I
Some years before the date of the events narrated in this story, at
the time when there was all that trouble between the aristocratic
householders of Riverside Row and the humbler dwellers in Budd Street
(arising, if you remember, from the practice of the latter of washing
their more intimate articles of underclothing and hanging them to dry
in back gardens into which their exclusive neighbours were compelled to
gaze every time they looked out of windows), the vicar of the parish,
the Rev. Alistair Pond-Pond, always a happy phrase-maker, wound up his
address at the annual village sports of Rudge with an impressive appeal
to the good feeling of those concerned.
"We must not," said the Reverend Alistair, "consider ourselves as
belonging to this section of Rudge-in-the-Vale or to that section of
Rudge-in-the-Vale. Let us get together. Let us recollect that we are
all fellow-members of one united community. Rudge must be looked on as
a whole. And what a whole it is!"
With the concluding words of this peroration Pat Wyvern, by the time
she had been home a little under a week, found herself in hearty
agreement. Walking with her father along High Street on the sixth
morning, she had to confess herself disappointed with Rudge.
There are times in everyone's experience when Life, after running
merrily for a while through pleasant places, seems suddenly to strike
a dull and depressing patch of road: and this was what was happening
now to Pat. The sense, which had come to her so strongly in the lobby
of the Lincoln Hotel in Curzon Street, of being in a world unworthy
of her--a world cold and unsympathetic and full of an inferior grade
of human being, had deepened. Her home-coming, she had now definitely
decided, was not a success.
Elderly men with a grievance are seldom entertaining companions for
the young, and five days of the undiluted society of Colonel Wyvern
had left Pat with the feeling that, much as she loved her father, she
wished he would sometimes change the subject of his conversation. Had
she been present in person she could not have had a fuller grasp of the
facts of that dynamite outrage than she now possessed.
But this was not all. After Mr. Carmody's thug-like behaviour on that
fatal day, she was given to understand, the Hall and its grounds were
as much forbidden territory to her as the piazza of the townhouse of
the Capulets would have been to a young Montague. And, though, being a
modern girl, she did not as a rule respond with any great alacrity to
parental mandates, she had her share of clan loyalty and realized that
she must conform to the rules of the game.
Accordingly she had not been within half a mile of the Hall since her
arrival, and, having been accustomed for fourteen years to treat the
place and its grounds as her private property, found Rudge, with a
deadline drawn across the boundaries of Mr. Carmody's park, a poor sort
of place. Unlovable character though Mr. Carmody was in many respects,
she had always been fond of him, and she missed seeing him. She also
missed seeing Hugo. And, as for John, not seeing him was the heaviest
blow of all.
From the days of her childhood, John had always been her stand-by.
Men might come and men might go, but John went on for ever. He had
never been too old, like Mr. Carmody, or too lazy, like Hugo, to give
her all the time and attention she required, and she did think that,
even though there was this absurd feud going on, he might have had
the enterprise to make an opportunity of meeting her. As day followed
day her resentment grew, until now she had reached the stage when she
was telling herself that this was simply what from a knowledge of
his character she might have expected. John--she had to face it--was
a jellyfish. And if a man is a jellyfish, he will behave like a
jellyfish, and it is at times of crisis that his jellyfishiness will be
most noticeable.
It was conscience that had brought Pat to the High Street this morning.
Her father had welcomed her with such a pathetic eagerness, and had
been so plainly pleased to see her back that she was ashamed of herself
for not feeling happier. And it was in a spirit of remorse that now,
though she would have preferred to stay in the garden with a book, she
had come with him to watch him buy another bottle of Brophy's Paramount
Elixir from Chas. Bywater, Chemist.
Brophy, it should be mentioned, had proved a sensational success. His
Elixir was making the local gnats feel perfect fools. They would bite
Colonel Wyvern on the face and stand back, all ready to laugh, and he
would just smear Brophy on himself and be as good as new. It was simply
sickening, if you were a gnat; but fine, of course, if you were Colonel
Wyvern, and that just man, always ready to give praise where praise was
due, said as much to Chas. Bywater.
"That stuff," said Colonel Wyvern, "is good. I wish I'd heard of it
before. Give me another bottle."
Mr. Bywater was delighted--not merely at this rush of trade, but
because, good kindly soul, he enjoyed ameliorating the lot of others.
"I thought you would find it capital, Colonel. I get a great many
requests for it. I sold a bottle yesterday to Mr. Carmody, senior."
Colonel Wyvern's sunniness vanished as if someone had turned it off
with a tap.
"Don't talk to me about Mr. Carmody," he said gruffly.
"Quite," said Chas. Bywater.
Pat bridged a painful silence.
"Is Mr. Carmody back, then?" she asked. "I heard he was at some sort of
health place."
"Healthward Ho, miss, just outside Lowick."
"He ought to be in prison," said Colonel Wyvern.
Mr. Bywater stopped himself in the nick of time from saying "Quite,"
which would have been a deviation from his firm policy of never taking
sides between customers.
"He returned the day before yesterday, miss, and was immediately bitten
on the nose by a mosquito."
