words, and now he turned abruptly and looked out of a window. His
shoulders heaved significantly for an instant and something like a
stifled sob broke the stillness of the room. But when a moment later he
swung round he was himself again, the tough, sturdy old J. Felkin
Haggenbakker--or, rather, Thomas G. Gunn--who was so highly respected,
and perhaps a little feared, at the Rotary Club in Pittsburgh.
“Well, I must not bore you, Mr. Shotter. You are, no doubt, a busy man.
Let me be brief. Mr. Shotter, I want this house.”
“You want what?” said Sam, bewildered. He had had no notion that he was
going to be swept into the maelstrom of a business transaction.
“Yes, sir, I want this house. And let me tell you that money is no
object. I’ve lots of money.” He dismissed money with a gesture. “I have
my whims and I can pay for them. How much for the house, Mr. Shotter?”
Sam felt that it behooved him to keep his head. He had not the remotest
intention of selling for all the gold in Pittsburgh a house which, in
the first place, did not belong to him and, secondly, was next door to
Kay Derrick.
“I’m very sorry----” he began.
Mr. Gunn checked him with an apologetic lift of the hand.
“I was too abrupt,” he said. “I rushed the thing. A bad habit of mine.
When I was prospecting in Nevada, the boys used to call me Hair-Trigger
Gunn. I ought to have stated my position more clearly.”
“Oh, I understand your position.”
“You realise then that this isn’t a house to me; it is a shrine?”
“Yes, yes; but----”
“It contains,” said Mr. Gunn with perfect truth, “something very
precious to me.”
“Yes; but----”
“It is my boyhood that is enshrined here--my innocent, happy, halcyon
boyhood. I have played games at my mother’s knee in this very room. I
have read tales from the Scriptures with her here. It was here that my
mother, seated at the piano, used to sing--sing----”
His voice died away again. He blew his nose and turned once more to the
window. But though he was under the impression that he had achieved a
highly artistic aposiopesis, he could hardly have selected a more
unfortunate word to stammer brokenly. Something resembling an electric
thrill ran through Sam. Memory, dormant, had responded to the code word.
Sing Sing! He knew now where he had seen this man before.
It is the custom of the Welfare League of America’s most famous
penitentiary to alleviate the monotony of the convict’s lot by giving
periodical performances of plays, produced and acted by the personnel of
the prison. When the enterprising burglar isn’t burgling, in fact, he is
probably memorising the words of some popular lyric for rendition on the
next big night.
To one of these performances, some eighteen months back, Sam had been
taken by a newspaper friend. The hit of the evening had been this very
Thomas G. Gunn, then a mere number, in the rôle of a senator.
Mr. Gunn had resumed his address. He was speaking once more of his
mother, and speaking well. But he was not holding his audience. Sam cut
in on his eloquence.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’m afraid this house is not for sale.”
“But, Mr. Shotter----”
“No,” said Sam. “I have a very special reason for wishing to stay here,
and I intend to remain. And now I’m afraid I must ask you----”
“Suppose I look in this evening and take the matter up again?” pleaded
Mr. Gunn, finding with some surprise that he had been edged out onto the
steps and making a last stand there.
“It’s no use. Besides, I shan’t be in this evening. I’m dining out.”
“Will anybody be in?” asked Miss Gunn suddenly, breaking a long silence.
“Why, yes,” said Sam, somewhat surprised, “the man who works here. Why?”
“I was only thinking that if we called he might show us over the place.”
“Oh, I see. Well, good-bye.”
“But, say now, listen----”
“Good-bye,” said Sam.
He closed the door and made his way to the kitchen. Hash, his chair
tilted back against the wall, was smoking a thoughtful pipe.
“Who was it, Sam?”
“Somebody wanting to buy the house. Hash, there’s something fishy going
on.”
“Ur?”
“Do you remember me pointing out a man to you in that bar in Fleet
Street?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it was the same fellow. And do you remember me saying that I was
sure I had seen him before somewhere?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’ve remembered where it was. It was in Sing Sing, and he was
serving a sentence there.”
Mr. Todhunter’s feet came to the floor with a crash.
“There’s something darned peculiar about this house, Hash. I slept in it
the night I landed, and there was a fellow creeping around with an
electric torch. And now this man, whom I know to be a crook, puts up a
fake story to make me let him have it. What do you think, Hash?”
“I’ll tell you what I think,” said Mr. Todhunter, alarmed. “I think I’m
going straight out to buy a good watchdog.”
“It’s a good idea.”
