I
The strange depression which had come upon Pat in the shop of Chas.
Bywater did not yield, as these gray moods generally do, to the
curative influence of time. The following morning found her as gloomy
as ever--indeed, rather gloomier, for shortly after breakfast the
_noblesse oblige_ spirit of the Wyverns had sent her on a reluctant
visit to an old retainer who lived--if you could call it that--in one
of the smaller and stuffier houses in Budd Street. Pensioned off after
cooking for the Colonel for eighteen years, this female had retired
to bed and stayed there, and there was a legend in the family, though
neither by word nor look did she ever give any indication of it, that
she enjoyed seeing Pat.
Bedridden ladies of advanced age seldom bubble over with fun and _joie
de vivre_. This one's attitude toward life seemed to have been borrowed
from her favourite light reading, the works of the Prophet Jeremiah,
and Pat, as she emerged into the sunshine after some eighty minutes of
her society, was feeling rather like Jeremiah's younger sister.
The sense of being in a world unworthy of her--a world cold and
unsympathetic and full of an inferior grade of human being, had now
become so oppressive that she was compelled to stop on her way home
and linger on the old bridge which spanned the Skirme. From the days
of her childhood this sleepy, peaceful spot had always been a haven
when things went wrong. She was gazing down into the slow-moving water
and waiting for it to exercise its old spell, when she heard her name
spoken and turned to see Hugo.
"What ho," said Hugo, pausing beside her. His manner was genial and
unconcerned. He had not met her since that embarrassing scene in the
lobby of the Hotel Lincoln, but he was a man on whom the memory of past
embarrassments sat lightly. "What do you think you're doing, young Pat?"
Pat found herself cheering up a little. She liked Hugo. The sense of
being all alone in a bleak world left her.
"Nothing in particular," she said. "Just looking at the water."
"Which in its proper place," agreed Hugo, "is admirable stuff. I've
been doing a bit of froth-blowing at the Carmody Arms. Also buying
cigarettes and other necessaries. I say, have you heard about my Uncle
Lester's brain coming unstuck? Absolutely. He's quite _non compos_.
Mad as a coot. Belfry one seething mass of bats. He's taken to climbing
ladders in the small hours after swallows' nests. However, shelving
that for the moment, I'm very glad I ran into you this morning, young
Pat. I wish to have a serious talk with you about old John."
"John?"
"John."
"What about John?"
At this moment there whirred past, bearing in its interior a weedy,
snub-nosed man with a waxed moustache, a large red automobile. Hugo,
suspending his remarks, followed it with astonished eyes.
"Good Lord!"
"What about Johnnie?"
"That was the Dex-Mayo," said Hugo. "And the gargoyle inside was that
blighter Twist from Healthward Ho. Great Scott! The car must have been
over there to fetch him."
"What's so remarkable about that?"
"What's so remarkable?" echoed Hugo, astounded. "What's remarkable
about Uncle Lester deliberately sending his car twenty miles to fetch
a man who could have come, if he had to come at all, by train at his
own expense? My dear old thing, it's revolutionary. It marks an epoch.
Do you know what I think has happened? You remember that dynamite
explosion in the park when Uncle Lester nearly got done in?"
"I don't have much chance to forget it."
"Well, what I believe has happened is that the shock he got that day
has completely changed his nature. It's a well-known thing. You hear
of such cases all the time. Ronnie Fish was telling me about one only
yesterday. There was a man he knew in London, a money lender, a fellow
who had a glass eye, and the only thing that enabled anyone to tell
which of his eyes was which was that the glass one had rather a more
human expression than the other. That's the sort of chap he was. Well,
one day he was nearly konked in a railway accident, and he came out of
hospital a different man. Slapped people on the back, patted children
on the head, tore up I.O.U.'s, and talked about its being everybody's
duty to make the world a better place. Take it from me, young Pat,
Uncle Lester's whole nature has undergone some sort of rummy change
like that. That swallow's nest business must have been a preliminary
symptom. Ronnie tells me that this money lender with the glass eye...."
Pat was not interested in glass-eyed money lenders.
"What were you saying about John?"
"I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going home quick, so as to be
among those present when he starts scattering the stuff. It's quite
on the cards that I may scoop that five hundred yet. Once a tightwad
starts seeing the light...."
"You were saying something about John," said Pat, falling into step
with him as he moved off. His babble irked her, making her wish that
she could put the clock back a few years. Age, they say, has its
compensations, but one of the drawbacks of becoming grown-up and
sedate is that you have to abandon the childish practice of clumping
your friends on the side of the head when they wander from the point.
However, she was not too old to pinch her companion in the fleshy part
of the arm, and she did so.
"Ouch!" said Hugo, coming out of his trance.
"What about John?"
Hugo massaged his arm tenderly. The look of a greyhound pursuing an
electric hare died out of his eyes.
"Of course, yes. John. Glad you reminded me. Have you seen John lately?"
"No. I'm not allowed to go to the Hall, and he seems too busy to come
and see me."
"It isn't so much being busy. Don't forget there's a war on. No doubt
he's afraid of bumping into the parent."
"If Johnnie's scared of Father...."
"There's no need to speak in that contemptuous tone. I am, and there
are few more intrepid men alive than Hugo Carmody. The old Colonel,
believe me, is a tough baby. If I ever see him, I shall run like a
rabbit, and my biographers may make of it what they will. You, being
his daughter and having got accustomed to his ways, probably look on
him as something quite ordinary and harmless, but even you will admit
that he's got eyebrows which must be seen to be believed."
"Oh, never mind Father's eyebrows. Go on about Johnnie."
"Right ho. Well, then, look here, young Pat," said Hugo, earnestly,
"in the interests of the aforesaid John, I want to ask you a favour. I
understand he proposed to you that night at the Mustard Spoon."
"Well?"
"And you slipped him the mitten."
"Well?"
"Oh, don't think I'm blaming you," Hugo assured her. "If you don't
want him, you don't. Nothing could be fairer than that. But what I'm
asking you to do now is to keep clear of the poor chap. If you happen
to run into him, that can't be helped, but be a sport and do your best
to avoid him. Don't unsettle him. If you come buzzing round, stirring
memories of the past and arousing thoughts of Auld Lang Syne and what
not, that'll unsettle him. It'll take his mind off his job and ...
well ... unsettle him. And, providing he isn't unsettled, I have strong
hopes that we may get old John off this season. Do I make myself
clear?"
Pat kicked viciously at an inoffensive pebble, whose only fault was
that it happened to be within reach at the moment.
"I suppose what you're trying to break to me in your rambling,
woollen-headed way is that Johnnie is mooning round that Molloy girl? I
met her just now in Bywater's, and she told me she was staying at the
Hall."
"I wouldn't call it mooning," said Hugo thoughtfully, speaking like a
man who is an expert in these matters and can appraise subtle values.
"I wouldn't say it had quite reached the mooning stage yet. But I have
hopes. You see, John is a bloke whom Nature intended for a married man.
He's a confirmed settler-down, the sort of chap who...."
"You needn't go over all that again. I had the pleasure of hearing your
views on the subject that night in the lobby of the hotel."
"Oh, you did hear?" said Hugo, unabashed. "Well, don't you think I'm
right?"
"If you mean do I approve of Johnnie marrying Miss Molloy, I certainly
do not."
"But if you don't want him...."
"It has nothing to do with my wanting him or not wanting him. I don't
like Miss Molloy."
"Why not?"
"She's flashy."
"I would have said smart."
"I wouldn't." Pat, with an effort, recovered a certain measure of calm.
Wrangling, she felt, was beneath her. As she could not hit Hugo with
the basket in which she had carried two pounds of tea, a bunch of
roses, and a seed cake to her bedridden pensioner, the best thing to do
was to preserve a ladylike composure. "Anyway, you're probably taking a
lot for granted. Probably Johnnie isn't in the least attracted by her.
Has he ever given any sign of it?"
"Sign?" Hugo considered. "It depends what you mean by sign. You know
what old John is. One of these strong, silent fellows who looks on all
occasions like a stuffed frog."
"He doesn't."
"Pardon me," said Hugo firmly. "Have you ever seen a stuffed frog?