"Thank God!" said Colonel Wyvern.
"But I sold him one of the three-and-sixpenny size of the Elixir,"
said Chas. Bywater, with quiet pride, "and a single application
completely eased the pain."
Colonel Wyvern said he was sorry to hear it, and there is no doubt that
conversation would once more have become difficult had there not at
this moment made itself heard from the other side of the door a loud
and penetrating sniff.
A fatherly smile lit up Chas. Bywater's face.
"That's Mr. John's dog," he said, reaching for the cough drops.
Pat opened the door and the statement was proved correct. With a short
wooffle, partly of annoyance at having been kept waiting and partly of
happy anticipation, Emily entered, and seating herself by the counter,
gazed expectantly at the chemist.
"Hullo, Emily," said Pat.
Emily gave her a brief look in which there was no pleased recognition,
but only the annoyance of a dog interrupted during an important
conference. She then returned her gaze to Mr. Bywater.
"What do you say, doggie?" said Mr. Bywater, more paternal than ever,
poising a cough drop.
"Oh, Hell! Snap into it!" replied Emily curtly, impatient at this
foolery.
"Hear her speak for it?" said Mr. Bywater. "Almost human, that dog is."
Colonel Wyvern, whom he had addressed, did not seem to share his lively
satisfaction. He muttered to himself. He regarded Emily sourly, and his
right foot twitched a little.
"Just like a human being, isn't she, miss?" said Chas. Bywater, damped
but persevering.
"Quite," said Pat absently.
Mr. Bywater, startled by this infringement of copyright, dropped the
cough lozenge and Emily snapped it up.
Pat, still distraite, was watching the door. She was surprised to find
that her breath was coming rather quickly and that her heart had begun
to beat with more than its usual rapidity. She was amazed at herself.
Just because John Carroll would shortly appear in that doorway must
she stand fluttering, for all the world as though poor old Johnnie, an
admitted jellyfish, were something that really mattered? It was too
silly, and she tried to bully herself into composure. She failed. Her
heart, she was compelled to realize, was now simply racing.
A step sounded outside, a shadow fell on the sunlit pavement, and Dolly
Molloy walked into the shop.
II
It is curious, when one reflects, to think how many different
impressions a single individual can make simultaneously on a number
of his or her fellow-creatures. At the present moment it was almost
as though four separate and distinct Dolly Molloys had entered the
establishment of Chas. Bywater.
The Dolly whom Colonel Wyvern beheld was a beautiful woman with just
that hint of diablerie in her bearing which makes elderly widowers feel
that there is life in the old dog yet. Colonel Wyvern was no longer
the dashing Hussar who in the 'nineties had made his presence felt in
many a dim sitting-out place and in many a punt beneath the willows
of the Thames, but there still lingered in him a trace of the old
barrack-room fire. Drawing himself up, he automatically twirled his
moustache. To Colonel Wyvern Dolly represented Beauty.
To Chas. Bywater, with his more practical and worldly outlook, she
represented Wealth. He saw in Dolly not so much a beautiful woman
as a rich-looking woman. Although Soapy had contrived, with subtle
reasoning, to head her off from the extensive purchases which she
had contemplated making in preparation for her visit to Rudge, Dolly
undoubtedly took the eye. She was, as she would have put it herself, a
snappy dresser, and in Chas. Bywater's mind she awoke roseate visions
of large orders for face creams, imported scents and expensive bath
salts.
Emily, it was evident, regarded Mrs. Molloy as Perfection. A dog who,
as a rule, kept herself to herself and looked on the world with a cool
and rather sardonic eye, she had conceived for Dolly the moment they
met one of those capricious adorations which come occasionally to the
most hard-boiled Welsh terriers. Hastily swallowing her cough drop, she
bounded at Dolly and fawned on her.
So far, the reactions caused by the newcomer's entrance have been
unmixedly favourable. It is only when we come to Pat that we find
Disapproval rearing its ugly head.
"Disapproval," indeed, is a mild and inadequate word. "Loathing" would
be more correct. Where Colonel Wyvern beheld beauty and Mr. Bywater
opulence, Pat saw only flashiness, vulgarity, and general horribleness.
Piercing with woman's intuitive eye through an outer crust which to
vapid and irreflective males might possibly seem attractive, she saw
Dolly as a vampire and a menace--the sort of woman who goes about
the place ensnaring miserable fat-headed innocent young men who have
lived all their lives in the country and so lack the experience to see
through females of her type.
For beyond a question, felt Pat, this girl must have come to Rudge in
brazen pursuit of poor old Johnnie. The fact that she took her walks
abroad accompanied by Emily showed that she was staying at the Hall;
and what reason could she have had for getting herself invited to the
Hall if not that she wished to continue the acquaintance begun at the
Mustard Spoon? This, then, was the explanation of John's failure to
come and pass the time of day with an old friend. What she had assumed
to be jellyfishiness was in reality base treachery. Like Emily, whom,
slavering over Mrs. Molloy's shoes, she could gladly have kicked, he
had been hypnotized by this woman's specious glamour and had forsaken
old allegiances.
