Well, in that case,” said Mr. Molloy, “I venture to assert that the
archbishop would simply say to me, ‘Molloy,’ he’d say----”
Dolly wearied of a discussion which seemed to her too academic for the
waste of valuable moments.
“Sixty-forty,” she said brusquely.
“Seventy-thirty,” emended Chimp.
“Sixty-five-thirty-five,” said Mr. Molloy.
“Right!” said Chimp. “And now I’ll tell you what to do.” I’ll give you
five minutes first to see if you can think of it for yourself, and if
you can’t, I’ll ask you not to start beefing because it’s so simple and
not worth the money.”
Five minutes’ concentrated meditation produced no brain wave in Mr.
Molloy, who, outside his chosen profession of selling valueless oil
stock to a trusting public, was not a very gifted man.
“Well, then,” said Chimp, “here you are: You go to that fellow who’s
taken the joint and ask him to let you buy it off him.”
“Well, of all the fool propositions!” cried Dolly shrilly, and even Mr.
Molloy came near to sneering.
“Not so good, you don’t think?” continued Chimp, uncrushed. “Well, then,
listen here to the rest of it. Dolly calls on this fellow first. She
acts surprised because her father hasn’t arrived yet.”
“Her what?”
“Her father. Then she starts in vamping this guy all she can. If she
hasn’t lost her pep since she last tried that sort of thing, the guy
ought to be in pretty good shape for Act Two by the time the curtain
rings up. That’s when you blow in, Soapy.”
“Am I her father?” asked Mr. Molloy, a little blankly.
“Sure, you’re her father. Why not?”
Mr. Molloy, who was a little sensitive about the difference in age
between his bride and himself, considered that Chimp was not displaying
his usual tact, but muttered something about greying himself up some at
the temples.
“Then what?” asked Dolly.
“Then,” said Chimp, “Soapy does a spiel.”
Mr. Molloy brightened. He knew himself to be at his best when it came to
a spiel.
“Soapy says he was born in this joint--ages and ages ago.”
“What do you mean--ages and ages ago?” said Mr. Molloy, starting.
“Ages and ages ago,” repeated Chimp firmly, “before he had to emigrate
to America and leave the dear old place to be sold. He has loving
childhood recollections of the lawn where he played as a kiddy and
worships every brick in the place. All his favourite relations pegged
out in the rooms upstairs, and all like that. Well, I’m here to say,”
concluded Chimp emphatically, “that if that guy has any sentiment in him
and if Dolly has done the preliminary work properly, he’ll drop.”
There was a tense silence.
“It’ll work,” said Soapy.
“It might work,” said Dolly, more doubtfully.
“It will work,” said Soapy. “I shall be good. I will have that lobster
weeping into his handkerchief inside three minutes.”
“A lot depends on Dolly,” Chimp reminded him.
“Don’t you worry about that,” said the lady stoutly. “I’ll be good too.
But listen here; I’ve got to dress this act. This is where I have to
have that hat with the bird-of-paradise feather that I see in Regent
Street this morning.”
“How much?” inquired the rest of the syndicate in a single breath.
“Eighteen guineas.”
“Eighteen guineas!” said Chimp.
“Eighteen guineas!” said Soapy.
They looked at each other wanly, while Dolly, unheeded, spoke of ships
and ha’porths of tar.
“And a new dress,” she continued, warming to her work. “And new shoes
and a new parasol and new gloves and new----”
“Have a heart, petty,” pleaded Mr. Molloy. “Exercise a little
discretion, sweetness.”
Dolly was firm.
“A girl,” she said, “can’t do herself justice in a tacky lid. You know
that. And you know as well as I do that the first thing a gentleman does
is to look at a dame’s hoofs. And as for gloves, I simply beg you to
cast an eye on these old things I’ve got on now and ask yourselves----”
“Oh, all right, all right,” said Chimp.
“All right,” echoed Mr. Molloy.
Their faces were set grimly. These men were brave, but they were
suffering.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE CHIRRUP
Mr. Wrenn looked up from his plate with a sudden start, a wild and
febrile glare of horror in his eyes. Old theatregoers, had any such been
present, would have been irresistibly reminded by his demeanour of the
late Sir Henry Irving in _The Bells_.
It was breakfast time at San Rafael; and, as always at this meal, the
air was charged with an electric unrest. It is ever thus at breakfast in
the suburbs. The specter of a fleeting train broods over the feast,
turning normally placid men into temporary neuropaths. Meeting Mr. Wrenn
in Fleet Street after lunch, you would have set him down as a very
pleasant, quiet, elderly gentleman, rather on the mild side. At
breakfast, Bengal tigers could have picked up hints from him.
