Tea with Lapping
Agatha Girton had not appeared at breakfast that morning, and when
Patricia returned home to buckle into the task that the Saint had
entrusted to her the housekeeper told her that the lady had gone out
for a walk directly after lunch without saying when she might be
expected back. Miss Girton often went for long tramps over the
surrounding country, swinging a heavy stick and stepping out with the
long, tireless stride of a veteran. In the light of her
recently-acquired knowledge, Patricia now realised that Miss Girton
had been growing more and more grim and taciturn of late, and that
concurrently with the beginning of this moodiness those walks had been
growing more protracted and more frequent. The girl saw in this the
evidence of Agatha Girton’s increasing anxiety—the woman was so
masculine in all things that she might be expected, in the
circumstances, to fall back on the typically masculine relief of
strenuous physical effort to aid mental work and at the same time to
gain some peace of mind through sheer fatigue.
But, though there was nothing astonishing or alarming in Agatha
Girton’s hike, it was annoying because it prevented Patricia from
carrying out her first promise to the Saint. Miss Girton might well
stay out until dinner time, and then it would be too late to start any
controversy, with the big appointment hanging in the background.
However, that couldn’t be cured, so the only thing to do was to get
busy on the next specimen.
Patricia found Lapping pottering about in his garden, arrayed in
stained tweeds, coatless, bare-armed, with an ancient felt hat on the
back of his head. He looked a picture of healthy rustic
late-middle-age, and the expansive good humour with which he greeted
her was in keeping with his appearance.
“My dear Miss Holm! We haven’t seen anything of you for far too long.
How are you?”
“Splendid,” she told him. “And you’re looking younger than ever.”
He shook his head with a whimsical smile.
“Flattery, my dear, base flattery. I’m an old man, and youth belongs
to youth.” He peered quizzically at her in his short-sighted fashion.
“What chance have I got for your favour against that dashing young
hero of the Pill Box? No, you must leave me to my years.”
“But I want to talk to you, Sir Michael,” she said, smiling back.
“Can’t I even come inside the gate?”
“Temptress!” he teased. “You’re a witch—but I’m too old and dusty to
be vamped even by you.”
But he threw down the trowel, wiped his hands on his trousers, and
opened the gate for her. It was not a strain to take the Saint’s
advice and treat Lapping as a sort of honorary uncle. His manner
invited it. He was one of those rare and lovable neuters, of kindly
wisdom and broad human sympathies, who are invariably adopted as
honorary uncles by such sweet young things as Patricia. He had never
married—perhaps because he was too essentially safe and comfortable
and tolerant for any woman to choose him as a partner in such a wild
adventure as matrimony.
“And when do we congratulate you?” he asked, pursuing the _rôle_ of
his privilege. “There could hardly be a better match—young Templar’s
exciting enough to make any maiden heart beat faster.”
It was no less than she could have wished. He saved her the trouble of
leading up to the subject.
“I was just going to ask you what you thought of it,” she remarked.
“Then may I first make the conventional felicitations?”
“Not yet. I came to ask your opinion to help me decide.”
“But surely your aunt is the proper person——”
“I’ve already asked her. Now I want your advice as well.”
He tilted the battered Trilby further over his ear.
“This is a horrible responsibility to have thrust upon one,” he
complained. “Even the aged and presumably wise have been known to err
in their verdicts upon the rising generation. Still, if you
insist. . . . Well, the first objection you must face is that every
other woman he meets will want to take him away from you. Dark,
dare-devil, romantic fire-eaters like him are scarce these days, and
the few there are can take their pick. Not that I don’t thoroughly
agree with his choice. But——”
“Perhaps,” she suggested sweetly, “there might be a quite averagely
nice man who would want to take me away from Mr. Templar. I don’t want
to seem conceited, but you can’t have it all your way.”
He stared, then laughed.
“That’s a point of view,” he admitted.
“Now let’s go and sit in the shade and be serious,” she pleaded. “And
just when we’re nearly coming to blows you can give me some tea and I
shall collapse.”
They walked over to a couple of wicker chairs that stood under a tree
at the side of the house.
