Politeness to a visitor wrestled with the itch to be away. “I fear I
have an engagement also, for which I am already a little late. I
promised Cornelius----”
“That’s all right. I’ll go in next door and have a chat with Sam
Shotter.”
“He has gone to the theatre with Kay.”
“A washout, in short,” said Mr. Braddock with undiminished cheerfulness.
“Right-ho! Then I’ll pop.”
“But, my dear fellow, you mustn’t run away like this,” said Mr. Wrenn
with remorse. “Why don’t you come in and have a cup of tea and wait for
Kay? Claire will bring you some if you ring.”
“Something in that,” agreed Mr. Braddock. “Sound, very sound.”
He spoke a few genial words of farewell and proceeded to the
drawing-room, where he rang the bell. Nothing ensuing, he went to the
top of the kitchen stairs and called down.
“I say!” Silence from below. “I say!” fluted Mr. Braddock once more, and
now it seemed to him that the silence had been broken by a sound--a
rummy sound--a sound that was like somebody sobbing.
He went down the stairs. It was somebody sobbing. Bunched up on a chair,
with her face buried in her arms, that weird girl Claire was crying like
the dickens.
“I say!” said Mr. Braddock.
There is this peculiar quality about tears--that they can wash away in a
moment the animosity of a lifetime. For years Willoughby Braddock had
been on terms of distant hostility with this girl. Even apart from the
fact that that affair of the onion had not ceased to rankle in his
bosom, there had been other causes of war between them. Mr. Braddock
still suspected that it was Claire who, when on the occasion of his
eighteenth birthday he had called at Midways in a top hat, had flung a
stone at that treasured object from the recesses of a shrubbery. One of
those things impossible of proof, the outrage had been allowed to become
a historic mystery; but Willoughby Braddock had always believed the
hidden hand to be Claire’s, and his attitude toward her from that day
had been one of stiff disapproval.
But now, seeing her weeping and broken before him, with all the infernal
cheek which he so deprecated swept away on a wave of woe, his heart
softened. It has been a matter of much speculation among historians what
Wellington would have done if Napoleon had cried at Waterloo.
“I say,” said Mr. Braddock, “what’s the matter? Anything up?”
The sound of his voice seemed to penetrate Claire’s grief. She sat up
and looked at him damply.
“Oh, Mr. Braddock,” she moaned, “I’m so wretched! I am so miserable, Mr.
Braddock!”
“There, there!” said Willoughby Braddock.
“How was I to know?”
“Know what?”
“I couldn’t tell.”
“Tell which?”
“I never had a notion he would act like that.”
“Who would like what?”
“Hash.”
“You’ve spoiled the hash?” said Mr. Braddock, still out of his depth.
“My Hash--Clarence. He took it the wrong way.”
At last Mr. Braddock began to see daylight. She had cooked hash for this
Clarence, whoever he might be, and he had swallowed it in so erratic a
manner that it had choked him.
“Is he dead?” he asked in a hushed voice.
A piercing scream rang through the kitchen.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!”
“My dear old soul!”
“He wouldn’t do that, would he?”
“Do what?”
“Oh, Mr. Braddock, do say he wouldn’t do that!”
“What do you mean by ‘that’?”
“Go and kill himself.”
“Who?”
“Hash.”
Mr. Braddock removed the perfectly folded silk handkerchief from his
breast pocket and passed it across his forehead.
“Look here,” he said limply, “you couldn’t tell me the whole thing from
the beginning in a few simple words, could you?”
He listened with interest as Claire related the events of the day.
“Then Clarence is Hash?” he said.
“Yes.”
“And Hash is Clarence?”
“Yes; everyone calls him Hash.”
“That was what was puzzling me,” said Mr. Braddock, relieved. “That was
the snag that I got up against all the time. Now that is clear, we can
begin to examine this thing in a calm and judicial spirit. Let’s see if
I’ve got it straight. You read this stuff in the paper and started
testing him--is that right?”
