Meanwhile Mr. Twist had driven on towards Acapulco in a state of painful
indecision. Should he or shouldn't he take a turning he knew of a couple
of miles farther that led up an unused and practically undrivable track
back by the west side to The Open Arms, and instruct Mrs. Bilton to
proceed at once down the lane and salvage Anna-Felicitas? Should he or
shouldn't he? For the first mile he decided he would; then, as his anger
cooled, he began to think that after all he needn't worry much. The
Annas were lucidly too young for serious philandering, and even if that
Elliott didn't realize this, owing to Anna-Felicitas's great length, he
couldn't do much before he, Mr. Twist, was back again along the lane. In
this he under-estimated the enterprise of the British Navy, but it
served to calm him; so that when he did reach the turning he had made up
his mind to continue on his way to Acapulco.
There he spent some perplexing and harassing hours.
At the bank his reception was distinctly chilly. He wasn't used, since
his teapot had been on the market, to anything but warmth when he went
into a bank. On this occasion even the clerks were cold; and when after
difficulty--actual difficulty--he succeeded in seeing the manager, he
couldn't but perceive his unusual reserve. He then remembered what he
had put down to mere accident at the time, that as he drove up Main
Street half an hour before, all the people he knew had been looking the
other way.
From the bank, where he picked up nothing in the way of explanation of
the American avoidance of The Open Arms, the manager going dumb at its
mere mention, he went to the solicitors who had arranged the sale of the
inn, and again in the street people he knew looked the other way. The
solicitor, it appeared, wouldn't be back till the afternoon, and the
clerk, an elderly person hitherto subservient, was curiously short about
it.
By this time Mr. Twist was thoroughly uneasy, and he determined to ask
the first acquaintance he met what the matter was. But he couldn't find
anybody. Every one, his architect, his various experts--those genial and
frolicsome young men--were either engaged or away on business somewhere
else. He set his teeth, and drove to the Cosmopolitan to seek out old
Ridding--it wasn't a place he drove to willingly after his recent
undignified departure, but he was determined to get to the bottom of
this thing--and walking into the parlour was instantly aware of a hush
falling upon it, a holding of the breath.
In the distance he saw old Ridding,--distinctly; and distinctly he saw
that old Ridding saw him. He was sitting at the far end of the great
parlour, facing the entrance, by the side of something vast and black
heaped up in the adjacent chair. He had the look on his pink and
naturally pleasant face of one who has abandoned hope. On seeing Mr.
Twist a ray of interest lit him up, and he half rose. The formless mass
in the next chair which Mr. Twist had taken for inanimate matter,
probably cushions and wraps, and now perceived was one of the higher
mammals, put out a hand and said something,--at least, it opened that
part of its face which is called a mouth but which to Mr. Twist in the
heated and abnormal condition of his brain seemed like the snap-to of
some great bag,--and at that moment a group of people crossed the hall
in front of old Ridding, and when the path was again clear the chair
that had contained him was empty. He had disappeared. Completely. Only
the higher mammal was left, watching Mr. Twist with heavy eyes like two
smouldering coals.
He couldn't face those eyes. He did try to, and hesitated while he
tried, and then he found he couldn't; so he swerved away to the right,
and went out quickly by the side door.
There was now one other person left who would perhaps clear him up as to
the meaning of all this, and he was the lawyer he had gone to about the
guardianship. True he had been angry with him at the time, but that was
chiefly because he had been angry with himself. At bottom he had carried
away an impression of friendliness. To this man he would now go as a
last resource before turning back home, and once more he raced up Main
Street in his Ford, producing by these repeated appearances an effect of
agitation and restlessness that wasn't lost on the beholders.
The lawyer was in his office, and disengaged. After his morning's
experience Mr. Twist was quite surprised and much relieved by being
admitted at once. He was received neither coldly nor warmly, but with
unmistakable interest.
"I've come to consult you," said Mr. Twist.
The lawyer nodded. He hadn't supposed he had come not to consult him,
but he was used to patience with clients, and he well knew their
preference in conversation for the self-evident.
"I want a straight answer to a straight question," said Mr. Twist, his
great spectacles glaring anxiously at the lawyer who again nodded.
"Go on," he said, as Mr. Twist paused.
"What I want to know is," burst out Mr. Twist, "what the hell--"
The lawyer put up a hand. "One moment, Mr. Twist," he said. "Sorry to
interrupt--"
And he got up quickly, and went to a door in the partition between his
office and his clerks' room.
