Mr. Priestley Is Adventurous
To say that Mr. Priestley had been seriously perturbed by the
vegetable accusations that had been hurled against him, would be to
overstate the case; to say that he dismissed them immediately with
complacent assurance from his mind, would be to trifle with the truth.
During the few days that followed the young man’s visit Mr. Priestley
was at some pains to prove to himself over and over again that he
could not, by any stretch of imagination, be truthfully termed a
turnip. The outburst he explained with complete satisfaction as the
spasmodic attempt of a nervous mentality, disordered by love, to
convert the whole world to its own way of thinking and being; and he
put the whole thing out of his mind as unworthy of serious
consideration, exactly forty-eight separate times.
Yet these baseless insinuations of our friends, dismiss, explain or
shelve them as we will, have a habit of rankling. We _know_ that they
are baseless, because of course they are; but they rankle—perhaps out
of their own sheer baselessness. It is extraordinarily annoying of
them.
Without his quite realising the fact, a spirit of restlessness began
to pervade the ordered round of Mr. Priestley’s daily life. He did
things he had never done before. He snapped at his perfectly good man;
he sniffed the spring air, while vague and foolish aspirations filled
his bosom; several times he looked almost with distaste at the
unoccupied chair on the other side of his hearth, instead of
congratulating himself as usual on its emptiness; he conceived
something approaching dislike for the pleasantly impossible idealism
of Theocritus, and substituted the cynical Theophrastes as his bedside
book.
On Saturday evening things reached a climax. Shattering into small
fragments the record of years, Mr. Priestley shook the dust of his
flat off his feet (or performed the motions of shaking dust off feet,
in the total absence of the commodity itself) and went out to dine at
a restaurant! No snail, Mr. Priestley felt sure, ever forsakes its
house to dine at a restaurant. His vindication was surely complete.
The restaurant Mr. Priestley chose as the scene of this epoch-making
meal was in Jermyn Street, a quiet, pretentious place, where the
high-priestlike demeanour of the head-waiter amply justified the
length of the bill. High-priestlike head-waiters are worth their
weight in extras. Mr. Priestley, with a wisdom beyond his experience,
allowed the high-priest to choose his dinner for him and his
half-bottle of burgundy.
Now, Mr. Priestley did know something about burgundy, and his
knowledge told him that this was very excellent burgundy indeed. So
impressed was Mr. Priestley with the excellence of this admirable
burgundy that he readily agreed to the high-priest’s suggestion that
one paltry half-bottle was not enough for a man of palate. He had
another half-bottle.
The high-priest was delighted with Mr. Priestley’s palate. He
mentioned at the end of dinner, in the tones of one chanting a solemn
anthem, that there was some Very Special Brandy in the cellars which
even such a palate as Mr. Priestley’s would receive with awe and
wonder. It was a Chance, the high-priest intimated, which would Not
Occur Again. Mr. Priestley, now as mellow and glowing as an October
sunset, fell in with the idea at once. He gave his palate its chance.
The high-priest then chose Mr. Priestley a cigar, superintended the
seven underlings who helped him into his overcoat, pocketed his
remuneration with the air of one accepting alms for the deserving
rich, and turned Mr. Priestley out into the night.
His very expensive cigar between his teeth, Mr. Priestley ambled down
Jermyn Street, at peace with the world. His case was proved for the
forty-ninth time, and now without a shadow of doubt; he was _not_ a
vegetable-marrow. Do vegetable-marrows dine alone in expensive
restaurants, knowingly discuss palates with high-priests, and smoke
the best cigars procurable? They do not.
“And neither, confound it!” observed Mr. Priestley aloud with sudden
vehemence, “do snails!” And he winked surprisingly at a passing
respectable matron. He was shocked at his action the next moment, but
he was also guiltily pleased with it. Even Pat would admit that a
hermit practically never winks at respectable ladies, even of safely
mature years.