“Zatawittle?” he gasped, speaking in the early morning patois of
Suburbia, which is the English language filtered through toast and
marmalade.
“Of course, it wasn’t a whistle, darling,” said Kay soothingly. “I keep
telling you you’ve lots of time.”
Partially reassured, Mr. Wrenn went on with his meal. He finished his
toast and reached for his cup.
“Wassatie?”
“Only a quarter-past.”
“Sure your washrah?”
“I put it right yesterday.”
At this moment there came faintly from afar a sweet, musical chiming.
“There’s the college clock striking the quarter,” said Kay.
Mr. Wrenn’s fever subsided. If it was only a quarter-past he was on
velvet. He could linger and chat for a while. He could absolutely dally.
He pushed back his chair and lighted a cigarette with the air of a
leisured man.
“Kay, my dear,” he said, “I’ve been thinking--about this young fellow
Shotter.”
Kay jumped. By an odd coincidence, she had herself been thinking of Sam
at that moment. It annoyed her to think of Sam, but she constantly found
herself doing it.
“I really think we ought to invite him to dinner one night.”
“No!”
“But he seems so anxious to be friendly. Only yesterday he asked me if
he could drop round some time and borrow the garden roller. He said he
understood that that was always the first move in the suburbs toward
establishing good neighbourly relations.”
“If you ask him to dinner I shall go out.”
“I can’t understand why you dislike him so much.”
“Well, I just do.”
“He seems to admire you tremendously.”
“Does he?”
“He keeps talking about you--asking what you were like as a child and
whether you ever did you hair differently and things of that kind.”
“Oh!”
“I rather wish you didn’t object to him so much. I should like to see
something of him out of office hours. I find him a very pleasant fellow
myself, and extremely useful in the office. He has taken that Aunt
Ysobel page off my hands. You remember how I used to hate having to
write that?”
“Is that all he does?”
Mr. Wrenn chuckled.
“By no means,” he said amusedly.
“What are you laughing at?”
“I was thinking,” explained Mr. Wrenn, “of something that happened
yesterday. Cordelia Blair called to see me with one of her usual
grievances----”
“Oh, no!” said Kay sympathetically. Her uncle, she knew, was much
persecuted by female contributors who called with grievances at the
offices of Pyke’s _Home Companion_; and of all these gifted creatures,
Miss Cordelia Blair was the one he feared most. “What was the trouble
this time?”
“Apparently the artist who is illustrating _Hearts Aflame_ had drawn
Leslie Mordyke in a lounge suit instead of dress clothes.”
“Why don’t you bite these women’s heads off when they come bothering
you? You shouldn’t be so nice to them.”
“I can’t, my dear,” said Mr. Wrenn plaintively. “I don’t know why it is,
but the mere sight of a woman novelist who is all upset seems to take
all the heart out of me. I sometimes wish I could edit some paper like
_Tiny Tots_ or _Our Feathered Chums_. I don’t suppose indignant children
come charging in on Mason or outraged canaries on Mortimer.... But I was
telling you--when I heard her voice in the outer office, I acquainted
this young fellow Shotter briefly with the facts, and he most nobly
volunteered to go out and soothe her.”
“I can’t imagine him soothing anyone.”
“Well, he certainly had the most remarkable effect on Miss Blair. He
came back ten minutes later to say that all was well and that she had
gone away quite happy.”
“Did he tell you how he had managed it?”
“No.” Another chuckle escaped Mr. Wrenn. “Kay, it isn’t possible--you
don’t imagine--you don’t suppose he could conceivably, on such a very
slight acquaintance, have kissed her, do you?”
“I should think it very probable.”
“Well, I’m bound to own----”
“Don’t laugh in that horrible, ghoulish way, uncle!”
“I can’t help it. I could see nothing, you understand, as I was in the
inner office; but there were most certainly sounds that suggested----”
Mr. Wrenn broke off. Again that musical chiming had come faintly to his
ears. But this time its effect was the reverse of soothing. He became a
thing of furious activity. He ran to and fro, seizing his hat and
dropping it, picking it up and dropping his brief case, retrieving the
brief case and dropping his stick. By the time he had finally shot out
of the front door with his hat on his head, his brief case in his hand
and his stick dangling from his arm, it was as if a tornado had passed
through the interior of San Rafael, and Kay, having seen him off, went
out into the garden to try to recover.
It was a pleasant, sunny morning, and she made for her favourite spot,
the shade of the large tree that hung over the edge of the lawn, a noble
tree, as spreading as that which once sheltered the Village Blacksmith.
Technically, this belonged to Mon Repos, its roots being in the latter’s
domain; but its branches had grown out over the fence, and San Rafael,
with that injustice which is so marked a feature of human affairs, got
all the benefit of its shade.
