From Cocktails to Criminology
It has been said, no doubt with truth, that to make her mark in these
overcrowded days a girl must adopt a line and stick to it like grim
death. She may be languid, she may be sporting, she may be offensively
rude, she may be appealing and doll-like, and she will find success,
but she must never be purely and simply herself; that is the
fundamental mistake. Such criticism could not be applied to the Misses
Howard.
Our semi-civilised conventions have their disadvantages. In a more
enlightened age the Misses Howard might have been compelled to go
through life wearing horns and a barbed tail and a passable imitation
of cloven hooves, as a timely warning to unsuspecting strangers not to
take these two innocent-looking maidens at their face-value, charming
as that was. Dissimulation, as practised by the Misses Howard, was
more than a fine art; it was a hobby. The unsuspecting stranger (of
the male sex, of course; female strangers are never unsuspecting, and
the more strange they are the more they suspect), catching sight of
one of the Miss Howards would swell his manly chest and pat his manly
back, and say to himself in his manly tones: “Here is a poor,
frightened little thing who looks at me as if I were a god. Who knows?
Perhaps I am a god. I am very much inclined, when this helpless and
pretty little thing looks at me like that, to think that I am. Out
with the lance and armour! Are there any dragons about? Or, failing
dragons, mice? At any rate, it is palpably up to me to protect this
delectably timid small person from something, and that pretty
quickly.”
And twenty minutes later, if he had interested the timid little thing
enough, he would be wondering ruefully if certain words of hers really
meant what they had implied, or whether they were intended to convey
something quite different and impossibly puncturing to the gallant
balloon of manly self-esteem. If he did not interest her enough, he
would be wondering still more ruefully how he could ever have imagined
such a frigid block of sarcastic ice to be incapable in any
conceivable way of looking after, not merely herself, but the entire
universe as well. The Misses Howard may perhaps most politely be
described as “stimulating.”
Nevertheless, the family of Howard had done one good thing—it had
brought Guy and Cynthia together. George Howard, the brother of the
two demons, a large, solid person, as unlike his sisters as the
elephant is unlike the mosquito, had been Guy’s worshipping disciple
at school and at Oxford; Dora and Cynthia had been “best friends.”
George had now taken for the summer the cottage at Duffley whose
garden adjoined Guy’s. He had moved in only three days before this
story opens, and the fate of Duffley still hung in the balance.
Laura, younger than her sister by a couple of years, had shouldered
the responsibilities of her lot and the family’s orphanhood by
accompanying her brother George about wherever he went and insisting
upon keeping his house for him, much to that simple soul’s sorrow; on
the whole, George would rather have had his house kept for him by a
combination of Catherine of Medici and Lucretia Borgia than by either
of his sisters. George was the sort of person who likes to know where
he is at any given moment, and has a rooted distaste for dwelling upon
a volcano. Laura, therefore, was now wasting her gifts upon the rustic
life of Duffley. Dora, investing her talents to better purpose, had
gone on the stage, where she had confidently expected to multiply them
sevenfold.
The British stage is a mass of curious contradictions. It lives upon
humbug, it exploits humbug, and it is itself more taken in by humbug
than any other institution. If a penniless actress lays out her last
ten shillings in a pair of new gloves and a taxi-fare to the
stage-door, the stage will say to itself as often as not: “Ha! Trixie
Two-shoes is going about everywhere in taxis now, is she? She must be
getting on, that girl. There is evidently more in her than I thought.
I must have her for my next show, at double the salary she’s getting
now. Good!” The stage then buys four cigars at five times the price it
usually pays, in order to impress the financial magnate after lunch
with the strength of its own position.
But when humbug was offered to it of such rare and golden quality that
its exploitation should have been repaid a hundred times over, the
stage would have none of it. Dora had been unable to penetrate further
into the legitimate drama which she felt herself called upon to
enrich, than the stage-door-keeper’s box. Refusing to be beaten (she
had no need of the money, but she was determined by hook or by crook
to get on that elusive stage), Dora had abandoned the idea of
legitimate drama for the time being and expressed her willingness to
adorn the chorus of a revue, comforting herself with the reflection
that not a few great stars have risen from the musical ranks to
legitimate heights. She had at once obtained the position to which her
face and figure entitled her and, after a year in the provinces, had
for the last six months been adorning the front row of the Mammoth
Chorus at the Palladeum. She was now rehearsing a production which was
to open the following week, and so was at liberty to present herself,
with her fiancé, at a Saturday to Monday housewarming for George.