Mr. Priestley ambled on, feeling something like a cross between the
devil and the deep blue sea.
The entrance to the tube station attracted his attention and he turned
into it. It would be pleasant, he thought, to stroll through and have
a look at the lights of Piccadilly Circus. For some reason obscure to
him Mr. Priestley felt that he wanted lights, and plenty of them. He
might even linger for a few minutes in Piccadilly Circus. It was a
mildly devilish thing to do, he knew.
He took up his stand at the Circus entrance of the station and gazed
benevolently out upon the scene, crowded with hurrying late-comers to
the neighbouring theatres.
A lady with a very white nose and very red lips looked at him and
diagnosed the two half-bottles under his waistcoat.
“Hullo, dear!” said the lady, with a winning smile.
Mr. Priestley started violently and plunged back into the station
behind him like a rabbit into its burrow. The lady, diagnosing this
time that she had failed to please, passed on. Mr. Priestley emerged
again, properly ashamed of himself.
“That,” observed Mr. Priestley to himself, with considerable severity,
“was the action of a snail. I ought to have returned that woman’s
greeting and taken her off to some place of refreshment. A glass of
port would probably have purchased her story, and I should have
undergone an interesting and unprecedented experience. I should, in
fact, as Pat counselled me, have had an Adventure. Never mind, the
opportunity will probably occur again.” Which, as Mr. Priestley was
communing with himself in the Piccadilly entrance of the Underground
Railway, was no less than the truth.
As even Mr. Priestley had surmised, he had not long to wait. Almost
the next moment a voice spoke at his elbow—a pleasantly modulated
feminine voice this time, though not altogether free from irritation.
“Well, here you are at _last_!” said the voice. “I was beginning to
think you never were coming. I’ve been waiting round about here for
nearly twenty minutes.”
This time Mr. Priestley had better command of himself. He did not
start violently, he did not bolt for the lift like a mole for its
hill, he did not even pause to reflect upon what he was doing. He just
turned round and gazed with interest at the pretty, flower-like face
that was upturned to his and the innocent blue eyes, just clouded with
what must have been pardonable exasperation. Then he smiled benignly.
Some sage has already put it upon record that circumstances alter
cases. He did not add that some circumstances can take a case, jump on
it, turn it inside out, roll it out flat and then build it up
backwards; yet this is what his own circumstances were doing for Mr.
Priestley’s case. A week ago Mr. Priestley would have raised his hat,
turned a bright brick-red and stammered out to the owner of the
trusting, flower-like face the error of her ways. As it was he
descended blithely to such depths of duplicity as at that remote time
he would have deemed incredible. This was his chance! This was to the
life-stories of improper ladies over glasses of port as that burgundy
had been to red ink! This was an ADVENTURE not merely with a capital
“A” but in block letters a mile high! This was Heaven-sent
Opportunity!
Wherein Mr. Priestley erred. It was not Heaven who had sent him the
opportunity, but a much more unscrupulous agency.
“I’m exceedingly sorry I’m so late,” replied the adventurous Mr.
Priestley, and continued to beam. Limpet indeed!
If this answer brought a tinge of astonishment into the girl’s eyes,
if she lifted one cheek out of the fur in which it nestled as if
incredulous that she had heard aright and wanted the remark repeated,
if she then involuntarily stepped back half a pace and scrutinised Mr.
Priestley’s face with something not unlike acute misgiving, if her
delicately slender form finally quivered slightly and she bit her lip
as one making violent and drastic efforts to control the muscles of
her face—if these things happened, I say, then Mr. Priestley was far
too occupied in admiring his own devilishness to notice them. He was
the sort of person to shut both eyes and wrap his head up in a rug if
he saw an adventure approaching him, was he? Huh!
By an impartial observer the girl might have been thought to pull
herself together with an effort. “Well, now you are here,” she said,
and her voice expressed nothing but asperity, “where can we talk?”
