It chanced that as he spoke these light and casual words Hamilton
Beamish, glancing down, noted that his shoe-lace had come untied.
Stooping to attend to this he missed seeing George's face. Nor--for he
was a man who concentrated even on the lightest task the full attention
of a great mind--did he hear the other's sudden, whistling gasp of
astonishment and horror. A moment later, however, he observed out of
the corner of his eye something moving: and, looking, perceived that
George's legs were wobbling strangely.
Hamilton Beamish straightened himself. He was now in a position to see
George steadily and see him whole: and the spectacle convinced him at
once that something in the message he had just delivered must have
got right in among his friend's ganglions. George Finch's agreeable
features seemed to be picked out in a delicate Nile-green. His eyes
were staring. His lower jaw had fallen. Nobody who had ever seen
a motion-picture could have had the least doubt as to what he was
registering. It was dismay.
"My dear George!" said Hamilton Beamish, concerned.
"Wok.... Wuk.... Wok...." George swallowed desperately. "Wok name did
you say?"
"May Stubbs." Hamilton Beamish's expression grew graver, and he looked
at his friend with sudden suspicion. "Tell me all, George. It is idle
to pretend that the name is strange to you. Obviously it has awakened
deep and unpleasant memories. I trust, George, that this is not some
poor girl with whose happiness you have toyed in the past, some broken
blossom that you have culled and left to perish by the wayside?"
George Finch was staring before him in a sort of stupor.
"All is over!" he said dully.
Hamilton Beamish softened.
"Confide in me. We are friends. I will not judge you harshly, George."
A sudden fury melted the ice of George's torpor.
"It's all that parson's fault!" he cried vehemently. "I knew all along
it meant bad luck. Gosh, what a Paradise this world would be if only
clergymen could stand on chairs without spraining their ankles! I'm
done for."
"Who is this May Stubbs?"
"I knew her in East Gilead," said George hopelessly. "We were sort of
engaged."
Hamilton Beamish pursed his lips.
"Apart from the slovenly English of the phrase, which is perhaps
excusable in the circumstances, I cannot see how you can have been
'sort of' engaged. A man is either engaged or he is not."
"Not where I come from. In East Gilead they have what they call
understandings."
"And there was an understanding between you and this Miss Stubbs?"
"Yes. Just one of those boy and girl affairs. You know. You see a girl
home once or twice from church, and you take her to one or two picnics,
and people kid you about her, and ... well, there you are. I suppose
she thought we were engaged. And now she's read in the papers about my
wedding, and has come to make herself unpleasant."
"Did you and this girl quarrel before you separated?"
"No. We sort of drifted apart. I took it for granted that the thing was
over and done with. And when I saw Molly...."
Hamilton Beamish laid a hand upon his arm.
"George," he said, "I want you to give me your full attention: for
we have arrived now at the very core of the matter. Were there any
letters?"
"Dozens. And of course she has kept them. She used to sleep with them
under her pillow."
"Bad!" said Hamilton Beamish, shaking his head. "Very bad!"
"And I remember her saying once that she believed in breach of promise
suits."
Hamilton Beamish frowned. He seemed to be deploring the get-rich-quick
spirit of the modern girl, who is not content to sit down and wait for
her alimony.
"You think it certain that she is coming here with the intention of
making trouble?"
"What other reason could she have?"
"Yes, I fancy you are right. I must think. I must think. Let me think."
And, so saying, Hamilton Beamish turned sharply to the left and began
to walk slowly round in a circle, his hands behind his back and his
face bent and thoughtful. His eyes searched the ground as if to wrest
inspiration from it.
Few sights in this world are more inspiring than that of a great
thinker actually engaged in thought: and yet George Finch, watching his
friend, chafed. He had a perhaps forgivable craving for quick results:
and Hamilton Beamish, though impressive, did not seem to be getting
anywhere.
"Have you thought of anything?" he asked, as the other came round for
the third time.
Hamilton Beamish held up a hand in silent reproof, and resumed his
pacing. Presently he stopped.
"Yes?" said George.
"With regard to this engagement...."
"It wasn't an engagement. It was an understanding."
"With regard to this understanding or engagement, the weak spot in your
line of defence is undoubtedly the fact that it was you who broke it
off."
"But I didn't break it off."
"I used the wrong expression. I should have said that it was you
who took the initiative. You left East Gilead and came to New York.
Therefore, technically, you deserted this girl."
"I wish you wouldn't say things like that. Can't you understand that
it was just one of those boy and girl affairs which come to an end of
themselves?"