Seated under this, with a gentle breeze ruffling her hair, Kay gave
herself up to meditation.
She felt worried and upset and in the grip of one of her rare moods of
despondency. She had schooled herself to pine as little as possible for
the vanished luxury of Midways, but when she did so pine it was always
at this time of the day. For although she had adjusted herself with
almost complete success to the conditions of life at San Rafael, she had
not yet learned to bear up under the suburban breakfast.
At Midways the meal had been so leisurely, so orderly, so spacious, so
redolent of all that is most delightful in the country life of the
wealthy; a meal of soft murmurs and rustling papers, of sunshine falling
on silver in the summer, of crackling fires in winter; a take-your-time
meal; a thing of dignity and comfort. Breakfast at San Rafael was a mere
brutish bolting of food, and it jarred upon her afresh each morning.
The breeze continued to play in her hair. Birds hopped upon the grass.
Someone down the road was using a lawn mower. Gradually the feeling of
having been jolted and shaken by some rude force began to pass from Kay,
and she was just reaching the stage where, re-establishing connection
with her sense of humour, she would be able to look upon the amusing
side of the recent scramble, when from somewhere between earth and
heaven there spoke a voice.
“Oo-oo!” said the voice.
Kay was puzzled. Though no ornithologist, she had become reasonably
familiar with the distinctive notes of such of our feathered chums as
haunted the garden of San Rafael, and this did not appear to be one of
them.
“I see you,” proceeded the voice lovingly. “How’s your pore head,
dearie?”
The solution of the mystery presented itself at last. Kay raised her
eyes and beheld, straddled along a branch almost immediately above her,
a lean, stringy man of ruffianly aspect, his naturally unlovely face
rendered additionally hideous by an arch and sentimental smile. For a
long instant this person goggled at her, and she stared back at him.
Then, with a gasp that sounded confusedly apologetic, he scrambled back
along the branch like an anthropoid ape, and dropping to earth beyond
the fence, galloped blushingly up the garden.
Kay sprang to her feet. She had been feeling soothed, but now a bubbling
fury had her in its grip. It was bad enough that outcasts like Sam
Shotter should come and camp themselves next door to her. It was bad
enough that they should annoy her uncle, a busy man, with foolish
questions about what she had been like as a child and whether she had
ever done her hair differently. But when their vile retainers went to
the length of climbing trees and chirruping at her out of them, the
situation, it seemed to her, passed beyond the limit up to which a
spirited girl may reasonably be expected to endure.
She returned to the house, fermenting, and as she reached the hall the
front doorbell rang.
Technically, when the front doorbell of San Rafael rang, it was Claire
Lippett’s duty to answer it; but Claire was upstairs making beds. Kay
stalked across the hall, and having turned the handle, found confronting
her a young woman of spectacular appearance, clad in gorgeous raiment
and surmounted by a bird-of-paradise-feathered hat so much too good for
her that Kay’s immediate reaction of beholding it was one of simple and
ignoble jealousy. It was the sort of hat she would have liked to be able
to afford herself, and its presence on the dyed hair of another cemented
the prejudice which that other’s face and eyes had aroused within her.
“Does a guy named Shotter live here?” asked the visitor. Then, with the
air of one remembering a part and with almost excessive refinement,
“Could I see Mr. Shotter, if you please?”
“Mr. Shotter lives next door,” said Kay frostily.
“Oh, thank yaw. Thank yaw so much.”
“Not at all,” said Kay.
She shut the door and went into the drawing-room. The feeling of being
in a world bounded north, east, south and west by Sam Shotter had
thoroughly poisoned her day.
She took pen, ink and paper and wrote viciously for a few moments.
“Claire,” she called.
“’Ullo!” replied a distant voice.
“I’m leaving a note on the hall table. Will you take it next door some
time?”
“Right-ho!” bellowed the obliging Miss Lippett.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
VISITORS AT MON REPOS
Sam was preparing to leave for the office when his visitor arrived. He
had, indeed, actually opened the front door.
“Mr. Shottah?”
“Yes,” said Sam. He was surprised to see Mrs. Molloy. He had not
expected visitors at so early a period of his tenancy. This, he
supposed, must be the suburban equivalent of the county calling on the
new-comer. Impressed by the hat, he assumed Dolly to be one of the old
aristocracy of Valley Fields. A certain challenging jauntiness in her
bearing forbade the suspicion that she was collecting funds for charity.
“Won’t you come in?”
“Thank yaw. Thank yaw so much. The house agent told me your name.”
“Cornelius?”
“Gink with a full set of white whiskers. Say, somebody ought to put that
baby wise about the wonderful invention of the safety razor.”
Sam agreed that this might be in the public interest, but he began to
revise his views about the old aristocracy.