Well, I have. I had one for years when I was a kid. And John has
exactly the same power of expressing emotion. You can't go by what he
says or the way he looks. You have to keep an eye out for much subtler
bits of evidence. Now, last night he was explaining the rules of
cricket to this girl, and answering all her questions on the subject,
and, as he didn't at any point in the proceeding punch her on the
nose, one is entitled to deduce, I consider, that he must be strongly
attracted by her. Ronnie thinks so, too. So what I'm asking you to
do...."
"Good-bye," said Pat. They had reached the gate of the little drive
that led to her house, and she turned sharply.
"Eh?"
"Good-bye."
"But just a moment," insisted Hugo. "Will you...."
At this point he stopped in mid-sentence and began to walk quickly up
the road; and Pat, puzzled to conjecture the reason for so abrupt a
departure, received illumination a moment later when she saw her father
coming down the drive. Colonel Wyvern had been dealing murderously with
snails in the shadow of a bush, and the expression on his face seemed
to indicate that he would be glad to extend the treatment to Hugo.
He gazed after that officious young man with a steely eye. The second
post had arrived a short time before, and it had included among a
number of bills and circulars a letter from his lawyer, in which the
latter regretfully gave it as his opinion that an action against Mr.
Lester Carmody in the matter of that dynamite business would not lie.
To bring such an action would, in the judgment of Colonel Wyvern's
lawyer, be a waste both of time and money.
The communication was not calculated to sweeten the Colonel's
temper, nor did the spectacle of his daughter in apparently pleasant
conversation with one of the enemy help to cheer him up.
"What are you talking about to that fellow?" he demanded. It was rare
for Colonel Wyvern to be the heavy father, but there are times when
heaviness in a father is excusable. "Where did you meet him?"
His tone disagreeably affected Pat's already harrowed nerves, but she
replied to the question equably.
"I met him on the bridge. We were talking about John."
"Well, kindly understand that I don't want you to hold any
communication whatsoever with that young man or his cousin John or his
infernal uncle or any of that Hall gang. Is that clear?"
Her father was looking at her as if she were a snail which he had just
found eating one of his lettuce leaves, but Pat still contrived with
some difficulty to preserve a pale, saintlike calm.
"Quite clear."
"Very well, then."
There was a silence.
"I've known Johnnie fourteen years," said Pat in a small voice.
"Quite long enough," grunted Colonel Wyvern.
Pat walked on into the house and up the stairs to her room. There,
having stamped on the basket and reduced it to a state where it would
never again carry seed cake to ex-cooks, she sat on her bed and stared,
dry-eyed, at her reflection in the mirror.
What with Dolly Molloy and Hugo and her father, the whole aspect of
John Carroll seemed to be changing for her. No longer was she able to
think of him as Poor Old Johnnie. He had the glamour now of something
unattainable and greatly to be desired. She looked back at a night,
some centuries ago, when a fool of a girl had refused the offer of this
superman's love, and shuddered to think what a mess of things girls can
make.
And she had no one to confide in. The only person who could have
understood and sympathized with her was Hugo's glass-eyed money lender.
He knew what it was to change one's outlook.
II
Mr. Alexander (Chimp) Twist stood with his shoulders against the
mantelpiece in Mr. Carmody's study and, twirling his waxed moustache
thoughtfully, listened with an expressionless face to Soapy Molloy's
synopsis of the events which had led up to his being at the Hall
that morning. Dolly reclined in a deep armchair. Mr. Carmody was not
present, having stated that he would prefer to leave the negotiations
entirely to Mr. Molloy.
Through the open window the sounds and scents of summer poured in, but
it is unlikely that Chimp Twist was aware of them. He was a man who
believed in concentration, and his whole attention now was taken up by
the remarkable facts which his old acquaintance and partner was placing
before him.
The latter's conversation on the telephone some two hours ago had left
Chimp Twist with an open mind. He was hopeful, but cautiously hopeful.
Soapy had insisted that there was a big thing on, but he had reserved
his enthusiasm until he should learn the details. The thing, he felt,
might seem big to Soapy, but to Alexander Twist no things were big
things unless he could see in advance a substantial profit for A. Twist
in them.
Mr. Molloy, concluding his story, paused for reply. The visitor gave
his moustache a final twist, and shook his head.
"I don't get it," he said.
Mrs. Molloy straightened herself militantly in her chair. Of all
masculine defects, she liked slowness of wit least; and she had never
been a great admirer of Mr. Twist.
"You poor, nut-headed swozzie," she said with heat. "What don't you
get? It's simple enough, isn't it? What's bothering you?"
"There's a catch somewhere. Why isn't this guy Carmody able to sell the
things?"
"It's the law, you poor fish. Soapy explained all that."
"Not to me he didn't," said Chimp. "A lot of words fluttered out of
him, but they didn't explain anything to me. Do you mean to say there's
a law in this country that says a man can't sell his own property?"
"It isn't his own property." Dolly's voice was shrill with
exasperation. "The things belong in the family and have to be kept
there. Does that penetrate, or have we got to use a steam drill? Listen
here. Old George W. Ancestor starts one of these English families
going--way back in the year G.X. something. He says to himself, 'I
can't last forever, and when I go then what? My son Freddie is a good
boy, handy with the battle axe and okay at mounting his charger, but
he's like all the rest of these kids--you can't keep him away from the
hock shop as long as there's anything in the house he can raise money
on. It begins to look like the moment I'm gone my collection of old
antiques can kiss itself good-bye.' And then he gets an idea. He has a
law passed saying that Freddie can use the stuff as long as he lives
but he can't sell it. And Freddie, when his time comes, he hands the
law on to his son Archibald, and so on, down the line till you get to
this here now Carmody. The only way this Carmody can realize on all
these things is to sit in with somebody who'll pinch them and then salt
them away somewheres, so that after the cops are out of the house and
all the fuss has quieted down they can get together and do a deal."
Chimp's face cleared.
"Now I'm hep," he said. "Now I see what you're driving at. Why couldn't
Soapy have put it like that before? Well, then, what's the idea? I
sneak in and swipe the stuff. Then what?"
"You salt it away."
"At Healthward Ho?"
"No!" said Mr. Molloy.
"No!" said Mrs. Molloy.
It would have been difficult to say which spoke with the greater
emphasis, and the effect was to create a rather embarrassing silence.
"It isn't that we don't trust you, Chimpie," said Mr. Molloy, when this
silence had lasted some little time.
"Oh?" said Mr. Twist, rather distantly.
"It's simply that this bimbo Carmody naturally don't want the stuff to
go out of the house. He wants it where he can keep an eye on it."
"How are you going to pinch it without taking it out of the house?"
"That's all been fixed. I was talking to him about it this morning
after I 'phoned you. Here's the idea. You get the stuff and pack it
away in a suitcase...."
"Stuff that there's only enough of so's you can put it all in a
suitcase is a hell of a lot of use to anyone," commented Mr. Twist
disparagingly.
Dolly clutched her temples. Mr. Molloy brushed his hair back from his
forehead with a despairing gesture.
"Sweet potatoes!" moaned Dolly. "Use your bean, you poor sap, use your
bean. If you had another brain you'd just have one. A thing hasn't got
to be the size of the Singer Building to be valuable, has it? I suppose
if someone offered you a diamond you'd turn it down because it wasn't
no bigger than a hen's egg."
"Diamond?" Chimp brightened. "Are there diamonds?"
"No, there aren't. But there's pictures and things, any one of them
worth a packet. Go on, Soapy. Tell him."
Mr. Molloy smoothed his hair and addressed himself to his task once
more.
"Well, it's like this, Chimpie," he said. "You put the stuff in a
suitcase and you take it down into the hall where there's a closet
under the stairs...."
"We'll show you the closet," interjected Dolly.
"Sure we'll show you the closet," said Mr. Molloy generously. "Well,
you put the suitcase in this closet and you leave it lay there. The
idea is that later on I give old man Carmody my cheque and he hands it
over and we take it away."
"He thinks Soapy owns a museum in America," explained Dolly. "He thinks
Soapy's got all the money in the world."
"Of course, long before the time comes for giving any cheques, we'll
have got the stuff away."
Mr. Chimp digested this.
"Who's going to buy it when you do get it away?" he asked.
"Oh, gee!" said Dolly. "You know as well as I do there's dozens of
people on the other side who'll buy it."
"And how are you going to get it away? If it's in a closet in Carmody's
house and Carmody has the key...?"