Only once had either of the Miss Howards met their match, and that was
when a certain Mr. Doyle irritably besought Dora five months ago,
within twenty minutes of the opening of their acquaintance, “for
Heaven’s sake not to try and pull that moon-eyed, baby-voiced stuff on
him. He wasn’t born yesterday, and he didn’t like it. In short, her
artless behaviour left Mr. Doyle not only cold but weary.” Dora was so
taken aback that for the first time in her life she became perfectly
natural with a complete stranger.
The sequel was inevitable. When four days later the volatile Mr.
Doyle, touched apparently by this complimentary change of front,
besought her hand in marriage, she kept her whirling head long enough
to accept him on the spot; she felt she had at last met her master,
and the sensation though novel was by no means disagreeable. Since
then they had remained engaged, in spite of all expectations to the
contrary, their own included; indeed, Mr. Doyle had gone so far as to
inform his fiancée with engaging candour that this was the longest
period he had ever been engaged to any one girl. They were now even
beginning to think quite seriously of the possibility of really
getting married some day if Mr. Doyle could scrape together the
capital on which to do so.
In spite of Cynthia’s assurances, Guy Nesbitt was not on hand when the
quartet arrived. With a face like a high priest’s he was performing
solemn rites in the dining-room over a bottle of port and a decanter,
and Cynthia had to welcome her guests in the drawing-room alone.
She cast a somewhat anxious eye at the sisters as they marched
decorously into the room on the heels of the maid’s announcement,
their faces both ornamented with the same shy smile. Although she had
known them most of her life and Dora was her closest friend, Cynthia
never felt she knew quite where she was with them. In their rear
walked Mr. Doyle, and behind him George Howard. Where Cynthia cast one
anxious eye, George cast two. In spite of his elder years George knew
even less where he was with his sisters than Cynthia did.
“Hallo, Lawks!” smiled their hostess. “Hallo, Dawks!” To be admitted
to the circle of those permitted to address them by these pseudonyms,
which George had invented with simple pride at the age of eight, was
the highest privilege the two had to bestow. The number so allowed
was, for each sister, twelve, and no one fresh could be received
within the magic circle until a suitable vacancy occurred. Cynthia did
not know Laura nearly so well as her sister (the two had, very wisely,
been despatched to different schools), but was permitted the honour in
view of her position as Dora’s Best Friend.
Laura smiled her greeting, and Dora motioned Mr. Doyle forward. “This
is my appendage, Cynthia,” she remarked frankly.
“He isn’t much to look at perhaps,” Laura amplified, “but his heart’s
in the right place; at least Dora says it is, we haven’t had him
vetted yet. His name’s Henry Aloysius Frederick Doyle, but never mind
about that; he answers much better to the name of Pat. He’s Irish.”
Mr. Doyle, a slightly-built, clean-shaven young man with black hair,
turned in the act of bowing to Cynthia. “I’m not!” he said
indignantly.
“Yes, you are,” his future sister-in-law contradicted him. “How could
you help being, with a name like Pat Doyle?”
“But my name isn’t Pat Doyle. It’s Henry Doyle. Pat’s a nickname,
goodness knows why. I’ve told you a hundred——”
“Stop arguing and shake hands with the lady,” the younger Miss Howard
interrupted. “Goodness knows your manners are bad enough at the best
of times without making them worse. And we did want you to shine a
little to-night. That’s why I told you not to speak with your mouth
full, like you usually do, and not to wave your fork in the air when
you argue. Of course you’re Irish!”
With a somewhat heightened colour, which told Cynthia that these
candid remarks were not without their substratum of truth, Mr. Doyle
completed his greeting of his hostess. George, trying hard to look as
if he had heard nothing, took Cynthia’s slim hand in his huge paw and
told her, with remarkable earnestness, that it had been a topping day;
he also expressed his hopes that it would be as topping a day
to-morrow. One gathered that George was being what he considered
tactful.
Cynthia embarked upon her share of the unnatural conversation that
takes place between intimate friends before a rather formal dinner.