“Yes. And instead of jousting, he just turned all cold-like and broke
off the engagement.”
“I see. Well, dash it, the thing’s simple. All you want is for some
polished man of the world to take the blighter aside and apprise him of
the facts. Shall I pop round and see him now?”
Claire’s tear-stained face lit up as if a light had been switched on
behind her eyes. She eyed Mr. Braddock devotedly.
“Oh, if you only would!”
“Of course I will--like a shot.”
“Oh, you are good! I’m sorry I threw that onion at you, Mr. Braddock.”
“Fault’s on both sides,” said Mr. Braddock magnanimously. “Now you stop
crying, like a good girl, and powder your nose and all that, and I’ll
have the lad round all pleasant and correct in a couple of minutes.”
He patted Claire’s head in a brotherly fashion and trotted out through
the back door.
A few minutes later, Mr. and Mrs. Molloy, searching feverishly in the
drawing-room of Mon Repos, heard a distant tinkle and looked at each
other with a wild surmise.
“It’s the back doorbell,” said Dolly.
“I told you,” said Mr. Molloy sombrely. “I knew this would happen.
What’ll we do?”
Mrs. Molloy was not the woman to be shaken for long.
“Why, go downstairs and answer it,” she said. “It’s prob’ly only a
tradesman come with a loaf of bread or something. He’ll think you’re the
help.”
“And if he doesn’t,” replied Mr. Molloy with some bitterness, “I suppose
I bust him one with the meat ax. Looks to me as if I shall have to lay
out the whole darned population of this blamed place before I’m
through.”
“Sweetie mustn’t be cross.”
“Sweetie’s about fed up,” said Mr. Molloy sombrely.
§ 2
Expecting, when he opened the back door, to see a tradesman with a
basket on his arm, Soapy Molloy found no balm to his nervous system in
the apparition of a young man of the leisured classes in a faultlessly
cut grey suit. He gaped at Mr. Braddock.
“Hullo,” said Mr. Braddock.
“Hullo,” said Soapy.
“Are you Hash?” inquired the ambassador.
“Pardon?”
“Is your name Clarence?”
In happier circumstances Soapy would have denied the charge indignantly;
but now he decided that it was politic to be whatever anyone wished him
to be.
“That’s me, brother,” he said.
Mr. Braddock greatly disliked being called brother, but he made no
comment.
“Well, I just buzzed round,” he said, “to tell you that everything’s all
right.”
Soapy was far from agreeing with him. He was almost equally far from
understanding a word that this inexplicable visitor was saying. He
coughed loudly, to drown a strangled sound that had proceeded from the
gagged and bound Hash, whom he had deposited in a corner by the range.
“That’s good,” he said.
“About the girl, I mean. Claire, you know. I was in the kitchen next
door a moment ago, and she was crying and howling and all that because
she thought you didn’t love her any more.”
“Too bad,” said Mr. Molloy.
“It seems,” went on Mr. Braddock, “that she read something in a paper,
written by some silly ass, which said that she ought to test your
affection by pretending to flirt with some other cove. And when she did,
you broke off the engagement. And the gist, if you understand me, of
what I buzzed round to say is that she loves you still and was only
fooling when she sent that other bloke the lock of hair.”
“Ah?” said Mr. Molloy.
“So it’s all right, isn’t it?”
“It’s all right by me,” said Mr. Molloy, wishing--for it sounded
interesting--that he knew what all this was about.
“Then that’s that, what?”
“You said it, brother.”
Mr. Braddock paused. He seemed disappointed at a certain lack of emotion
on his companion’s part.
“She’s rather expecting you to dash round right away, you know--fold her
in your arms, and all that.”
This was a complication which Soapy had not foreseen.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” he said. “I’ve a lot of work to do around this
house and I don’t quite see how I can get away. Say, listen, brother,
you tell her I’ll be round later on in the evening.”
“All right. I’m glad everything’s satisfactory. She’s a nice girl
really.”
“None better,” said Mr. Molloy generously.