Mr. Priestley looked at the face of his unexpected companion and found
that it was good. He looked round at the lights of Piccadilly and
found that they were good. He bestowed a casual glance on the world in
general, and found that it was good, too. “Talk?” he said. “I should
think we might talk anywhere.” He looked round Piccadilly Circus again
and his surmise was confirmed; it was simply full of places where this
charming person and he might talk.
“We don’t want to be overheard, you know,” the charming person
reminded him, with a touch of austerity.
Mr. Priestley was in entire agreement. “Oh, no. Of course not. Good
gracious, no!” While he was still speaking he knew vaguely there was
something he wanted to ask; the next moment he realised what it was.
Why, after all, did they not want to be overheard?
“What about the lounge of the Piccadilly Palace?” suggested the girl,
before he could frame the question.
“Admirable!” said Mr. Priestley with enthusiasm, his question
completely forgotten before his interest in the particularly
delightful way in which his companion’s brows just did not meet as she
frowned her perplexity over this serious matter. The thought occurred
to him that for all he knew the world might have been full of feminine
brows that delightfully just did not meet when their owners were
charmingly perplexed, and he had never noticed this remarkable
phenomenon. The next moment he knew for a certainty that there was
only one possible pair of brows that could behave like that and his
life hitherto had not been really wasted after all.
The next coherent thing that Mr. Priestley knew was that he was
sitting before a small table in the Piccadilly Palace lounge and
ordering coffee. To the waiter’s bland assumption that liqueurs would
be required as well the girl shook her head in a decided negative; and
Mr. Priestley, who detested platitudes almost as much as false
quantities, reminded himself that enough was as good as a feast, and
shook his head in a decided negative too.
The breathing space before the coffee arrived gave Mr. Priestley time
to collect his hitherto somewhat scattered wits and conquer the
dream-like state of his mind. This was not an illusion, he pointed out
to himself half-incredulously during his companion’s fortuitous
silence; he really was sitting in the lounge of the Piccadilly Palace
with a particularly charming young woman who was labouring under the
impression that he was some one else. Whom she had mistaken him for,
or what she wanted to talk to him about, he could neither imagine nor
very much cared; for once in his life he was living only in the
present. The explanations which must inevitably come later, would be
awkward no doubt, but they could take care of themselves; in the
meantime he was going to take unscrupulous advantage of the situation
for just as long as he possibly could. Did somebody once mention the
word “limpet”?
The coffee, which arrived with singular promptitude, helped Mr.
Priestley to dispel the slight mistiness from his brain. Glancing
covertly at his companion, he now consciously perceived what had
before been an unconscious impression, that her prettiness had a
quality of wistful charm which was particularly appealing. One saw at
once that her dainty fragility was not fitted to cope with the harsh
realities of this world. She needed looking after. Somebody, Mr.
Priestley decided with mild indignation, _ought_ to be looking after
her; it was extremely remiss of somebody not to be looking after her.
A feeling that was not exactly paternal, not at all brotherly, and
perhaps not so entirely disinterested as its owner imagined, took
possession of him: he would look after this eminently protectable
small person. The feeling was, in fact, that of the prowling
knight-errant who comes across the prepossessing maiden who has been
stripped and tied to the tree by robbers; he rescues her with eager
zest, but he does not look upon her like a father.
At present the distressed maiden’s childlike features wore an
expression of stern resolve which sat upon them, Mr. Priestley
thought, with pathetic incongruity. She was quietly, but even to his
uninitiated eyes, expensively dressed, in pleasant contrast with his
late encounter, whose clothes had cleverly combined the maximum of
loudness with the minimum of cost. Hitherto, except for a few murmured
commonplaces regarding sugar and milk and such trifles, she had not
spoken since they entered the place. Mr. Priestley awaited her next
words with ill-suppressed eagerness.
