I
A man whose uncle jerks him away from London as if he were picking a
winkle out of its shell with a pin and keeps him for months and months
immured in the heart of Worcestershire must inevitably lose touch
with the swiftly-changing kaleidoscope of metropolitan night-life.
Nothing in a big city fluctuates more rapidly than the status of its
supper-dancing clubs; and Hugo, had he still been a lad-about-town in
good standing, would have been aware that recently the Mustard Spoon
had gone down a good deal in the social scale. Society had migrated to
other, newer institutions, leaving it to become the haunt of the lesser
ornaments of the stage and the Portuguese, the Argentines and the
Greeks.
To John Carroll, however, as he stood waiting in the lobby, the place
seemed sufficiently gay and glittering. Nearly a year had passed since
his last visit to London: and the Mustard Spoon rather impressed him.
An unseen orchestra was playing with extraordinary vigour, and from
time to time ornate persons of both sexes drifted past him into the
brightly lighted supper room. Where an established connoisseur of
night clubs would have pursed his lips and shaken his head, John was
conscious only of feeling decidedly uplifted and exhilarated.
But then he was going to see Pat again, and that was enough to
stimulate any man.
She arrived unexpectedly, at a moment when he had taken his eye off the
door to direct it in mild astonishment at a lady in an orange dress
who, doubtless with the best motives, had dyed her hair crimson and was
wearing a black-rimmed monocle. So absorbed was he with this spectacle
that he did not see her enter, and was only made aware of her presence
when there spoke from behind him a clear little voice which, even when
it was laughing at you, always seemed to have in it something of the
song of larks on summer mornings and winds whispering across the fields
in spring.
"Hullo, Johnnie."
The hair, scarlet though it was, lost its power to attract. The appeal
of the monocle waned. John spun round.
"Pat!"
She was looking lovelier than ever. That was the thing that first
presented itself to John's notice. If anybody had told him that Pat
could possibly be prettier than the image of her which he had been
carrying about with him all these months, he would not have believed
him. But so it was. Some sort of a female with plucked eyebrows and
a painted face had just come in, and she might have been put there
expressly for purposes of comparison. She made Pat seem so healthy,
so wholesome, such a thing of the open air and the clean sunshine,
so pre-eminently fit. She looked as if she had spent her time at Le
Touquet playing thirty-six holes of golf a day.
"Pat!" cried John, and something seemed to catch at his throat. There
was a mist in front of his eyes. His heart was thumping madly.
She extended her hand composedly. In her this meeting after long
separation had apparently stirred no depths. Her demeanour was
friendly, but matter-of-fact.
"Well, Johnnie. How nice to see you again. You're looking very brown
and rural. Where's Hugo?"
It takes two to hoist a conversation to an emotional peak. John choked,
and became calmer.
"He'll be here soon, I expect," he said.
Pat laughed indulgently.
"Hugo'll be late for his own funeral--if he ever gets to it. He said
eleven-fifteen and it's twenty-five to twelve. Have you got a table?"
"Not yet."
"Why not?"
"I'm not a member," said John, and saw in her eyes the scorn which
women reserve for male friends and relations who show themselves
wanting in enterprise. "You have to be a member," he said, chafing
under the look.
"I don't," said Pat with decision. "If you think I'm going to wait all
night for old Hugo in a small lobby with six draughts whizzing through
it, correct that impression. Go and find the head waiter and get a
table while I leave my cloak. Back in a minute."
John's emotions as he approached the head waiter rather resembled
those with which years ago he had once walked up to a bull in a field,
Pat having requested him to do so because she wanted to know if bulls
in fields really are fierce or if the artists who depict them in
comic papers are simply trying to be funny. He felt embarrassed and
diffident. The head waiter was a large, stout, smooth-faced man who
would have been better for a couple of weeks at Healthward Ho, and he
gave the impression of having disliked John from the start.
John said it was a nice evening. The head waiter did not seem to
believe him.
"Has--er--has Mr. Carmody booked a table?" asked John.
"No, monsieur."
"I'm meeting him here to-night."
The head waiter appeared uninterested. He began to talk to an underling
in rapid French. John, feeling more than ever an intruder, took
advantage of a lull in the conversation to make another attempt.
"I wonder.... Perhaps.... Can you give me a table?"
Most of the head waiter's eyes were concealed by the upper strata of
his cheeks, but there was enough of them left visible to allow him to
look at John as if he were something unpleasant that had come to light
in a portion of salad.
"Monsieur is a member?"
"Er--no."
"If you will please wait in the lobby, thank you."
"But I was wondering...."
"If you will wait in the lobby, please," said the head waiter, and,
dismissing John from the scheme of things, became gruesomely obsequious
to an elderly man with diamond studs, no hair, an authoritative
manner, and a lady in pink. He waddled before them into the supper
room, and Pat reappeared.
"Got that table?"
"I'm afraid not. He says...."
"Oh, Johnnie, you are maddening. Why are you so helpless?"
Women are unjust in these matters. When a man comes into a night club
of which he is not a member and asks for a table he feels that he is
butting in, and naturally is not at his best. This is not helplessness,
it is fineness of soul. But women won't see that.
"I'm awfully sorry."
The head waiter had returned, and was either doing sums or drawing
caricatures on a large pad chained to a desk. He seemed so much the
artist absorbed in his work that John would not have dreamed of
venturing to interrupt him. Pat had no such delicacy.
"I want a table, please," said Pat.
"Madame is a member?"
"A table, please. A nice, large one. I like plenty of room. And when
Mr. Carmody arrives tell him that Miss Wyvern and Mr. Carroll are
inside."