"I was looking at the thing from a lawyer's view-point. And may I point
out that the affair appears not to have come to an end. What I am
trying to make clear is this: that, if you had wished it to come to
an end, you should, before you left East Gilead, have arranged somehow
that this Miss Stubbs broke off the engagement."
"Understanding."
"The engagement or understanding. That would have cleaned the slate.
You should have done something that would have made her disgusted with
you."
"How could I? I'm not the sort of fellow who can do things like that."
"Even now, it seems to me, if you could do something that would revolt
this Miss Stubbs ... make her recoil from you with loathing...."
"Well, what?"
"I must think," said Hamilton Beamish.
He did four more laps.
"Suppose you had committed some sort of crime?" he said, returning to
the fixed point. "Suppose she were to find out you were a thief? She
wouldn't want to marry you if you were on your way to Sing-Sing."
"No. And neither would Molly."
"True. I must think again."
It was some moments later that George, eyeing his friend with the
growing dislike which those of superior brain-power engender in us when
they fail to deliver the goods in our times of crisis, observed him
give a sudden start.
"I think I have it," said Hamilton Beamish.
"Well?"
"This Miss Stubbs. Tell me, is she strait-laced? Prudish? Most of those
village girls are."
George reflected.
"I don't remember ever having noticed. I never did anything to make her
prudish about."
"I think we may assume that, having lived all her life in a spot
like East Gilead, she is. The solution of this difficulty, then, is
obviously to lead her to suppose that you have become a reprobate."
"A what?"
"A Don Juan. A Lothario. A libertine. It should be perfectly easy. She
has seen motion-pictures of life in New York, and will not be hard to
convince that you have deteriorated since you came to live there. Our
plan of action now becomes straightforward and simple. All we have to
do is to get some girl to come along and say that you have no right to
marry anybody but her."
"What!"
"I can see the scene now. This Miss Stubbs is sitting beside you, a
dowdy figure in her home-made village gown. You are talking of the
old days. You are stroking her hand. Suddenly you look up and start.
The door has opened and a girl, all in black with a white face, is
entering. Her eyes are haggard, her hair disordered. In her arms she
clasps a little bundle."
"No, no! Not that!"
"Very well, we will dispense with the bundle. She stretches out her
arms to you. She totters. You rush to support her. The scene is similar
to one in Haddon Chambers' 'Passers-By.'"
"What happened in that?"
"What could happen? The fiancée saw the ruined girl had the greater
claim, so she joined their hands together and crept silently from the
room."
George laughed mirthlessly.
"There's just one thing you're overlooking. Where are we going to get
the white-faced girl?"
Hamilton Beamish stroked his chin.
"There is that difficulty. I must think."
"And while you're thinking," said George coldly, "I'll do the only
practical thing there is to be done, and go down to the station and
meet her, and have a talk with her and try to get her to be sensible."
"Perhaps that would be as well. But I still feel that my scheme would
be the ideal one, if only we could find the girl. It is too bad that
you have not a dark past."
"My dark past," said George bitterly, "is all ahead of me."
He turned and hurried down the drive. Hamilton Beamish, still
meditating, made his way towards the house.
He had reached the lawn, when, as he stopped to light a cigarette to
assist thought, he saw a sight that made him drop the match and draw
back into the shelter of a tree.
Hamilton Beamish stopped, looked and listened. A girl had emerged
from a clump of rhododendrons, and was stealing softly round the lawn
towards the dining-room window.
* * * * *
Girlhood is the season of dreams. To Fanny Welch, musing over the
position of affairs after Sigsbee H. Waddington had given her her final
instructions, there had come a quaint, fantastic thought, creeping
into her mind like a bee into a flower--the thought that if she got to
the house an hour earlier than the time he had mentioned, it might be
possible for her to steal the necklace and keep it for herself.
The flaw in the scheme, as originally outlined, had seemed to her all
along to lie in the fact that Mr. Waddington was to preside over the
enterprise and take the loot from her the moment she had got it. The
revised plan appeared immeasurably more attractive, and she proceeded
to put it into action.
Luck seemed to be with her. Nobody was about, the window was ajar, and
there on the table lay that which she had now come to look on in the
light of a present for a good girl. She crept out of her hiding-place,
stole round the edge of the lawn, entered the room, and had just
grasped the case in her hand, when it was borne sharply in upon her
that luck was not with her so much as she had supposed. A heavy hand
was placed upon her shoulder: and, twisting round, she perceived a
majestic-looking man with a square chin and horn-rimmed spectacles.
"Well, young lady!" said this person.
Fanny breathed hard. These little contretemps are the risk of the
profession, but that makes them none the easier to bear philosophically.