Pat, eyeing Dolly coldly, was filled with a sisterly desire to save
John from one who could never make him happy.
Dolly was all friendliness.
"Why, hello," she said, removing a shapely foot from Emily's mouth, "I
was wondering when I was going to run into you. I heard you lived in
these parts."
"Yes?" said Pat frigidly.
"I'm staying at the Hall."
"Yes?"
"What a wonderful old place it is."
"Yes."
"All those pictures and tapestries and things."
"Yes."
"Is this your father?"
"Yes. This is Miss Molloy, Father. We met in London."
"Pleased to meet you," said Dolly.
"Charmed," said Colonel Wyvern.
He gave another twirl of his moustache. Chas. Bywater hovered
beamingly. Emily, still ecstatic, continued to gnaw one of Dolly's
shoes. The whole spectacle was so utterly revolting that Pat turned to
the door.
"I'll be going along, Father," she said. "I want to buy some stamps."
"I can sell you stamps, miss," said Chas. Bywater affably.
"Thank you, I will go to the post office," said Pat. Her manner
suggested that you got a superior brand of stamps there. She walked
out. Rudge, as she looked upon it, seemed a more depressing place than
ever. Sunshine flooded the High Street. Sunshine fell on the Carmody
Arms, the Village Hall, the Plough and Chickens, the Bunch of Grapes,
the Waggoner's Rest and the Jubilee Watering Trough. But there was no
sunshine in the heart of Pat Wyvern.
III
And, curiously enough, at this very moment up at the Hall the same
experience was happening to Mr. Lester Carmody. Staring out of his
study window, he gazed upon a world bathed in a golden glow: but his
heart was cold and heavy. He had just had a visit from the Rev.
Alistair Pond-Pond, and the Reverend Alistair had touched him for five
shillings.
Many men in Mr. Carmody's place would have considered that they had got
off lightly. The vicar had come seeking subscriptions to the Church
Organ Fund, the Mothers' Pleasant Sunday Evenings, the Distressed
Cottagers' Aid Society, the Stipend of the Additional Curate and
the Rudge Lads' Annual Summer Outing, and there had been moments of
mad optimism when he had hoped for as much as a ten-pound note. The
actual bag, as he totted it up while riding pensively away on his
motor-bicycle, was the above-mentioned five shillings and a promise
that the squire's nephew Hugo and his friend Mr. Fish should perform at
the village concert next week.
And even so, Mr. Carmody was looking on him as a robber. Five shillings
had gone--just like that--and every moment now he was expecting his
nephew John to walk in and increase his expenditure. For just after
breakfast John had asked if he could have a word with him later on in
the morning, and Mr. Carmody knew what that meant.
John ran the Hall's dairy farm, and he was always coming to Mr.
Carmody for money to buy exotic machinery which could not, the latter
considered, be really necessary. To Mr. Carmody a dairy farm was a
straight issue between man and cow. You backed the cow up against a
wall, secured its milk, and there you were. John always seemed to want
to make the thing so complicated and difficult, and only the fact that
he also made it pay induced his uncle ever to accede to his monstrous
demands.
Nor was this all that was poisoning a perfect summer day for Mr.
Carmody. There was in addition the soul-searing behaviour of Doctor
Alexander Twist, of Healthward Ho.
When Doctor Twist had undertaken the contract of making a new Lester
Carmody out of the old Lester Carmody, he had cannily stipulated for
cash down in advance--this to cover a course of three weeks. But at the
end of the second week Mr. Carmody, learning from his nephew Hugo that
an American millionaire was arriving at the Hall, had naturally felt
compelled to forego the final stages of the treatment and return home.
Equally naturally, he had invited Doctor Twist to refund one-third
of the fee. This the eminent physician and physical culture expert
had resolutely declined to do, and Mr. Carmody, re-reading the man's
letter, thought he had never set eyes upon a baser document.
He was shuddering at the depths of depravity which it revealed, when
the door opened and John came in. Mr. Carmody beheld him and shuddered.
John--he could tell it by his eye--was planning another bad dent in the
budget.
"Oh, Uncle Lester," said John.
"Well?" said Mr. Carmody hopelessly.
"I think we ought to have some new Alpha Separators."
"What?"
"Alpha Separators."
"Why?"
"We need them."
"Why?"
"The old ones are past their work."
"What," inquired Mr. Carmody, "is an Alpha Separator?"
John said it was an Alpha Separator.
There was a pause. John, who appeared to have something on his mind
these days, stared gloomily at the carpet. Mr. Carmody shifted in his
chair.
"Very well," he said.
"And new tractors," said John. "And we could do with a few harrows."
"Why do you want harrows?"
"For harrowing."
Even Mr. Carmody, anxious though he was to find flaws in the other's
reasoning, could see that this might well be so. Try harrowing without
harrows, and you are handicapped from the start. But why harrow at
all? That was what seemed to him superfluous and wasteful. Still, he
supposed it was unavoidable. After all, John had been carefully trained
at an agricultural college after leaving Oxford and presumably knew.
