_In which three young men eat, and not only eat,
but drink._
There are few restaurants left in London where gentlemen may meet with
some sort of privacy and with the chance of eating reasonable food. It
might be more accurate to say there are none. But whether there are
any left or not, I am going to invent one for the purposes of this
story, and to inform you that on this same Tuesday night upon which
Mr. Kirby was telephoning to Sir Alexander McAuley, Jimmy and Melba
were very kindly entertaining Algernon Sawby Leonidas Brassington—Mr.
Brassington, Jun., for short—at dinner in a private room at Bolter’s.
Bolter’s, I need hardly inform such a woman of the world as my reader,
is the one place left in London where a man can dine well and yet at
his ease. It stands in a little street off Regent Street eastward, and
by a happy accident has been worthy of its reputation for seventy
years. Either it has not paid Bolter’s, or Bolter’s has been too proud,
but anyhow the Whelps of the Lion are quite ignorant of Bolter’s, so
are the cousins of the noble beast, so certainly are the greater part
of such degraded natives of the European Continent as we permit to
visit our Metropolis and to stare at our Imperial Populace.
Even the young bloods for the most part have not heard of Bolter’s, and
as it never spends a penny on advertisements, its name, on the rare
occasions when it appears in an article or a letter, is ruthlessly
struck out in proof by the blue pencil of the editor.
Bolter’s is known and loved by perhaps two hundred families. It is a
tradition, and as you may well imagine, enormously expensive. If you
are two dining at Bolter’s, you may expect to spend £7, and if you
are three, £10. If you are very rich, it is worth your while to dine
at Bolter’s. If you are only moderately rich, it is worth your while.
If you are poor, it is also worth your while to go to prison for not
paying—so excellent is the food.
All this I tell the reader in order that he may know how and why Jimmy
and Melba were entertaining their friend. That friend, though his
father was a very wealthy man, was a little awed by the surroundings.
He had heard of Bolter’s—once or twice, not more—from the fringes of
that governing world in which some of his University friends lived. He
remembered the son of a Cabinet Minister complaining of Bolter’s, and a
peer of the realm (a former furniture dealer and picture broker and for
that matter money-lender) saying that Bolter’s was filthy. Such praise
was praise indeed. He remembered that ladies did not go to Bolter’s.
He remembered talk of a dinner at Bolter’s just before a little group
of men had gone out in his first year to India, and now that he was
sitting in Bolter’s he felt duly impressed. He knew that Jimmy’s people
were “in” what he could never be “in.” Melba was more of an enigma to
him, but anyhow Melba was thick with Jimmy and Jimmy’s lot. In other
words, he knew that Jimmy and Melba were both on the right side of
a certain line which runs round very definitely through the core of
English society and encloses a very narrow central space; but, on the
other hand, he knew—he had the best of reasons for knowing—that they
were not exactly _flush_. He knew they _couldn’t_ be flush because
whereas he, Leonidas, had in the past won £1,800 off them at cards—and
spent it—they, Jimmy and Melba, had won £2,000 off _him_—and had never
got it! For his father (unlike _their_ fathers) had refused to pay. But
Mr. Brassington, Jun., was not the man to introduce a subject of that
kind. It is a subject of the kind that jars on toffs, unless indeed the
toffs themselves introduce it. And on this particular occasion they did.
Mr. Brassington, Jun., had drunk reasonably, Jimmy largely, Melba
immoderately. They had come to that one of the many courses which
consisted in a very small frozen bird, when Jimmy playfully threw a
bone at his guest (who ducked and missed it), and followed his action
with the words—
“You didn’t think we should run to this, did you, Booby?”
“Well,” said Algernon Sawby Leonidas Brassington delicately, “of
course, I knew that you wanted me to settle, and God knows I tried.”
“That’s all right,” said Melba, in a voice still clear and articulate.
“Your father’s paid.”
And having said this, he burst into somewhat unreasoning laughter,
choked, and drank a large tumbler of wine to cure his choking.
Booby was bewildered.
“My ... father’s ... paid?” he said slowly.
Jimmy nodded to confirm the great truth.
“Touched last week, Booby,” he said.
“Where?” wondered the astonished Booby.
“At the bank,” said Melba, and Jimmy added, “Oddly enough.”
“Not the whole thing?” said Booby, his face changing in expression as
he said it.
Melba’s mouth being full for the moment, he did no more than lift up
his eyes, nod and grunt. Jimmy, who was occupied in a swill, put down
the inebriant, drew a breath, and said—
“The whole boodle!”
It was perhaps well for the two young men principally concerned that
they were rapidly getting drunk, for in early youth the vice of
drunkenness, so fatal to maturer years, will often lead to astonishing
virtues. And long before they came to the cheese Jimmy and Melba had
discovered that they must talk of the matter seriously. Indeed, Jimmy
verged on the sentimental, Melba upon the stupidly pompous, as the
ordeal approached. It was over coffee that they faced it, and brandy
was their aid.
“Look here, Booby,” said Jimmy, after he and Melba had spent a silent
five minutes mentally egging each other on, “you ought to know the
truth, it’s only fair. We _made_ your father sign.”
Algernon Sawby Leonidas Brassington had a sudden retrospective vision
of his father, and he could make no sense out of the words.
“You _made_ him?” he said, flushing a little. “Cursed if you did! He’d
make _you_ more like!”
An illogical phrase enough, but one sufficiently full of meaning.
“Possibly,” said Jimmy, with the insulted dignity of a person who has
dined. “If you don’t want to hear about it you needn’t.”
“Shut up, Jimmy,” said Melba diplomatically.