"Now there," said Mr. Molloy, with a deferential glance at his wife, as
if requesting her permission to re-open a delicate subject, "the madam
and I had a kind of an argument. I wanted to wait till a chance came
along sort of natural, but Dolly's all for quick action. You know what
women are. Impetuous."
"If you'd care to know what we're going to do," said Mrs. Molloy
definitely, "we're not going to hang around waiting for any chances to
come along sort of natural. We're going to slip a couple of knock-out
drops in old man Carmody's port one night after dinner and clear out
with the stuff while...."
"Knock-out drops?" said Chimp, impressed. "Have you got any knock-out
drops?"
"Sure we've got knock-out drops. Soapy never travels without them."
"The madam always packs them in their little bottle first thing
before even my clean collars," said Mr. Molloy proudly. "So you see,
everything's all arranged, Chimpie."
"Yeah?" said Mr. Twist, "and how about me?"
"How do you mean, how about you?"
"It seems to me," pointed out Mr. Twist, eyeing his business partner in
rather an unpleasant manner with his beady little eyes, "that you're
asking me to take a pretty big chance. While you're doping the old man
I'll be twenty miles away at Healthward Ho. How am I to know you won't
go off with the stuff and leave me to whistle for my share?"
It is only occasionally that one sees a man who cannot believe his
ears, but anybody who had been in Mr. Carmody's study at this moment
would have been able to enjoy that interesting experience. A long
moment of stunned and horrified amazement passed before Mr. Molloy was
able to decide that he really had heard correctly.
"Chimpie! You don't suppose we'd double-cross you?"
"Ee-magine!" said Mrs. Molloy.
"Well, mind you don't," said Mr. Twist coldly. "But you can't say I'm
not taking a chance. And now, talking turkey for a moment, how do we
share?"
"Equal shares, of course, Chimpie."
"You mean half for me and half for you and Dolly?"
Mr. Molloy winced as if the mere suggestion had touched an exposed
nerve.
"No, no, no, Chimpie! You get a third, I get a third, and the madam
gets a third."
"Not on your life!"
"What!"
"Not on your life. What do you think I am?"
"I don't know," said Mrs. Molloy acidly. "But, whatever it is, you're
the only one of it."
"Is that so?"
"Yes, that is so."
"Now, now, now," said Mr. Molloy, intervening. "Let's not get personal.
I can't figure this thing out, Chimpie. I can't see where your kick
comes in. You surely aren't suggesting that you should ought to have as
much as I and the wife put together?"
"No, I'm not. I'm suggesting I ought to have more."
"What!"
"Sixty-forty's my terms."
A feverish cry rang through the room, a cry that came straight from a
suffering heart. The temperamental Mrs. Molloy was very near the point
past which a sensitive woman cannot be pushed.
"Every time we get together on one of these jobs," she said, with deep
emotion, "we always have this same fuss about the divvying up. Just
when everything looks nice and settled you start this thing of trying
to hand I and Soapy the nub end of the deal. What's the matter with you
that you always want the earth? Be human, why can't you, you poor lump
of Camembert."
"I'm human all right."
"You've got to prove it to me."
"What makes you say I'm not human?"
"Well, look in the glass and see for yourself," said Mrs. Molloy
offensively.
The pacific Mr. Molloy felt it time to call the meeting to order once
more.
"Now, now, now! All this isn't getting us anywheres. Let's stick to
business. Where do you get that sixty-forty stuff, Chimp?"
"I'll tell you where I get it. I'm going into this thing as a favour,
aren't I? There's no need for me to sit in at this game at all, is
there? I've got a good, flourishing, respectable business of my own,
haven't I? A business that's on the level. Well, then."
Dolly sniffed. Her husband's soothing intervention had failed signally
to diminish her animosity.
"I don't know what your idea was in starting that Healthward Ho
joint," she said, "but I'll bet my diamond sunburst it isn't on the
level."
"Certainly it's on the level. A man with brains can always make a good
living without descending to anything low and crooked. That's why I say
that if I go into this thing it will simply be because I want to do a
favour to two old friends."
"Old what?"
"Friends was what I said," repeated Mr. Twist. "If you don't like my
terms, say so and we'll call the deal off. It'll be all right by me.
I'll simply get along back to Healthward Ho and go on running my good,
flourishing, respectable business. Come to think of it, I'm not any too
solid on this thing, anyway. I was walking in my garden this morning
and a magpie come up to me as close as that."
Mrs. Molloy expressed the view that this was tough on the magpie, but
wanted to know what the bird's misfortune in finding itself so close to
Mr. Twist that it could not avoid taking a good, square look at him had
to do with the case.
"Well, I'm superstitious, same as everyone else. I saw the new moon
through the glass, what's more."
"Oh, stop stringing the beads and talk sense," said Dolly wearily.
"I'm talking sense all right. Sixty per cent. or I don't come in. You
wouldn't have asked me to come in if you could have done without me.
Think I don't know that? Sixty's moderate. I'm doing all the hard work,
aren't I?"
"Hard work?" Dolly laughed bitterly. "Where do you get the idea it's
going to be hard work? Everybody'll be out of the house on the night
of this concert thing they're having down in the village, there'll be
a window left open, and you'll just walk in and pack up the stuff. If
that's hard, what's easy? We're simply handing you slathers of money
for practically doing nothing."
"Sixty," said Mr. Twist. "And that's my last word."
"But, Chimpie ..." pleaded Mr. Molloy.
"Sixty."
"Have a heart!"
"Sixty."
"It isn't as though ..."
"Sixty."
Dolly threw up her hands despairingly.
"Oh, give it him," she said. "He won't be happy if you don't. If a
guy's middle name is Shylock, where's the use wasting time trying to do
anything about it?"
III
Mrs. Molloy's prediction that on the night of Rudge's annual dramatic
and musical entertainment the Hall would be completely emptied of its
occupants was not, as it happened, literally fulfilled. A wanderer
through the stable yard at about the hour of ten would have perceived a
light in an upper window: and had he taken the trouble to get a ladder
and climb up and look in would have beheld John Carroll seated at his
table, busy with a pile of accounts.
In an age so notoriously avid of pleasure as the one in which we live
it is rare to find a young man of such sterling character that he
voluntarily absents himself from a village concert in order to sit at
home and work: and, contemplating John, one feels quite a glow. It was
not as if he had been unaware of what he was missing. The vicar, he
knew, was to open the proceedings with a short address: the choir would
sing old English glees: the Misses Vivien and Alice Pond-Pond were down
on the programme for refined coon songs: and, in addition to other
items too numerous and fascinating to mention, Hugo Carmody and his
friend Mr. Fish would positively appear in person and render that noble
example of Shakespeare's genius, the Quarrel Scene from _Julius Cæsar_.
Yet John Carroll sat in his room, working. England's future cannot be
so dubious as the pessimists would have us believe while her younger
generation is made of stuff like this.
John was finding in his work these days a good deal of consolation.
There is probably no better corrective of the pangs of hopeless love
than real, steady application to the prosaic details of an estate. The
heart finds it difficult to ache its hardest while the mind is busy
with such items as Sixty-one pounds, eight shillings and fivepence, due
to Messrs. Truby and Gaunt for Fixing Gas Engine, or the claim of the
Country Gentlemen's Association for eight pounds eight and fourpence
for seeds. Add drains, manure, and feed of pigs, and you find yourself
immediately in an atmosphere where Romeo himself would have let his
mind wander. John, as he worked, was conscious of a distinct easing of
the strain which had been on him since his return to the Hall. And if
at intervals he allowed his eyes to stray to the photograph of Pat on
the mantelpiece, that was the sort of thing that might happen to any
young man, and could not be helped.
It was seldom that visitors penetrated to this room of his--indeed, he
had chosen to live above the stables in preference to inside the house
for this very reason, and on Rudge's big night he had looked forward to
an unbroken solitude. He was surprised, therefore, as he checked the
account of the Messrs. Vanderschoot & Son for bulbs, to hear footsteps
on the stairs. A moment later, the door had opened and Hugo walked in.
John's first impulse, as always when his cousin paid him a visit, was
to tell him to get out. People who, when they saw Hugo, immediately
told him to get out generally had the comfortable feeling that they
were doing the right and sensible thing. But to-night there was in his
demeanour something so crushed and forlorn that John had not the heart
to pursue this admirable policy.
