People were so much preoccupied by the Twinkler problem that they were
less interested than they otherwise would have been in the sea-blue
advertisements, and when the one appeared announcing that The Open Arms
would open wide on the 29th of the month and exhorting the public to
watch the signposts, they merely remarked that it wasn't, then, the
title of a book after all. Mr. Twist would have been surprised and
nettled if he had known how little curiosity his advertisements were
exciting; he would have been horrified if he had known the reason. As it
was, he didn't know anything. He was too busy, too deeply absorbed, to
be vulnerable to rumour; he, and the twins, and Mrs. Bilton were safe
from it inside their magic circle of _Arbeit und Liebe_.
Sometimes he was seen in Main Street, that street in Acapulco through
which everybody passes at certain hours of the morning, looking as
though he had a great deal to do and very little time to do it in; and
once or twice the Twinklers were seen there, also apparently very busy,
but they didn't now come alone. Mrs. Bilton, the lady from Los
Angeles--Acapulco knew all about her and admitted she was a lady of
strictest integrity and unimpeachable character, but this only made the
Twinkler problem more obscure--came too, and seemed, judging from the
animation of her talk, to be on the best of terms with her charges.
But once an idea has got into people's heads, remarked the lawyer, who
was nudged by the friend he was walking with as the attractive trio were
seen approaching,--Mrs. Bilton with her black dress and her snowy hair
setting off, as they in their turn set her off, the twins in their clean
white frocks and shining youth,--once an idea has got into people's
heads it sticks. It is slow to get in, and impossible to get out. Yet on
the face of it, was it likely that Mrs. Bilton--
"Say," interrupted his friend, "since when have you joined up with the
water-blooded believe-nothing-but-good-ites?"
And only his personal affection for the lawyer restrained him from using
the terrible word pro-German; but it had been in his mind.
The day before the opening, Miss Heap heard from an acquaintance in the
East to whom she had written in her uneasiness, and who was staying with
some people living in Clark. Miss Heap wrote soon after the
departure--she didn't see why she shouldn't call it by its proper name
and say right out expulsion--of the Twist party from the Cosmopolitan,
but letters take a long time to get East and answers take the same long
time to come back in, and messages are sometimes slow in being delivered
if the other person doesn't realize, as one does oneself, the tremendous
interests that are at stake. What could be a more tremendous interest,
and one more adapted to the American genius, than safe-guarding public
morals? Miss Heap wrote before the sinister rumours of German
machinations had got about; she was still merely at the stage of
uneasiness in regard to the morals of the Twist party; she couldn't
sleep at night for thinking of them. Of course if it were true that his
mother was coming out ... but was she? Miss Heap somehow felt unable to
believe it. "Do tell your friends in Clark," she wrote, "how
_delighted_ we all are to hear that Mrs. Twist is going to be one of us
in our sunny refuge here this winter. A real warm welcome awaits her.
Her son is working day and night getting the house ready for her, helped
indefatigably by the two Miss Twinklers."
She had to wait over a fortnight for the answer, and by the time she got
it those other more terrible doubts had arisen, the doubts as to the
exact position occupied by the Twinklers and Mr. Twist in the German
secret plans for, first, the pervasion, and, second, the invasion of
America; and on reading the opening lines of the letter Miss Heap found
she had to sit down, for her legs gave way beneath her.
It appeared that Mrs. Twist hadn't known where her son was till Miss
Heap's letter came. He had left Clark in company of the two girls
mentioned, and about whom his mother knew nothing, the very morning
after his arrival home from his long absence in Europe. That was all his
mother knew. She was quite broken. Coming on the top of all her other
sorrow her only son's behaviour had been a fearful, perhaps a finishing
blow, but she was such a good woman that she still prayed for him. Clark
was horrified. His mother had decided at first she would try to shield
him and say nothing, but when she found that nobody had the least idea
of what he had done she felt she owed it to her friends to be open and
have no secrets from them. Whatever it cost her in suffering and
humiliation she would be frank. Anything was better than keeping up
false appearances to friends who believed in you. She was a brave woman,
a splendid woman. The girls--poor Mrs. Twist--were Germans.
On reading this Miss Heap was all of a tingle. Her worst suspicions
hadn't been half bad enough. Here was everything just about as black as
it could be; and Mr Twist, a well-known and universally respected
American citizen, had been turned, by means of those girls playing upon
weaknesses she shuddered to think of but that she had reason to believe,
from books she had studied and conversations she had reluctantly taken
part in, were not altogether uncommon, into a cat's-paw of the German
Government.