"Very well," he said.
"All right," said John.
He went out, and Mr. Carmody experienced a little relief at the thought
that he had now heard all this morning's bad news.
But dairy farmers have second thoughts. The door opened again.
"I was forgetting," said John, poking his head in.
Mr. Carmody uttered a low moan.
"We want some Thomas tap-cinders."
"Thomas what?"
"Tap-cinders."
"Thomas tap-cinders?"
"Thomas tap-cinders."
Mr. Carmody swallowed unhappily. He knew it was no use asking what
these mysterious implements were, for his nephew would simply reply
that they were Thomas tap-cinders or that they were something invented
by a Mr. Thomas for the purpose of cinder-tapping, leaving his brain in
the same addled condition in which it was at present. If John wished to
tap cinders, he supposed he must humour him.
"Very well," he said dully.
He held his breath for a few moments after the door had closed once
more, then, gathering at length that the assault on his purse was over,
expelled it in a long sigh and gave himself up to bleak meditation.
The lot of the English landed proprietor, felt Mr. Carmody, is not what
it used to be in the good old times. When the first Carmody settled in
Rudge he had found little to view with alarm. He was sitting pretty,
and he admitted it. Those were the days when churls were churls, and a
scurvy knave was quite content to work twelve hours a day, Saturdays
included, in return for a little black bread and an occasional nod of
approval from his overlord. But in this Twentieth-Century England's
peasantry has degenerated. They expect coddling. Their roofs leak, and
you have to mend them; their walls fall down and you have to build them
up; their lanes develop holes and you have to restore the surface,
and all this runs into money. The way things were shaping, felt Mr.
Carmody, in a few years a landlord would be expected to pay for the
repairs of his tenants' wireless sets.
He wandered to the window and looked out at the sunlit garden. And as
he did so there came into his range of vision the sturdy figure of his
guest, Mr. Molloy, and for the first time that morning Lester Carmody
seemed to hear, beating faintly in the distance, the wings of the blue
bird. In a world containing anybody as rich-looking as Thomas G. Molloy
there was surely still hope.
Ronald Fish's prediction that Hugo's uncle would appreciate a visit
from so solid a citizen of the United States as Mr. Molloy had been
fulfilled to the letter. Mr. Carmody had welcomed his guest with open
arms. The more rich men he could gather about him, the better he was
pleased, for he was a man of vision, and had quite a number of schemes
in his mind for which he was anxious to obtain financial support.
He decided to go and have a chat with Mr. Molloy. On a morning like
this, with all Nature smiling, an American millionaire might well
feel just in the mood to put up a few hundred thousand dollars for
something. For July had come in on golden wings, and the weather now
was the kind of weather to make a poet sing, a lover love, and a Scotch
business man subscribe largely to companies formed for the purpose of
manufacturing diamonds out of coal tar. On such a morning, felt Mr.
Carmody, anybody ought to be willing to put up any sum for anything.
IV
Nature continued to smile for about another three and a quarter
minutes, and then, as far as Mr. Carmody was concerned, the sun
went out. With a genial heartiness, which gashed him like a knife,
the plutocratic Mr. Molloy declined to invest even a portion of his
millions in a new golf course, a cinema de luxe to be established in
Rudge High Street, or any of the four other schemes which his host
presented to his notice.
"No, sir," said Mr. Molloy. "I'm mighty sorry I can't meet you in any
way, but the fact is I'm all fixed up in Oil. Oil's my dish. I began in
Oil and I'll end in Oil. I wouldn't be happy outside of Oil."
"Oh?" said Mr. Carmody, regarding this Human Sardine with as little
open hostility and dislike as he could manage on the spur of the moment.
"Yes, sir," proceeded Mr. Molloy, still in lyrical vein, "I put my
first thousand into Oil and I'll put my last thousand into Oil. Oil's
been a good friend to me. There's money in Oil."
"There is money," urged Mr. Carmody, "in a cinema in Rudge High Street."
"Not the money there is in Oil."
"You are a stranger here," went on Mr. Carmody patiently, "so you have
no doubt got a mistaken idea of the potentialities of Rudge. Rudge,
you must remember, is a centre. Small though it is, never forget that
it lies just off the main road in the heart of a prosperous county.
Worcester is only seven miles away, Birmingham only eighteen. People
would come in their motors...."
"I'm not stopping them," said Mr. Molloy generously. "All I'm saying is
that my money stays in little old Oil."
"Or take Golf," said Mr. Carmody, side-stepping and attacking from
another angle. "The only good golf course in Worcestershire at present
is at Stourbridge. Worcestershire needs more golf courses. You know how
popular Golf is nowadays."
"Not so popular as Oil. Oil," said Mr. Molloy, with the air of one
making an epigram, "is Oil."