"Hullo," he said. "I thought you were down at the concert."
Hugo uttered a short, bitter laugh, and, sinking into a chair, stared
bleakly before him. His eyelids, like those of the Mona Lisa, were a
little weary. He looked like the hero of a Russian novel debating the
advisability of murdering a few near relations before hanging himself
in the barn.
"I was," he said. "Oh yes, I was down at the concert all right."
"Have you done your bit already?"
"I have. They put Ronnie and me on just after the Vicar's Short
Address."
"Wanted to get the worst over quick, eh?"
Hugo raised a protesting hand. There was infinite sadness in the
gesture.
"Don't mock, John. Don't jeer. Don't jibe and scoff. I'm a broken man."
"Only cracked, I should have said."
Hugo was not attuned to cousinly badinage. He frowned austerely.
"Less back-chat," he begged. "I came here for sympathy. And a drink.
Have you got anything to drink?"
"There's some whisky in that cupboard."
Hugo heaved himself from the chair, looking more Russian than ever.
John watched his operations with some concern.
"Aren't you mixing it pretty strong?"
"I need it strong." The unhappy man emptied his glass, refilled it, and
returned to the chair. "In fact, it's a point verging very much on the
moot whether I ought to have put any water in it at all."
"What's the trouble?"
"This isn't bad whisky," said Hugo, becoming a little brighter.
"I know it isn't. What's the matter?"
The momentary flicker of cheerfulness died out. Gloom once more claimed
Hugo for its own.
"John, old man," he said. "We got the bird."
"Yes?"
"Don't say 'Yes?' like that, as if you had expected it," said Hugo,
hurt. "The thing came on me as a stunning blow. I was amazed.
Astounded. Absolutely nonplussed."
"Could I have knocked you down with a feather?"
"I thought we were going to be a riot. Of course, mind you, we came on
much too early. It was criminal to bill us next to opening. An audience
needs careful warming up for an intellectual act like ours!"
"What happened?"
Hugo rose and renewed the contents of his glass.
"There is a spirit creeping into the life of Rudge-in-the-Vale," he
said, "which I don't like to see. A spirit of lawlessness and licence.
Disruptive influences are at work. Bolshevik propaganda, I shouldn't
wonder. Would a Rudge audience have given me the bird a few years ago?
Not a chance!"
"But you've never tried them with the Quarrel Scene from _Julius Cæsar_
before. Everybody has a breaking point."
The argument was specious, but Hugo shook his head.
"In the good old days I could have done Hamlet's Soliloquy, and
the hall would have rung with hearty cheers. It's just this modern
lawlessness and Bolshevism. There was a very tough collection of the
Budd Street element standing at the back, who should never have been
let in. They started straight away chi-yiking the vicar during his
short address. I didn't think anything of it at the time. I merely
supposed that they wanted him to cheese it and let the entertainment
start. I thought that directly Ronnie and I came on we should grip
them. But we were barely a third of the way through when there were
loud cries of 'Tripe!' and 'Get off!'"
"I see what that meant. You hadn't gripped them."
"I was never so surprised in my life. Mark you, I'll admit that
Ronnie was perfectly rotten. He kept foozling his lines and saying
'Oh, sorry!' and going back and repeating them. You can't get the
best out of Shakespeare that way. The fact is, poor old Ronnie is
feeling a little low just now. He got a letter this morning from his
man, Bessemer, in London, a fellow who has been with him for years
and has few equals as a trouser presser, springing the news out of an
absolutely clear sky that he's been secretly engaged for weeks and is
just going to get married and leave Ronnie. Naturally, it has upset the
poor chap badly. With a thing like that on his mind, he should never
have attempted an exacting part like Brutus in the Quarrel Scene."
"Just what the audience thought, apparently. What happened after that?"
"Well, we buzzed along as well as we could, and we had just got to that
bit about digesting the venom of your spleen though it do split you,
when the proletariat suddenly started bunging vegetables."
"Vegetables?"
"Turnips, mostly, as far as I could gather. Now, do you see the
significance of that, John?"
"How do you mean, the significance?"
"Well, obviously these blighters had come prepared. They had meant to
make trouble right along. If not, why would they have come to a concert
with their pockets bulging with turnips?"
"They probably knew by instinct that they would need them."
"No! It was simply this bally Bolshevism one reads so much about."
"You think these men were in the pay of Moscow?"
"I shouldn't wonder. Well, that took us off. Ronnie got rather a beefy
whack on the side of the head and exited rapidly. And I wasn't going to
stand out there doing the Quarrel Scene by myself, so I exited, too.
The last I saw, Chas. Bywater had gone on and was telling Irish dialect
stories with a Swedish accent."
"Did they throw turnips at him?"
"Not one. That's the sinister part of it. That's what makes me so sure
the thing was an organized outbreak and all part of this Class War you
hear about. Chas. Bywater, in spite of the fact that his material was
blue round the edges, goes like a breeze, and gets off without a single
turnip, whereas Ronnie and I ... well," said Hugo, a hideous grimness
in his voice, "this has settled one thing. I've performed for the last
time for Rudge-in-the-Vale. Next year when they may come to me, and
plead with me to help out with the programme, I shall reply, 'Not after
what has occurred!' Well, thanks for the drink. I'll be buzzing along."
Hugo rose and wandered somnambulistically to the table. "What are you
doing?"
"Working."
"Working?"
"Yes, working."
"What at?"
"Accounts. Stop fiddling with those papers, curse you."
"What's this thing?"
"That," said John, removing it from his listless grasp and putting it
out of reach in a drawer, "is the diagram of a thing called an Alpha
Separator. It works by centrifugal force and can separate two thousand
seven hundred and twenty-four quarts of milk in an hour. It has also
a Holstein butter-churner attachment, and a boiler which at seventy
degrees centigrade destroys the obligatory and optional bacteria."
"Yes?
"Positively."
"Oh? Well, damn it, anyway," said Hugo.
IV
Hugo crossed the strip of gravel which lay between the stable yard and
the house, and, having found in his trouser pocket the key of the back
door, proceeded to let himself in. His objective was the dining room.
He was feeling so much better after the refreshment of which he had
just partaken that reason told him he had found the right treatment for
his complaint. A few more swift ones from the cellarette in the dining
room and the depression caused by the despicable behaviour of the Budd
Street Bolshevists might possibly leave him altogether.
The passage leading to his goal was in darkness, but he moved steadily
forward. Occasionally a chair would dart from its place to crack him
over the shin, but he was not to be kept from the cellarette by trifles
like that. Soon his fingers were on the handle of the door, and he
flung it open and entered. And it was at this moment that there came to
his ears an odd noise.
It was not the noise itself that was odd. Feet scraping on gravel
always make that unmistakable sound. What impressed itself on Hugo
as curious was the fact that on the gravel outside the dining-room
window, feet at this hour should be scraping at all. His hand had been
outstretched to switch on the light, but now he paused. He waited,
listening. And presently in the oblong of the middle of the three large
windows he saw dimly against the lesser darkness outside a human body.
It was insinuating itself through the opening and what Hugo felt about
it was that he liked its dashed nerve.
Hugo Carmody was no poltroon. Both physically and morally he possessed
more than the normal store of courage. At Cambridge he had boxed for
his university in the light-weight division and once, in London, the
petty cash having run short, he had tipped a hat-check boy with an
aspirin tablet. Moreover, although it was his impression that the few
drops of whisky which he had drunk in John's room had but scratched
the surface, their effect in reality had been rather pronounced. "In
some diatheses," an eminent physician has laid down, "whisky is not
immediately pathogenic. In other cases the spirit in question produces
marked cachexia." Hugo's cachexia was very marked indeed. He would
have resented keenly the suggestion that he was fried, boiled, or even
sozzled, but he was unquestionably in a definite condition of cachexia.
In a situation, accordingly, in which many householders might have
quailed, he was filled with gay exhilaration. He felt able and willing
to chew the head off any burglar that ever packed a centrebit. Glowing
with cachexia and the spirit of adventure, he switched on the light
and found himself standing face to face with a small, weedy man beneath
whose snub nose there nestled a waxed moustache.
"Stand ho!" said Hugo jubilantly, falling at once into the vein of the
Quarrel Scene.