"Very good, madame. Certainly, madame. This way, madame."
Just as simple as that! John, making a physically impressive but
spiritually negligible tail to the procession, wondered, as he crossed
the polished floor, how Pat did these things. It was not as if she
were one of those massive, imperious women whom you would naturally
expect to quell head waiters with a glance. She was no Cleopatra, no
Catherine of Russia--just a slim, slight girl with a tip-tilted nose.
And yet she had taken this formidable magnifico in her stride, kicked
him lightly in the face, and passed on. He sat down, thrilled with a
worshipping admiration.
Pat, as always happened after one of her little spurts of irritability,
was apologetic.
"Sorry I bit your head off, Johnnie," she said. "It was a shame, after
you had come all this way just to see an old friend. But it makes me so
angry when you're meek and sheep-y and let people trample on you. Still
I suppose it's not your fault." She smiled across at him. "You always
were a slow, good-natured old thing, weren't you, like one of those big
dogs that come and bump their head on your lap and snuffle. Poor old
Johnnie!"
John felt depressed. The picture she had conjured up was not a
flattering one; and, as for this "Poor Old Johnnie!" stuff, it struck
just the note he most wanted to avoid. If one thing is certain in the
relations of the sexes, it is that the Poor Old Johnnies of this world
get nowhere. But before he could put any of these feelings into words
Pat had changed the subject.
"Johnnie," she said, "what's all this trouble between your uncle and
Father? I had a letter from Father a couple of weeks ago, and as far as
I could make out Mr. Carmody seems to have been trying to murder him.
What's it all about?"
Not so eloquently, nor with such a wealth of imagery as Colonel Wyvern
had employed in sketching out the details of the affair of the dynamite
outrage for the benefit of Chas. Bywater, Chemist, John answered the
question.
"Good heavens!" said Pat.
"I--I hope...." said John.
"What do you hope?"
"Well, I--I hope it's not going to make any difference?"
"Difference? How do you mean?"
"Between us. Between you and me, Pat."
"What sort of difference?"
John had his cue.
"Pat, darling, in all these years we've known one another haven't you
ever guessed that I've been falling more and more in love with you
every minute? I can't remember a time when I didn't love you. I loved
you as a kid in short skirts and a blue jersey. I loved you when you
came back from that school of yours, looking like a princess. And
I love you now more than I have ever loved you. I worship you, Pat
darling. You're the whole world to me, just the one thing that matters
the least little bit. And don't you try to start laughing at me again
now, because I've made up my mind that, whatever else you laugh at,
you've got to take me seriously. I may have been Poor Old Johnnie in
the past, but the time has come when you've got to forget all that. I
mean business. You're going to marry me, and the sooner you make up
your mind to it, the better."
That was what John had intended to say. What he actually did say was
something briefer and altogether less effective.
"Oh, I don't know," said John.
"Do you mean you're afraid I'm going to stop being friends with you
just because my father and your uncle have had a quarrel?"
"Yes," said John. It was not quite all he had meant, but it gave the
general idea.
"What a weird notion! After all these years? Good heavens, no. I'm much
too fond of you, Johnnie."
Once more John had his cue. And this time he was determined that he
would not neglect it. He stiffened his courage. He cleared his throat.
He clutched the tablecloth.
"Pat...."
"Oh, there's Hugo at last," she said, looking past him. "And about
time. I'm starving. Hullo! Who are the people he's got with him? Do you
know them?"
John heaved a silent sigh. Yes, he could have counted on Hugo arriving
at just this moment. He turned, and perceived that unnecessary young
man crossing the floor. With him were a middle-aged man and a younger
and extremely dashing-looking girl. They were complete strangers to
John.
II
Hugo pranced buoyantly up to the table, looking like the Laughing
Cavalier, clean-shaved.
He was wearing the unmistakable air of a man who has been to a
welter-weight boxing contest at the Albert Hall and backed the winner.
"Hullo, Pat," he said jovially. "Hullo, John. Sorry I'm late. Mitt--if
that is the word I want--my dear old friend ... I've forgotten your
name," he added, turning to his companion.
"Molloy, brother. Thomas G. Molloy."
Hugo's dear old friend spoke in a deep, rich voice, well in keeping
with his appearance. He was a fine, handsome, open-faced person in the
early forties, with grizzled hair that swept in a wave off a massive
forehead. His nationality was plainly American, and his aspect vaguely
senatorial.
"Molloy," said Hugo, "Thomas G. and daughter. This is Miss Wyvern. And
this is my cousin, Mr. Carroll. And now," said Hugo, relieved at having
finished with the introductions, "let's try to get a bit of supper."
The service at the Mustard Spoon is not what it was; but by the
simple process of clutching at the coat tails of a passing waiter and
holding him till he consented to talk business Hugo contrived to get
fairly rapid action. Then, after an interval of the rather difficult
conversation which usually marks the first stages of this sort of
party, the orchestra burst into a sudden torrent of what it evidently
mistook for music and Thomas G. Molloy rose and led Miss Molloy out on
to the floor. He danced a little stiffly, but he knew how to give the
elbow and he appeared, as the crowd engulfed him, to be holding his own.
"Who are your friends, Hugo?" asked Pat.
"Thos. G...."
"Yes, I know. But who are they?"
"Well, there," said Hugo, "you rather have me. I sat next to Thos. at
the fight, and I rather took to the fellow. He seemed to me a man full
of noble qualities, including a looney idea that Eustace Rodd was some
good as a boxer. He actually offered to give me three to one, and I
cleaned up substantially at the end of the seventh round. After that, I
naturally couldn't very well get out of giving the man supper. And as
he had promised to take his daughter out to-night, I said bring her
along. You don't mind?"