Mr. Carmody stopped himself just in time from saying what he thought of
Oil. To relieve his feelings he ground his heel into the soft gravel
of the path, and had but one regret, that Mr. Molloy's most sensitive
toe was not under it. Half turning in the process of making this bitter
gesture, he perceived that Providence, since the days of Job always
curious to know just how much a good man can bear, had sent Ronald
Overbury Fish to add to his troubles. Young Mr. Fish was sauntering up
behind his customary eleven inches of cigarette holder, his pink face
wearing that expression of good-natured superiority which, ever since
their first meeting, had afflicted Mr. Carmody sorely.
From the list of Mr. Carmody's troubles, recently tabulated, Ronnie
Fish was inadvertently omitted. Although to Lady Julia Fish, his
mother, this young gentleman, no doubt, was all the world, Lester
Carmody had found him nothing but a pain in the neck. Apart from
the hideous expense of entertaining a man who took twice of nearly
everything, and helped himself unblushingly to more port, he chafed
beneath his guest's curiously patronizing manner. He objected to being
treated as a junior--and, what was more, as a half-witted junior--by
solemn young men with pink faces.
"What's the argument?" asked Ronnie Fish, anchoring self and cigarette
holder at Mr. Carmody's side.
Mr. Molloy smiled genially.
"No argument, brother," he replied with that bluff heartiness which
Lester Carmody had come to dislike so much. "I was merely telling our
good friend and host here that the best investment under the broad blue
canopy of God's sky is Oil."
"Quite right," said Ronnie Fish. "He's perfectly correct, my dear
Carmody."
"Our good host was trying to interest me in golf courses."
"Don't touch 'em," said Mr. Fish.
"I won't," said Mr. Molloy. "Give me Oil. Oil's oil. First in war,
first in peace, first in the hearts of its countrymen, that's what Oil
is. The Universal Fuel of the Future."
"Absolutely," said Ronnie Fish. "What did Gladstone say in '88? You can
fuel some of the people all the time, and you can fuel all the people
some of the time, but you can't fuel all the people all of the time. He
was forgetting about Oil. Probably he meant coal."
"Coal?" Mr. Molloy laughed satirically. You could see he despised the
stuff. "Don't talk to me about Coal."
This was another disappointment for Mr. Carmody. Cinemas _de luxe_ and
golf courses having failed, Coal was just what he had been intending to
talk about. He suspected its presence beneath the turf of the park, and
would have been glad to verify his suspicions with the aid of someone
else's capital.
"You listen to this bird, Carmody," said Mr. Fish, patting his host on
the back. "He's talking sense. Oil's the stuff. Dig some of the savings
out of the old sock, my dear Carmody, and wade in. You'll never regret
it."
And, having delivered himself of this advice with a fatherly
kindliness which sent his host's temperature up several degrees, Ronnie
Fish strolled on.
Mr. Molloy watched him disappear with benevolent approval. He said to
Mr. Carmody that that young man had his head screwed on the right way,
and seemed not to notice a certain lack of responsive enthusiasm on the
other's part. Ronnie Fish's head was not one of Mr. Carmody's favourite
subjects at the moment.
"Yes, sir," said Mr. Molloy, resuming. "Any man that goes into Oil
is going into a good thing. Oil's all right. You don't see John D.
Rockefeller running round asking for hand-outs from his friends, do
you? No, sir! John's got his modest little competence, same as me, and
he got it, like I did, out of Oil. Say, listen, Mr. Carmody, it isn't
often I give up any of my holdings, but you've been mighty nice to me,
inviting me to your home and all, and I'd like to do something for you
in return. What do you say to a good, solid block of Silver River stock
at just the price it cost me? And let me tell you I'm offering you
something that half the big men on our side would give their eye teeth
for. Only a couple of days before I sailed I was in Charley Schwab's
office, and he said to me, 'Tom,' said Charley, 'right up till now
I've stuck to Steel and I've done well. Understand,' he said, 'I'm not
knocking Steel. But Oil's the stuff, and if you want to part with any
of that Silver River of yours, Tom,' he said, 'pass it across this desk
and write your own ticket.' That'll show you."
There is no anguish like the anguish of the man who is trying to
extract cash from a fellow human being and suddenly finds the fellow
human being trying to extract it from him. Mr. Carmody laughed a bitter
laugh.
"Do you imagine," he said, "that I have money to spare for speculative
investments?"
"Speculative?" Mr. Molloy seemed to suspect his ears of playing tricks.
"Silver River spec----?"
"By the time I've finished paying the bills for the expenses of this
infernal estate I consider myself lucky if I've got a few hundred that
I can call my own."
There was a pause.
"Is that so?" said Mr. Molloy in a thin voice.
Strictly speaking, it was not. Before succeeding to his present
position of head of the family and squire of Rudge Hall, Lester Carmody
had contrived to put away in gilt-edged securities a very nice sum
indeed, the fruit of his labours in the world of business. But it was
his whim to regard himself as a struggling pauper.
"But all this...." Mr. Molloy indicated with a wave of his hand the
smiling gardens, the rolling park and the opulent-looking trees
reflected in the waters of the moat. "Surely this means a barrel of
money?"