"You may go out to lunch now," he said, opening it a crack.
He then shut it, and came back to his seat at the table.
"Yes, Mr. Twist?" he said, settling down again. "You were inquiring what
the hell--?"
"Well, I was about to," said Mr. Twist, suddenly soothed, "but you're so
calm--"
"Of course I'm calm. I'm a quietly married man."
"I don't see what that's got to do with it."
"Everything. For some dispositions, everything. Mine is one. Yours is
another."
"Well, I guess I've not come here to talk about marriage. What I want to
know is why--"
"Quite so," said the lawyer, as he stopped. "And I can tell you. It's
because your inn is suspected of being run in the interests of the
German Government."
A deep silence fell upon the room. The lawyer watched Mr. Twist with a
detached and highly intelligent interest. Mr. Twist stared at the
lawyer, his kind, lavish lips fallen apart. Anger had left him. This
blow excluded anger. There was only room in him for blank astonishment.
"You know about my teapot?" he said at last.
"Try me again, Mr. Twist."
"It's on every American breakfast table."
"Including my own."
"They wouldn't use it if they thought--"
"My dear sir, they're not going to," said the lawyer. "They're
proposing, among other little plans for conveying the general sentiment
to your notice, to boycott the teapot. It is to be put on an unofficial
black list. It is to be banished from the hotels."
Mr. Twist's stare became frozen. The teapot boycotted? The teapot his
mother and sister depended on and The Open Arms depended on, and all his
happiness, and the twins? He saw the rumour surging over America in
great swift waves, that the proceeds of the Twist Non-Trickler were used
for Germany. He saw--but what didn't he see in that moment of submerged
horror? Then he seemed to come to the surface again and resume reason
with a gasp. "Why?" he asked.
"Why they're wanting to boycott the teapot?"
"No. Why do they think the inn--"
"The Miss Twinklers are German."
"Half."
"The half that matters--begging my absent wife's pardon. I know all
about that, you see. You started me off thinking them over by that ward
notion of yours. It didn't take me long. It was pretty transparent. So
transparent that my opinion of the intelligence of my fellow-townsfolk
has considerably lowered. But we live in unbalanced times. I guess it's
women at the bottom of this. Women got on to it first, and the others
caught the idea as they'd catch scarlet fever. It's a kind of scarlet
fever, this spy scare that's about. Mind you, I admit the germs are
certainly present among us." And the lawyer smiled. He thought he saw
he had made a little joke in that last remark.
Mr. Twist was not in the condition to see jokes, and didn't smile. "Do
you mean to say those children--" he began.
"They're not regarded as children by any one except you."
"Well, if they're not," said Mr. Twist, remembering the grass by the
wayside in the lane and what he had so recently met in it, "I guess I'd
best be making tracks. But I know better. And so would you if you'd seen
them on the boat. Why, twelve was putting their age too high on that
boat."
"No doubt. No doubt. Then all I can say is they've matured pretty
considerably since. Now do you really want me to tell you what is being
believed?"
"Of course. It's what I've come for."
"You mayn't find it precisely exhilarating, Mr. Twist."
"Go ahead."
"What Acapulco says--and Los Angeles, I'm told, too, and probably by
this time the whole coast--is that you threw over your widowed mother,
of whom you're the only son, and came off here with two German girls who
got hold of you on the boat--now, Mr. Twist, don't interrupt--on the
boat crossing from England, that England had turned them out as
undesirable aliens--quite so, Mr. Twist, but let me finish--that they're
in the pay of the German Government--no doubt, no doubt, Mr. Twist--and
that you're their cat's-paw. It is known that the inn each afternoon has
been crowded with Germans, among them Germans already suspected, I can't
say how rightly or how wrongly, of spying, and that these people are so
familiar with the Miss von Twinklers as to warrant the belief in a
complete secret understanding."
For a moment Mr. Twist continued both his silence and his stare. Then he
took off his spectacles and wiped them. His hand shook. The lawyer was
startled. Was there going to be emotion? One never knew with that sort
of lips. "You're not--" he began.
Then he saw that Mr. Twist was trying not to laugh.
"I'm glad you take it that way," he said, relieved but surprised.
"It's so darned funny," said Mr. Twist, endeavouring to compose his
features. "To anybody who knows those twins it's so darned funny.
Cat's-paw. Yes--rather feel that myself. Cat's-paw. That does seem a bit
of a bull's eye--" And for a second or two his features flatly refused
to compose.