In the bosom of the intruder many emotions were competing for
precedence, but jubilation was not one of them. If Mr. Twist had had
a weak heart, he would by now have been lying on the floor breathing
his last, for few people can ever have had a nastier shock. He stood
congealed, blinking at Hugo.
Hugo, meanwhile, had made the interesting discovery that it was no
stranger who stood before him but an old acquaintance.
"Great Scot!" he exclaimed. "Old Doc. Twist! The beautiful,
tranquil-thoughts bird!" He chuckled joyously. His was a retentive
memory, and he could never forget that this man had once come within an
ace of ruining that big deal in cigarettes over at Healthward Ho, and
had also callously refused to lend him a tenner. Of such a man he could
believe anything, even that he combined with the duties of a physical
culture expert a little housebreaking and burglary on the side. "Well,
well, well!" said Hugo. "Remember March, the Ides of March remember!
Did not great Julius bleed for justice' sake? What villain touched his
body that did stab and not for justice? Answer me that, you blighter,
yes or no."
Chimp Twist licked his lips nervously. He was a little uncertain as to
the exact import of his companion's last words, but almost any words
would have found in him at this moment a distrait listener.
"Oh, I could weep my spirit from my eyes!" said Hugo.
Chimp could have done the same. With an intense bitterness he was
regretting that he had ever allowed Mr. Molloy to persuade him into
this rash venture. But he was a man of resource. He made an effort to
mend matters. Soapy, in a similar situation, would have done it better,
but Chimp, though not possessing his old friend's glib tongue and
insinuating manners, did the best he could. "You startled me," he said,
smiling a sickly smile.
"I bet I did," agreed Hugo cordially.
"I came to see your uncle."
"You what?"
"I came to see your uncle."
"Twist, you lie! And, what is more, you lie in your teeth."
"Now, see here...!" began Chimp, with a feeble attempt at belligerence.
Hugo checked him with a gesture.
"There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats, for I am armed so
strong in honesty that they pass by me like the idle wind, which I
respect not. Must I give way and room to your rash choler? Shall I be
frightened when a madman stares? By the gods, you shall digest the
venom of your spleen though it do split you. And what could be fairer
than that?" said Hugo.
Mr. Twist was discouraged, but he persevered.
"I guess it looked funny to you, seeing me come in through a window.
But, you see, I rang the front door bell and couldn't seem to make
anyone hear."
"Away, slight man!"
"You want me to go away?" said Mr. Twist, with a gleam of hope.
"You stay where you are, unless you'd like me to lean a decanter of the
best port up against your head," said Hugo. "And don't flicker," he
added, awakening to another grievance against this unpleasant little
man.
"Don't what?" inquired Mr. Twist, puzzled but anxious to oblige.
"Flicker. Your outline keeps wobbling, and I don't like it. And there's
another thing about you that I don't like. I've forgotten what it is
for the moment, but it'll come back to me soon."
He frowned darkly: and for the first time it was borne in upon Mr.
Twist that his young host was not altogether himself. There was a gleam
in his eyes which, in Mr. Twist's opinion, was far too wild to be
agreeable.
"I know," said Hugo, having reflected. "It's your moustache."
"My moustache?"
"Or whatever it is that's broken out on your upper lip. I dislike it
intensely. When Cæsar lived," said Hugo querulously, "he durst not thus
have moved me. And the worst thing of all is that you should have taken
a quiet, harmless country house and called it such a beastly, repulsive
name as Healthward Ho. Great Scot!" exclaimed Hugo. "I knew there was
something I was forgetting. All this while you ought to have been doing
bending and stretching exercises!"
"Your uncle, I guess, is still down at the concert thing in the
village?" said Mr. Twist, weakly endeavouring to change the
conversation.
Hugo started. A look of the keenest suspicion flashed into his eyes.
"Were you at that concert?" he said sternly.
"Me? No."
"Are you sure, Twist? Look me in the face."
"I've never been near any concert."
"I strongly suspect you," said Hugo, "of being one of the ringleaders
in that concerted plot to give me the bird. I think I recognized you."
"Not me."
"You're sure?"
"Sure."
"Oh? Well, that doesn't alter the cardinal fact that you are the
bloke who makes poor, unfortunate fat men do bending and stretching
exercises. So do a few now yourself."
"Eh?"
"Bend!" said Hugo. "Stretch!"
"Stretch?"
"And bend," said Hugo, insisting on full measure. "First bend, then
stretch. Let me see your chest expand and hear the tinkle of buttons as
you burst your waistcoat asunder."
Mr. Twist was now definitely of opinion that the gleam in the young
man's eyes was one of the most unpleasant and menacing things he had
ever encountered. Transferring his gaze from this gleam to the other's
well-knit frame, he decided that he was in the presence of one who,
whether his singular request was due to weakness of intellect or to
alcohol, had best be humoured.
"Get on with it," said Hugo.
He settled himself in a chair and lighted a cigarette. His whole
manner was suggestive of the blasé nonchalance of a sultan about to
be entertained by the court acrobat. But, though his bearing was
nonchalant, that gleam was still in his eyes, and Chimp Twist hesitated
no longer. He bent, as requested--and then, having bent, stretched. For
some moments he jerked his limbs painfully in this direction and in
that, while Hugo, puffing smoke, surveyed him with languid appreciation.
"Now tie yourself into a reefer knot," said Hugo.
Chimp gritted his teeth. A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering
happier things, and there came back to him the recollection of mornings
when he had stood at his window and laughed heartily at the spectacle
of his patients at Healthward Ho being hounded on to these very
movements by the vigilant Sergeant Flannery. How little he had supposed
that there would ever come a time when he would be compelled himself to
perform these exercises. And how little he had guessed at the hideous
discomfort which they could cause to a man who had let his body muscles
grow stiff.
"Wait," said Hugo, suddenly.
Mr. Twist was glad to do so. He straightened himself, breathing heavily.
"Are you thinking beautiful thoughts?"
Chimp Twist gulped. "Yes," he said, with a strong effort.
"Beautiful, tranquil thoughts?"
"Yes."
"Then carry on."
Chimp resumed his calisthenics. He was aching in every joint now, but
into his discomfort there had shot a faint gleam of hope. Everything in
this world has its drawbacks and its advantages. With the drawbacks to
his present situation he had instantly become acquainted, but now at
last one advantage presented itself to his notice--the fact, to wit,
that the staggerings and totterings inseparable from a performance
of the kind with which he was entertaining his limited but critical
audience had brought him very near to the open window.
"How are the thoughts?" asked Hugo. "Still beautiful?"
Chimp said they were, and he spoke sincerely. He had contrived to put
a space of several feet between himself and his persecutor, and the
window gaped invitingly almost at his side.
"Yours," said Hugo, puffing smoke meditatively, "has been a very happy
life, Twist. Day after day you have had the privilege of seeing my
uncle Lester doing just what you're doing now, and it must have beaten
a circus hollow. It's funny enough even when you do it, and you haven't
anything like his personality and appeal. If you could see what a
priceless ass you look it would keep you giggling for weeks. I know,"
said Hugo, receiving an inspiration; "do the one where you touch your
toes without bending the knees."
In all human affairs the semblance of any given thing is bound to vary
considerably with the point of view. To Chimp Twist, as he endeavoured
to comply with this request, it seemed incredible that what he was
doing could strike anyone as humorous. To Hugo, on the other hand,
it appeared as if the entertainment had now reached its apex of
wholesome fun. As Mr. Twist's purple face came up for the third time,
he abandoned himself whole-heartedly to mirth. He rocked in his chair,
and, rashly trying to inhale cigarette smoke at the same time, found
himself suddenly overcome by a paroxysm of coughing.
It was the moment for which Chimp Twist had been waiting. There is,
as Ronnie Fish would have observed in the village hall an hour or so
earlier if the audience had had the self-restraint to let him get as
far as that, a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood,
leads on to fortune. Chimp did not neglect the opportunity which
Fate had granted him. With an agile bound he was at the window, and,
rendered supple, no doubt, by his recent exercises, leaped smartly
through it.
He descended heavily on the dog Emily. Emily, wandering out for a
last stroll before turning in, had just paused beneath the window to
investigate a smell which had been called to her attention on the
gravel. She was trying to make up her mind whether it was rats or the
ghost of a long-lost bone when the skies suddenly started raining heavy
bodies on her.