"Of course not. Though it would have been cosier, just we three."
"Quite true. But never forget that, if it had not been for this Thos.,
you would not be getting the jolly good supper which I have now ample
funds to supply. You may look on Thos. as practically the Founder of
the Feast." He cast a wary eye at his cousin, who was leaning back in
his chair with the abstracted look of one in deep thought. "Has old
John said anything to you yet?"
"John? What do you mean? What about?"
"Oh, things in general. Come and dance this. I want to have a very
earnest word with you, young Pat. Big things are in the wind."
"You're very mysterious."
"Ah!" said Hugo.
Left alone at the table with nothing to entertain him but his
thoughts, John came almost immediately to the conclusion that his
first verdict on the Mustard Spoon had been an erroneous one. Looking
at it superficially, he had mistaken it for rather an attractive
place: but now, with maturer judgment, he saw it for what it was--a
blot on a great city. It was places like the Mustard Spoon that made
a man despair of progress. He disliked the clientèle. He disliked the
head waiter. He disliked the orchestra. The clientèle was flashy and
offensive and, as regarded the male element of it, far too given to the
use of hair oil. The head waiter was a fat parasite who needed kicking.
And, as for Ben Baermann's Collegiate Buddies, he resented the fact
that they were being paid for making the sort of noises which he,
when a small boy, had produced--for fun and with no thought of sordid
gain--on a comb with a bit of tissue paper over it.
He was brooding on the scene in much the same spirit of captious
criticism as that in which Lot had once regarded the Cities of the
Plain, when the Collegiate Buddies suddenly suspended their cacophony,
and he saw Pat and Hugo coming back to the table.
But the Buddies had only been crouching, the better to spring. A moment
later they were at it again, and Pat, pausing, looked expectantly at
Hugo.
Hugo shook his head.
"I've just seen Ronnie Fish up in the balcony," he said. "I positively
must go and confer with him. I have urgent matters to discuss with the
old leper. Sit down and talk to John. You've got lots to talk about.
See you anon. And, if there's anything you want, order it, paying no
attention whatever to the prices in the right-hand column. Thanks to
Thos., I'm made of money to-night."
Hugo melted away: Pat sat down: and John, with another abrupt change
of mood, decided that he had misjudged the Mustard Spoon. A very
jolly little place, when you looked at it in the proper spirit. Nice
people, a distinctly lovable head waiter, and as attractive a lot of
musicians as he remembered ever to have seen. He turned to Pat, to seek
her confirmation of these views, and, meeting her gaze, experienced a
rather severe shock. Her eyes seemed to have frozen over. They were
cold and hard. Taken in conjunction with the fact that her nose turned
up a little at the end, they gave her face a scornful and contemptuous
look.
"Hullo!" he said, alarmed. "What's the matter?"
"Nothing."
"Why are you looking like that?"
"Like what?"
"Well...."
John had little ability as a word painter. He could not on the spur of
the moment give anything in the nature of detailed description of the
way Pat was looking. He only knew he did not like it.
"I suppose you expected me to look at you 'with eyes overrunning with
laughter'?"
"Eh?"
"'Archly the maiden smiled, and with eyes overrunning with laughter
said in a tremulous voice, "Why don't you speak for yourself, John?"'"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't you know _The Courtship of Miles Standish_? I thought that
must have been where you got the idea. I had to learn chunks of it at
school, and even at that tender age I always thought Miles Standish a
perfect goop. 'If the great captain of Plymouth is so very eager to wed
me, Why does he not come himself and take the trouble to woo me? If I
am not worth the wooing, I surely am not worth the winning.' And yards
more of it. I knew it by heart once. Well, what I want to know is, do
you expect my answer direct, or would you prefer that I communicated
with your agent?"
"I don't understand."
"Don't you? No? Really?"
"Pat, what's the matter?"
"Oh, nothing much. When we were dancing just now, Hugo proposed to me."
A cold hand clutched at John's heart. He had not a high opinion of his
cousin's fascinations, but the thought of anybody but himself proposing
to Pat was a revolting one.
"Oh, did he?'
"Yes, he did. For you."
"For me? How do you mean, for me?"
"I'm telling you. He asked me to marry you. And very eloquent he was,
too. All the people who heard him--and there must have been dozens who
did--were much impressed."
She stopped: and, as far as such a thing is possible at the Mustard
Spoon when Baermann's Collegiate Buddies are giving an encore of "My
Sweetie Is A Wow," there was silence. Emotion of one sort or another
had deprived Pat of words: and, as for John, he was feeling as if he
could never speak again.
He had flushed a dusky red, and his collar had suddenly become so tight
that he had all the sensations of a man who is being garrotted. And so
powerfully had the shock of this fearful revelation affected his mind
that his only coherent thought was a desire to follow Hugo up to the
balcony, tear him limb from limb, and scatter the fragments onto the
tables below.
Pat was the first to find speech. She spoke quickly, stormily.
"I can't understand you, Johnnie. You never used to be such a
jellyfish. You did have a mind of your own once. But now ... I believe
it's living at Rudge all the time that has done it. You've got lazy
and flabby. It's turned you into a vegetable. You just loaf about and
go on and on, year after year, having your three fat meals a day and
your comfortable rooms and your hot-water bottle at night...."
"I don't!" cried John, stung by this monstrous charge from the coma
which was gripping him.