“I’m afraid you’ll find the place in rather a mess,” he said
apologetically, leading the way to the drawing-room. “I’ve only just
moved in.”
The visitor replied that, on the contrary, she thought it cute.
“I seem to know this joint by heart,” she said. “I’ve heard so much
about it from old pop.”
“I don’t think I am acquainted with Mr. Popp.”
“My father, I mean. He used to live here when he was a tiny kiddy.”
“Really? I should have taken you for an American.”
“I am American, and don’t let anyone tell you different.”
“I won’t.”
“One hundred per cent, that’s me,” Sam nodded.
“‘Oh, say, can you see by the dawn’s early light?’” he said reverently.
“‘What so proudly’--I never can remember any more.”
“No one,” Sam reminded her, “knows the words but the Argentines....”
“...And the Portuguese and the Greeks.” The lady beamed. “Say, don’t
tell me you’re American too!”
“My mother was.”
“Why, this is fine! Pop’ll be tickled to death.”
“Is your father coming here too?”
“Well, I should say so! You don’t think I pay calls on strange gentlemen
all by myself, do you?” said the lady archly. “But listen! If you’re
American, we’re sitting pretty, because it’s only us Americans that’s
got real sentiment in them. Ain’t it the truth?”
“I don’t quite understand. Why do you want me to have sentiment?”
“Pop’ll explain all that when he arrives. I’m surprised he hasn’t blown
in yet. I didn’t think I’d get here first.” She looked about her. “It
seems funny to think of pop as a little kiddy in this very room.”
“Your father was English then?”
“Born in England--born here--born in this very house. Just to think of
pop playing all them childish games in this very room!”
Sam began to wish that she would stop. Her conversation was beginning to
give the place a queer feeling. The room had begun to seem haunted by a
peculiar being of middle-aged face and juvenile costume. So much so that
when she suddenly exclaimed, “There’s pop!” he had a momentary
impression that a whiskered elder in Lord Fauntleroy clothes was about
to dance out from behind the sofa.
Then he saw that his visitor was looking out of the window and,
following her gaze, noted upon the front steps a gentleman of majestic
port.
“I’ll go and let him in,” he said.
“Do you live here all alone?” asked the lady, and Sam got the idea that
she spoke eagerly.
“Oh, no, I’ve a man. But he’s busy somewhere.”
“I see,” she said disappointedly.
The glimpse which Sam had caught of the new arrival through the window
had been a sketchy one. It was only as he opened the door that he got a
full view of him. And having done so, he was a little startled. It is
always disconcerting to see a familiar face where one had expected a
strange one. This was the man he had seen in the bar that day when he
had met Hash in Fleet Street.
“Mr. Shotter?”
“Yes.”
It seemed to Sam that the man had aged a good deal since he had seen him
last. The fact was that Mr. Molloy, in greying himself up at the
temples, had rather overdone the treatment. Still, though stricken in
years, he looked a genial, kindly, honest soul.
“My name is Gunn, Mr. Shotter--Thomas G. Gunn.”
It had been Mr. Molloy’s intention--for he was an artist and liked to do
a thing, as he said, properly--to adopt for this interview the pseudonym
of J. Felkin Haggenbakker, that seeming to his critical view the sort of
name a sentimental millionaire who had made a fortune in Pittsburgh and
was now revisiting the home of his boyhood ought to have. The proposal
had been vetoed by Dolly, who protested that she did not intend to spend
hours of her time in unnecessary study.
“Won’t you come in?” said Sam.
He stood aside to let his visitor pass, wondering again where it was
that he had originally seen the man. He hated to forget a face and
personality which should have been unforgettable. He ushered Mr. Gunn
into the drawing-room, still pondering.
“So there you are, pop,” said the lady. “Say, pop, isn’t it dandy? Mr.
Shotter’s an American.”
Mr. Gunn’s frank eyes lit up with gratification.
“Ah! Then you are a man of sentiment, Mr. Shotter. You will understand.
You will not think it odd that a man should cherish all through his life
a wistful yearning for the place where he was born.”
“Not at all,” said Sam politely, and might have reminded his visitor
that the feeling, a highly creditable one, was shared by practically all
America’s most eminent song writers.
“Well, that is how I feel, Mr. Shotter,” said the other bluffly, “and I
am not ashamed to confess it. This house is very dear to me. I was born
in it.”
“So Miss Gunn was telling me.”
“Ah, she has told you? Yes, Mr. Shotter, I am a man who has seen men and
cities. I have lived in the hovels of the poor, I have risen till, if I
may say so, I am welcomed in the palaces of the rich. But never, rich or
poor, have I forgotten this old place and the childhood associations
which hallow it.”