“Are you really serious?” he questioned as they settled themselves.
She nodded.
“Absolutely. And you’re so old and clever I’m sure you can help.”
He grimaced.
“You needn’t rub in the patriarchal part,” he said, “though I admit it
myself. But you may spread yourself on the subject of my first-class
brain. And what am I to say? I know less about young Templar than you
do.”
“People say all sorts of things about him.”
Lapping looked reproachful.
“Was there ever a village that didn’t say all sorts of things about
inhabitants who weren’t utterly commonplace—and rumours even spring up
about the most prosaic people.”
She shook her head.
“It isn’t all rumour,” she said.
Then, as Simon had recommended, she told the whole story of the
previous night’s events, omitting very little. She told him about
Bittle’s amazing announcement and ultimatum, and about Agatha Girton’s
confirmation of the millionaire’s statement. She dwelt at length on
the Saint’s irregular behaviour, and on the curious incident at
Carn’s. But she did not mention the Saint’s parting warning.
He listened attentively. Watching his face, she saw only a slight
smile, as of a mellowed elder making allowances for the
irresponsibility and supercharged imagination of youth, and that
comprehensive tolerance hardly changed as she piled mystery upon
mystery and thrill upon thrill. But for the warning which the Saint
had drilled into her, to trust nobody, she would have accepted Lapping
as honorary uncle in all sincerity, without hesitation. It was almost
impossible to believe that this congenial, simple-minded,
clean-looking man could be an associate of the Tiger’s—but then, it
was almost as hard to realise that he possessed one of the keenest
legal brains of his day, and that those pleasant brown features had
assumed the inexorable mask of Justice and the same lips that smiled
so avuncularly now had pronounced sentence of death upon many men.
Presently her recital finished, and she was waiting for his response.
He pulled a flowery bandanna from his pocket and blew his nose loudly,
and then he turned to her with twinkling grey eyes.
“It’s certainly got the makings of a good story,” he confessed calmly.
“But it happened!” she insisted. “All in a few hours, last night.
Surely you must see that there’s something queer in the wind? There’s
some foundation to those rumours, but there’s always the chance that
the gossips have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. Do you think
Mr. Templar’s a detective?”
He shrugged.
“Who am I to say? Do detectives behave like that except in detective
stories?”
She played crestfallen, looking at him appealingly.
“You must know a lot about detectives, and if you say they don’t . . .
then I suppose he’s a crook. But I can’t believe that!”
“If a crook couldn’t convince people that he was honest,” Lapping
pointed out, “he’d have to give up the game and go into the
workhouse.”
“But Mr. Templar’s different.”
“They always are,” said Lapping cynically.
But a mocking spray of wrinkles remained creased up at the corners of
his eyes, and his mouth was still half-smiling. That wasn’t the way a
man who wanted to blacken another in the eyes of an infatuated girl
would go about it. She challenged him.
“You’re still ragging,” she accused—“and I wish you wouldn’t. _Please_
be solemn, just for a minute.”
“But what’s the use?” he temporised. “In any case, either you love him
already or you don’t. Which is it?”
“I do,” she answered defiantly.
He made a gesture of humorous despair.
“If that’s true, nothing anyone can say will change you. The law is
taken out of my hands. If I say I believe in him, you’ll fall on my
neck and say how wise I am to see deeper than everybody else. If I say
I don’t believe in him, and advise you to give him up, you’ll call me
a spiteful old fool, and rush off and fall on his neck and tell him
that you don’t care what the rest of the world says. So what can I
do?”
“Just give me your honest opinion. What would you advise me to do if I
were your daughter, for instance?”
He winced.
“Still harping on my grey hairs!” he protested. “However, shall we
stick to our former argument? You love him, and that’s all there is to
be said. I’ve had a lot of experience of lawbreakers, and unofficially
I’m broadminded about them. There are only three kinds of criminal.
The first is the small sneak-thief who’s been brought up to it from
childhood: he’s petty, whining or bullying according to size, and he
spends most of his life in prison—but to him that’s part of the game.