V
Emily was a dog who, as a rule, took things as they came, her guiding
motto in life being the old Horatian _nil admirari_, but she could
lose her poise. She lost it now. A startled oath escaped her, and
for a brief instant she was completely unequal to the situation. In
this instant, Chimp, equally startled but far too busy to stop, had
disengaged himself and was vanishing into the darkness.
A moment later Hugo came through the window. His coughing fit had spent
itself, and he was now in good voice again. He was shouting.
At once Emily became herself again. All her sporting blood stirred in
answer to these shouts. She forgot her agony. Her sense of grievance
left her. Recognizing Hugo, she saw all things clearly, and realized
in a flash that here at last was the burglar for whom she had been
waiting ever since her conversation with that wire-haired terrier over
at Webleigh Manor.
John had taken her to lunch there one day and, fraternizing with
the Webleigh dog under the table, she had immediately noticed in
his manner something aloof and distinctly patronizing. It had then
come out in conversation that they had had a burglary at the Manor
a couple of nights ago, and the wire-haired terrier, according to
his own story, had been the hero of the occasion. He spoke with an
ill-assumed offhandedness of barking and bitings and chasings in the
night, and, though he did not say it in so many words, gave Emily
plainly to understand that it took an unusual dog to grapple with such
a situation, and that in a similar crisis she herself would inevitably
be found wanting. Ever since that day she had been longing for a chance
to show her mettle, and now it had come. Calling instructions in a high
voice, she raced for the bushes into which Chimp had disappeared. Hugo,
a bad third, brought up the rear of the procession.
Chimp, meanwhile, had been combining with swift movement some very
rapid thinking. Fortune had been with him in the first moments of this
dash for safety, but now, he considered, it had abandoned him, and he
must trust to his native intelligence to see him through. He had not
anticipated dogs. Dogs altered the whole complexion of the affair. To
a go-as-you-please race across country with Hugo he would have trusted
himself, but Hugo in collaboration with a dog was another matter. It
became now a question not of speed but of craft; and he looked about
him, as he ran, for a hiding place, for some shelter from this canine
and human storm which he had unwittingly aroused.
And Fortune, changing sides again, smiled upon him once more. Emily,
who had been coming nicely, attempted very injudiciously at this
moment to take a short cut and became involved in a bush. And Chimp,
accelerating an always active brain, perceived a way out. There was a
low stone wall immediately in front of him, and beyond it, as he came
up, he saw the dull gleam of water.
It was not an ideal haven, but he was in no position to pick and
choose. The interior of the tank from which the gardeners drew
ammunition for their watering cans had, for one who from childhood had
always disliked bathing, a singularly repellent air. Those dark, oily
looking depths suggested the presence of frogs, newts, and other slimy
things that work their way down a man's back and behave clammily around
his spine. But it was most certainly a place of refuge.
He looked over his shoulder. An agitated crackling of branches
announced that Emily had not yet worked clear, and Hugo had apparently
stopped to render first aid. With a silent shudder Chimp stepped into
the tank and, lowering himself into the depths, nestled behind a water
lily.
Hugo was finding the task of extricating Emily more difficult than he
had anticipated. The bush was one of those thorny, adhesive bushes, and
it twined itself lovingly in Emily's hair. Bad feeling began to rise,
and the conversation took on an acrimonious tone.
"Stand still!" growled Hugo. "Stand still, you blighter dog."
"Push," retorted Emily. "Push, I tell you! Push, not pull. Don't you
realize that all the while we're wasting time here that fellow's
getting away?"
"Don't wriggle, confound you. How can I get you out if you keep
wriggling?"
"Try a lift in an upward direction. No, that's no good. Stop pushing
and pull. Pull, I tell you. Pull not push. Now, when I say '_To_
you ...'"
Something gave. Hugo staggered back. Emily sprang from his grasp. The
chase was on again.
But now all the zest had gone out of it. The operations in the bush
had occupied only a bare couple of minutes, but they had been enough
to allow the quarry to vanish. He had completely disappeared. Hugo,
sitting on the wall of the tank and trying to recover his breath,
watched Emily as she darted to and fro, inspecting paths and drawing
shrubberies, and knew that he had failed. It was a bitter moment, and
he sat and smoked moodily. Presently even Emily gave the thing up. She
came back to where Hugo sat, her tongue lolling, and disgust written
all over her expressive features. There was a silence. Emily thought
it was all Hugo's fault, Hugo thought it was Emily's. A stiffness had
crept into their relations once again, and when at length Hugo, feeling
a little more benevolent after three cigarettes, reached down and
scratched Emily's head, the latter drew away coldly.
"Damn fool!" she said.
Hugo started. Was it some sound, some distant stealthy footstep, that
had caused his companion to speak? He stared into the night.
"Fat head!" said Emily. "Can't even pull somebody out of a bush."
She laughed mirthlessly, and Hugo, now keenly on the alert, rose from
his seat and gazed this way and that. And then, moving softly away from
him at the end of the path, he saw a dark figure.
Instantly, Hugo Carmody became once more the man of action. With a
stern shout he dashed along the path. And he had not gone half a dozen
feet when the ground seemed suddenly to give way under him.
This path, as he should have remembered, knowing the terrain as he
did, was a terrace path, set high above the shrubberies below. It was
a simple enough matter to negotiate it in daylight and at a gentle
stroll, but to race successfully along it in the dark required a
Blondin. Hugo's third stride took him well into the abyss. He clutched
out desperately, grasped only cool Worcestershire night air, and then,
rolling down the slope, struck his head with great violence against a
tree which seemed to have been put there for the purpose.
When the sparks had cleared away and the firework exhibition was over,
he rose painfully to his feet.
A voice was speaking from above--the voice of Ronald Overbury Fish.
"Hullo!" said the voice. "What's up?"
VI
Weighed down by the burden of his many sorrows, Ronnie Fish had come
to this terrace path to be alone. Solitude was what he desired, and
solitude was what he supposed he had got until, abruptly, without any
warning but a wild shout, the companion of his school and university
days had suddenly dashed out from empty space and apparently attempted
to commit suicide. Ronnie was surprised. Naturally no fellow likes
getting the bird at a village concert, but Hugo, he considered, in
trying to kill himself was adopting extreme measures. He peered down,
going so far in his natural emotion as to remove the cigarette holder
from his mouth.
"What's up?" he asked again.
Hugo was struggling dazedly up the bank.
"Was that you, Ronnie?"
"Was what me?"
"That."
"Which?"
Hugo approached the matter from another angle.
"Did you see anyone?"
"When?"
"Just now. I thought I saw someone on the path. It must have been you."
"It was. Why?"
"I thought it was somebody else."
"Well, it wasn't."
"I know, but I thought it was."
"Who did you think it was?"
"A fellow called Twist."
"Twist?"
"Yes, Twist."
"Why?"
"I've been chasing him."
"Chasing Twist?"
"Yes. I caught him burgling the house."
They had been walking along, and now reached a spot where the light,
freed from overhanging branches, was stronger. Mr. Fish became aware
that his friend had sustained injuries.
"I say," he said, "you've hurt your head."
"I know I've hurt my head, you silly ass."
"It's bleeding, I mean."
"Bleeding?"
"Bleeding."
Blood is always interesting. Hugo put a hand to his wound, took it away
again, inspected it.
"By Jove! I'm bleeding."
"Yes, bleeding. You'd better go in and have it seen to."
"Yes," Hugo reflected. "I'll go and get old John to fix it. He once put
six stitches in a cow."
"What cow?"
"One of the cows. I forget its name."
"Where do we find this John?"
"He's in his room over the stables."
"Can you walk it all right?"
"Oh yes, rather,"
Ronnie, relieved, lighted a cigarette, and approached an aspect of the
affair which had been giving him food for thought.
"I say, Hugo, have you been having a few drinks or anything?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, buzzing about the place after non-existent burglars."
"They weren't non-existent. I tell you I caught this man Twist...."
"How do you know it was Twist?"
"I've met him."
"Who? Twist?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"He runs a place called Healthward Ho near here."
"What's Healthward Ho?"
"It's a place where fellows go to get fit. My uncle was there."
"And Twist runs it?"
"Yes."
"And you think this--dash it, this pillar of society was burgling the
house?"
"I caught him, I tell you."