She sipped at her coffee, set down the cup and turned to look at him
fairly and squarely. “You know,” she said with a certain charming
diffidence, “you’re not quite the sort of person I expected.”
“No?” beamed Mr. Priestley warily, drawing rapid deductions.
“In fact, if it hadn’t been for the carnation, I should certainly
never have recognised you.”
Mr. Priestley threw a surprised glance towards his buttonhole.
Certainly there was a carnation in it, of a rather uncommon mauve hue;
equally certainly there had been none when he left his own
carnationless abode. Evidently the high-priest must have set it there,
as a floral tribute of respect to such an uncommon palate. Mr.
Priestley’s heart warmed still more towards that dignitary.
“What sort of person did you expect, then?” he ventured, greatly
daring.
The girl laughed a little awkwardly. “Oh, well, you understand,
surely. I mean, we needn’t really have met there after all. I wouldn’t
mind being seen with you anywhere.”
“Thank you,” murmured the mystified Mr. Priestley. The tone was that
of a compliment, but it seemed to him that the words might have been
better chosen.
“You see you’re not—well, not very like the description you gave me in
your letter, are you?”
Mr. Priestley affected to consider the point. “Well, not _very_ much,
no,” he admitted.
“_I_ shouldn’t call you sturdy and powerful-looking, six-foot high and
forty round the chest,” pursued the girl with innocent candour.
“Did I say that?” murmured Mr. Priestley, aghast.
“You know you did,” said his companion with gentle severity. “Why?”
Mr. Priestley hesitated. This was becoming very difficult; very
difficult indeed. “Well,” he floundered, “because I thought—because it
seemed more likely that—because I hoped——” He drew his handkerchief
from his sleeve and mopped his brow.
“You mean, because you thought I should be more likely to give you a
favourable reply in those circumstances?”
“Exactly!” Mr. Priestley said with relief. “Yes, that was it.
Exactly.”
“It wasn’t very straight of you,” the girl commented in severe tones,
but there was just a suspicion of a smile at the corners of her mouth.
Mr. Priestley caught sight of the smile and took heart. “No,” he
agreed contritely, drawing more deductions, “I—I’m afraid it wasn’t. I
see that now.” Had the unhappy girl been answering an advertisement in
a matrimonial paper, or what? Most decidedly she wanted all the
looking after she could get. What were her brothers doing? Perhaps she
hadn’t got any. Then what had her parents been doing not to give her
some? Most certainly somebody was very much to blame.
“But after all, I suppose one could hardly expect straightness from
_you_, could one?” surprisingly remarked the object of his solicitude.
Mr. Priestley started slightly. “No, no,” he assented, playing for
safety. “No, of course not. Naturally. I quite understand that.”
There was a short pause while the girl sipped her coffee with a
thoughtful air and Mr. Priestley tried hard to imagine who he was
supposed to be, what the favourable reply had been about, and why one
could hardly expect straightness from him. He did not succeed.
“Well, I suppose you’ll do,” remarked the girl at last. She spoke
without any degree of enthusiasm. It appeared that she had been
debating the point.
“Er—good,” said Mr. Priestley, also with a marked lessening of
enthusiasm. It may have been that the effects of that second
half-bottle were beginning to wear off, it may have been due to the
unexpected complication in what had promised to be a straightforward
little episode, but the truth was that the Adventure was rapidly
losing its light-hearted aspect. For some reason Mr. Priestley felt
sure that quite serious developments were in the wind, and he was
wondering uneasily just how he was going to cope with them.
The girl turned to him with a quick movement. “Did you bring your
tools with you?”
“My—my _tools_?” echoed Mr. Priestley in bewilderment. Surely he had
not been mistaken for a plumber?
“Yes, I should love to see them. But I suppose you don’t carry them
with you usually, do you?”
“Oh, very seldom,” said Mr. Priestley firmly. “Very seldom, indeed.” A
dim recollection came to him. “My—er—mate, you know,” he murmured.