Glancing surreptitiously at Dora from time to time, Cynthia decided
that the engagement had done her friend good. Dora seemed quieter. Not
subdued, or anything like that, but tasting her enjoyment of life with
a rather more detached, almost a lazy air. In contrast with the more
bounding spirits of Laura, Dora seemed far older than the two years
between them would have suggested. Cynthia was conscious of a certain
relief.
Five minutes later Guy came hurrying in and paused for a moment in the
doorway, blinking benignly round through his glasses. “Sorry I’m so
late,” he apologised. “Hallo, Dawks. Good-evening, Laura. The bottles
were disgustingly dirty, and I had to go and wash again.”
“Never mind washing, in a good cause,” murmured Mr. Doyle, and came
forward to be introduced.
The cocktails which Guy then proceeded to dispense played their usual
helpful part (what would civilisation be without its cocktails?) and
the little gathering moved into the dining-room. Dora seemed, for such
a self-possessed young woman, acutely conscious of the presence of her
fiancé, on trial, as it were, before the Best Friend, and was in
consequence refreshingly innocuous; Laura, who was only meeting Guy
for the third time and was not yet quite sure what to make of him, was
equally tentative. Cynthia was able to take her seat at the bottom of
the table with the happy confidence that her party was going to be a
success. Cynthia was more right than she imagined.
The dinner proceeded much in the way of all dinners, and the ice, to
which the cocktails had already dealt a sound blow, was gradually
smashed into diminishing smithereens.
As the port was placed before him and the maid withdrew, Guy glanced
with satisfaction round his dinner-table, on whose polished mahogany
the candles in their heavy silver stands gleamed softly. The meal had
gone off well, the guests had been exceedingly cheerful, and Cynthia,
in a black velvet gown which admirably enhanced the white beauty of
her arms and shoulders, was looking her very best. The host in Guy was
full of content, the husband no less so. He poured himself out a glass
of port as the decanter reached him from Dora, and beamed round once
more.
The young man Doyle had pleased Guy particularly. He had shown signs
of a tendency towards argument which was most gratifying; rather
voluble, perhaps, and occasionally a little excitable, but good, sound
argument; and if there was one form of mental exercise which Guy’s
soul loved beyond all others it was argument. In the dreamy
contentment that follows a perfectly good dinner he listened to
Cynthia rolling the conversational ball at her end of the table and
meditated on a new subject to attract Doyle’s attention from his
fiancée.
“By the way,” Cynthia was remarking to George, “Monica and Alan are
coming to stay with us the week after next for a few days, George. We
must get up a river picnic for them.”
“Thank goodness,” Laura took it on herself to reply. “We’ve only been
in Duffley three days, but I’m bored stiff with the place already. I
feel wasted here. There are possibilities in a river picnic.”
“Oh, rather,” George murmured dutifully, concealing his blenches in
his port-glass.
As Cynthia’s brother and sister, and consequently Guy’s brother and
sister-in-law, Alan and Monica undoubtedly had every claim upon him;
but he was not unduly elated at Cynthia’s news. Duffley was a nice,
peaceful place, where one could get a tolerably good game of golf and
smoke a quiet pipe or two in the country round. It seemed a pity to
have it turned upside down, even for a few days.
George had met Alan and Monica before; the meeting had taken place two
years ago, but George would never forget it. “Oh, rather,” he repeated
sadly, wondering whether there were many frogs in the neighbourhood of
Duffley. The last time they had met, Alan had done his best to endear
himself by putting a frog in George’s bed. Neither George nor the frog
had altogether appreciated the jest. George had had something of a
fellow-feeling for frogs ever since.
Cynthia turned to her other neighbour. “Will you still be here, Pat?”
“Mr. Doyle,” had been dropped, on command of the sisters, before the
champagne had been round twice.
“I doubt it,” observed Laura darkly, from the other side of the table.
It appeared that Laura had taken it upon herself to entertain the
gravest doubts as to the engagement lasting for more than a few hours
in the immediate future, and to give voice to those doubts upon every
possible occasion. When she was not doing this, she was trying to
correct, with an air of patient despondency, certain faults which she
professed to see in her future brother-in-law’s manners. “For,” as she
told her indignant sister, “you may be going to marry him, but I’ve
got to be a sister to him; and I never could be a sister to a man who
eats and drinks at the same time.”