“I still think she threw a stone at my top hat that day, but dash it,”
said Mr. Braddock warmly, “let the dead past bury its dead, what?”
“Couldn’t do a wiser thing,” said Mr. Molloy.
* * * * *
He closed the door; and having breathed a little stertorously, mounted
the stairs.
“Who was it?” called Dolly from the first landing.
“Some nut babbling about a girl.”
“Oh? Well, I’m having a hunt round in the best bedroom. You go on
looking in the drawing-room.”
Soapy turned his steps towards the drawing-room, but he did not reach
it. For as he was preparing to cross the threshold, the front doorbell
rang.
It seemed to Soapy that he was being called upon to endure more than man
was ever intended to bear. That, at least, was his view as he dragged
his reluctant feet to the door. It was only when he opened it that he
realised that he had underestimated the malevolence of fate. Standing on
the top step was a policeman.
“Hell!” cried Soapy. And while we blame him for the intemperate
ejaculation, we must in fairness admit that the situation seemed to call
for some such remark. He stood goggling, a chill like the stroke of an
icy finger running down his spine.
“’Evening, sir,” said the policeman. “Mr. Shotter?”
Soapy’s breath returned.
“That’s me,” he said huskily. This thing, coming so soon after his
unrehearsed impersonation of Hash Todhunter, made him feel the sort of
dizzy feeling which a small-part actor must experience who has to open a
play as Jervis, a footman, and then rush up to his dressing room, make a
complete change and return five minutes later as Lord George Spelvin,
one of Lady Hemmingway’s guests at The Towers.
The policeman fumbled in the recesses of his costume.
“Noo resident, sir, I think?”
“Yes.”
“Then you will doubtless be glad,” said the policeman, shutting
his eyes and beginning to speak with great rapidity, as if he
were giving evidence in court, “of the opportunity to support a
charitibulorganization which is not only most deserving in itself but
is connected with a body of men to ’oom you as a house-’older will be
the first to admit that you owe the safety of your person and the
tranquillity of your home--the police,” explained the officer, opening
his eyes.
Mr. Molloy did not look on the force in quite this light, but he could
not hurt the man’s feelings by saying so.
“This charitibulorganizationtowhichIallude,” resumed the constable,
shutting his eyes again, “is the Policeman’s Orphanage, for which I have
been told of--one of several others--to sell tickets for the annual
concert of, to be ’eld at the Oddfellows ‘All in Ogilvy Street on the
coming sixteenth prox. Tickets, which may be purchased in any quantity
or number, consist of the five-shilling ticket, the half-crown ticket,
the two-shilling ticket, the shilling ticket and the sixpenny ticket.”
He opened his eyes. “May I have the pleasure of selling you and your
good lady a couple of the five-shilling?”
“If I may add such weight as I possess to the request, I should
certainly advocate the purchase, Mr. Shotter. It is a most excellent and
deserving charity.”
The speaker was a gentleman in clerical dress who had appeared from
nowhere and was standing at the constable’s side. His voice caused Soapy
a certain relief; for when, a moment before, a second dark figure had
suddenly manifested itself on the top step, he had feared that the
strain of the larger life was causing him to see double.
“I take it that I am addressing Mr. Shotter?” continued the new-comer.
He was a hatchet-faced man with penetrating eyes and for one awful
moment he had looked to Soapy exactly like Sherlock Holmes. “I have just
taken up my duties as vicar of this parish, and I am making a little
preliminary round of visits so that I may become acquainted with my
parishioners. Mr. Cornelius, the house agent, very kindly gave me a list
of names. May I introduce myself?--the Rev. Aubrey Jerningham.”
It has been well said that the world knows little of its greatest men.
This name, which would have thrilled Kay Derrick, made no impression
upon Soapy Molloy. He was not a great reader; and when he did read, it
was something a little lighter and more on the zippy side than _Is There
a Hell?_
“How do?” he said gruffly.