"Who? Twist?"
"Yes."
"Well, where is he, then?"
"I don't know."
"Listen, old man," said Ronnie gently. "I think you'd better be pushing
along and getting that bulb of yours repaired."
He remained gazing after his friend, as he disappeared in the direction
of the stable yard, with much concern. He hated to think of good old
Hugo getting into a mental state like this, though, of course, it was
only what you could expect if a man lived in the country all the time.
He was still brooding when he heard footsteps behind him and looked
round and saw Mr. Lester Carmody approaching.
Mr. Carmody was in a condition which in a slimmer man might have
been called fluttering. He, like John, had absented himself from the
festivities in the village, wishing to be on the spot when Mr. Twist
made his entry into the house. He had seen Chimp get through the
dining-room window and had instantly made his way to the front hall,
proposing to wait there and see the precious suitcase duly deposited
in the cupboard under the stairs. He had waited, but no Chimp had
appeared. And then there had come to his ears barkings and shoutings
and uproar in the night. Mr. Carmody, like Othello, was perplexed in
the extreme.
"Ah, Carmody," said Mr. Fish.
He waved a kindly cigarette holder at his host. The latter regarded
him with tense apprehension. Was his guest about to announce that
Mr. Twist, caught in the act, was now under lock and key? For some
reason or other, it was plain, Hugo and this unspeakable friend of his
had returned at an unexpectedly early hour from the village, and Mr.
Carmody feared the worst.
"I've got a bit of bad news for you, Carmody," said Mr. Fish. "Brace
up, my dear fellow."
Mr. Carmody gulped.
"What--what--what...."
"Poor old Hugo. Gone clean off his mental axis."
"What! What do you mean?"
"I found him just now running round in circles and dashing his head
against trees. He said he was chasing a burglar. Of course there wasn't
anything of the sort on the premises. For, mark this, my dear Carmody:
according to his statement, which I carefully checked, the burglar was
a most respectable fellow named Twist, who runs a sort of health place
near here. You know him, I believe?"
"Slightly," said Mr. Carmody. "Slightly."
"Well, would a man in that position go about burgling houses? Pure
delusion, of course."
Mr. Carmody breathed a deep sigh. Relief had made him feel a little
faint.
"Undoubtedly," he said. "Hugo was always weak-minded from a boy."
"By the way," said Mr. Fish, "did you by any chance get up at five in
the morning the other day and climb a ladder to look for swallows'
nests?"
"Certainly not."
"I thought as much. Hugo said he saw you. Delusion again. The whole
truth of the matter is, my dear Carmody, living in the country has
begun to soften poor old Hugo's brain. You must act swiftly. You don't
want a gibbering nephew about the place. Take my tip and send him away
to London at the earliest possible moment."
It was rare for Lester Carmody to feel gratitude for the advice
which this young man gave him so freely, but he was grateful now. He
perceived clearly that a venture like the one on which he and his
colleagues had embarked should never have been undertaken while the
house was full of infernal, interfering young men. Such was his emotion
that for an instant he almost liked Mr. Fish.
"Hugo was saying that you wished him to become your partner in some
commercial enterprise," he said.
"A night club. The Hot Spot. Situated just off Bond Street, in the
heart of London's pleasure-seeking area."
"You were going to give him a half share for five hundred pounds, I
believe?"
"Five hundred was the figure."
"He shall have the cheque immediately," said Mr. Carmody. "I will go
and write it now. And to-morrow you shall take him to London. The best
trains are in the morning. I quite agree with you about his mental
condition. I am very much obliged to you for drawing it to my notice."
"Don't mention it, Carmody," said Mr. Fish graciously. "Only too glad,
my dear fellow. Always a pleasure, always a pleasure."
VII
John had returned to his work and was deep in it when Hugo and his
wounded head crossed his threshold. He was startled and concerned.
"Good heavens!" he cried. "What's been happening?"
"Fell down a bank and bumped the old lemon against a tree," said Hugo,
with the quiet pride of a man who has had an accident. "I looked in to
see if you had got some glue or something to stick it up with."
John, as became one who thought nothing of putting stitches in cows,
exhibited a cool efficiency. He bustled about, found water and cotton
wool and iodine, and threw in sympathy as a make-weight. Only when the
operation was completed did he give way to a natural curiosity.
"How did it happen?"
"Well, it started when I found that bounder Twist burgling the house."
"Twist?"
"Yes. Twist. The Healthward Ho bird."
"You found Doctor Twist burgling the house?"
"Yes, and I made him do bending and stretching exercises. And in the
middle he legged it through the window, and Emily and I chivvied him
about the garden. Then he disappeared, and I saw him again at the end
of that path above the shrubberies, and I dashed after him and took a
toss and it wasn't Twist at all, it was Ronnie."
John forbore to ask further questions. This incoherent tale satisfied
him that his cousin, if not delirious, was certainly on the borderland.
He remembered the whole-heartedness with which Hugo had drowned his
sorrows only a short while back in this very room, and he was satisfied
that what the other needed was rest.
"You'd better go to bed," he said. "I think I've fixed you up pretty
well, but perhaps you had better see the doctor to-morrow."
"Doc. Twist?"
"No, not Doctor Twist," said John soothingly. "Doctor Bain, down in the
village."
"Something ought to be done about the man Twist," argued Hugo.
"Somebody ought to pop it across him."
"If I were you I'd just forget all about Twist. Put him right out of
your mind."
"But are we going to sit still and let perishers with waxed moustaches
burgle the house whenever they feel inclined and not do a thing to
bring their gray hairs in sorrow to the grave?"
"I wouldn't worry about it, if I were you, I'd just go off and have a
nice long sleep."
Hugo raised his eyebrows, and, finding that the process caused
exquisite agony to his wounded head, quickly lowered them again. He
looked at John with cold disapproval, pained at this evidence of
supineness in a member of a proud family.
"Oh?" he said. "Well, bung--oh, then!"
"Good night."
"Give my love to the Alpha Separator and all the little Separators."
"I will," said John.
He accompanied his cousin down the stairs and out into the stable yard.
Having watched him move away and feeling satisfied that he could reach
the house without assistance, he felt in his pocket for the materials
for the last smoke of the day, and was filling his pipe when Emily came
round the corner.
Emily was in great spirits.
"Such larks!" said Emily. "One of those big nights. Burglars dashing
to and fro, people falling over banks and butting their heads against
trees, and everything bright and lively. But let me tell you something.
A fellow like your cousin Hugo is no use whatever to a dog in any real
emergency. He's not a force. A broken reed. You should have seen him.
He...."
"Stop that noise and get to bed," said John.
"Right ho," said Emily. "You'll be coming soon, I suppose?"
She charged up the stairs, glad to get to her basket after a busy
evening. John lighted his pipe, and began to meditate. Usually he
smoked the last pipe of the day to the accompaniment of thoughts about
Pat, but now he found his mind turning to this extraordinary delusion
of Hugo's that he had caught Doctor Twist, of Healthward Ho, burgling
the house.
John had never met Doctor Twist, but he knew that he was the proprietor
of a flourishing health-cure establishment and assumed him to be a
reputable citizen; and the idea that he had come all the way from
Healthward Ho to burgle Rudge Hall was so bizarre that he could not
imagine by what weird mental processes his cousin had been led to
suppose that he had seen him. Why Doctor Twist, of all people? Why not
the vicar or Chas. Bywater?
Footsteps sounded on the gravel, and he was aware of the subject of his
thoughts returning. There was a dazed expression on Hugo's face, and in
his hand there fluttered a small oblong slip of paper.
"John," said Hugo, "look at this and tell me if you see what I see. Is
it a cheque?"
"Yes."
"For five hundred quid, made out to me and signed by Uncle Lester?"
"Yes."
"Then there _is_ a Santa Claus!" said Hugo reverently. "John, old man,
it's absolutely uncanny. Directly I got into the house just now Uncle
Lester called me to his study, handed me this cheque, and told me that
I could go to London with Ronnie to-morrow and help him start that
night club. You remember me telling you about Ronnie's night club,
the Hot Spot, situated just off Bond Street in the heart of London's
pleasure-seeking area? Or did I? Well, anyway, he is starting a night
club there, and he offered me a half share if I'd put up five hundred.
By the way, Uncle Lester wants you to go to London to-morrow, too."