“What a pity! Still, it doesn’t really matter, because you won’t be
wanting them to-night, as I told you. I can show you a very easy way
into the house.”
Mr. Priestley’s blood, already somewhat chilled, dropped several
further degrees. For a moment he stared dumbly at his pretty
companion. Then he took his bull by its horns.
“Perhaps you had better tell me the—the whole story,” he said a little
huskily.
The girl’s eyes widened in innocent surprise. “But I told you
everything, in my letter!”
“Yes. Oh, yes,” mumbled Mr. Priestley. “Quite. But I—I think you had
better tell me _again_, you see. Letters are never very satisfactory,
are they? I mean, perhaps I should understand it all rather more
clearly if you—if you told me again, you know!”
“I thought I’d made it clear enough,” said the girl in puzzled tones.
“We were to meet here to discuss anything necessary, and then go down
in my car to break into the house while they’re away for the week-end.
What else is there you want me to tell you?”
Mr. Priestley’s blood retired a little farther into cold storage. His
mild blue eyes remained fixed on his companion’s face in a horrified
stare. “To—to break into the house?” he repeated faintly.
“Of course! I explained it all in my letter. Why, you’re looking quite
startled.”
Mr. Priestley strove to pull himself together. “Well, it—it is a
little bit startling, isn’t it?” he said with a ghastly attempt at a
smile. “Just a little bit. To—to break into the house, so to speak.”
The girl’s lips twitched and she turned her head hastily away,
apparently to contemplate with every sign of interest an
under-developed palm-tree in an opposite corner of the lounge. When
she turned back to Mr. Priestley again a moment later her face once
more wore an expression of guileless bewilderment.
“But what else should I want to hire a burglar for?” she asked,
reasonably enough.
Mr. Priestley swallowed. “Of course, there—there is something in
that,” he conceded, endeavouring to assume the air of one debating an
interesting point. “Oh, yes, I quite see that.”
He cast a hunted glance round. The Adventure was beginning to assume
the aspect less of an adventure than a nightmare. Protection! There
was certainly one person at their table who required all the
protection that could be got, but it was not the one at his side;
appearances, Mr. Priestley reflected wildly, _are_ deceptive. The
sooner, in fact, that he got away from this promising young criminal,
the better. Should he make a plain bolt for it at once, or——
“Well, is there anything else you want to ask me?” the girl’s voice
broke into his agonised thoughts. “Because, if not, hadn’t we better
be making a move? We don’t want to be _too_ late getting back to
London, do we? I’ll pay the waiter, of course, if you will call him.”
And she began to refasten the fur at her throat and collect her
various impedimenta by way of a hint that was anything but mistakable.
“After all, I can tell you the details just as well in the car going
down, can’t I?” she added.
Mr. Priestley moistened his dry lips. The second half-bottle was very
little in evidence by this time. “Er—Miss—er—Miss—er——”
“Spettigue, I think you mean,” the girl rescued him gently. “Didn’t
you get that letter I wrote you at all, Mr. Mullins?”
“Oh, yes,” Mr. Priestley-Mullins replied hastily. “Yes, of course,
Miss—er—Spettigue. But I don’t—that is——”
The girl came as near to showing impatience as a creature so demurely
angelic could. “It’s half-past nine already,” she said plaintively.
“We really must not waste any more time, Mr. Mullins. Isn’t that our
waiter over there? Do please call him.” And she fixed Mr. Priestley
with a look that should have caused even milder men than he to write
fiercely to _The Times_ about the dragon-shortage in these degenerate
days, and can’t something be done about it? She also rose to her feet
with a decision that left no room for further delay.
Reluctantly, very reluctantly, Mr. Priestley followed suit. Somebody
(he never knew who) paid the waiter, and they made their way out into
the open air again.
“The car’s in a garage up in Maida Vale,” remarked the girl. “We’d
better take the Underground.”