“No, Cynthia,” said Mr. Doyle with emphasis. “I shall certainly not be
here then. Why?”
“What a pity! I couldn’t help thinking you’d be so useful,” Cynthia
smiled. “I mean, anybody who can manage to engage himself to
Dawks—well, Monica ought to be child’s-play to him.”
“Are you meaning,” inquired Mr. Doyle carefully, “that you want me to
get engaged to your sister as well as Dawks? I’m a very obliging man,
and I do my best to be kind to my friends, but the trouble is that
I’ve never been properly trained as a bigamist. Besides, don’t you
think Dawks might have something to say about it?”
“She will,” interposed that young lady’s sister promptly. “She’ll say,
‘Get to it, my lad, and step briskly!’ That’ll be all right, Cynthia.
He’ll be free for Monica days before she comes.”
Cynthia laughed tactfully and proceeded with her exposition. “No, I
wasn’t meaning that you need go so far as to get engaged to her; what
I did think, though, was that you might be able to—well, what is known
as _handle_ her, perhaps.”
“Man-handle her, more like,” put in the faithful Greek chorus.
George stifled another groan in his wine-glass. The last time he had
encountered her, Monica had handled him, with a hose-pipe, causing him
to dance at her commands as madly as any dervish on the front lawn of
her house half an hour before the ceremony, on pain of having his
wedding garments drenched, what time the wedding-guests stood about in
the background feebly beating their breasts; and all because he had
bestowed a brotherly tug at the thick plait which hung down her back—a
thing to George’s ideas that was almost inevitable etiquette in the
presence of a flapper. George had singularly few pleasant
recollections of Monica.
Mr. Doyle seemed to have caught something of the spirit of George’s
apprehensions. He groaned faintly and ran a hand through his long
black hair. “You don’t mean—you don’t mean that your sister is
anything like——?” He paused. “Oh, no!” he said with decision. “You
must put her off. Remember, Dawks might come down for another
week-end, and then there’d be three in the place at a time. Duffley
couldn’t stand it. The whole village would vanish in a cloud of blue
smoke, and we with it. You must put her off, Cynthia.”
“Are we,” Laura inquired carefully of her sister, “are we, do you
think, being insulted, Dawks? Are we being insulted by this wretched
Sein Feiner you’re trying to smuggle into the family?”
An apprehensive look appeared on Cynthia’s face. She loved the
sisters, and she loved to see them ragging; but she did not love the
idea of their ragging across her dining-room table.
Help came from an unexpected quarter. Dora, who had been unwontedly
silent during the last half-hour, smiled lazily at her sister. “When
are you going to grow up, Lawks?” she asked gently.
Nobody but herself could have posed such a question and retired
unscathed. As it was, Laura was half out of her chair before she sank
back feebly, turning incredulous eyes up to the ceiling.
“The woman’s nerve’s all gone,” she murmured in a faint voice. “She’s
got soft. It’s young love, I suppose. She’ll be asking people to call
her Miss Howard soon. Well, Heaven preserve me from ever getting
engaged, that’s all!”
“On behalf of the sex,” remarked Mr. Doyle piously, “which I so
unworthily represent, Amen!”
Laura’s pose altered abruptly, and her eyes sparkled with battle, but
before she could translate her feelings into action, Guy, catching a
frantic signal from his wife’s eyes, interposed with a change of
subject. “Cheer up, George,” he said hastily. “What’s the matter? You
look as if you’d committed a murder, and couldn’t decide what to do
with the body.”
“I think he’s just seen a ghost, and is being tactful about it,” said
Laura, her attention successfully diverted.
George, roused abruptly from his meditations concerning frogs and
hose-pipes, smiled wanly. “Me? I’m all right,” he muttered.
“I think you’ve guessed it, Nesbitt,” remarked Doyle, regarding his
future brother-in-law closely. “He has committed a murder. How awkward
for him! Now I come to look at him, he has got a criminal face, hasn’t
he? I wonder what type he belongs to. The Palmer, would you say? He
has that look of chubby innocence. But no, he’s too big and massive.
Now, who. . . ? Smith, perhaps? Smith was always the gent, wasn’t he?”