“And ’ow many of the five-shilling may I sell you and your good lady?”
inquired the constable. His respect for the cloth had kept him silent
through the recent conversation, but now he seemed to imply that
business is business.
“It is a most excellent charity,” said the Rev. Aubrey, edging past
Soapy in spite of that sufferer’s feeble effort to block the way. “And I
understand that several highly competent performers will appear on the
platform. I am right, am I not, officer?”
“Yes, sir, you are quite right. In the first part of the program
Constable Purvis will render the ’Oly City--no, I’m a liar, Asleep on
the Deep; Constable Jukes will render imitations of well-known footlight
celebrities ’oo are familiartoyouall; Inspector Oakshott will render
conjuring tricks; Constable----”
“An excellent evening’s entertainment, in fact,” said the Rev. Aubrey.
“I am taking the chair, I may mention.”
“And the vicar is taking the chair,” said the policeman, swift to seize
upon this added attraction. “So ’ow many of the five-shilling may I sell
you and your good lady, sir?”
Soapy, like Chimp, was a thrifty man; and apart from the expense, his
whole soul shrank from doing anything even remotely calculated to
encourage the force. Nevertheless, he perceived that there was no escape
and decided that it remained only to save as much as possible from the
wreck.
“Gimme one,” he said, and the words seemed to be torn from him.
“One only?” said the constable disappointedly. “’Ow about your good
lady?”
“I’m not married.”
“’Ow about your sister?”
“I haven’t a sister.”
“Then ’ow about if you ’appen to meet one of your gentlemen friends at
the club and he expresses a wish to come along?”
“Gimme one!” said Soapy.
The policeman gave him one, received the money, returned a few genial
words of thanks and withdrew. Soapy, going back into the house, was
acutely disturbed to find that the vicar had come too.
“A most deserving charity,” said the vicar.
Soapy eyed him bleakly. How did one get rid of vicars? Short of
employing his bride’s universal panacea and hauling off and busting him
one, Soapy could not imagine.
“Have you been a resident of Valley Fields long, Mr. Shotter?”
“No.”
“I hope we shall see much of each other.”
“Do you?” said Soapy wanly.
“The first duty of a clergyman, in my opinion----”
Mr. Molloy had no notion of what constituted the first duty of a
clergyman, and he was destined never to find out. For at this moment
there came from the regions above the clear, musical voice of a woman.
“Sweet-ee!”
Mr. Molloy started violently. So did the Rev. Aubrey Jerningham.
“I’m in the bedroom, honey bunch. Come right on up.”
A dull flush reddened the Rev. Aubrey’s ascetic face.
“I understood you to say that you were not married, Mr. Shotter,” he
said in a metallic voice.
“No--er--ah----”
He caught the Rev. Aubrey’s eye. He was looking as Sherlock Holmes might
have looked had he discovered Doctor Watson stealing his watch.
“No--I--er--ah----”
It is not given to every man always to do the right thing in trying
circumstances. Mr. Molloy may be said at this point definitely to have
committed a social blunder. Winking a hideous, distorted wink, he raised
the forefinger of his right hand and with a gruesome archness drove it
smartly in between his visitor’s third and fourth ribs.
“Oh, well, you know how it is,” he said thickly.
The Rev. Aubrey Jerningham quivered from head to heel. He drew himself
up and looked at Soapy. The finger had given him considerable physical
pain, but it was the spiritual anguish that hurt the more.
“I do, indeed, know how it is,” he said.
“Man of the world,” said Soapy, relieved.
“I will wish you good evening, Mr. Shotter,” said the Rev. Aubrey.
The front door banged. Dolly appeared on the landing.
“Why don’t you come up?” she said.
“Because I’m going to lie down,” said Soapy, breathing heavily.
“What do you mean?”
“I want a rest. I need a rest, and I’m going to have it.” Dolly
descended to the hall.
“Why, you’re looking all in, precious!”
“‘All in’ is right. If I don’t ease off for a coupla minutes, you’ll
have to send for an ambulance.”