What should she do? What should she say? To whom should she go? Which
was the proper line of warning for her to take? It seemed to her that
the presence of these people on the Pacific coast was a real menace to
its safety, moral and physical; but how get rid of them? And if they
were got rid of wouldn't it only be exposing some other part of America,
less watchful, less perhaps able to take care of itself, to the ripening
and furtherance of their schemes, whatever their schemes might be? Even
at that moment Miss Heap unconsciously felt that to let the Twinklers go
would be to lose thrills. And she was really thrilled. She prickled with
excitement and horror. Her circulation hadn't been so good for years.
She wasn't one to dissect her feelings, so she had no idea of how
thoroughly she was enjoying herself. And it was while she sat alone in
her bedroom, her fingers clasping and unclasping the arms of her chair,
her feet nervously nibbing up and down on the thick soft carpet,
hesitating as to the best course for her to take, holding her knowledge
meanwhile tight, hugging it for a little altogether to herself, her very
own, shared as yet by no one,--it was while she sat there, that people
out of doors in Acapulco itself, along the main roads, out in the
country towards Zamora on the north and San Blas on the south, became
suddenly aware of new signposts.
They hadn't been there the day before. They all turned towards the spot
at the foot of the mountains where Pepper Lane was. They all pointed,
with a long white finger, in that direction. And on them all was written
in plain, sea-blue letters, beneath which the distance in miles or
fractions of a mile was clearly marked, _To The Open Arms_.
Curiosity was roused at last. People meeting each other in Main Street
stopped to talk about these Arms wondered where and what they were, and
decided to follow the signposts that afternoon in their cars and track
them down. They made up parties to go and track together. It would be a
relief to have something a little different to do. What on earth could
The Open Arms be? Hopes were expressed that they weren't something
religious. Awful to follow signposts out into the country only to find
they landed you in a meeting-house.
At lunch in the hotels, and everywhere where people were together, the
signposts were discussed. Miss Heap heard them being discussed from her
solitary table, but was so much taken up with her own exciting thoughts
that she hardly noticed. After lunch, however, as she was passing out of
the restaurant, still full of her unshared news and still uncertain as
to whom she should tell it first, Mr. Ridding called out from his table
and said he supposed she was going too.
They had been a little chilly to each other since the afternoon of the
conversation with the Twinklers, but he would have called out to any one
at that moment. He was sitting waiting while Mrs. Ridding finished her
lunch, his own lunch finished long ago, and was in the condition of
muffled but extreme exasperation which the unoccupied watching of Mrs.
Ridding at meals produced. Every day three times this happened, that Mr.
Ridding got through his meal first by at least twenty minutes and then
sat trying not to mind Mrs. Ridding. She wasn't aware of these efforts.
They would greatly have shocked her; for to try not to mind one's wife
surely isn't what decent, loving husbands ever have to do.
"Going where?" asked Miss Heap, stopping by the table; whereupon Mr.
Ridding had the slight relief of getting up.
Mrs. Ridding continued to eat impassively.
"Following these new signposts that are all over the place," said Mr.
Ridding. "Sort of paper-chase business."
"Yes. I'd like to. Were you thinking of going, Mrs. Ridding?"
"After our nap," said Mrs. Ridding, steadily eating. "I'll take you. Car
at four o'clock, Albert."
She didn't raise her eyes from her plate, and as Miss Heap well knew
that Mrs. Ridding was not open to conversation during meals and as she
had nothing to say to Mr. Ridding, she expressed her thanks and
pleasure, and temporarily left them.
This was a day of shocks and thrills. When the big limousine--symbol of
Mrs. Ridding's power, for Mr. Ridding couldn't for the life of him see
why he should have to provide a strange old lady with cars, and yet did
so on an increasing scale of splendour--arrived at the turn on the main
road to San Blas which leads into Pepper Lane and was confronted by the
final signpost pointing up it, for the first time The Open Arms and the
Twist and Twinkler party entered Miss Heap's mind in company. So too
did they enter Mr. Ridding's mind; and they only remained outside Mrs.
Ridding's because of her profound uninterest. Her thoughts were merged
in aspic. That was the worst of aspic when it was as good as it was at
the Cosmopolitan; one wasn't able to leave off eating it quite in time,
and then, unfortunately, had to go on thinking of it afterwards.