He prattled on happily. Thus great events from causes small do spring.
In Guy’s eyes an eager light had appeared, the light that must have
gleamed in Stanley’s eyes when he pretended to greet Livingstone so
nonchalantly. “I say, Doyle,” he said in hushed tones, “you’re
not—you’re not interested in criminology, are you?”
The light leaped into Doyle’s eyes. He looked at his host with
reverence and awe. “Are you?” he asked, in the same cathedral-like
voice.
“Yes. I’ve never met any one else who was before.”
“Neither have I!”
They gazed at each other in ecstasy.
“What’s your real opinion of the Thompson case?” Guy managed to
whisper.
“I heard an awfully interesting theory about the Mahon case,”
whispered Doyle at the same moment.
Cynthia coughed gently, “Have I caught your eye, Dawks? This, I think,
is where we three gracefully retire.”
They did so.
“Do _you_ think Seddon ought to have been convicted?” murmured Doyle,
closing the door as absently as he had opened it.
“Have you read the MacLachlan trial?” murmured Guy absently, producing
cigars. “The character of old Fleming is most absorbing. Of course he
did it.”
They opened the flood-gates of their hobby and the long pent tide
poured forth.
For a time George listened with interest, for murders, dash it, are
interesting, say what you like. Then he listened with less interest,
for murders, hang it, are a bit what-you-might-call boring, taken in
the mass; a good juicy mystery with his morning-paper George enjoyed
as much as any one, but one, in George’s opinion, was enough at a
time. Besides, after a fellow had done some one in and been well and
truly hanged for it, what on earth was there to go on yapping about?
George listened with growing boredom.
“What about a foursome to-morrow morning, Guy?” said George. “We can
get Dawks to make up the four. She doesn’t play at all too badly.”
“When are your sister and brother-in-law coming, Guy?” said George.
“I say, hadn’t we better be getting into the drawing-room?” said
George. “They’ll be wondering what’s happened to us.”
He might have saved himself the trouble; for when two or three
criminologists are gathered together, then is for them neither time
nor space, sweetheart nor wife, necessity nor law.
They talked on.
“I say,” said George, nerving himself for a supreme effort, “I’m
getting a bit fed up with all this chat about murder.”
Never once before in all his life had George so much as hinted that
anything his elder and superior did, came to him the least little bit
amiss; never before had the disciple ventured to criticise the master.
At school where there were three years between them (and three years
at school is an eternity) the small but beefy George, a stolid boy in
those days, had worshipped, humbly adoring, at the shrine of Guy, the
Head of his House. When Guy, who had only just scraped his second
fifteen cap, came down as an old boy to find George captain of the
school fifteen and runner-up for the captaincy of the cricket eleven,
George had all but wept for joy to hear himself addressed almost on
equal terms.
At Oxford, where Guy was a fourth-year man, the time of George’s
fresherhood had been brightened and sanctified by the presence in the
same town of his divinity. Had not George been permitted to be the
humble instrument for bringing about Guy’s marriage with the only
woman in this world remotely approaching worthiness, and had he not
been rewarded beyond rubies by being allowed to be the great one’s
best man—an honour he valued far more than the note from his captain
announcing that he had been awarded a blue for rugger? Yet, after all
that, here he was, red in the face and not unconscious of his
epoch-making action, saying gruffly that he was getting fed up with
all that chat about murder! Murder has turned people into
revolutionaries before George.
The two ghouls paused in their banquet and turned glazed eyes upon
George. Had they heard aright?
“_Fed up?_” demanded Doyle incredulously.
“Yes,” replied the mutinous George. “Too much of a good thing.”
“_Too much?_” repeated Mr. Doyle. He exchanged pitying glances with
Guy.
“My dear chap,” that gentleman took up the tale, rather in the tones
of one addressing a small and particularly foolish infant (thus do all
criminologists address on this particular subject those who are not of
their own persuasion, which accounts largely for their unpopularity.)
“My dear chap, you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick. It isn’t
the mere _act_ of murder which interests us, it’s the state of mind of
the murderer. The particular psychology, in fact, which finds its
culmination in murder. The motives, the amount of premeditation, the
lack of premeditation even more, the psychology of the victim, the
network of circumstance, and a hundred other things—_those_ are what
makes murder the most absorbing of all psychological studies.”