Obviously, Templar doesn’t fall into that category. The second type is
the clever man with a kink: he does fairly well for himself, till one
day he makes a slip and ends up in the dock. He may be bred to it like
the first kind, or he may drift into crime because he thinks he sees
bigger rewards for his cleverness there than in legitimate
professions. But he’s a coward and a snake—and, obviously again, that
lets Templar out. The distinction’s rather a fine one, but I think you
can put it that the worst kink in type the second is that he can’t
laugh like a completely sane man; and Templar’s got such a
refreshingly boyish sense of humour. The third and last type is the
Raffles. He’s common in fiction, but he only occurs once in a blue
moon outside a novelist’s imagination; he does it more than anything
for the thrill. Templar might be that, quite easily; but that kind is
always clean, and if he loves you you’ve nothing to worry about. So
suppose we agree that that’s the worst we can say about him—and we can
even excuse some of that on the grounds of youthful high spirits and
an impetuous desire for adventure. Are you satisfied?”
Lapping had delivered this discourse in a kindly and charitable way,
such as a man might use who had seen too much of the world to judge
anyone hastily and who understood enough to be able to pardon much,
and Patricia found it hard to doubt his sincerity. Still, she had a
card or two yet to play, and she did not intend to let the Saint down
by allowing herself to be too easily won.
“You’re a wonderful help, Sir Michael,” she said. “You’ve more or less
expressed what I feel myself. . . . It’s a comfort to know that I’m
not alone in my lunacy.”
“I think, though,” he warned her, “you ought to ask the young man to
give his own explanation. If he trusts you, and if he’s the type I
gather he is, he’ll make a clean breast of it all. Hasn’t he told you
anything about himself?”
She was instantly on her guard.
“What sort of things?” she countered, and he showed surprise that she
should ask such a question.
“Well, things! He can’t have expected you not to be at all curious
about the reason for these extraordinary goings-on.”
“He just told me I must be patient and believe in him. He said it
would be dangerous for me to know too much, but that once it was all
cleared up and the enemy was out of the way he’d be able to explain it
all.”
“And who is this mysterious enemy?”
“Mr. Templar calls him the Tiger—I don’t know why.”
Lapping knitted his brows for a time in thought.
“I seem to recognise the nickname,” he said. “Wait a minute. . . .
Wasn’t there a sensation in the papers some time ago? A Chicago gang
called the Tiger Cubs had broken a bank and escaped with an enormous
sum of money in gold—something of the sort.”
She kept her face perfectly blank.
“I can’t remember,” she said. “It doesn’t convey anything to me.”
“I can’t place it on the spur of the moment, but I’m certain it was
something like that. But a Chicago gang leader in Baycombe! That
sounds rather far-fetched.”
“I know it does,” she granted ruefully. “But so do some of the true
things I’ve told you this afternoon.”
His hand just touched her arm. He smiled again—his frequent friendly
smile that was so nearly irresistible even to her newborn suspicion of
everything and everybody. But one thing checked her impulse to believe
in him and look for enemies elsewhere. She was looking into his face,
and she would have sworn that there lurked in his eyes a glimmer of
suppressed amusement.
“Then shall we give it up?” he said. “We could argue for hours, and
get no further. All you can do is to possess your soul in patience.
Sooner or later events will prove whether your intuition is right or
wrong, and then you will be able to make your decision with a clearer
vision. Meanwhile, you can only act as your heart dictates. There’s a
trite and priggish piece of sentimental moralising for you! But what
else can an old fogey offer!”
“You’re too silly!” she laughed. “I’m awfully grateful.”
“Then, having temporarily settled the fate of the greatest romance in
history, what about the tea you promised yourself?”
She thanked him, and he rose and went into the house to give the order
and tidy himself up.