The Twist house, remembered her companions simultaneously, was in Pepper
Lane. Odd that this other thing, whatever it was, should happen to be
there too. Miss Heap said nothing, but sat very straight and alert, her
eyes everywhere. Mr. Ridding of course said nothing either. Not for
worlds would he have mentioned the word Twist, which so instantly and
inevitably suggested that other and highly controversial word Twinkler.
But he too sat all eyes; for anyhow he might in passing get a glimpse of
the place containing those cunning little bits of youngness, the
Twinkler sisters, and even with any luck a glimpse of their very selves.
Up the lane went the limousine, slowly because of the cars in front of
it. It was one of a string of cars, for the day was lovely, there was no
polo, and nobody happened to be giving a party. All the way out from
Acapulco they had only had to follow other cars. Cars were going, and
cars were coming back. The cars going were full of solemn people,
pathetically anxious to be interested. The cars coming back were full of
animated people who evidently had achieved interest.
Miss Heap became more and more alert as they approached the bend in the
lane round which the Twist house was situated. She had been there
before, making a point of getting a friend to motor her past it in
order to see what she could for herself, but Mr. Ridding, in spite of
his desire to go and have a look too, had always, each time he tried to,
found Mrs. Ridding barring the way. So that he didn't exactly know where
it was; and when on turning the corner the car suddenly stopped, and
putting his head out--he was sitting backwards--- he saw a great,
old-fashioned signboard, such as he was accustomed to in pictures of
ancient English village greens, with
The Open Arms
in medieval letters painted on it, all he said was, "Guess we've run it
to earth."
Miss Heap sat with her hands in her lap, staring. Mrs. Ridding, her mind
blocked by aspic, wasn't receiving impressions. She gazed with heavy
eyes straight in front of her. There she saw cars. Many cars. All
stopped at this particular spot. With a dull sensation of fathomless
fatigue she dimly wondered at them.
"Looks as though it's a hostelry," said Mr. Ridding, who remembered his
Dickens; and he blinked up, craning his head out, at the signboard, on
which through a gap in the branches of the pepper trees a shaft of
brilliant late afternoon sun was striking. "Don't see one, though."
He jerked his thumb. "Up back of the trees there, I reckon," he said.
Then he prepared to open the door and go and have a look.
A hand shot out of Miss Heap's lap at him. "Don't," she said quickly.
"Don't, Mr. Ridding."
There was a little green gate in the thick hedge that grew behind the
pepper trees, and some people he knew, who had been in the car in front,
were walking up to it. Some other people he knew had already got to it,
and were standing talking together with what looked like leaflets in
their hands. These leaflets came out of a green wooden box fastened on
to one of the gate-posts, with the words _Won't you take one_? painted
on it.
Mr. Ridding naturally wanted to go and take one, and here was Miss Heap
laying hold of him and saying "Don't."
"Don't what?" he asked looking down at her, his hand on the door.
"Hello Ridding," called out one of the people he knew. "No good getting
out. Show doesn't open till to-morrow at four. Can't get in to-day.
Gate's bolted. Nothing doing."
And then the man detached himself from the group at the gate and came
over to the car with a leaflet in his hand.
"Say--" he said,--"how are you to-day, Miss Heap? Mrs. Ridding, your
humble servant--say, look at this. Teapot Twist wasn't born yesterday
when it comes to keeping things dark. No mention of his name on this
book of words, but it's the house he was doing up all right, and it is
to be used as an inn. Afternoon-tea inn. Profits to go to the American
Red Cross. Price per head five dollars. Bit stiff, five dollars for tea.
Wonder where those Twinkler girls come in. Here--you have this, Ridding,
and study it. I'll get another." And taking off his hat a second time to
the ladies he went back to his friends.
In great agitation Miss Heap turned to Mrs. Ridding, whose mind,
galvanized by the magic words Twist and Twinkler, was slowly heaving
itself free of aspic. "Perhaps we had best go back to the hotel, Mrs
Ridding," said Miss Heap, her voice shaking. "There's something I wish
particularly to tell you. I ought to have done so this morning, directly
I knew, but I had no idea of course that this...." She waved a hand at
the signboard, and collapsed into speechlessness.
"Albert--hotel," directed Mrs. Ridding.
And Mr. Ridding, clutching the leaflet, his face congested with
suppressed emotions, obediently handed on the order through the
speaking-tube to the chauffeur.