"Well, bed socks, then," amended Pat. "You've just let yourself be
cosseted and pampered and kept in comfort till the You that used to be
there has withered away and you've gone blah. My dear, good Johnnie,"
said Pat vehemently, riding over his attempt at speech and glaring at
him above a small, perky nose whose tip had begun to quiver even as it
had always done when she lost her temper as a child. "My poor, idiotic,
flabby, fat-headed Johnnie, do you seriously expect a girl to want to
marry a man who hasn't the common, elementary pluck to propose to her
for himself and has to get someone else to do it for him?"
"I didn't!"
"You did."
"I tell you I did not."
"You mean you never asked Hugo to sound me out?"
"Of course not. Hugo is a meddling, officious idiot, and if I'd got him
here now, I'd wring his neck."
He scowled up at the balcony. Hugo, who happened to be looking down at
the moment, beamed encouragingly and waved a friendly hand as if to
assure his cousin that he was with him in spirit. Silence, tempered
by the low wailing of the Buddy in charge of the saxophone and the
unpleasant howling of his college friends, who had just begun to sing
the chorus, fell once more.
"This opens up a new line of thought," said Pat at length. "Our Miss
Wyvern appears to have got the wires crossed," she looked at him
meditatively. "It's funny. Hugo seemed so convinced about the way you
felt."
John's collar tightened up another half inch, but he managed to get his
vocal chords working.
"He was quite right about the way I felt."
"You mean.... Really?"
"Yes."
"You mean you're ... fond of me?"
"Yes."
"But, Johnnie!"
"Damn it, are you blind?" cried John, savage from shame and the agony
of harrowed feelings, not to mention a collar which appeared to have
been made for a man half his size. "Can't you see? Don't you know I've
always loved you? Yes, even when you were a kid."
"But, Johnnie, Johnnie, Johnnie!" Distress was making Pat's silver
voice almost squeaky. "You can't have done. I was a horrible kid. I did
nothing but bully you from morning till night."
"I liked it."
"But how can you want me to marry you? We know each other too well.
I've always looked on you as a sort of brother."
There are words in the language which are like a knell. Keats
considered "forlorn" one of them. John Carroll was of opinion that
"brother" was a second.
"Oh, I know. I was a fool. I knew you would simply laugh at me."
Pat's eyes were misty. The tip of her nose no longer quivered, but now
it was her mouth that did so. She reached out across the table and her
hand rested on his for a brief instant.
"I'm not laughing at you, Johnnie, you--you chump. What would I want to
laugh at you for? I'm much nearer crying. I'd do anything in the world
rather than hurt you. You must know that. You're the dearest old thing
that ever lived. There's no one on earth I'm fonder of." She paused.
"But this ... it--it simply isn't on the board."
She was looking at him, furtively, taking advantage of the fact
that his face was turned away and his eyes fixed on the broad,
swallow-tailed back of Mr. Ben Baermann. It was odd, she felt, all very
odd. If she had been asked to describe the sort of man whom one of
these days she hoped to marry, the description, curiously enough, would
not have been at all unlike dear old Johnnie. He had the right clean,
fit look--she knew she could never give a thought to anything but an
outdoor man--and the straightness and honesty and kindliness which she
had come, after moving for some years in a world where they were rare,
to look upon as the highest of masculine qualities. Nobody could have
been farther than John from the little, black-moustached dancing-man
type which was her particular aversion, and yet ... well, the idea of
becoming his wife was just simply too absurd and that was all there was
to it.
But why? What, then, was wrong with Johnnie? Simply, she felt, the
fact that he was Johnnie. Marriage, as she had always envisaged it,
was an adventure. Poor cosy, solid old Johnnie would have to display
quite another side of himself, if such a side existed, before she could
regard it as an adventure to marry him.
"That man," said John, indicating Mr. Baermann, "looks like a Jewish
black beetle."
Pat was relieved. If by this remark he was indicating that he wished
the recent episode to be taken as concluded, she was very willing to
oblige him.
"Doesn't he?" she said. "I don't know where they can have dug him up
from. The last time I was here, a year ago, they had another band, a
much better one. I think this place has gone down. I don't like the
look of some of these people. What do you think of Hugo's friends?"
"They seem all right." John cast a moody eye at Miss Molloy, a
prismatic vision seen fitfully through the crowd. She was laughing, and
showing in the process teeth of a flashing whiteness. "The girl's the
prettiest girl I've seen for a long time."
Pat gave an imperceptible start. She was suddenly aware of a feeling
which was remarkably like uneasiness. It lurked at the back of her
consciousness like a small formless cloud.
"Oh!" she said.
Yes, the feeling was uneasiness. Any other man who at such a moment had
said those words she would have suspected of a desire to pique her, to
stir her interest by a rather obviously assumed admiration of another.
But not John. He was much too honest. If Johnnie said a thing, he meant
it.
A quick flicker of concern passed through Pat. She was always candid
with herself, and she knew quite well that, though she did not want
to marry him, she regarded John as essentially a piece of personal
property. If he had fallen in love with her, that was, of course, a
pity: but it would, she realized, be considerably more of a pity if he
ever fell in love with someone else. A Johnnie gone out of her life and
assimilated into that of another girl would leave a frightful gap. The
Mustard Spoon was one of those stuffy, overheated places, but, as she
meditated upon this possibility, Pat shivered.
"Oh!" she said.
The music stopped. The floor emptied. Mr. Molloy and his daughter
returned to the table. Hugo remained up in the gallery, in earnest
conversation with his old friend, Mr. Fish.