“I think, perhaps a taxi——?” suggested Mr. Priestley, in whose
harassed brain a plan was now beginning to form.
The girl looked at him with appealing helplessness. “I do so _much_
prefer the Underground,” she said wistfully. “It’s so much safer.”
They took the Underground.
Now Mr. Priestley was a chivalrous man. Even as his Adventure had
turned out, he could not bring himself to slip out of it, as he easily
could have done already, without a word of explanation. He had been
responsible for this tangled skein; it was equally his responsibility
to leave it in a properly tidied condition. Without going so far as to
make a clean breast of his own baseness, he yet felt it necessary to
explain that this evening at any rate was a close season for burglars.
For the rest, any faint feelings of curiosity which he might have
entertained regarding the ultimate intentions of this charming but
nefarious maiden had now been quite swamped in the urgency of his
anxiety not to be mixed up in them. Even to himself Mr. Priestley
could not but admit that he would make a remarkably poor burglar.
A taxi would have suited his purpose much better, but he had to do the
best he could with the Underground. Fortunately, there were only one
or two people in the carriage, and Mr. Priestley was able to deliver
himself with no fear of being overheard. “Miss Spettigue,” he began,
in the low, firm voice of the Man who will Stand No Nonsense. “Miss
Spettigue, I fear I have some unpleasant news for you.”
The lady curved a small hand round an invisible ear. “Did you say
anything?” she inquired at the top of her voice.
Mr. Priestley abandoned the low, firm voice and substituted a louder
edition. “I fear I have some unpleasant news for you,” he roared above
the din of the train. Chatty conversation on the Underground is best
carried on between a retired fog-horn and a bull from Bashan.
“If it’s your tools,” the girl howled cheerfully, “I——”
“It isn’t my tools,” bellowed Mr. Priestley with a testiness which
quite surprised him. “It’s this. I regret that I shall be unable
to—er—to break into this house for you.”
“Unable to——?” The girl looked at him with astonishment. “What do you
mean?” she shrieked.
At that moment the train considerately slowed down to approach a
station, and the interchange of ideas became easier.
“What do you mean?” repeated the girl, in more normal tones.
Mr. Priestley wriggled uneasily. “I—I’ve reformed, you see,” he
mumbled.
“You’ve _what_?”
“Reformed. I—I’m not going to burgle any more.”
“Why ever not?”
Mr. Priestley fixed a hot gaze on an advertisement containing some
pithy advice to mothers. “I—well, I don’t think it’s right,” he said
uncomfortably.
There was a short but tense silence. The train shrieked to a
standstill.
“I think I’d better get out here,” murmured Mr. Priestley unhappily,
still learning what to do if he ever became a mother.
“Here’s your ticket,” muttered Mr. Priestley, now blushing miserably
all over.
The silence full of unutterable things into which his companion had
retired, her face turned away from him, was broken by a curious sound.
It was not exactly a sniff, nor was it a gulp, and it certainly was
not a choke; but in some curious way it combined the essential
elements of all three. Mr. Priestley, taken by surprise, turned and
looked at her. As he did so he gave a violent start and quite forgot
that the train was on the point of moving on from the station where he
had planned a graceful exit. Her shoulders were heaving, and she was
fumbling blindly in her ridiculous little bag. The next moment she
drew out a still more ridiculous handkerchief and applied it to her
eyes.
“God bless my soul!” Mr. Priestley petitioned.
“Good gracious me!” observed Mr. Priestley.
“Well, I never!” Mr. Priestley remarked.
“Here, I say, you mustn’t do that!” ordered Mr. Priestley, aghast.
“Please don’t cry!” Mr. Priestley implored, and incontinently
abandoned all lingering thoughts about exits.
The girl turned a woebegone face towards him, her lower lip trembling
pathetically. Anything more utterly helpless and appealing could
hardly be imagined. “Then you’re—you’re going to leave me in the
lurch, Mr. Mullins?” she asked, in a funny, shaky little voice.
