A Game of Billiards
The officers' mess of the Guards--the billiard-room. Dinner was over,
coffee was being drunk while the diners played a game of snooker pool,
that is, some of them. There had been something in the atmosphere
during the meal which was hardly genial. It is essential that all the
members of a regimental mess should be as a band of brothers, as it
were, a big and perfectly happy family. Unless they are on the best of
terms with each other, that easy atmosphere is absent, and things
become impossible; there must not be even a suspicion of a rift in the
lute, if that complete harmony is to reign without which the position
becomes unbearable.
In the officers' mess of a British regiment, as a rule, the conditions
which make for comfort are not to seek; in that famous regiment, in the
whole history of its mess, they never had been to seek until quite
recently. Now something had crept in which jarred. First there had been
the deplorable business of Sydney Beaton. They were just beginning to
recover from that when there came the peculiar conduct of Jackie
Tickell, his own version of which we have heard Major Reith tell Miss
Forster. Mr. Tickel's action had had an even more deplorable effect
upon the morals of the mess than the major had cared to admit. This had
been to a large extent owing to the position taken up by Anthony
Dodwell. He had declared that what Mr. Tickell had done was a slur upon
himself, and had gone so far as to demand that the whole affair should
be referred to a court of honour.
Than that sort of thing nothing could have been more foreign to the
regimental traditions. It had always been regarded as a matter of
course that among the officers of the Guards there should be no
differences of opinion; if there were, they were certainly not to make
themselves heard in public. The regiment never had been concerned in
any such inquiry as that which Dodwell suggested. If his suggestion was
acted upon, all sorts of unpleasant consequences would follow. Not only
would the whole disreputable business have to be made officially
public, but outsiders would have to be called in to adjudicate in what
after all was a family quarrel; which, in effect, would mean that other
regiments would sit in judgment on the Guards. In the eyes of
authority, than that a more inconceivable state of affairs there could
scarcely be.
What was to be done to restore the harmony that had heretofore reigned
it was not easy to see; a single jarring note is so apt to keep on
ringing in the ears. Sydney Beaton had gone--where, no one, not even
his nearest and dearest, seemed to know. He had been one of the most
popular persons in the regiment, not only with his brother officers,
but with the rank and file; his own company adored him. Not only was
the one hideous scandal still fresh in men's memories, but now still
worse stories were being whispered about it.
It was difficult to say how they had first gained currency. Someone
must have been the first to whisper something, but who that someone was
no one seemed to know. Two stories had gone right through the regiment;
one, that Sydney Beaton had turned professional thief; the other, that
he had murdered Noel Draycott.
Why Mr. Tickell had chosen the moment when these stories filled all the
air to take up the position he had done, his friends and acquaintances
were quite at a loss to determine. The thing was over and done with;
Beaton had admitted his guilt by running away; what on earth possessed
Tickell, they demanded, that he should want to start muddying the water
all over again? If he had had any doubts on the matter, he might have
kept them to himself; it was too late to declare them in public now; he
ought to have done it ages ago; the thing was all settled and done
with. Then there was the absence of Draycott. If Draycott had been
about, and he had said what he had said, Mr. Tickell would soon have
been disposed of; Draycott would have agreed with Dodwell, there would
have been two to one, Tickell would have been compelled to bow to the
weight of evidence. As things were, the case against Beaton rested on
one man's word only--Anthony Dodwell's. Tickell had not directly
impugned it; but he had done almost as bad. He had stood up to Dodwell
in a quite unexpected fashion. Jackie Tickell was an easy-going,
good-natured youngster, who in general preferred to do anything rather
than come to an open rupture with anyone; yet he had stood up to
Dodwell; and all the regiment knew that there was no more unpleasant
man to quarrel with. He had said to him in the hearing of them all:
"You know, Dodwell, I'm not saying for a moment that you didn't see
what you thought you saw."
Dodwell interposed.
"It's not a question of what I thought I saw; I should not have made an
accusation of that sort had I not been certain. Just as you see me
strike this match"--he struck one to illustrate his words--"as
certainly I saw Beaton cheat."
"I'm not denying that in the least, but, you see, I didn't."
"What has that to do with the matter? If I tell you that I did strike
this match, are you to be at liberty to doubt it merely because you
didn't happen to see me do it?"
"The things ain't the same; you can't compare them. Because you're
satisfied that you saw Sydney Beaton cheat, it doesn't follow that I
am; and until I am I'm not going to keep the money which was his if he
played fair."
"You seem to be altogether forgetting," put in Frank Clifford, "that
Dodwell wasn't the only person who saw. What about Draycott? And look
at the way in which Beaton did a bunk!"
"I'm not so sure, if I'd been treated as we treated him, that I
shouldn't have acted as Beaton did; we had all of us had as much as was
good for us to drink--and that's where it was. As for Draycott, I had a
chat or two with him, and it isn't so clear to me as it might be, that
he wasn't rather sorry that he spoke."
