"Well," he said, "for instance, I come up here every evening at seven
and--er--think for a few minutes."
"A few minutes?!"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, a few minutes isn't long."
"But I always have my cocktail at a quarter past."
"You could postpone it."
"And Ponsonby likes us to start dinner at seven-thirty."
"What on earth has Ponsonby to do with it?"
"Well, he likes to get off by nine, you know. I think he goes off and
plays bowls at the roadhouse. You see, Reggie, old man, we have to
study Ponsonby a little. He's always on the verge of giving notice--in
fact, it was only by coaxing him on one or two occasions that we
got him to stay on--and he's such a treasure that I don't know what
we should do if we lost him. But, if you think that I ought to stay
longer----?"
"Certainly I do. You ought to do a thing like this properly, or not at
all."
He sighed.
"It's a frightful risk, but in future we'll dine at eight."
It seemed to me that there was a suspicion of a cloud on Ponsonby's
shining morning face, when the news was broken to him that for the
future he couldn't unleash himself on the local bowling talent as early
as usual, but he made no kick, and the new order of things began.
My next offensive movement I attribute to a flash of absolute genius. I
was glancing through a photograph album in the drawing-room before
lunch, when I came upon a face which I vaguely remembered. It was one
of those wide, flabby faces, with bulging eyes, and something about it
struck me as familiar. I consulted Harold, who came in at that moment.
"That?" said Harold. "That's Percy." He gave a slight shudder.
"Amelia's brother, you know. An awful fellow. I haven't seen him for
years."
Then I placed Percy. I had met him once or twice in the old days, and I
had a brainwave. Percy was everything that poor old Harold disliked
most. He was hearty at breakfast, a confirmed back-slapper, and a man
who prodded you in the chest when he spoke to you.
"You haven't seen him for years!" I said in a shocked voice.
"Thank heaven!" said Harold devoutly.
I put down the photograph album, and looked at him in a deuced serious
way. "Then it's high time you asked him to come here."
Harold blanched. "Reggie, old man, you don't know what you are saying.
You can't remember Percy. I wish you wouldn't say these things, even in
fun."
"I'm not saying it in fun. Of course, it's none of my business, but you
have paid me the compliment of confiding in me about Amelia, and I feel
justified in speaking. All I can say is that, if you cherish her memory
as you say you do, you show it in a very strange way. How you can
square your neglect of Percy with your alleged devotion to Amelia's
memory, beats me. It seems to me that you have no choice. You must
either drop the whole thing and admit that your love for her is dead,
or else you must stop this infernal treatment of her favorite brother.
You can't have it both ways."
He looked at me like a hunted stag. "But, Reggie, old man! Percy! He
asks riddles at breakfast."
"I don't care."
"Hilda can't stand him."
"It doesn't matter. You must invite him. It's not a case of what you
like or don't like. It's your duty."
He struggled with his feelings for a bit. "Very well," he said in a
crushed sort of voice.
At dinner that night he said to Hilda: "I'm going to ask Amelia's
brother down to spend a few days. It is so long since we have seen
him."
Hilda didn't answer at once. She looked at him in rather a curious sort
of way, I thought. "Very well, dear," she said.
I was deuced sorry for the poor girl, but I felt like a surgeon. She
would be glad later on, for I was convinced that in a very short while
poor old Harold must crack under the strain, especially after I had put
across the coup which I was meditating for the very next evening.
It was quite simple. Simple, that is to say, in its working, but a
devilish brainy thing for a chappie to have thought out. If Ann had
really meant what she had said at lunch that day, and was prepared to
stick to her bargain and marry me as soon as I showed a burst of
intelligence, she was mine.
What it came to was that, if dear old Harold enjoyed meditating in
front of Amelia's portrait, he was jolly well going to have all the
meditating he wanted, and a bit over, for my simple scheme was to lurk
outside till he had gone into the little room on the top floor, and
then, with the aid of one of those jolly little wedges which you use to
keep windows from rattling, see to it that the old boy remained there
till they sent out search parties.
There wasn't a flaw in my reasoning. When Harold didn't roll in at the
sound of the dinner gong, Hilda would take it for granted that he was
doing an extra bit of meditating that night, and her pride would stop
her sending out a hurry call for him. As for Harold, when he found that
all was not well with the door, he would probably yell with
considerable vim. But it was odds against anyone hearing him. As for
me, you might think that I was going to suffer owing to the probable
postponement of dinner. Not so, but far otherwise, for on the night I
had selected for the coup I was dining out at the neighboring inn with
my old college chum Freddie Meadowes. It is true that Freddie wasn't
going to be within fifty miles of the place on that particular night,
but they weren't to know that.
Did I describe the peculiar isolation of that room on the top floor,
where the portrait was? I don't think I did. It was, as a matter of
fact, the only room in those parts, for, in the days when he did his
amateur painting, old Harold was strong on the artistic seclusion
business and hated noise, and his studio was the only room in use on
that floor.
In short, to sum up, the thing was a cinch.
Punctually at ten minutes to seven, I was in readiness on the scene.
There was a recess with a curtain in front of it a few yards from the
door, and there I waited, fondling my little wedge, for Harold to walk
up and allow the proceedings to start. It was almost pitch-dark, and
that made the time of waiting seem longer. Presently--I seemed to have
been there longer than ten minutes--I heard steps approaching. They
came past where I stood, and went on into the room. The door closed,
and I hopped out and sprinted up to it, and the next moment I had the
good old wedge under the wood--as neat a job as you could imagine. And
then I strolled downstairs, and toddled off to the inn.