III
Ronald Overbury Fish was a pink-faced young man of small stature and
extraordinary solemnity. He had been at school with Hugo and also at
the university. Eton was entitled to point with pride at both of them,
and only had itself to blame if it failed to do so. The same remark
applies to Trinity College, Cambridge. From earliest days Hugo had
always entertained for R. O. Fish an intense and lively admiration,
and the thought of being compelled to let his old friend down in this
matter of the Hot Spot was doing much to mar an otherwise jovial
evening.
"I'm most frightfully sorry, Ronnie, old thing," he said immediately
the first greetings were over. "I sounded the aged relative this
afternoon about that business, and there's nothing doing."
"No hope?"
"None."
Ronnie Fish surveyed the dancers below with a grave eye. He removed the
stub of his cigarette from its eleven-inch holder, and recharged that
impressive instrument.
"Did you reason with the old pest?"
"You can't reason with my uncle Lester."
"I could," said Mr. Fish.
Hugo did not doubt this. Ronnie, in his opinion, was capable of any
feat.
"Yes, but the only trouble is," he explained, "you would have to do it
at long range. I asked if I might invite you down to Rudge and he would
have none of it."
Ronnie Fish relapsed into silence. It seemed to Hugo, watching him,
that that great brain was busy, but upon what train of thought he could
not conjecture.
"Who are those people you're with?" he asked at length.
"The big chap with the fair hair is my cousin John. The girl in green
is Pat Wyvern. She lives near us."
"And the others? Who's the stately looking bird with the brushed-back
hair who has every appearance of being just about to address a
gathering of constituents on some important point of policy?"
"That's a fellow named Molloy. Thos. G. I met him at the fight. He's an
American."
"He looks prosperous."
"He is not so prosperous, though, as he was before the fight started. I
took thirty quid off him."
"Your uncle, from what you have told me, is pretty keen on rich men,
isn't he?"
"All over them."
"Then the thing's simple," said Ronnie Fish. "Invite this Mulcahy or
whatever his name is to Rudge, and invite me at the same time. You'll
find that in the ecstasy of getting a millionaire on the premises your
uncle will forget to make a fuss about my coming. And once I am in I
can talk this business over with him. I'll guarantee that if I can get
an uninterrupted half hour with the old boy I can easily make him see
the light."
A rush of admiration for his friend's outstanding brain held Hugo
silent for a moment. The bold simplicity of the move thrilled him.
"What it amounts to," continued Ronnie Fish, "is that your uncle is
endeavouring to do you out of a vast fortune. I tell you, the Hot Spot
is going to be a gold mine. To all practical intents and purposes he is
just as good as trying to take thousands of pounds out of your pocket.
I shall point this out to him, and I shall be surprised if I can't put
the thing through. When would you like me to come down?"
"Ronnie," said Hugo, "this is absolute genius." He hesitated. He
had no wish to discourage his friend, but he desired to be fair and
above-board. "There's just one thing. Would you have any objection to
performing at the village concert?"
"I should enjoy it."
"They're sure to rope you in. I thought you and I might do the Quarrel
Scene from _Julius Cæsar_ again."
"Excellent."
"And this time," said Hugo generously, "you can be Brutus."
"No, no," said Ronnie, moved.
"Yes, yes."
"Very well. Then fix things up with this American bloke, and leave the
rest to me. Shall I like your uncle?"
"No," said Hugo confidently.
"Ah well," said Mr. Fish equably, "I don't for a moment suppose he'll
like me."
IV
The respite afforded to their patrons' ear drums by the sudden
cessation of activity on the part of the Buddies proved of brief
duration. Men like these ex-collegians, who have really got the
saxophone virus into their systems, seldom have long lucid intervals
between the attacks. Very soon they were at it again, and Mr. Molloy,
rising, led Pat gallantly out onto the floor. His daughter, following
them with a bright eye as she busied herself with a lip stick, laughed
amusedly.
"She little knows!"
John, like Pat a short while before, had fallen into a train of
thought. From this he now woke with a start to the realization that he
was alone with this girl and presumably expected by her to make some
effort at being entertaining.
"I beg your pardon?" he said.
Even had he been less preoccupied, he would have found small pleasure
in this tête-à-tête. Miss Molloy--her father addressed her as
Dolly--belonged to the type of girl in whose society a diffident man
is seldom completely at ease. There hung about her like an aura a sort
of hard glitter. Her challenging eyes were of a bright hazel--beautiful
but intimidating. She looked supremely sure of herself.
"I was saying," she explained, "that your Girl Friend little knows what
she has taken on, going out to step with Soapy."
"Soapy?"
It seemed to John that his companion had momentarily the appearance of
being a little confused.
"My father, I mean," she said quickly. "I call him Soapy."
"Oh?" said John. He supposed the practice of calling a father by a
nickname in preference to the more old-fashioned style of address was
the latest fad of the Modern Girl.
"Soapy," said Miss Molloy, developing her theme, "is full of Sex
Appeal, but he has two left feet." She emitted another little gurgle of
laughter. "There! Would you just look at him now!"
John was sorry to appear dull, but, eyeing Mr. Molloy as requested, he
could not see that he was doing anything wrong. On the contrary, for
one past his first youth, the man seemed to him enviably efficient.
"I'm afraid I don't know anything about dancing," he said
apologetically.
"At that, you're ahead of Soapy. He doesn't even suspect anything.
Whenever I get into the ring with him and come out alive I reckon I've
broke even. It isn't so much his dancing on my feet that I mind--it's
the way he jumps on and off that slays me. Don't you ever hoof?"
"Oh, yes. Sometimes. A little."
"Well, come and do your stuff, then. I can't sit still while they're
playing that thing."