Anthony Dodwell had looked very black, and he then and there publicly
announced that if that was the way in which Tickell chose to look at
it, he would insist on having the whole business referred to
arbitrators, who would act as members of a court of honour.
So far Dodwell had not gone any farther; that is, he had not brought
the matter before his official superiors in a form which would render
it impossible for them to continue to ignore it. It is possible that he
had been given the hint not to, and that words had been spoken both to
him and to Mr. Tickell which had been meant to be not only words of
healing, but also of warning.
That night, at the mess dinner, Dodwell had seemed to be in a curious
frame of mind; nor, when they were in the billiard-room, did his mood
seem to have sweetened. He had what is apt to be a very unpopular
possession--a biting tongue; under the guise of a smiling exterior he
could, when he liked, set a whole room by the ears. Jackie Tickell not
only never said willingly a thing which could wound either the present
or the absent, but there were not infrequent occasions when it was only
with difficulty that he said anything at all; his tongue was certainly
not the readiest part of him, a fact of which Dodwell, apparently
relying on his notorious good temper, had more than once taken
advantage. Dodwell played all games well; the different varieties of
billiards he played almost as well as a professional. Tickell played
very few games well; at billiards he was a notorious duffer; why he
ever played snooker--which, for a poor performer, in good company, at
anything like points, is apt to be an expensive amusement--he alone
could tell. What amusement he derived from it was a mystery; at the end
of a game he was almost invariably the one player who had to pay all
the others. Yet there never was a game of snooker from which he was
willingly left out.
That evening he was, if possible, playing worse than usual, missing
easy shots, leaving certainties for the man who followed--who happened
to be Dodwell. Thanks partly to his own skill, and almost as much to
Jackie's generosity, Anthony Dodwell was piling up a huge score, and
nearly every time he put a ball down he returned sarcastic thanks to
Jackie. As a bad player of snooker pool not only loses himself, but is
the cause of loss to others, Jackie's misdemeanours gratified no one
but Dodwell.
"Really, Jackie," declared Cyril Harding, when on one occasion he had
managed to leave a white ball over one pocket and, in some mysterious
fashion, the black over another, "you might be doing it on purpose. I
wonder how many that is you've given Dodwell?"
"I do seem to be making rather a mess of it tonight," admitted Jackie.
"I sometimes wonder," persisted Payne, "if it ever occurs to you that
you are not the only person who has to pay. If there's anything to
which I personally object, it is to seeing Dodwell get that assistance
that he does not stand in need of; as if he couldn't put the lot of us
in the cart without help from anyone."
Dodwell, putting down both the white and the black, proceeded to make a
break, for which he professed himself grateful to Jackie at the end.
"Thank you, Tickell; these gifts which you persist in making me are
really rather overwhelming. Every time I come to the table I find that
you have left me everything you possibly can; I hope the victims of
your unnatural generosity will not think that we are in collusion. Do
you know, I myself am almost moved to wonder if you are doing it on
purpose?"
Mr. Tickell looked unhappy, but he said nothing; his tongue, as was its
wont, seemed to be tied in a knot. He moved away from Dodwell's
neighbourhood; but the other's sarcasm followed him.
"I'm in rather a difficult position; if I don't take advantage of your
leaves they'll think that I'm not trying; and if I do, since they are
so regular, they'll wonder."
As the victim continued silent, and something in the bearing of the
others more than hinted that in their opinion he was going too far,
some contrary spirit seemed to push Dodwell farther still.
"At bridge, I've heard it maintained that a bad player ought to pay his
partner's losses; if that was the rule at snooker, Tickell, it would be
awkward for you; you might have to break in on that little pot of money
of which we have heard so much, and which you so chivalrously refused
to put into your pocket because, as I understand the matter, some
friend of yours put Noel Draycott away."
At this Major Reith, who was the senior officer present, interposed.
"Dodwell, you have no right to say that sort of thing."
"In your opinion? Thank you for its expression."
Jackie Tickell came towards the speaker.
"I didn't quite catch what you said, Dodwell--at least, I hope I
didn't. Did I understand you to say that a friend of mine had put Noel
Draycott away?"
"It would at least appear--I won't say at a convenient moment for
you--that someone has--would you prefer that I should use another form
of words, and say--murdered Noel Draycott?"
"Who says that someone has murdered Noel Draycott?"
The words did not come from one of the previous speakers; they were
uttered by someone who had just come into the room; in a voice which
was startlingly familiar to all those who heard it. With one accord
each man in the room turned round to stare in the direction from which
the words had come. Just standing inside the doorway was the man who
had first been spoken of as having been put out of the way, and then as
having been murdered--Noel Draycott.