I didn't hurry over my dinner, partly because the browsing and sluicing
at the inn was really astonishingly good for a roadhouse and partly
because I wanted to give Harold plenty of time for meditation. I
suppose it must have been a couple of hours or more when I finally
turned in at the front door. Somebody was playing the piano in the
drawing room. It could only be Hilda who was playing, and I had doubts
as to whether she wanted company just then--mine, at any rate.
Eventually I decided to risk it, for I wanted to hear the latest about
dear old Harold, so in I went, and it wasn't Hilda at all; it was Ann
Selby.
"Hello," I said. "I didn't know you were coming down here." It seemed
so odd, don't you know, as it hadn't been more than ten days or so
since her last visit.
"Good evening, Reggie," she said.
"What's been happening?" I asked.
"How do you know anything has been happening?"
"I guessed it."
"Well, you're quite right, as it happens, Reggie. A good deal has been
happening." She went to the door, and looked out, listening. Then she
shut it, and came back. "Hilda has revolted!"
"Revolted?"
"Yes, put her foot down--made a stand--refused to go on meekly putting
up with Harold's insane behavior."
"I don't understand."
She gave me a look of pity. "You always were so dense, Reggie. I will
tell you the whole thing from the beginning. You remember what I spoke
to you about, one day when we were lunching together? Well, I don't
suppose you have noticed it--I know what you are--but things have been
getting steadily worse. For one thing, Harold insisted on lengthening
his visits to the top room, and naturally Ponsonby complained. Hilda
tells me that she had to plead with him to induce him to stay on. Then
the climax came. I don't know if you recollect Amelia's brother Percy?
You must have met him when she was alive--a perfectly unspeakable
person with a loud voice and overpowering manners. Suddenly, out of a
blue sky, Harold announced his intention of inviting him to stay. It
was the last straw. This afternoon I received a telegram from poor
Hilda, saying that she was leaving Harold and coming to stay with me,
and a few hours later the poor child arrived at my apartment."
You mustn't suppose that I stood listening silently to this speech.
Every time she seemed to be going to stop for breath I tried to horn in
and tell her all these things which had been happening were not mere
flukes, as she seemed to think, but parts of a deuced carefully planned
scheme of my own. Every time I'd try to interrupt, Ann would wave me
down, and carry on without so much as a semi-colon.
But at this point I did manage a word in. "I know, I know, I know! I
did it all. It was I who suggested to Harold that he should lengthen
the meditations, and insisted on his inviting Percy to stay."
I had hardly got the words out, when I saw that they were not making
the hit I had anticipated. She looked at me with an expression of
absolute scorn, don't you know.
"Well, really, Reggie," she said at last, "I never have had a very high
opinion of your intelligence, as you know, but this is a revelation to
me. What motive you can have had, unless you did it in a spirit of pure
mischief----" She stopped, and there was a glare of undiluted repulsion
in her eyes. "Reggie! I can't believe it! Of all the things I loathe
most, a practical joker is the worst. Do you mean to tell me you did
all this as a practical joke?"
"Great Scott, no! It was like this----"
I paused for a bare second to collect my thoughts, so as to put the
thing clearly to her. I might have known what would happen. She dashed
right in and collared the conversation.
"Well, never mind. As it happens, there is no harm done. Quite the
reverse, in fact. Hilda left a note for Harold telling him what she had
done and where she had gone and why she had gone, and Harold found it.
The result was that, after Hilda had been with me for some time, in he
came in a panic and absolutely grovelled before the dear child. It
seems incredible but he had apparently had no notion that his absurd
behavior had met with anything but approval from Hilda. He went on as
if he were mad. He was beside himself. He clutched his hair and stamped
about the room, and then he jumped at the telephone and called this
house and got Ponsonby and told him to go straight to the little room
on the top floor and take Amelia's portrait down. I thought that a
little unnecessary myself, but he was in such a whirl of remorse that
it was useless to try and get him to be rational. So Hilda was
consoled, and he calmed down, and we all came down here in the
automobile. So you see----"
At this moment the door opened, and in came Harold.
"I say--hello, Reggie, old man--I say, it's a funny thing, but we can't
find Ponsonby anywhere."
There are moments in a chappie's life, don't you know, when Reason, so
to speak, totters, as it were, on its bally throne. This was one of
them. The situation seemed somehow to have got out of my grip. I
suppose, strictly speaking, I ought, at this juncture, to have cleared
my throat and said in an audible tone, "Harold, old top, _I_ know
where Ponsonby is." But somehow I couldn't. Something seemed to keep
the words back. I just stood there and said nothing.
"Nobody seems to have seen anything of him," said Harold. "I wonder
where he can have got to."
Hilda came in, looking so happy I hardly recognized her. I remember
feeling how strange it was that anybody could be happy just then.
"_I_ know," she said. "Of course! Doesn't he always go off to the
inn and play bowls at this time?"
"Why, of course," said Harold. "So he does."
And he asked Ann to play something on the piano. And pretty soon we had
settled down to a regular jolly musical evening. Ann must have played a
matter of two or three thousand tunes, when Harold got up.
"By the way," he said. "I suppose he did what I told him about the
picture before he went out. Let's go and see."
"Oh, Harold, what does it matter?" asked Hilda.
"Don't be silly, Harold," said Ann.