"Put down that jewel-case."
Fanny did so. There was a pause. Hamilton Beamish moved to the window,
blocking it up.
"Well?" said Fanny.
Hamilton Beamish adjusted his spectacles.
"Well, you've got me. What are you going to do?"
"What do you expect me to do?"
"Turn me over to the police?"
The figure in the window nodded curtly. Fanny clasped her hands
together. Her eyes filled with tears.
"Don't turn me over to the bulls, mister! I only did it for ma's
sake...."
"All wrong!"
"If you was out of work and starvin' and you had to sit and watch your
poor old ma bendin' over the wash-tub...."
"All wrong!" repeated Hamilton Beamish forcefully.
"What do you mean, all wrong?"
"Mere crude Broadway melodrama. That stuff might deceive some people,
but not me."
Fanny shrugged her shoulders.
"Well, I thought it was worth trying," she said.
Hamilton Beamish was regarding her keenly. That busy brain was never
still, and now it had begun to work with even more than its normal
intensity.
"Are you an actress?"
"Me? I should say not. My folks are awful particular."
"Well, you have considerable dramatic ability. There was a ring of
sincerity in that drivel you just recited which would have convinced
most men. I think I could use you in a little drama which I have been
planning. I'll make a bargain with you. I have no wish to send you to
prison."
"Spoken like a man."
"I ought to, of course."
"Yes, but it's a lot better fun doing things that you oughtn't, isn't
it?"
"Well, the point is, I have a friend who is in a difficulty, and it
occurs to me that you can get him out."
"Always glad to oblige."
"My friend is going to be married to-day, and he has just heard
that a previous fiancée of his, whom in the excitement inseparable
from falling in love with the girl who is to be his bride he had
unfortunately overlooked, is on her way here."
"To make trouble?"
"Precisely."
"Well, what can I do about it?"
"Just this. For five minutes I want you to play the rôle of my friend's
discarded victim."
"I don't get it."
"I will put it more plainly. In a short while this girl will arrive,
probably in company with my friend, who has gone to meet her at the
station. You will be waiting outside here. At an appropriate moment
you will rush into the room, hold out your arms to my friend and cry
'George! George! Why did you desert me? You don't belong to that girl
there. You belong to me--the woman you have wronged!'"
"Not on your life!"
"What!"
Fanny drew herself up haughtily.
"Not on your life!" she said. "Suppose my husband got to hear of it!"
"Are you married?"
"Married this morning at the Little Church Round the Corner."
"And you come here and try to steal things on your wedding-day!"
"Why not? You know as well as I do what it costs nowadays to set up
house."
"Surely it would be a severe shock to your husband to find that you
had been sent to prison! I think you had better be reasonable."
Fanny scraped the floor with her shoe.
"Would this thing you want me to do get into the papers?"
"Good heavens, no!"
"And there's another thing. Suppose I did come in and pull that spiel,
who would believe it?"
"The girl would. She is very simple."
"She must be."
"Just an ignorant village girl. The sort who would naturally recoil
from a man in the circumstances I have outlined."
"Suppose they ask me questions?"
"They won't."
"But suppose they do? Suppose the girl says Where did you meet him and
when did all this happen and what the hell and all like that, what do I
say?"
Hamilton Beamish considered the point.
"I think the best plan would be for you to pretend, immediately after
you have spoken the words I have indicated, that emotion has made you
feel faint. Yes, that is best. Having said those words, exclaim 'Air!
Air! I want air!' and rush out."
"Now you're talking. I like that bit about rushing out. I'll go so
quick, they won't see me."
"Then you are prepared to do this thing?"
"Looks as if I'd got to."
"Good. Kindly run through your opening speech. I must see that you are
letter-perfect."
"George! George!..."
"Pause before the second George and take in breath. Remember that the
intensity or loudness of the voice depends on the amplitude of the
movement of the vocal chords, which pitch depends on the number of
vibrations per second. Tone is strengthened by the resonance of the air
on the air-passages and in the pharyngeal and oral cavities. Once more,
please."
"George! George! Why did you desert me?..."
"Arms extended."
"You don't belong to that girl there."
"Pause. Breath."
"You belong to me--the woman you have wronged!"
Hamilton Beamish nodded with restrained approval.
"Not bad. Not at all bad. I should have liked, if it had been
possible, to have an expert examine your thyro-arytenoid ligaments:
and I wish there had been time for you to study my booklet on "Voice
Production." ... However, I think it will do. Now go back and hide in
the rhododendrons. This girl may be arriving at any moment."