John rose reluctantly. Their brief conversation had made it clear to
him that in the matter of dancing this was a girl of high ideals, and
he feared he was about to disappoint her. If she regarded with derision
a quite adequate performer like Mr. Molloy, she was obviously no
partner for himself. But there was no means of avoiding the ordeal. He
backed her out into mid-stream, hoping for the best.
Providence was in a kindly mood. By now the floor had become so
congested that skill was at a discount. Even the sallow youths with
the marcelled hair and the india-rubber legs were finding little scope
to do anything but shuffle. This suited John's individual style. He,
too, shuffled: and, playing for safety, found that he was getting along
better than he could have expected. His tension relaxed, and he became
conversational.
"Do you often come to this place?" he asked, resting his partner
against the slim back of one of the marcelled-hair brigade who, like
himself, had been held up in the traffic block.
"I've never been here before. And it'll be a long time before I come
again. A more gosh-awful aggregation of yells for help, than this gang
of whippets," said Miss Molloy, surveying the company with a critical
eye, "I've never seen. Look at that dame with the eyeglass."
"Rather weird," agreed John.
"A cry for succour," said Miss Molloy severely. "And why, when you can
buy insecticide at any drug store, people let these boys with the shiny
hair go around loose beats me."
John began to warm to this girl. At first, he had feared that he and
she could have little in common. But this remark told him that on
certain subjects, at any rate, they saw eye to eye. He, too, had felt
an idle wonder that somebody did not do something about these youths.
The Buddies had stopped playing: and John, glowing with the strange
new spirit of confidence which had come to him, clapped loudly for an
encore.
But the Buddies were not responsive. Hitherto, a mere tapping of the
palms had been enough to urge them to renewed epileptic spasms; but now
an odd lethargy seemed to be upon them, as if they had been taking some
kind of treatment for their complaint. They were sitting, instruments
in hand, gazing in a spellbound manner at a square-jawed person in
ill-fitting dress clothes who had appeared at the side of Mr. Baermann.
And the next moment, there shattered the stillness a sudden voice that
breathed Vine Street in every syllable.
"Ladies and gentlemen," boomed the voice, proceeding, as nearly as John
could ascertain, from close to the main entrance, "will you kindly take
your seats."
"Pinched!" breathed Miss Molloy in his ear. "Couldn't you have betted
on it!"
Her diagnosis was plainly correct. In response to the request, most of
those on the floor had returned to their tables, moving with the dull
resignation of people to whom this sort of thing has happened before:
and, enjoying now a wider range of vision, John was able to see that
the room had become magically filled with replicas of the sturdy figure
standing beside Mr. Baermann. They were moving about among the tables,
examining with an offensive interest the bottles that stood thereon and
jotting down epigrams on the subject in little notebooks. Time flies
on swift wings in a haunt of pleasure like the Mustard Spoon, and it
was evident that the management, having forgotten to look at its watch,
had committed the amiable error of serving alcoholic refreshments after
prohibited hours.
"I might have known," said Miss Molloy querulously, "that something of
the sort was bound to break loose in a dump like this."
John, like all dwellers in the country as opposed to the wicked
inhabitants of cities, was a law-abiding man. Left to himself, he would
have followed the crowd and made for his table, there to give his name
and address in the sheepish undertone customary on these occasions. But
he was not left to himself. A moment later it had become plain that the
dashing exterior of Miss Molloy was a true index to the soul within.
She grasped his arm and pulled him commandingly.
"Snap into it!" said Miss Molloy.
The "it" into which she desired him to snap was apparently a small
door that led to the club's service quarters. It was the one strategic
point not yet guarded by a stocky figure with large feet and an eye
like a gimlet. To it his companion went like a homing rabbit, dragging
him with her. They passed through; and John, with a resourcefulness of
which he was surprised to find himself capable, turned the key in the
lock.
"Smooth!" said Miss Molloy approvingly. "Nice work! That'll hold them
for a while."
It did. From the other side of the door there proceeded a confused
shouting, and somebody twisted the handle with a good deal of
petulance, but the Law had apparently forgotten to bring its axe with
it to-night, and nothing further occurred. They made their way down a
stuffy passage, came presently to a second door, and, passing through
this, found themselves in a backyard, fragrant with the scent of old
cabbage stalks and dish water.
Miss Molloy listened. John listened. They could hear nothing but a
distant squealing and tooting of horns, which, though it sounded like
something out of the repertoire of the Collegiate Buddies, was in
reality the noise of the traffic in Regent Street.
"All quiet along the Potomac," said Miss Molloy with satisfaction.
"Now," she added briskly, "if you'll just fetch one of those ash cans
and put it alongside that wall and give me a leg-up and help me round
that chimney and across that roof and down into the next yard and over
another wall or two, I think everything will be more or less jake."
V
John sat in the lobby of the Lincoln Hotel in Curzon Street. A lifetime
of activity and dizzy hustle had passed, but it had all been crammed
into just under twenty minutes, and, after seeing his fair companion
off in a taxicab, he had made his way to the Lincoln, to ascertain from
a sleepy night porter that Miss Wyvern had not yet returned. He was now
awaiting her coming.
She came some little while later, escorted by Hugo. It was a fair
summer night, warm and still, but with her arrival a keen east wind
seemed to pervade the lobby. Pat was looking pale and proud, and Hugo's
usually effervescent demeanour had become toned down to a sort of
mellow sadness. He had the appearance of a man who has recently been
properly ticked off by a woman for Taking Me to Places Like That.
"Oh, hullo, John," he murmured in a low, bedside voice. He brightened
a little, as a man will who, after a bad quarter of an hour with an
emotional girl, sees somebody who may possibly furnish an alternative
target for her wrath. "Where did you get to? Left early to avoid the
rush?"
