* * * * *
"THE PURPLE LIE."
"Arabella," I said, examining the fuzzy part of her which projected
above the dome of the coffee-pot, "I perceive that you mope. That being
so, I am glad to be able to tell you that I have been presented with two
tickets for _The Purple Lie_ to-morrow evening."
"Sorry," she replied, "but it's off."
"Off!" I exclaimed indignantly, "when the box-office is being besieged
all day by a howling mob, and armoured commissionaires are constantly
being put into commission to defend it. Off!"
"What I mean to say is," said Arabella, "that we're dining with the
Messington-Smiths to-morrow evening."
I bowed my head above the marmalade and wept. "Arabella," I groaned,
looking up at last, "what have we done that these people should continue
to supply us with food? We do not love them, and they do not love us.
The woman is a bromide. Her husband is even worse. He is a phenacetin. I
shall fall asleep in the middle of the asparagus and butter myself
badly. Think, moreover, of the distance to Morpheus Avenue. Remember
that I have been palpitating to see _The Purple Lie_ for weeks."
"So have I," said Arabella. "It's sickening, but I am afraid we must
pass those tickets on."
I happened that day to be lunching with my friend Charles. "The last
thing in the world I want to do," I said to him, "is to oblige you in
any way, but I chance to have--ahem!--purchased two stalls for _The
Purple Lie_ which I cannot make use of. I had forgotten that I am dining
with some very important and--er--influential people to-morrow night.
When a man moves as I do amid a constant whirl of gilt-edged
engagements----"
"Ass!" said Charles, and pocketed the tickets.
On the following morning I perceived a large crinkly frown at the
opposite end of the breakfast table, and, rightly divining that Arabella
was behind it, asked her what the trouble was.
"It's the Messington-Smiths," she complained. "They can't have us to
dinner after all. It seems that Mrs. Messington-Smith has a bad sore
throat."
"Any throat would be sore," I replied, "that had Mrs. Messington-Smith
talking through it. I wonder whether Charles is using those tickets."
"You might ring up and see."
To step lightly to the telephone, ask for Charles's number, get the
wrong one, ask again, find that he had gone to his office, ring him up
there and get through to him, was the work of scarcely fifteen minutes.
"Charles," I said, "are you using those two stalls of mine to-day?"
"Awfully sorry," he replied, "but I can't go myself. I gave them away
yesterday evening."
"Wurzel!" I said. "Who to?"
"To whom," he corrected gently. "To a dull man I met in the City named
Messington-Smith."
"Named _what_?" I shrieked.
"Messington-Smith. _M_ for Mpret, _E_ for Eiderdown----"
"Where does he live?"
"21, Morpheus Avenue."
For a moment the room seemed to spin round me. I put down the
transmitter and pressed my hand to my forehead. Then in a shaking voice
I continued--"Of all the double-barrelled, unmitigated, blue-faced----"
"What number, please?" sang a sweet soprano voice. I rang off, and went
to break the news to Arabella.
She was silent for a few moments, and then asked me suddenly,
"Whereabouts in the stalls were those seats of ours?"
"Almost in the middle of the third row," I replied mournfully.
Arabella said no more, but with a rather disdainful smile on her face
walked firmly to her little escritoire, sat down, wrote a note, and
addressed it to Mrs. Messington-Smith.
"What have you said?" I asked, as she stamped her letter with a rather
vicious jab on KING GEORGE'S left eye.
"Just that I am sorry about her old sore throat," she replied. "And then
I went on, that wasn't it funny by the same post we had been given two
stalls for _The Purple Lie_ to-night in a very good place in the middle
of the third row? She will get the letter by lunch-time," she added
pensively, "and it will be so nice for her to know that we shall be
sitting almost next to them."
"But we aren't going to _The Purple Lie_ at all," I protested.
"No," she said, "and as a matter of fact I don't suppose the
Messington-Smiths are either--now."
I left Arabella smiling triumphantly through her tears,
but when I returned in the evening the breakfast-time frown had
reappeared with even crinklier ramifications.
"Why," I asked, "are you looking like a tube map?"
"Mrs. Messington-Smith," she answered with a slight catch in her voice,
"has just been telephoning."
"I thought the receiver looked a bit played out," I said. "What does she
want with us now?"
"Well, she _has_ got a sore throat after all. You could tell that from
her voice. And she isn't going to _The Purple Lie_ either. She never
even meant to."
"But the tickets," I gasped.
"She and her husband quite forgot about them till to-day," said
Arabella. "And now they have given them away to some friends. But they
weren't given away at all till this afternoon, and----"
She broke off and gave a lachrymose little sniff.
"And what?"
"And she knew, of course, that we're disengaged to-night, and when she
got my letter she was just going to send them round to us."
* * * * *
Illustration: BEATEN ON POINTS.