"Me. Why?"
"I fancy he's got the wind up a bit about this burglary business
to-night. He said something about wanting you to go and see the
insurance people--to bump up the insurance a trifle, I suppose. He'll
explain. But, listen, John. It really is the most extraordinary thing,
this. Uncle Lester starting to unbelt, I mean, and scattering money all
over the place. I was absolutely right when I told Pat this morning...."
"Have you seen Pat?"
"Met her this morning on the bridge. And I said to her ..."
"Did she--er--ask after me?"
"No."
"No?" said John hollowly.
"Not that I remember. I brought your name into the talk, and we had a
few words about you, but I don't recollect her asking after you." Hugo
laid a hand on his cousin's arm. "It's no use, John. Be a man! Forget
her. Keep plugging away at that Molloy girl. I think you're beginning
to make an impression. I think she's softening. I was watching her
narrowly last night, and I fancied I saw a tender look in her eyes when
they fell on you. I may have been mistaken, but that's what I fancied.
A sort of shy, filmy look. I'll tell you what it is, John. You're much
too modest. You underrate yourself. Keep steadily before you the fact
that almost anybody can get married if they only plug away at it. Look
at this man Bessemer, for instance, Ronnie's man that I told you about.
As ugly a devil as you would wish to see outside the House of Commons,
equipped with number sixteen feet and a face more like a walnut than
anything. And yet he has clicked. The moral of which is that no one
need ever lose hope. You may say to yourself that you have no chance
with this Molloy girl, that she will not look at you. But consider the
case of Bessemer. Compared with him, you are quite good looking. His
ears alone...."
"Good night," said John.
He knocked out his pipe and turned to the stairs. Hugo thought his
manner abrupt.
VIII
Sergeant-Major Flannery, that able and conscientious man, walked
briskly up the main staircase of Healthward Ho. Outside a door off the
second landing he stopped and knocked.
A loud sneeze sounded from within.
"Cub!" called a voice.
Chimp Twist, propped up with pillows, was sitting in bed, swathed in
a woollen dressing gown. His face was flushed, and he regarded his
visitor from under swollen eyelids with a moroseness which would have
wounded a more sensitive man. Sergeant-Major Flannery stood six feet
two in his boots: he had a round, shiny face at which it was agony for
a sick man to look, and Chimp was aware that when he spoke it would
be in a rolling, barrack-square bellow which would go clean through
him like a red-hot bullet through butter. One has to be in rude health
and at the top of one's form to bear up against the Sergeant-Major
Flannerys of this world.
"Well?" he muttered thickly.
He broke off to sniff at a steaming jug which stood beside his bed, and
the Sergeant-Major, gazing down at him with the offensive superiority
of a robust man in the presence of an invalid, fingered his waxed
moustache. The action intensified Chimp's dislike. From the first he
had been jealous of that moustache. Until it had come into his life
he had always thought highly of his own fungoid growth, but one look
at this rival exhibit had taken all the heart out of him. The thing
was long and blond and bushy, and it shot heavenward into two glorious
needle-point ends, a shining zareba of hair quite beyond the scope of
any mere civilian. Non-army men may grow moustaches and wax them and
brood over them and be fond and proud of them, but to obtain a waxed
moustache in the deepest and holiest sense of the words you have to be
a sergeant-major.
"Oo-er!" said Mr. Flannery. "That's a nasty cold you've got."
Chimp, as if to endorse this opinion, sneezed again.
"A nasty, feverish cold," proceeded the Sergeant-Major in the tones in
which he had once been wont to request squads of recruits to number off
from the right. "You ought to do something about that cold."
"I ab dog sobthig about it," growled Chimp, having recourse to the jug
once more.
"I don't mean sniffing at jugs, sir. You won't do yourself no good
sniffing at jugs, Mr. Twist. You want to go to the root of the matter,
if you understand the expression. You want to attack it from the
stummick. The stummick is the seat of the trouble. Get the stummick
right and the rest follows natural."
"Wad do you wad?"
"There's some say quinine and some say a drop of camphor on a lump of
sugar and some say cinnamon, but you can take it from me the best thing
for a nasty feverish cold in the head is taraxacum and hops. There is
no occasion to damn my eyes, Mr. Twist. I am only trying to be 'elpful.
You send out for some taraxacum and hops, and before you know where you
are...."
"Wad do you wad?"
"I'm telling you. There's a gentleman below--a gentleman who's called,"
said Sergeant-Major Flannery, making his meaning clear. "A gentleman,"
being still more precise, "who's called at the front door in a
nortermobile. He wants to see you."
"Well, he can't."
"Says his name's Molloy."
"Molloy?"
"That's what he _said_," replied Mr. Flannery, as one declining to be
quoted or to accept any responsibility.
"Oh? All right. Send him up."
"Taraxacum and hops," repeated the Sergeant-Major, pausing at the door.
He disappeared, and a few moments later returned, ushering in Soapy. He
left the two old friends together, and Soapy approached the bed with
rather an awe-struck air.
"You've got a cold," he said.
Chimp sniffed--twice. Once with annoyance and once at the jug.
"So would you have a code if you'd been sitting up to your neck in
water for half an hour last night and had to ride home tweddy biles
wriggig wet on a motorcycle."
"Says which?" exclaimed Soapy, astounded.
Chimp related the saga of the previous night, touching disparagingly on
Hugo and saying some things about Emily which it was well she could not
hear.
"And that leds me out," he concluded.
"No, no!"
"I'm through."
"Don't say that."
"I do say thad."
"But, Chimpie, we've got it all fixed for you to get away with the
stuff to-night."
Chimp stared at him incredulously.
"To-night? You thig I'm going out to-night with this code of mine, to
clibe through windows and be run off my legs by ..."
"But, Chimpie, there's no danger of that now. We've got everything set.
That guy Hugo and his friend are going to London this morning, and so's
the other fellow. You won't have a thing to do but walk in."
"Oh?" said Chimp.
He relapsed into silence, and took a thoughtful sniff at the jug.
This information, he was bound to admit, did alter the complexion of
affairs. But he was a business man.
"Well, if I do agree to go out and risk exposing this nasty, feverish
code of mine to the night air, which is the worst thig a man can
do--ask any doctor...."
"Chimpie!" cried Mr. Molloy in a stricken voice. His keen intuition
told him what was coming.
"... I don't do it on any sigsdy-forty basis. Sigsdy-five--thirty-five
is the figure."
Mr. Molloy had always been an eloquent man--without a natural turn
for eloquence you cannot hope to traffic successfully in the baser
varieties of oil stocks; but never had he touched the sublime heights
of oratory to which he soared now. Even the first few words would have
been enough to melt most people. Nevertheless when at the end of five
minutes he paused for breath, he knew that he had failed to grip his
audience.
"Sigsdy-five--thirty-five," said Chimp firmly. "You need me, or you
wouldn't have brought me into this. If you could have worked the job by
yourself, you'd never have tode me a word about it."
"I can't work it by myself. I've got to have an alibi. I and the wife
are going to a theatre to-night in Birmingham."
"That's what I'm saying. You can't get alog without me. And that's why
it's going to be sigsdy-five--thirty-five."
Mr. Molloy wandered to the window and looked hopelessly out over the
garden.
"Think what Dolly will say when I tell her," he pleaded.
Chimp replied ungallantly that Dolly and what she might say meant
little in his life. Mr. Molloy groaned hollowly.
"Well, I guess if that's the way you feel...."
Chimp assured him it was.
"Then I suppose that's the way we'll have to fix it."
"All right," said Chimp. "Then I'll be there somewheres about eleven,
or a little later, maybe. And you needn't bother to leave any window
opud this time. Just have a ladder laying around and I'll bust the
window of the picture gallery, where the stuff is. It'll be more
trouble, but I dode bide takid a bidder trouble to make thigs look more
natural. You just see thad ladder's where I can fide it, and then you
can leave all the difficud part of it to me."
"Difficult!"
"Difficud was what I said," returned Chimp. "Suppose I trip over
somethig id the dark? Suppose I slip on the stairs? Suppose the ladder
breaks? Suppose that dog gets after me again? That dog's not going to
London, is it? Well, then! Besides, considering that I may quide ligely
get pneumonia and pass in my checks.... What did you say?"
Mr. Molloy had not spoken. He had merely sighed wistfully.