"Everything that comes in goes out again in expenses. There's no end to
my expenses. Farmers in England to-day sit up at night trying to think
of new claims they can make against a landlord."
There was another pause.
"That's bad," said Mr. Molloy thoughtfully. "Yes, sir, that's bad."
His commiseration was not all for Mr. Carmody. In fact, very little
of it was. Most of it was reserved for himself. It began to look, he
realized, as though in coming to this stately home of England he had
been simply wasting valuable time. It was not as if he enjoyed staying
at country houses in a purely æsthetic spirit. On the contrary, a place
like Rudge Hall afflicted his town-bred nerves. Being in it seemed to
him like living in the first-act set of an old-fashioned comic opera.
He always felt that at any moment a band of villagers and retainers
might dance out and start a drinking chorus.
"Yes, sir," said Mr. Molloy, "that must grind you a good deal."
"What must?"
It was not Mr. Carmody who had spoken, but his guest's attractive
young wife, who, having returned from the village, had come up from
the direction of the rose garden. From afar she had observed her
husband spreading his hands in broad, persuasive gestures, and from
her knowledge of him had gathered that he had embarked on one of those
high-pressure sales talks of his which did so much to keep the wolf
from the door. Then she had seen a shadow fall athwart his fine face,
and, scenting a hitch in the negotiations, had hurried up to lend
wifely assistance.
"What must grind him?" she asked.
Mr. Molloy kept nothing from his bride.
"I was offering our host here a block of those Silver River shares...."
"Oh, you aren't going to sell Silver Rivers!" cried Mrs. Molloy in
pretty concern. "Why, you've always told me they're the biggest thing
you've got."
"So they are. But...."
"Oh, well," said Dolly with a charming smile, "seeing it's Mr. Carmody.
I wouldn't mind Mr. Carmody having them."
"Nor would I," said Mr. Molloy sincerely. "But he can't afford to buy."
"What!"
"You tell her," said Mr. Molloy.
Mr. Carmody told her. He was never averse to speaking of the
unfortunate position in which the modern owner of English land found
himself.
"Well, I don't get it," said Dolly, shaking her head. "You call
yourself a poor man. How can you be poor, when that gallery place you
showed us round yesterday is jam full of pictures worth a fortune an
inch and tapestries and all those gold coins?"
"Heirlooms."
"How's that?"
"They're heirlooms," said Mr. Carmody bitterly.
He always felt bitter when he thought of the Rudge Hall heirlooms. He
looked upon them as a mean joke played on him by a gang of sardonic
ancestors.
To a man, lacking both reverence for family traditions and appreciation
of the beautiful in art, who comes into possession of an ancient house
and its contents, there must always be something painfully ironical
about heirlooms. To such a man they are simply so much potential wealth
which is being allowed to lie idle, doing no good to anybody. Mr.
Carmody had always had that feeling very strongly.
Unlike the majority of heirs, he had not been trained from boyhood
to revere the home of his ancestors, and to look forward to its
possession as a sacred trust. He had been the second son of a second
son, and his chance of ever succeeding to the property was at the
outset so remote that he had seldom given it a thought. He had gone
into business at an early age, and when, in middle life, a series of
accidents made him squire of Rudge Hall, he had brought with him to the
place a practical eye and the commercial outlook. The result was that
when he walked in the picture gallery and thought how much solid cash
he could get for this Velasquez or that Gainsborough, if only he were
given a free hand, the iron entered into Lester Carmody's soul.
"They're heirlooms," he said. "I can't sell them."
"How come? They're yours, aren't they?"
"No," said Mr. Carmody, "they belong to the estate."
On Mr. Molloy, as he listened to his host's lengthy exposition of the
laws governing heirlooms, there descended a deepening cloud of gloom.
You couldn't, it appeared, dispose of the darned things without the
consent of trustees; while even if the trustees gave their consent
they collared the money and invested it on behalf of the estate. And
Mr. Molloy, though ordinarily a man of sanguine temperament, could not
bring himself to believe that a hard-boiled bunch of trustees, most of
them probably lawyers with tight lips and suspicious minds, would ever
have the sporting spirit to take a flutter in Silver River Ordinaries.
"Hell!" said Mr. Molloy with a good deal of feeling.
Dolly linked her arm in his with a pretty gesture of affectionate
solicitude.
"Poor old Pop!" she said. "He's all broken up about this."
Mr. Carmody regarded his guest sourly.
"What's he got to worry about?" he asked with a certain resentment.
"Why, Pop was sort of hoping he'd be able to buy all this stuff," said
Dolly. "He was telling me only this morning that, if you felt like
selling, he would write you out his cheque for whatever you wanted
without thinking twice."
V
Moodily scanning his wife's face during Mr. Carmody's lecture on
Heirloom Law, Mr. Molloy had observed it suddenly light up in a manner
which suggested that some pleasing thought was passing through her
always agile brain; but, presented now in words, this thought left him
decidedly cold. He could not see any sense in it.
"For the love of Pete...!" began Mr. Molloy.