“Oh!” said George. But he was impressed. George had never realised
that murder had a psychology at all. George was learning things.
Guy saw that the faithful hound was beginning to think of coming once
more to heel, and carried on with the good work.
He leaned back in his chair, joined his finger-tips and regarded his
now uneasy disciple over his glasses with some severity.
“Let me put it in this way,” he said, striving conscientiously to
speak in words of not more than one syllable. “Suppose _you_ committed
a murder, George. Suppose you were playing with the vicar, and he
foozled his tee-shot to the last green and the whole match, and
half-a-crown, depended on it; and suppose, unable to live in the same
world with such bungling incompetence, you smote him on the head with
one of your clubs, so that he died. Are you supposing all that?”
“Ye-es,” said George, supposing manfully.
“Well, what would interest us is not whether you smote him with your
mashie or your niblick, or how much he bled, or whether his
death-agonies removed any divots from the fairway. Nothing like that
at all, George. Simply the state of your mind which showed you in one
moment of blinding revelation that nothing short of murder was
demanded by the situation.”
“But I’m not a murderer,” said George, putting his finger on the weak
spot.
“No, George, at present you’re not; at least, so we hope. But if you
ever happened to murder anybody, then you, yes, even you, George
Howard, would be a murderer; and we should be studying the intricate
psychology which caused you to snatch at your niblick and lay the
vicar low just as eagerly as we now discuss the singular mentality of
Mr. George Joseph Smith, who drowned a woman in her bath one minute
and strummed on the organ in his sitting-room the next.”
“What he means,” Mr. Doyle chimed in, “is that the really interesting
thing is the reactions of the ordinary person to the idea of murder.
What he feels like,” he amplified kindly, “after he’s done it, in
fact.”
“And before,” Guy amended.
“And before,” Mr. Doyle agreed. “Look, in short, upon this picture and
on that. Mr. Howard before murder, same gent after murder. The cross
marks the spot where the body was found.”
“So now do you understand, George?” Guy inquired.
“I think so,” George responded, trying to look as if he did. “You
mean, you like probing into the mind of a chap who’s committed a
murder?”
“In a nutshell!” approved Mr. Doyle.
“But unfortunately we have to do our probing at second-hand,” Guy
lamented. “Or rather, we have to let others do the probing for us and
then try to draw our own deductions. What wouldn’t you give, Doyle,
for the chance to probe yourself? To psycho-analyse a murderer before
the law got hold of him and messed his mind up?”
“Oh, don’t!”
“To have him under observation right from the time of the crime,” Guy
gloated wistfully. “To know exactly what he thought and felt and did.”
“Don’t tempt me, Nesbitt! I’ll be getting George to murder you in a
minute, if you go on like this. I promise I wouldn’t give you away,
George, if you’d only let me psycho-analyse you afterwards.”
“That’s right,” Guy said. “George is just the person, of course. The
ordinary man is far more interesting than your sordid murderer for
gain or your mentally kinked. The reactions of the ordinary man to
murder! That’s the crux of the whole thing. And so few murderers are
ordinary men, unfortunately. What do you imagine he’d do, Doyle? I
believe the ordinary decent man would go straight to the nearest
police-station and give himself up.”
The light of argument kindled in Doyle’s eye. George’s heart sank.
“That depends on the circumstances. You must postulate those first. Do
you mean, if the murder was a more or less unpremeditated one, and
without witnesses?”
“Yes, certainly. Any circumstances you like. Your ordinary decent
man’s impulse would be to give himself up at once.”
“Not he!” retorted Mr. Doyle with much scorn. “If there are no
witnesses and no evidence against him, he’s going to make one
arrow-flight for home and safety.”
“I don’t agree with you,” Guy hunched his head between his shoulders
till he looked more like an ill-omened bird of prey than ever. His
glasses and the top of his head shone with enjoyment. “I don’t agree
with you. He wouldn’t stop to consider whether there was evidence or
not. He’d assume that there must be; he’d take it for granted that
he’d be found out. He’d give himself up, without hesitation. In a way,
you see, it’s a shelving of responsibility, and the ordinary decent
man avoids responsibility like the plague. Besides, he’d have too
great a respect for the law.”