Mr. Priestley squirmed. It appeared to him with sudden and unexpected
force how remiss it was of him not to be a burglar. It was not playing
the game. Here was this charming girl expecting to meet her burglar,
never dreaming that she was doing anything else but meet her burglar;
and there was Mr. Priestley going about the place not being a burglar
at all. His conduct had been despicable, that was the only word for
it—despicable!
Still, the fact remained that however contemptible it might be of him,
he certainly was not a burglar. “I’m afraid I must,” he replied
uneasily.
The girl had recourse to her handkerchief. “I think it’s most c-cruel
of you,” she quavered. “After all, you can’t c-count my letters as
b-burgling! I think you’re horrid. And after you p-promised, and I
sent half your f-fee in advance.”
“My f-fee?” repeated the bewildered Mr. Priestley. “Your l-letters?”
“Yes. Oh, how can you be so unk-kind?”
That is just what Mr. Priestley was wondering. But he was wondering a
large number of other things as well. In any case, he really had to
find out more about this mysterious business first. “Look here,” he
said desperately, while the train gathered speed, “will you tell me
the whole thing from beginning to end as if I didn’t know anything
about it at all? I—I’m afraid I must have been mixing you up with—with
somebody else. I have—er—so many clients, you see.”
Bright hope was dawning in the face which the girl turned eagerly
towards him. “And you’ll get my letters for me, after all?”
“I can’t make any promises,” returned Mr. Priestley cautiously, “but
let me have the—er—the facts of the case first.”
With renewed animation the girl proceeded to give them to him, telling
her story as much as possible between stations but not sparing her
larynx even in the tunnels.
Mr. Priestley listened to her with mingled feelings of relief and
uneasiness. The relief was due to the fact that she was not, after
all, the promising young criminal for which he had taken her, the
uneasiness to the realisation that the matter was very much more
complicated than he had ever imagined; she was planning to commit
burglary, true, but it was, so to speak, a white burglary.
Briefly, the story which Mr. Priestley learnt with gradually
increasing indignation was to the effect that Miss Spettigue had, when
a younger and exceedingly foolish virgin, written certain letters to a
man who had turned out subsequently to be, if not a wolf, at any rate
a fox in sheep’s clothing.
“Nothing actually wrong in them, Mr. Mullins,” she explained with
touching earnestness. “Just—well, just _silly_.”
“Oh, quite,” murmured the temporary Mr. Mullins uncomfortably.
“Precisely.”
The disguised fox had since married; but, on being approached with a
view to surrendering his trophies of Miss Spettigue’s girlish
affections, had refused point-blank to do anything of the sort.
Matters had begun to look serious, for the Fox, this time approaching
Miss Spettigue himself, had hinted very plainly that, if she wished to
regain possession of her compromising effusions, she must be prepared
to pay for the privilege, and very handsomely too.
Miss Spettigue here paused to dab her eyes again and gulp.
“The scoundrel!” exclaimed the horrified Mr. Priestley.
The lady flashed him a look of gratitude and continued her tale.
A sum had actually been named, far in excess of her possibilities, and
there the matter had rested—with the unpleasant threat in the
background that if the money were not paid by a certain date “steps
would be taken.” As the money could not be paid, it was obviously a
matter of some urgency to obtain possession of the letters by other
means.
“You’re engaged to be married, no doubt?” observed Mr. Priestley
half-abstractedly, when the recital was finished. His thoughtful gaze
was fixed on the opposite side of the carriage and he seemed to be
debating his immediate future. “Of course, you could hardly tell your
fiancé. I quite see that.”
His companion bestowed on him a sidelong and somewhat anxious look.
Mr. Priestley was far too preoccupied to notice it, but a shrewd
observer might have summed it up as the calculating look of one
hastily reckoning up comparative values.
If this were so, she made her decision with commendable promptitude.