“I don’t like these bad characters hanging about. I had a cousin in the
pawnbroking line what was hit on the ’ead by a burglar with a antique
vase. That’s what happened to him, all through hearing a noise in the
night and coming down to see what it was.”
“But what’s at the back of all this? What do you make of it?”
“Ah, there you have me,” said Hash frankly. “But that don’t alter the
fact that I’m going to get a dog.”
“I should. Get something pretty fierce.”
“I’ll get a dog,” said Hash solemnly, “that’ll feed on nails and bite
his own mother.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ASTONISHING STATEMENT OF HASH TODHUNTER
§ 1
The dinner to which Sam had been bidden that night was at the house of
his old friend, Mr. Willoughby Braddock, in John Street, Mayfair, and at
ten minutes to eight Mr. Braddock was fidgeting about the morning-room,
interviewing his housekeeper, Mrs. Martha Lippett. His guests would be
arriving at any moment, and for the last quarter of an hour, a-twitter
with the nervousness of an anxious host, he had been popping about the
place on a series of tours of inspection, as jumpy, to quote the words
of Sleddon, his butler--whom, by leaping suddenly out from the dimly lit
dining-room, he had caused to bite his tongue and nearly drop a tray of
glasses--as an old hen. The general consensus of opinion below stairs
was that Willoughby Braddock, in his capacity of master of the revels,
was making a thorough pest of himself.
“You are absolutely certain that everything is all right, Mrs. Lippett?”
“Everything is quite all right, Master Willie,” replied the housekeeper
equably.
This redoubtable woman differed from her daughter Claire in being tall
and thin and beaked like an eagle. One of the well-known Bromage family
of Marshott-in-the-Dale, she had watched with complacent pride the
Bromage nose developing in her sons and daughters, and it had always
been a secret grief to her that Claire, her favourite, who inherited so
much of her forceful and determined character, should have been the only
one of her children to take nasally after the inferior, or Lippett, side
of the house. Mr. Lippett had been an undistinguished man, hardly fit to
mate with a Bromage and certainly not worthy to be resembled in
appearance by the best of his daughters.
“You’re sure there will be enough to eat?”
“There will be ample to eat.”
“How about drinks?” said Mr. Braddock, and was reminded by the word of a
grievance which had been rankling within his bosom ever since his last
expedition to the dining room. He pulled down the corners of his white
waistcoat and ran his finger round the inside of his collar. “Mrs.
Lippett,” he said, “I--er--I was outside the dining room just now----”
“Were you, Master Willie? You must not fuss so. Everything will be quite
all right.”
“----and I overheard you telling Sleddon not to let me have any
champagne to-night,” said Mr. Braddock, reddening at the outrageous
recollection.
The housekeeper stiffened.
“Yes, I did, Master Willie. And your dear mother, if she were still with
us, would have given the very same instructions--after what my daughter
Claire told me of what occurred the other night and the disgraceful
condition you were in. What your dear mother would have said, I don’t
know!”
Mrs. Lippett’s conversation during the last twenty years of Willoughby
Braddock’s life had dealt largely with speculations as to what his dear
mother would have said of various ventures undertaken or contemplated by
him.
“You must fight against the craving, Master Willie. Remember your Uncle
George!”
Mr. Braddock groaned in spirit. One of the things that make these old
retainers so hard to bear is that they are so often walking editions of
the _chroniques scandaleuses_ of the family. It sometimes seemed to Mr.
Braddock that he could not move a step in any direction without having
the awful example of some erring ancestor flung up against him.
“Well, look here,” he said, with weak defiance, “I want champagne
to-night.”
“You will have cider, Master Willie.”
“But I hate cider.”
“Cider is good for you, Master Willie,” said Mrs. Lippett firmly.
The argument was interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell. The
housekeeper left the room, and presently Sleddon, the butler, entered,
escorting Lord Tilbury.
“Ha, my dear fellow,” said Lord Tilbury, bustling in.
He beamed upon his host as genially as the Napoleonic cast of his
countenance would permit. He rather liked Willoughby Braddock, as he
rather liked all very rich young men.
“How are you?” said Mr. Braddock. “Awfully good of you to come at such
short notice.”
“My dear fellow!”
He spoke heartily, but he had, as a matter of fact, been a little piqued
at being invited to dinner on the morning of the feast. He considered
that his eminence entitled him to more formal and reverential treatment.
And though he had accepted, having had previous experience of the
excellence of Mr. Braddock’s cook, he felt that something in the nature
of an apology was due to him and was glad that it had been made.