“Your ordinary decent man sounds to me uncommonly like a spineless
worm,” retorted Mr. Doyle. “Now this is what he probably _would_
do. . . .”
The argument raged delectably.
It continued to rage.
It developed heat.
George’s heart sank till it could sink no further. He poured himself
out another glass of port and recklessly consumed it side by side with
his cigar, an action that would have caused Guy in his saner moments
the utmost pain and distress; as it was he never even noticed it.
George squirmed, he wriggled, he writhed. Seven times he said, “I
say!” and seven times said no more.
“I say!” said George loudly for the eighth time. “I say, if you’re so
jolly keen on knowing what the wretched chap would do, why on earth
don’t you stage a murder and find out?”
George had a large voice. In spite of their preoccupation his words
penetrated into the minds of the other two. They actually stopped
arguing to look at him.
“Do what?” said Mr. Doyle.
“What do you mean?” asked Guy.
So far as he knew, George had not meant anything, except a desperate
endeavour somehow to break the thick cord of this interminable
argument, but desperation sharpens the wits and George saw in a flash
what he must have been meaning. “Why,” he explained modestly, “carry
out an experiment, of course. A psychological experiment,” he added
with pride. “Not a real murder, of course. Just fix things so that a
chap thinks he’s committed a murder, you see. Oughtn’t to be so
difficult. You could hammer out half a dozen different ways of working
it, Guy, with your gumption.”
They stared at him in respectful silence. George, who was by way of
sharing their respect, stared back.
“By jove!” exclaimed Mr. Doyle softly. One gathered that the idea
appealed to him. He looked at George with new eyes.
That gentleman obliged with another brain-wave. “Do you remember that
time when you wondered what a Dean would do if he found a girl in his
rooms after the coll. gates were locked, under the impression that
she’d been invited to stay till morning, so to speak, Guy? Well,
something like that.”
Guy, remembering his innocent curiosity on that point and the means he
had taken to gratify it, began to laugh silently, stealing jam with
every appearance of joyful guilt. Across his delighted vision strayed
the germs of three separate and distinct plans for making an innocent
citizen imagine that he had murdered a fellow. “The ordinary man’s
reactions to murder, eh?” he chuckled. “It _could_ be done. Upon my
soul, it could! What do you say, Doyle?”
What Mr. Doyle should have said is: “Nesbitt, your cocktails were
good, your champagne better, your port superlative. Of all have we
drunk, and in consequence we are not a little elated. Let us realise
the fact, and not toy with fascinating impossibilities.” He said
nothing of the sort. What he did say, tersely, was: “Every time!
Let’s!”
Guy jumped to his feet, grinning madly. “I think—yes, I think I see
it! I shall want a female accomplice. Let’s go and hear what the
others have got to say about it.”
They joined the ladies.
There, five minutes later, Guy was being accorded the highest honours,
as an enlivener of the tedium of Duffley’s daily round, amid hearty
shrieks which effectively drowned the one half-hearted dissentient
voice in the room.
“Guy, I hand it to you,” Laura was shrieking. “And to mark the
occasion I’m going to create a precedent. I’ve got no vacancy in my
inner circle, but I must do something. I’m going to create an entirely
extra place for you and make a baker’s dozen of it. Henceforth I am
Lawks to you, and Lawks only!”
“Lawks it is!” beamed the gratified Guy, and winked broadly at his
wife. “Thank you.”
That lady, watching his narrow back as he drew up chairs for the
conference, had no difficulty in correctly interpreting the wink. It
said quite plainly: “What price my ideas about feminine psychology
now?”
With much ceremony and clinking of glasses (a bottle of Benedictine
was specially opened for the occasion and ruthlessly carried into the
drawing-room in defiance of all decent convention) Guy was sealed of
the tribe of Howard.
“Oh!”
An exclamation from Mr. Doyle caused all heads to turn in his
direction. He was smiting the back of a chair with clenched fist.
“_I_ know the man for us!” cried Mr. Doyle. “The very fellow! As
ordinary and decent as you like, and the sort of man whose reactions
it’s almost impossible to predict. And it’d do him all the good in the
world, too. He wants shaking up badly. It might be the saving of him
to imagine for twenty-four hours that he’d killed a man. A fellow
called Priestley. . . .”