“Well, I don’t know as I won’t take a spell myself. It’s kinda dusty
work, hunting around. I’ll go take a breath of air outside at the
back.... Was that somebody else calling just now?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Gee! These people round these parts don’t seem to have any homes of
their own, do they? Well, I’ll be back in a moment, honey. There’s a
sort of greenhouse place by the back door. Quite likely old Finglass may
have buried the stuff there.”
§ 3
The Rev. Aubrey Jerningham crossed the little strip of gravel that
served both Mon Repos and San Rafael as a drive and mounted the steps
to Mr. Wrenn’s front door. He was still quivering.
“Mr. Wrenn?” he asked of the well-dressed young man who answered the
ring.
Mr. Braddock shook his head. This was the second time in the last five
minutes that he had been taken for the owner of San Rafael; for while
the vicar had worked down Burberry Road from the top, the policeman had
started at the bottom and worked up.
“Sorry,” he said, “Mr. Wrenn’s out.”
“I will come in and wait,” said the Rev. Aubrey.
“Absolutely,” said Mr. Braddock.
He led the way to the drawing-room, feeling something of the
embarrassment, though in a slighter degree, which this holy man had
inspired in Soapy Molloy. He did not know much about vicars, and rather
wondered how he was to keep the conversation going.
“Offer you a cup of tea?”
“No, thank you.”
“I’m afraid,” said Mr. Braddock apologetically, “I don’t know where they
keep the whisky.”
“I never touch spirits.”
Conversation languished. Willoughby Braddock began to find his companion
a little damping. Not matey. Seemed to be brooding on something, or Mr.
Braddock was very much mistaken.
“You’re a clergyman, aren’t you, and all that?” he said, after a pause
of some moments.
“I am. My name is the Rev. Aubrey Jerningham. I have just taken up my
duties as vicar of this parish.”
“Ah? Jolly spot.”
“Where every prospect pleases,” said the Rev. Aubrey, “and only man is
vile.”
Silence fell once more. Mr. Braddock searched in his mind for genial
chatter, and found that he was rather short on clerical small talk.
He thought for a moment of asking his visitor why it was that bishops
wore those rummy bootlace-looking things on their hats--a problem that
had always perplexed him; but decided that the other might take offence
at being urged to give away professional secrets.
“How’s the choir coming along?” he asked.
“The choir is quite satisfactory.”
“That’s good. Organ all right?”
“Quite, thank you.”
“Fine!” said Mr. Braddock, feeling that things were beginning to move.
“You know, down where I live, in Wiltshire, the local padres always seem
to have the deuce of a lot of trouble with their organs. Their church
organs, I mean, of course. I’m always getting touched for contributions
to organ funds. Why is that? I’ve often wondered.”
The Rev. Aubrey Jerningham forbore to follow him into this field of
speculation.
“Then you do not live here, Mr.----”
“Braddock’s my name--Willoughby Braddock. Oh, no, I don’t live here.
Just calling. Friend of the family.”
“Ah? Then you are not acquainted with the--gentleman who lives next
door--Mr. Shotter?”
“Oh, yes, I am! Sam Shotter? He’s one of my best pals. Known him for
years and years and years.”
“Indeed? I cannot compliment you upon your choice of associates.”
“Why, what’s wrong with Sam?”
“Only this, Mr. Braddock,” said the Rev. Aubrey, his suppressed wrath
boiling over like a kettle: “He is living a life of open sin.”
“Open which?”
“Open sin. In the heart of my parish.”
“I don’t get this. How do you mean--open sin?”
“I have it from this man Shotter’s own lips that he is a bachelor.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“And yet a few minutes ago I called at his house and found that there
was a woman residing there.”
“A woman?”
“A woman.”
“But there can’t be. Sam’s not that sort of chap. Did you see her?”
“I did not wait to see her. I heard her voice.”
“I’ve got it,” said Mr. Braddock acutely. “She must have been a caller;
some casual popper-in, you know.”