His bride had promised to love, honour, and obey him, but she had never
said anything about taking any notice of him when he tried to butt in
on her moments of inspiration. She ignored the interruption.
"You see," she said, "Pop collects old junk--I mean antiques and all
like that. Over in America he's got a great big museum place full of
stuff. He's going to present it to the nation when he hands in his
dinner pail. Aren't you, Pop?"
It became apparent to Mr. Molloy that at the back of his wife's mind
there floated some idea at which, handicapped by his masculine slowness
of wit, he could not guess. It was plain to him, however, that she
expected him to do his bit, so he did it.
"You betcher," he said.
"How much would you say all that stuff in your museum was worth, Pop?"
Mr. Molloy was still groping in outer darkness, but he persevered.
"Oo," he said, "worth? Call it a million.... Two millions.... Three,
maybe."
"You see," explained Dolly, "the place is so full up, he doesn't really
know what he's got. But Pierpont Morgan offered you a million for the
pictures alone, didn't he?"
Now that figures had crept into the conversation, Mr. Molloy was
feeling more at his ease. He liked figures.
"You're thinking of Jake Shubert, honey," he said. "It was the
tapestries that Pierp. wanted. And it wasn't a million, it was seven
hundred thousand. I laughed in his face. I asked him if he thought
he was trying to buy cheese sandwiches at the delicatessen store or
something. Pierp. was sore." Mr. Molloy shook his head regretfully,
and you could see he was thinking that it was too bad that his little
joke should have caused a coolness between himself and an old friend.
"But, great guns!" he said, in defence of his attitude. "Seven hundred
thousand! Did he think I wanted carfare?"
Mr. Carmody's always rather protuberant eyes had been bulging farther
and farther out of their sockets all through this exchange of remarks,
and now they reached the farthest point possible and stayed there.
His breath was coming in little gasps, and his fingers twitched
convulsively. He was suffering the extreme of agony.
It was all very well for a man like Mr. Molloy to speak sneeringly of
$700,000. To most people--and Mr. Carmody was one of them--$700,000 is
quite a nice little sum. Mr. Molloy, if he saw $700,000 lying in the
gutter, might not think it worth his while to stoop and pick it up,
but Mr. Carmody could not imitate that proud detachment. The thought
that he had as his guest at Rudge a man who combined with a bottomless
purse a taste for antiquities and that only the imbecile laws relating
to heirlooms prevented them consummating a deal racked him from head to
foot.
"How much would you have given Mr. Carmody for all those pictures and
things he showed us yesterday?" asked Dolly, twisting the knife in the
wound.
Mr. Molloy spread his hands carelessly.
"Two hundred thousand ... three ... we wouldn't have quarrelled about
the price. But what's the use of talking? He can't sell 'em."
"Why can't he?"
"Well, how can he?"
"I'll tell you how. Fake a burglary."
"What!"
"Sure. Have the things stolen and slipped over to you without anybody
knowing, and then you hand him your cheque for two hundred thousand or
whatever it is, and you're happy and he's happy and everybody's happy.
And, what's more, I guess all this stuff is insured, isn't it? Well
then, Mr. Carmody can stick to the insurance money, and he's that much
up besides whatever he gets from you."
There was a silence. Dolly had said her say, and Mr. Molloy felt for
the moment incapable of speech. That he had not been mistaken in
supposing that his wife had a scheme at the back of her head was now
plain, but, as outlined, it took his breath away. Considered purely
as a scheme, he had not a word to say against it. It was commercially
sound and did credit to the ingenuity of one whom he had always
regarded as the slickest thinker of her sex. But it was not the sort of
scheme, he considered, which ought to have emanated from the presumably
innocent and unspotted daughter of a substantial Oil millionaire. It
was calculated, he felt, to create in their host's mind doubts and
misgivings as to the sort of people he was entertaining.
He need have no such apprehension. It was not righteous disapproval
that was holding Mr. Carmody dumb.
It has been laid down by an acute thinker that there is a subtle
connection between felony and fat. Almost all embezzlers, for instance,
says this authority, are fat men. Whether this is or is not true,
the fact remains that the sensational criminality of the suggestion
just made to him awoke no horror in Mr. Carmody's ample bosom. He
was startled, as any man might be who had this sort of idea sprung
suddenly on him in his own garden, but he was not shocked. A youth and
middle age spent on the London Stock Exchange had left Lester Carmody
singularly broad-minded. He had to a remarkable degree that specious
charity which allows a man to look indulgently on any financial
project, however fishy, provided he can see a bit in it for himself.
"It's money for nothing," urged Dolly, misinterpreting his silence.
"The stuff isn't doing any good, just lying around the way it is now.
And it isn't as if it didn't really belong to you. All what you were
saying awhile back about the law is simply mashed potatoes. The things
belong to the house, and the house belongs to you, so where's the harm
in your selling them? Who's supposed to get them after you?"
Mr. Carmody withdrew his gaze from the middle distance.
"Eh? Oh. My nephew Hugo."
"Well, you aren't worrying about him?"