He tried to make his high and now uncertain voice kind as he went on to
the younger Mr. Brassington—
“You see, Booby, it’s like this. Th’ was a lillel comprulsion—y’ know.
There was scene, wasn’t there, Jimmy?”
“Oh, yes, scene right ’nough!” said Jimmy.
“Well, anyhow, he gave us the cheque, and then, you know, we had to
prevent its getting out—his getting out, I mean.”
“I don’t understand a word you say,” said Booby.
“No,” said Jimmy too thoughtfully, glaring at the fire. “We were ’fraid
that.”
“If there’s a row, Booby,” said Melba affectionately, “if there’s real
row, y’ ought to be warned. That’s what we think.”
“That’s it,” said Jimmy.
Then under the impression that their ordeal was over and their duty
done, the two conspirators lapsed into silence. It was a silence which
might have lasted some minutes.
It was broken by the ringing of an electric bell in the corridor
outside, a sound muffled by the door, and the German reservist whom his
unscrupulous Government secretly paid to wait at table at Bolter’s,
came in to tell Mr. McAuley that he was wanted at the telephone.
The god Bacchus, when he came out of Asia with those panthers of his,
came into Europe the master of many moods, and Jimmy was a young man
careless and content as he lifted the receiver. He heard a clear and
rather high voice ask him whether he was Mr. McAuley. It was a voice
he seemed to remember. It was the voice of Mr. Kirby.
[Illustration: _Mr. McAuley was wanted at the telephone._]
“I asked them at home where you were,” said the voice, “and they told
me I should find you if I rang up Bolter’s.”
“Thank you,” said Jimmy too loudly—but he had no cause for gratitude!
“I am talking from Ormeston,” said the voice; “my name is Kirby.”
Jimmy’s mood began to change.
“I’ve asked for six minutes,” the voice went on, “but I may as well
tell you at once. It’s about that house you took—Greystones. Now, Mr.
McAuley, in your own interests, would you be good enough to take the
10.15 from King’s Cross. I’ll meet you at Ormeston Station.”
The very brief heroic mood not unknown to the god Bacchus now rushed
over Jimmy.
“Upon my word, sir!” he began. Then in the twinkling of an eye another
mood—one of alarm—prompted him to add, “Is it anything really urgent?”
And his third mood was panic.
Good Lord! He could imagine one or two terribly urgent things in
connection with Greystones. What if old Brassington were lying there
dead? What if he had exploded, and told the police in spite of his own
shame?
“Mr. Kirby!” he cried in a changed voice into the little black cup,
“Mr. Kirby!” The wire was dumb, there was only the buzzing and spitting
and little fiendish snarls which the marvellous invention has added to
modern life. “Mr. Kirby!” said Jimmy still higher and for the third
time, but it was a woman’s voice that answered—
“Another three minutes?” it said snappishly, and then the wire went
dead.
Twice more and once again did poor Jimmy implore the voice, but Mr.
Kirby knew the nature of man, especially of youthful man. He had not
attempted to persuade. In the study of his own house at Ormeston he had
already replaced the receiver, and was taking down from the book-shelf
a volume of Molière. He loved that author, and there was a good two
hours before he need meet the night mail at the station.
After a quarrel with the clerk-in-charge and sundry foolish troubles,
Jimmy abandoned the machine. He came back to his two companions. They
were in the thick of some silly vinous argument or other. They looked
up at his entry, and they saw that he was changed.
“What’s matter, Jimmy?” said Melba.
“I—I—I want to talk to you,” said Jimmy nervously, and singularly
sober. He looked at Booby.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” said Booby.
“Well, but we do,” said Jimmy ruefully, and he drew Melba into the
passage outside.
“There’s a row up,” he said.
“What about?” said Melba.
“Old Brassington,” said Jimmy in a nervous whisper.
“Peached? He wouldn’t dare,” whispered Melba incredulously.
“Why not?” said Jimmy, agonised. “I’ve been called, you know. Called
up from Ormeston. Urgently. By the lawyer. There’s a thing in the law,
Melba, called ‘duress.’”
“Oh, rats! He can’t prove anything!”
“Damn it all!” said Jimmy, “we don’t know that.”
“He wouldn’t make a fool of himself,” continued Melba uncomfortably.
“You can’t ever tell with these old jossers. Anyhow, that lawyer chap
my father knows, the man we got the house from, has rung me up, and
I’ve got to go and see him in Ormeston to-night by the 10.15.”
Melba said nothing.
“Would you go?” continued Jimmy, seeking valiance from his friend.
“No,” said Melba stoutly.
“’Tisn’t you that have got to do it,” said Jimmy bitterly. “’Twas me he
called up. I signed, you know, Melba. It’s _my_ name they’ve got.”
“If it was me——” began Melba.
“’Tisn’t you,” said Jimmy rudely, and as he said it Booby came out.
“If you two are going to talk business,” he said suspiciously, “I’m
going home to my rooms.”
“Fact is, Booby,” said Jimmy, “I’ve just heard about my aunt; she’s
dying.”
Booby was concerned.
“Oh, dear!” he said.
“Yes,” went on Jimmy rapidly, bringing out his watch, and seeing that
it lacked only seven minutes of ten, “it’s bad, very bad! I can’t wait.”
He thrust himself into his coat, looked over his shoulder as he ran
down the stairs, and with the very disconcerting cry, “Keep Booby!”
hurled at his companion, he sought the street and a taxi, and was
half-way to King’s Cross before he remembered that Melba must pay for
the dinner. But the thought was small comfort compared with the trial
that was before him. And for an hour and three-quarters as the train
raced up north to the Midlands he comforted himself less and less at
the prospect.