“In that case, what would she be doing in his bedroom?”
“In his bedroom?”
“In--his--bedroom! I came here to warn Mr. Wrenn, who, I understand from
Mr. Cornelius, has a young niece, to be most careful to allow nothing in
the shape of neighbourly relations between the two houses. Do you think
that Mr. Wrenn will be returning shortly?”
“I couldn’t say. But look here,” said Mr. Braddock, troubled, “there
must be some mistake.”
“You do not know where he is, by any chance?”
“No--yes, I do, though. He said something about going to see Cornelius.
I think they play chess together or something. A game,” said Mr.
Braddock, “which I have never been able to get the hang of. But then I’m
not awfully good at those brainy games.”
“I will go to Mr. Cornelius’ house,” said the Rev. Aubrey, rising.
“You don’t play mah-jongg, do you?” asked Mr. Braddock. “Now, there’s a
game that I----”
“If he is not there, I will return.”
Left alone, Willoughby Braddock found that his appetite for tea had
deserted him. Claire, grateful for his services, had rather extended
herself over the buttered toast, but it had no appeal for him. He
lighted a cigarette and went out to fiddle with the machinery of his
two-seater, always an assistance to thought.
But even the carburettor, which had one of those fascinating ailments to
which carburettors are subject, yielded him no balm. He was thoroughly
upset and worried.
He climbed into the car and gave himself up to gloomy meditation, and
presently voices down the road announced the return of Kay and Sam. They
were chatting away in the friendliest possible fashion--from where he
sat, Willoughby Braddock could hear Kay’s clear laugh ringing out
happily--and it seemed to Mr. Braddock, though he was no austerer
moralist than the rest of his generation, that things were in a position
only to be described as a bit thick. He climbed down and waited on the
pavement.
“Why, hullo, Willoughby,” said Kay. “This is fine. Have you just
arrived? Come in and have some tea.”
“I’ve had tea, thanks. That girl Claire gave me some, thanks.... I say,
Sam, could I have a word with you?”
“Say on,” said Sam.
“In private, I mean. You don’t mind, Kay?”
“Not a bit. I’ll go in and order tea.”
Kay disappeared into the house; and Sam, looking at Mr. Braddock,
observed with some surprise that his face had turned a vivid red and
that his eyes were fastened upon him in a reproachful stare.
“What’s up?” he asked, concerned.
Willoughby Braddock cleared his throat.
“You know, Sam----”
“But I don’t,” said Sam, as he paused.
“----you know, Sam, I’m not a--nobody would call me a---- Dash it, now
I’ve forgotten the word!”
“Beauty?” hazarded Sam.
“It’s on the tip of my tongue--Puritan. That’s the word I want. I’m not
a Puritan. Not strait-laced, you know. But, really, honestly, Sam, old
man--I mean, dash it all!”
Sam stroked his chin thoughtfully.
“I still don’t quite get it, Bradder,” he said. “What exactly is the
trouble?”
“Well, I mean, on the premises, old boy, absolutely on the premises--is
it playing the game? I mean, next door to people who are pals of mine
and taking Kay to the theatre and generally going on as if nothing was
wrong.”
“Well, what is wrong?” asked Sam patiently.
“Well, when it comes to the vicar beetling in and complaining about
women in your bedroom----”
“What?”
“He said he heard her.”
“Heard a woman in my bedroom?”
“Yes.”
“He must be crazy. When?”
“Just now.”
“This beats me.”
“Well, that was what he said, anyway. Dashed unpleasant he was about it
too. Oh, and there’s another thing, Sam. I wish you’d ask that man of
yours not to call me brother. He----”
“Great Cæsar!” said Sam.
He took Willoughby Braddock by the arm and urged him toward the steps.
His face wore a purposeful look.
“You go in, like a good chap, and talk to Kay,” he said. “Tell her I’ll
be in in a minute. There’s something I’ve got to look into.”
“Yes, but listen----”
“Run along!”
“But I don’t understand.”
“Push off!”