“I am not engaged to be married, Mr. Mullins,” she said, “I _am_
married.”
“God bless my soul!” exclaimed Mr. Priestley, looking at her with new
eyes. Somehow he could not associate this flower-like innocence (as it
was after all now plainly proved to be) with the coarsities of married
life. She might be of marriageable years, no doubt she was; but in
essence she was still a child—and children are forbidden to marry. So
should grown-up children be too, thought Mr. Priestley, reluctantly
abandoning in favour of its legal owner the rôle of protector which he
had been beginning again to contemplate. The next instant he hastily
picked it up again. Of course she needed protection, now more than
ever —from this coarse, obtuse, gross-bodied husband of hers! Mr.
Priestley had no doubt at all that this must be a correct description
of the absent Mr. Spettigue. “God bless my soul!” he repeated.
With intuitive genius the girl must have been following the line of
his thoughts. A frightened look appeared in her lustrous eyes as she
gazed at him in mute entreaty.
“That’s the awful part, you see,” she faltered. “If I were single
it—it wouldn’t matter so much, but my husband——!” She choked. “He’d
never forgive me!” she concluded mournfully—but not so mournfully that
she was precluded from watching Mr. Priestley’s reactions to this
interesting piece of news very closely indeed. It was the crux of the
situation, and if Mr. Priestley did not recognise the fact, his
companion certainly did.
A genuine tear glistened in her eye. “My life would be ruined!” she
quavered. “Absolutely ruined!”
Mr. Priestley drew a deep breath. “Don’t distress yourself, my dear
young lady, please,” he implored. “We—we must see what can be done.
Tell me the rest of the story.”
The girl drew a deep breath also. In an artistically shaky voice she
proceeded to tell the rest of her story.
It had been impossible to confide in her husband. “He —he wouldn’t
quite _understand_,” she explained with pathetic dignity, and Mr.
Priestley nodded violent agreement. So, she had decided that the best
thing to do was to get some one to burgle the Fox’s lair for her, and
had therefore inserted the newspaper advertisement which Mr. Mullins
had answered. Their subsequent correspondence was, of course, fresh in
his memory. In the meantime she herself had not been idle. She had
found out where the letters were kept and, by an intelligent system
connected with a certain inmate of the household itself, was able to
keep herself informed of its master’s doings. Through this medium news
had reached her of the projected week-end visit and the consequent
closing of the house, and she had arranged the raid accordingly.
“I see,” observed Mr. Priestley very thoughtfully. “Yes, all this
certainly must make things very much clearer.”
The recently married Mrs. Spettigue leaned towards him and impulsively
laid a small, gloved hand upon his. “Now _do_ say you’ll get my
letters for me, Mr. Mullins!” she beseeched, her pretty eyes fixed on
his in a look of infinite entreaty. “You can’t possibly pretend it’s
real burgling, can you? _Please!_”
The good red blood leapt in Mr. Priestley’s veins as it had not done
for fifteen years. After all, what did it matter? The cause was just
enough in all conscience, and even if things did go wrong, his own
name would not be brought into it. But, bother all that—what did
anything matter beside the good name of this poor, charming creature,
whose little hand still lay so trustfully upon his?
“I—I’ll do my best,” he promised huskily. “My dear young lady, I’ll
certainly do my best.”
His companion’s relief was undisguised. “Oh, you _dear_!” Her little
hand gently squeezed Mr. Priestley’s in touching gratitude. She smiled
at him through her tears. “I _knew_ you wouldn’t let me down when it
really came to the point.”
Many heroes have had less reward.
For the rest of the journey, and during the long ride through the
darkness in the powerful two-seater, Mr. Priestley remained strangely
silent. As a matter of fact he was trying hard to remember anything he
had ever read which might prove helpful to one about to commit a
felony. Wasn’t there somebody once called Charlie Peace? Or was it
Charlie Raffles?