"It was this way ..." began John. But Pat had turned to the desk, and
was asking the porter for her key. If a female martyr in the rougher
days of the Roman Empire had had occasion to ask for a key, she would
have done it in just the voice which Pat employed. It was not a loud
voice, nor an angry one,--just the crushed, tortured voice of a girl
who has lost her faith in the essential goodness of humanity.
"You see ..." said John.
"Are there any letters for me?" asked Pat.
"No, no letters," said the night porter; and the unhappy girl gave a
little sigh, as if that was just what might be expected in a world
where men who had known you all your life took you to Places which
they ought to have Seen from the start were just Drinking-Hells, while
other men, who also had known you all your life, and, what was more,
professed to love you, skipped through doors in the company of flashy
women and left you to be treated by the police as if you were a common
criminal.
"What happened," said John, "was this...."
"Good night," said Pat.
She followed the porter to the lift, and Hugo, producing a
handkerchief, dabbed it lightly over his forehead.
"Dirty weather, shipmate!" said Hugo. "A very deep depression off the
coast of Iceland, laddie."
He placed a restraining hand on John's arm, as the latter made a
movement to follow the Snow Queen.
"No good, John," he said gravely. "No good, old man, not the slightest.
Don't waste your time trying to explain to-night. Hell hath no fury
like a woman scorned, and not many like a girl who's just had to give
her name and address in a raided night club to a plain-clothes cop who
asked her to repeat it twice and then didn't seem to believe her."
"But I want to tell her why...."
"Never tell them why. It's no use. Let us talk of pleasanter things.
John, I have brought off the coup of a lifetime. Not that it was my
idea. It was Ronnie Fish who suggested it. There's a fellow with a
brain, John. There's a lad who busts the seams of any hat that isn't a
number eight."
"What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about this amazingly intelligent idea of old Ronnie's.
It's absolutely necessary that by some means Uncle Lester shall be
persuaded to cough up five hundred quid of my capital to enable me to
go into a venture second in solidity only to the Mint. The one person
who can talk him into it is Ronnie. So Ronnie's coming to Rudge."
"Oh?" said John, uninterested.
"And to prevent Uncle Lester making a fuss about this, I've invited old
man Molloy and daughter to come and visit us as well. That was Ronnie's
big idea. Thos. is rolling in money, and, once Uncle Lester learns
that, he won't kick about Ronnie being there. He loves having rich men
around. He likes to nuzzle them."
"Do you mean," cried John, "that that girl is coming to stay at Rudge?"
He was appalled. Limpidly clear though his conscience was, he was able
to see that his rather spectacular association with Miss Dolly Molloy
had displeased Pat, and the last thing he wished for was to be placed
in a position which was virtually tantamount to hobnobbing with the
girl. If she came to stay at Rudge, Pat might think.... What might not
Pat think?
He became aware that Hugo was speaking to him in a quiet, brotherly
voice.
"How did all that come out, John?"
"All what?"
"About Pat. Did she tell you that I paved the way?"
"She did! And look here...."
"All right, old man," said Hugo, raising a deprecatory hand. "That's
absolutely all right. I don't want any thanks. You'd have done the same
for me. Well, what has happened? Everything pretty satisfactory?"
"Satisfactory!"
"Don't tell me she turned you down?"
"If you really want to know, yes, she did."
Hugo sighed.
"I feared as much. There was something about her manner when I was
paving the way that I didn't quite like. Cold. Not responsive. A
bit glassy-eyed. What an amazing thing it is," said Hugo, tapping a
philosophical vein, "that in spite of all the ways there are of saying
Yes, a girl on an occasion like this nearly always says No. An American
statistician has estimated that, omitting substitutes like 'All right,'
'You bet,' 'O.K.,' and nasal expressions like 'Uh-huh,' the English
language provides nearly fifty different methods of replying in the
affirmative, including Yeah, Yeth, Yum, Yo, Yaw, Chess, Chass, Chuss,
Yip, Yep, Yop, Yup, Yurp...."
"Stop it!" cried John forcefully.
Hugo patted him affectionately on the shoulder.
"All right, John. All right, old man. I quite understand. You're upset.
A little on edge, yes? Of course you are. But listen, John, I want to
talk to you very seriously for a moment, in a broad-minded spirit of
cousinly good will. If I were you, laddie, I would take myself firmly
in hand at this juncture. You must see for yourself by now that you're
simply wasting your time fooling about after dear old Pat. A sweet
girl, I grant you--one of the best: but if she won't have you she
won't, and that's that. Isn't it or is it? Take my tip and wash the
whole thing out and start looking round for someone else. Now, there's
Miss Molloy, for instance. Pretty. Pots of money. If I were you, while
she's at Rudge, I'd have a decided pop at her. You see, you're one of
those fellows that Nature intended for a married man right from the
start. You're a confirmed settler-down, the sort of chap that likes
to roll the garden lawn and then put on his slippers and light a pipe
and sit side by side with the little woman, sharing a twin set of head
phones. Pull up your socks, John, and have a dash at this Molloy girl.
You'd be on velvet with a rich wife."
At several points during this harangue John had endeavoured to speak,
and he was just about to do so now, when there occurred that which
rendered speech impossible. From immediately behind them, as they stood
facing the door, a voice spoke.
"I want my bag, Hugo."
It was Pat. She was standing within a yard of them. Her face was still
that of a martyr, but now she seemed to suggest by her expression a
martyr whose tormentors have suddenly thought up something new.
"You've got my bag," she said.
"Oh, ah," said Hugo.