“I asked you at the last moment,” explained Mr. Braddock, “because I
wasn’t sure till this morning that Sam Shotter would be able to come. I
thought it would be jolly for him, meeting you out of the office, don’t
you know.”
Lord Tilbury inclined his head. He quite saw the force of the argument
that it would be jolly for anyone, meeting him.
“So you know young Shotter?”
“Oh, yes. We were at school together.”
“A peculiar young fellow.”
“A great lad.”
“But--er--a little eccentric, don’t you think?”
“Oh, Sam always was a bit of nib,” said Mr. Braddock. “At school there
used to be some iron bars across the passage outside our dormitory, the
idea being to coop us up during the night, don’t you know. Sam used to
shin over these and go downstairs to the house master’s study.”
“With what purpose?”
“Oh, just to sit.”
Lord Tilbury was regarding his host blankly. Not a day passed, he was
ruefully reflecting, but he received some further evidence of the light
and unstable character of this young man of whom he had so rashly taken
charge.
“It sounds a perfectly imbecile proceeding to me,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t know, you know,” said Mr. Braddock, for the defence. “You
see, occasionally there would be a cigar or a plate of biscuits or
something left out, and then Sam would scoop them. So it wasn’t
altogether a waste of time.”
Sleddon was entering with a tray.
“Cocktail?” said Mr. Braddock, taking one himself with a defiant glare
at his faithful servant, who was trying to keep the tray out of his
reach.
“No, I thank you,” said Lord Tilbury. “My doctor has temporarily
forbidden me the use of alcoholic beverages. I have been troubled of
late with a suspicion of gout.”
“Tough luck.”
“No doubt I am better without them. I find cider an excellent
substitute.... Are you expecting many people here to-night?”
“A fairish number. I don’t think you know any of them--except, of
course, old Wrenn.”
“Wrenn? You mean the editor of my _Home Companion_?”
“Yes. He and his niece are coming. She lives with him, you know.”
Lord Tilbury started as if a bradawl had been thrust through the
cushions of his chair; and for an instant, so powerfully did these words
affect him, he had half a mind to bound at the receding Sleddon and,
regardless of medical warnings, snatch from him that rejected cocktail.
A restorative of some kind seemed to him imperative.
The statement by Mr. Wrenn, delivered in his office on the morning of
Sam’s arrival, that he possessed no daughter had had the effect of
relieving Lord Tilbury’s mind completely. Francie, generally so unerring
in these matters, had, he decided, wronged Sam in attributing his
occupancy of Mon Repos to a desire to be next door to some designing
girl. And now it appeared that she had been right all the time.
He was still staring with dismay at his unconscious host when the rest
of the dinner guests began to arrive. They made no impression on his
dazed mind. Through a sort of mist, he was aware of a young man with a
face like a rabbit, another young man with a face like another rabbit;
two small, shingled creatures, one blonde, the other dark, who seemed to
be either wives or sisters of these young men; and an unattached female
whom Mr. Braddock addressed as Aunt Julia. His Lordship remained aloof,
buried in his thoughts and fraternising with none of them.
Then Sam appeared, and a few moments later Sleddon announced Mr. Wrenn
and Miss Derrick; and Lord Tilbury, who had been examining a picture by
the window, swung round with a jerk.
In a less prejudiced frame of mind he might have approved of Kay; for,
like so many other great men, he had a nice eye for feminine beauty, and
she was looking particularly attractive in a gold dress which had
survived the wreck of Midways. But now that very beauty merely increased
his disapproval and alarm. He looked at her with horror. He glared as
the good old father in a film glares at the adventuress from whose
clutches he is trying to save his only son.
At this moment, however, something happened that sent hope and comfort
stealing through his heart. Sam, who had been seized upon by Aunt Julia
and had been talking restively to her for some minutes, now contrived by
an adroit piece of side-stepping to remove himself from her sphere of
influence. He slid swiftly up to Kay, and Lord Tilbury, who was watching
her closely, saw her face freeze. She said a perfunctory word or two,
and then, turning away, began to talk with great animation to one of the
rabbit-faced young men. And Sam, with rather the manner of one who has
bumped into a brick wall in the dark, drifted off and was immediately
gathered in again by Aunt Julia.
A delightful sensation of relief poured over Lord Tilbury. In the days
of his youth when he had attended subscription dances at the Empress
Rooms, West Kensington, he had sometimes seen that look on the faces of
his partners when he had happened to tread on their dresses. He knew its
significance. Such a look could mean but one thing--that Kay, though
living next door to Sam, did not regard him as one of the pleasant
features of the neighbourhood. In short, felt Lord Tilbury, if there was
anything between these two young people, it was something extremely
one-sided; and he went in to dinner with a light heart, prepared to
enjoy the cooking of Mr. Braddock’s admirable chef as it should be
enjoyed.