The lawyer watched him. "Yes," he said. "Yes. But the effect of these
beliefs may be awkward."
"Oh, damned," agreed Mr. Twist, going solemn again.
And there came over him in a flood the clear perception of what it would
mean,--the sheer disaster of it, the horrible situation those helpless
Annas would be in. What a limitless fool he must have been in his
conduct of the whole thing. His absorption in the material side of it
had done the trick. He hadn't been clever enough, not imaginative
enough, nor, failing that, worldly enough to work the other side
properly. When he found there was no Dellogg he ought to have insisted
on seeing Mrs. Dellogg, intrusion or no intrusion, and handing over the
twins; and then gone away and left them. A woman was what was wanted.
Fool that he was to suppose that he, a man, an unmarried man, could get
them into anything but a scrape. But he was so fond of them. He just
couldn't leave them. And now here they all were, in this ridiculous and
terrible situation.
"There are two things you can do," said the lawyer.
"Two?" said Mr. Twist, looking at him with anxious eyes. "For the life
of me I can't see even one. Except running amoke in slander actions--"
"Tut, tut," said the lawyer, waving that aside. "No. There are two
courses to pursue. And they're not alternative, but simultaneous. You
shut down the inn--at once, to-morrow--that's Saturday. Close on
Saturday, and give notice you don't re-open--now pray let me
finish--close the inn as an inn, and use it simply as a private
residence. Then, as quick as may be, marry those girls."
"Marry what girls?"
"The Miss von Twinklers."
Mr. Twist stared at him. "Marry them?" he said helplessly. "Marry them
who to?"
"You for one."
Mr. Twist stared at him in silence. Then he said, "You've said that to
me before."
"Yep. And I'll say it again. I'll go on saying it till you've done it."
"'Well, if that's all you've got to offer as a suggestion for a way
out--"
But Mr. Twist wasn't angry this time; he was too much battered by
events; he hadn't the spirits to be angry.
"You've--got to--marry--one--of--those--girls," said the lawyer, at each
word smiting the table with his open palm. "Turn her into an American.
Get her out of this being a German business. And be able at the same
time to protect the one who'll be your sister in-law. Why, even if you
didn't want to, which is sheer nonsense, for of course any man would
want to--I know what I'm talking about because I've seen them--it's your
plain duty, having got them into this mess."
"But--marry which?" asked Mr. Twist, with increased helplessness and yet
a manifest profound anxiety for further advice.
For the first time the lawyer showed impatience "Oh--either or both," he
said. "For God's sake don't be such a--"
He pulled up short.
"I didn't quite mean that," he resumed, again calm. "The end of that
sentence was, as no doubt you guess, fool. I withdraw it, and will
substitute something milder. Have you any objection to ninny?"
No, Mr. Twist didn't mind ninny, or any other word the lawyer might
choose, he was in such a condition of mental groping about. He took out
his handkerchief and wiped away the beads on his forehead and round his
mouth.
"I'm thirty-five," he said, looking terribly worried.
Propose to an Anna? The lawyer may have seen them, but he hadn't heard
them; and the probable nature of their comments if Mr. Twist proposed to
them--to one, he meant of course, but both would comment, the one he
proposed to and the one he didn't--caused his imagination to reel. He
hadn't much imagination; he knew that now, after his conduct of this
whole affair, but all there was of it reeled.
"I'm thirty-five," he said helplessly.
"Pooh," said the lawyer, indicating the negligibleness of this by a
movement of his shoulder.
"They're seventeen," said Mr. Twist.
"Pooh," said the lawyer again, again indicating negligibleness. "My
wife was--"
"I know. You told me that last time. Oh, I know all _that_" said Mr.
Twist with sudden passion. "But these are children. I tell you they're
_children_--"
"Pooh," said the lawyer a third time, a third time indicating
negligibleness.
Then he got up and held out his hand. "Well, I've told you," he said.
"You wanted to know, and I've told you. And I'll tell you one thing
more, Mr. Twist. Whichever of those girls takes you, you'll have the
sweetest, prettiest wife of any man in the world except one, and that's
the man who has the luck to get the other one. Why, sweetest and
prettiest are poor words. She'll be the most delectable, the most--"
Mr. Twist rose from his chair in such haste that he pushed the table
crooked. His ears flamed.
"See here," he said very loud. "I won't have you talk familiarly like
that about my wife."