He handed over the beaded trifle, and she took it with a cold
aloofness. There was a pause.
"Well, good night," said Hugo.
"Good night," said Pat.
"Good night," said John.
"Good night," said Pat.
She turned away, and the lift bore her aloft. Its machinery badly
needed a drop of oil, and it emitted, as it went, a low wailing sound
that seemed to John like a commentary on the whole situation.
VI
Some half a mile from Curzon Street, on the fringe of the Soho
district, there stands a smaller and humbler hotel named the Belvidere.
In a bedroom on the second floor of this, at about the moment when Pat
and Hugo had entered the lobby of the Lincoln, Dolly Molloy sat before
a mirror, cold-creaming her attractive face. She was interrupted in
this task by the arrival of the senatorial Thomas G.
"Hello, sweetie-pie," said Miss Molloy. "There you are."
"Yes," replied Mr. Molloy. "Here I am."
Although his demeanour lacked the high tragedy which had made strong
men quail in the presence of Pat Wyvern, this man was plainly ruffled.
His fine features were overcast and his frank gray eyes looked sombre.
"Gee! If there's one thing in this world I hate," he said, "it's having
to talk to policemen."
"What happened?"
"Oh, I gave my name and address. _A_ name and address, that is to say.
But I haven't got over yet the jar it gave me seeing so many cops all
gathered together in a small room. And that's not all," went on Mr.
Molloy, ventilating another grievance. "Why did you make me tell those
folks you were my daughter?"
"Well, sweetie, it sort of cramps my style, having people know we're
married."
"What do you mean, cramps your style?"
"Oh, just cramps my style."
"But, darn it," complained Mr. Molloy, going to the heart of the
matter, "it makes me out so old, folks thinking I'm your father." The
rather pronounced gap in years between himself and his young bride was
a subject on which Soapy Molloy was always inclined to be sensitive.
"I'm only forty-two."
"And you don't seem that, not till you look at you close," said Dolly
with womanly tact. "The whole thing is, sweetie, being so dignified,
you can call yourself anybody's father and get away with it."
Mr. Molloy, somewhat soothed, examined himself, not without approval,
in the mirror.
"I do look dignified," he admitted.
"Like a professor or something."
"That isn't a bald spot coming there, is it?"
"Sure it's not. It's just the way the light falls."
Mr. Molloy resumed his examination with growing content.
"Yes," he said complacently, "that's a face which for business purposes
is a face. I may not be the World's Sweetheart, but nobody can say I
haven't got a map that inspires confidence. I suppose I've sold more
bum oil stock to suckers with it than anyone in the profession. And
that reminds me, honey, what do you think?"
"What?" asked Mrs. Molloy, removing cream with a towel.
"We're sitting in the biggest kind of luck. You know how I've been
wanting all this time to get hold of a really good prospect--some guy
with money to spend who might be interested in a little oil deal?
Well, that Carmody fellow we met to-night has invited us to go and
visit at his country home."
"You don't say!"
"I do say!"
"Well, isn't that the greatest thing. Is he rich?"
"He's got an uncle that must be, or he couldn't be living in a place
like he was telling me. It's one of those stately homes of England you
read about."
Mrs. Molloy mused. The soft smile on her face showed that her day
dreams were pleasant ones.
"I'll have to get me some new frocks ... and hats ... and shoes ... and
stockings ... and ..."
"Now, now, now!" said her husband, with that anxious alarm which
husbands exhibit on these occasions. "Be yourself, baby! You aren't
going to stay at Buckingham Palace."
"But a country-house party with swell people...."
"It isn't a country-house party. There's only the uncle besides those
two boys we met to-night. But I'll tell you what. If I can plant a good
block of those Silver River shares on the old man, you can go shopping
all you want."
"Oh, Soapy! Do you think you can?"
"Do I think I can?" echoed Mr. Molloy scornfully. "I don't say I've
ever sold Central Park or Brooklyn Bridge to anybody, but if I can't
get rid of a parcel of home-made oil stock to a guy that lives in the
country I'm losing my grip and ought to retire. Sure, I'll sell him
those Silver Rivers, honey. These fellows that own these big estates in
England are only glorified farmers when you come right down to it, and
a farmer will buy anything you offer him, just so long as it's nicely
engraved and shines when you slant the light on it."
"But, Soapy...."
"Now what?"
"I've been thinking. Listen, Soapy. A home like this one where we're
going is sure to have all sorts of things in it, isn't it? Pictures, I
mean, and silver and antiques and all like that. Well, why can't we,
once we're in the place, get away with them and make a nice clean-up?"
Mr. Molloy, though conceding that this was the right spirit, was
obliged to discourage his wife's pretty enthusiasm.
"Where could you sell that sort of stuff?"
"Anywhere, once you got it over to the other side. New York's full of
rich millionaires who'll buy anything and ask no questions, just so
long as it's antiques."
Mr. Molloy shook his head.
"Too dangerous, baby. If all that stuff left the house same time as we
did, we'd have the bulls after us in ten minutes. Besides, it's not in
my line. I've got my line, and I like to stick to it. Nobody ever got
anywhere in the long run by going outside of his line."
"Maybe you're right."
"Sure I'm right. A nice conservative business, that's what I aim at."
"But suppose when we get to this joint it looks dead easy?"
"Ah! Well then, I'm not saying. All I'm against is risks. If
something's handed to you on a plate, naturally no one wouldn't ever
want to let it get past them."
And with this eminently sound commercial maxim Mr. Molloy reached for
his pyjamas and prepared for bed. Something attempted, something done,
had earned, he felt, a night's repose.