When, on sitting at the table, he found that Kay was on his right, he
was pleased, for he had now come to entertain a feeling of warm esteem
for this excellent and sensible girl. It was his practice never to talk
while he ate caviare; but when that had been consumed in a holy silence
he turned to her, beaming genially.
“I understand you live at Valley Fields, Miss Derrick.”
“Yes.”
“A charming spot.”
“Very.”
“The college grounds are very attractive.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Have you visited the picture gallery?”
“Yes, several times.”
Fish arrived--_sole meunière_. It was Lord Tilbury’s custom never to
talk during the fish course.
“My young friend Shotter is, I believe, a near neighbour of yours,” he
said, when the _sole meunière_ was no more.
“He lives next door.”
“Indeed? Then you see a great deal of him, no doubt?”
“I never see him.”
“A most delightful young fellow,” said Lord Tilbury, sipping cider.
Kay looked at him stonily.
“Do you think so?” she said.
Lord Tilbury’s last doubts were removed. He felt that all was for the
best in the best of all possible worlds. Like some joyous reveller out
of Rabelais, he raised his glass with a light-hearted flourish. He
looked as if he were about to start a drinking chorus.
“Excellent cider, this, Braddock,” he boomed genially. “Most
excellent.”
Willoughby Braddock, who had been eying his own supply of that wholesome
beverage with sullen dislike, looked at him in pained silence; and Sam,
who had been sitting glumly, listening without interest to the prattle
of one of the shingled girls, took it upon himself to reply. He was
feeling sad and ill used. That incident before dinner had distressed
him. Moreover, only a moment ago he had caught Kay’s eye for an instant
across the table, and it had been cold and disdainful. He welcomed the
opportunity of spoiling somebody’s life, and particularly that of an old
ass like Lord Tilbury, who should have been thinking about the hereafter
instead of being so infernally hearty.
“I read a very interesting thing about cider the other day,” he said in
a loud, compelling voice that stopped one of the rabbit-faced young men
in mid-anecdote as if he had been smitten with an axe. “It appears that
the farmers down in Devonshire put a dead rat in every barrel----”
“My dear Shotter!”
“----to give it body,” went on Sam doggedly. “And the curious thing is
that when the barrels are opened, the rats are always found to have
completely disappeared--showing the power of the juice.”
A wordless exclamation proceeded from Lord Tilbury. He lowered his
glass. Mr. Braddock was looking like one filled with a sudden great
resolution.
“I read it in Pyke’s _Home Companion_,” said Sam. “So it must be true.”
“A little water, please,” said Lord Tilbury stiffly.
“Sleddon,” said Mr. Braddock in a voice of thunder, “give me some
champagne.”
“Sir?” quavered the butler. He cast a swift look over his shoulder, as
if seeking the moral support of Mrs. Lippett. But Mrs. Lippett was in
the housekeeper’s room.
“Sleddon!”
“Yes, sir,” said the butler meekly.
Sam was feeling completely restored to his usual sunny self.
“Talking of Pyke’s _Home Companion_,” he said, “did you take my advice
and read that serial of Cordelia Blair’s, Lord Tilbury?”
“I did not,” replied His Lordship shortly.
“You should. Miss Blair is a very remarkable woman.”
Kay raised her eyes.
“A great friend of yours, isn’t she?” she said.
“I would hardly say that. I’ve only met her once.”
“But you got on very well with her, I heard.”
“I think I endeared myself to her pretty considerably.”
“So I understood.”
“I gave her a plot for a story,” said Sam.
One of the rabbit-faced young men said that he could never understand
how fellows--or women, for that matter--thought up ideas for stories--or
plays, for the matter of that--or, as a matter of fact, any sort of
ideas, for that matter.
“This,” Sam explained, “was something that actually happened--to a
friend of mine.”
The other rabbit-faced young man said that something extremely rummy had
once happened to a pal of his. He had forgotten what it was, but it had
struck him at the time as distinctly rummy.
“This fellow,” said Sam, “was fishing up in Canada. He lived in a sort
of shack.”
“A what?” asked the blonde shingled girl.
“A hut. And tacked up on the wall of the shack was a photograph of a
girl, torn out of an illustrated weekly paper.”
“Pretty?” asked the dark shingled girl.