Mr. Carmody was not. What he was worrying about was the practicability
of the thing. Could it, he was asking himself, be put safely through
without the risk, so distasteful to a man of sensibility, of landing
him for a lengthy term of years in a prison cell? It was on this aspect
of the matter that he now touched.
"It wouldn't be safe," he said, and few men since the world began have
ever spoken more wistfully. "We would be found out."
"Not a chance. Who would find out? Who's going to say anything? You're
not. I'm not. Pop's not."
"You bet your life Pop's not," asserted Mr. Molloy.
Mr. Carmody gazed out over the waters of the moat. His brain, quickened
by the stimulating prospect of money for nothing, detected another
doubtful point.
"Who would take the things?"
"You mean get them out of the house?"
"Exactly. Somebody would have to take them. It would be necessary to
create the appearance of an actual burglary."
"Well, there'll be an actual burglary."
"But whom could we trust in such a vital matter?"
"That's all right. Pop's got a friend, another millionaire like
himself, who would put this thing through just for the fun of it, to
oblige Pop. You could trust him."
"Who?" asked Mr. Molloy, plainly surprised that any friend of his could
be trusted.
"Chimp," said Dolly briefly.
"Oh, Chimp," said Mr. Molloy, his face clearing. "Yes, Chimp would do
it."
"Who," asked Mr. Carmody, "is Chimp?"
"A good friend of mine. You wouldn't know him."
Mr. Carmody scratched at the gravel with his toe, and for a long minute
there was silence in the garden. Mr. Molloy looked at Mrs. Molloy.
Mrs. Molloy looked at Mr. Molloy. Mr. Molloy closed his left eye for
a fractional instant, and in response Mrs. Molloy permitted her right
eyelid to quiver. But, perceiving that this was one of the occasions on
which a strong man wishes to be left alone to commune with his soul,
they forebore to break in upon his reverie with jarring speech.
"Well, I'll think it over," said Mr. Carmody.
"Atta-boy!" said Mr. Molloy.
"Sure. You take a nice walk around the block all by yourself," advised
Mrs. Molloy, "and then come back and issue a bulletin."
Mr. Carmody moved away, pondering deeply, and Mr. Molloy turned to his
wife.
"What made you think of Chimp?" he asked doubtfully.
"Well, he's the only guy on this side that we really know. We can't
pick and choose, same as if we were in New York."
Mr. Molloy eyed the moat with a thoughtful frown.
"Well, I'll tell you, honey. I'm not so darned sure that I sort of kind
of like bringing Chimp into a thing like this. You know what he is--as
slippery as an eel that's been rubbed all over with axle grease. He
might double-cross us."
"Not if we double-cross him first."
"But could we?"
"Sure we could. And, anyway, it's Chimp or no one. This isn't the sort
of affair you can just go out into the street and pick up the first
man you run into. It's a job where you've got to have somebody you've
worked with before."
"All right, baby. If you say so. You always were the brains of the
firm. If you think it's kayo, then it's all right by me and no more to
be said. Cheese it! Here's his nibs back again."
Mr. Carmody was coming up the gravel path, his air that of a man who
has made a great decision. He had evidently been following a train of
thought, for he began abruptly at the point to which it had led him.
"There's only one thing," he said. "I don't like the idea of bringing
in this friend of yours. He may be all right or he may not. You say you
can trust him, but it seems to me the fewer people who know about this
business, the better."
These were Mr. Molloy's sentiments, also. He would vastly have
preferred to keep it a nice, cosy affair among the three of them. But
it was no part of his policy to ignore obvious difficulties.
"I'd like that, too," he said. "I don't want to call in Chimp any more
than you do. But there's this thing of getting the stuff out of the
house."
"What you were saying just now," Mrs. Molloy reminded Mr. Carmody.
"It's got to look like an outside job, what I mean."
"As it's called," said Mr. Molloy hastily. "She's always reading these
detective stories," he explained. "That's where she picks up these
expressions. Outside job, ha, ha! But she's dead right, at that. You
said yourself it would be necessary to create the appearance of an
actual burglary. If we don't get Chimp, who is going to take the stuff?"
"I am."
"Eh?"
"I am," repeated Mr. Carmody stoutly. "I have been thinking the whole
matter out, and it will be perfectly simple. I shall get up very early
to-morrow morning and enter the picture gallery through the window by
means of a ladder. This will deceive the police into supposing the
theft to have been the work of a professional burglar."
Mr. Molloy was regarding him with affectionate admiration.
"I never knew you were such a hot sketch!" said Mr. Molloy. "You
certainly are one smooth citizen. Looks to me as if you'd done this
sort of thing before."
"Wear gloves," advised Mrs. Molloy.
"What she means," said Mr. Molloy, again speaking with a certain
nervous haste, "is that the first thing the bulls--as the expression
is--they always call the police bulls in these detective stories--the
first thing the police look for is fingerprints. The fellows in the
books always wear gloves."
"A very sensible precaution," said Mr. Carmody, now thoroughly in the
spirit of the thing. "I am glad you mentioned it. I shall make a point
of doing so."