“You bet she was pretty,” said Sam devoutly. “Well, this man spent weeks
in absolute solitude, with not a soul to talk to--nothing, in fact, to
distract his mind from the photograph. The consequence was that he came
to look on this girl as--well, you might say an old friend.”
“Sleddon,” said Mr. Braddock, “more champagne.”
“Some months later,” proceeded Sam, “the man came over to England. He
met the girl. And still looking on her as an old friend, you understand,
he lost his head and, two minutes after they had met, he kissed her.”
“Must have been rather a soppy kind of a silly sort of idiot,” observed
the blonde shingled girl critically.
“Perhaps you’re right,” agreed Sam. “Still, that’s what happened.”
“I don’t see where the story comes in,” said one of the rabbit-faced
young men.
“Well, naturally, you see, not realising the true state of affairs, the
girl was very sore,” said Sam.
The rabbit-faced young men looked at each other and shook their heads.
The shingled young women raised their eyebrows pityingly.
“No good,” said the blonde shingled girl.
“Dud,” said the dark shingled girl. “Who’s going to believe nowadays
that a girl is such a chump as to mind a man kissing her?”
“Everybody kisses everybody nowadays,” said one of the rabbit-faced
young men profoundly.
“Girl was making a fuss about nothing,” said the other rabbit-faced
young man.
“And how does the story end?” asked Aunt Julia.
“It hasn’t ended,” said Sam. “Not yet.”
“Sleddon!” said Mr. Braddock, in a quiet, dangerous voice.
§ 2
It is possible, if you are young and active and in an exhilarated frame
of mind, to walk from John Street, Mayfair, to Burberry Road, Valley
Fields. Sam did so. His frame of mind was extraordinarily exhilarated.
It seemed to him, reviewing recent events, that he had detected in Kay’s
eyes for an instant a look that resembled the first dawning of spring
after a hard winter; and, though not in the costume for athletic feats,
he covered the seven miles that separated him from home at a pace which
drew derisive comment from the proletariat all along the route. The
Surrey-side Londoner is always intrigued by the spectacle of anyone
hurrying, and when that person is in dress clothes and a tall hat he
expresses himself without reserve.
Sam heard nothing of this ribaldry. Unconscious of the world, he strode
along, brushing through Brixton, hurrying through Herne Hill, and
presently arrived, warm and happy, at the door of Mon Repos.
He let himself in; and, entering, was aware of a note lying on the hall
table.
He opened it absently. The handwriting was strange to him, and feminine:
“DEAR MR. SHOTTER: I should be much obliged if you would ask your
manservant not to chirrup at me out of trees.
“Yours truly,
“KAY DERRICK.”
He had to read this curt communication twice before he was able fully to
grasp its meaning. When he did so a flood of self-pity poured over Sam.
He quivered with commiseration for the hardness of his lot. Here was he,
doing all that a man could to establish pleasant neighbourly relations
with the house next door, and all the while Hash foiling his every
effort by chirruping out of trees from morning till night. It was
bitter, bitter.
He was standing there, feeding his surging wrath by a third perusal of
the letter, when from the direction of the kitchen there suddenly
sounded a long, loud, agonised cry. It was like the wail of a soul in
torment; and without stopping to pick up his hat, which he had dropped
in the sheer shock of this dreadful sound, he raced down the stairs.
“’Ullo,” said Hash, looking up from an evening paper. “Back?”
His placidity amazed Sam. If his ears were any guide, murder had been
done in this room only a few seconds before, and here was this iron man
reading the racing news without having turned a hair.
“What on earth was that?”
“What was what?”
“That noise.”
“Oh, that was Amy,” said Hash.
Sam’s eye was diverted by movement in progress in the shadows behind the
table. A vast shape was rising from the floor, revealing itself as an
enormous dog. It finished rising; and having placed its chin upon the
table, stood looking at him with dreamy eyes and a wrinkled forehead,
like a shortsighted person trying to recall a face.
“Oh, yes,” said Sam, remembering. “So you got him?”
“Her.”
“What is he--she?”
“Gawd knows,” said Hash simply. It was a problem which he himself had
endeavoured idly to solve earlier in the evening. “I’ve named her after
an old aunt of mine. Looks a bit like her.”
“She must be an attractive woman.”
“She’s dead.”
“Perhaps it’s all for the best,” said Sam. He leaned forward and pulled
the animal’s ears in friendly fashion. Amy simpered in a ladylike way,
well pleased. “Would you say she was a bloodhound, Hash?”
“I wouldn’t say she was anything, not to swear to.”
“A kind of canine cocktail,” said Sam. “The sort of thing a Cruft’s Show
judge dreams about when he has a nightmare.”