She was glad of the respite, for she was finding it a strain to obey
the Saint’s injunction and maintain the pose of a kind of cross
between a sleuth, a conspirator, and a fugitive with a price on her
head. And Lapping, after so obligingly leading the conversation into
the path she wanted it to follow, had given her no help at all. He was
very winning and benevolent, and quite at his ease. All her baiting of
the trap and stealthy stalking of her quarry had yielded not a trace
of a guilty conscience. But there was still the disturbing matter of
his amusement to account for. She had an uncomfortable and
exasperating feeling that he was quietly making fun of her—that her
crude and clumsy attempts to make him give himself away afforded him a
secret malicious delight. He had given nothing away, and that fact
only reinforced her growing belief that he had something to give if he
chose to do so.
It was a disconcerting realisation to have to face—that Lapping had
read through her studied innocence and seen her for nothing more or
less than the emissary of the Saint, and that he was simply playing
with her. Would any law-abiding man, however tolerant, have been quite
so broadminded? She began to doubt it, while she had to admit that her
grounds for doing so were very flimsy. If Lapping were high up in the
Tiger Cubs, he would be a clever man, and a clever man would know that
to try to turn her against the Saint would immediately arouse
suspicion of his motives; whereas by taking the Saint’s part he might
hope to inveigle her into regarding him as a potential ally. But how
could an ex-judge, most of whose life had been led in the glaring
light of publicity, have managed to enter such a gang as the Tiger’s?
Her brain reeled in a dizzy maze of impossible theories, of profound
subtleties and super-crafty counter-subtleties. If Lapping were in
league with the Tiger, and had seen through her, how high would he be
likely to rate her intelligence? For according to that rating he would
be skilfully gauging her psychological reactions to his insidious
attack, so that on the very points where she thought he had betrayed
himself he would have fooled her into making exactly the deductions he
wanted her to make. And to beat him at that game she would have to be
just a shade cleverer than he gave her credit for being—and how clever
was that? For the first time she got an insight into the true deadly
technique of the “sport” she had taken up so light-heartedly.
Now Lapping emerged from the house, carrying a folding table. Behind
him followed his housekeeper with the tray of tea things. For an
instant Patricia was seized with panic. Suppose Lapping were one of
the Tiger Cubs—even the Tiger himself—and had discovered her object
and decided to remove her? The tea could be drugged, cakes could be
poisoned. She choked back an impulse to rush away, forcing herself to
think of Simon. What would the Saint have done in the circumstances?
Well, for a start, he’d never have allowed them to arise. But how
would he face them if they had arisen? She compelled herself to deal
logically with her fear, and the answer came. Whatever Lapping might
be, and however much he suspected, he wouldn’t dare to do anything to
her just then, because of the possibility that the Saint might be
keeping an eye on the proceedings, watching and waiting to see if
Lapping would fall for the temptation and so incriminate himself. The
answer was sound. Patricia relaxed, and greeted Lapping with a
friendly smile when he arrived.
“I feel I’m giving you a lot of trouble,” she apologised.
He waived her excuses.
“Not at all, my dear Miss Holm. It’s a pleasure. And the trouble is
negligible—for a bachelor, I’m very domesticated, and dispensing tea
is one of my social assets.”
He was genial and unreserved. The secret amusement which she had
noticed was no longer evident. Either he had ceased to see the funny
side of the situation, or his pleasure in it had become too great to
show. She found herself again falling under the spell of his avuncular
_bonhomie_, but the memory of that half-hidden mockery in his eyes
continued to bother her. Wouldn’t a man with nothing to conceal have
showed his amusement openly, if he found anything comic in being
appealed to for advice on such a matter? What other explanation could
there be except the one that Lapping was playing a shrewd game?
Perhaps the Saint would know. The bare facts must be placed in his
possession at once, for Patricia felt that she was hopelessly out of
her depth. She ate and drank sparingly, praying for the earliest
moment at which she could take her leave without seeming in too great
a hurry. Lapping, either ignoring her perturbation or failing to see
any signs of it, chatted pleasantly; Patricia did her best to keep up
the part she was playing. She must have done it successfully, for he
appeared pained and surprised when she made a tentative move to gather
up her belongings.
“Must you leave me so soon?”
“I’ve promised to see my aunt before dinner,” she said. “There’s some
business to talk over—something about my investments. It’s an awful
bore, but the letter’s got to be written to-night so that it can go
off first thing in the morning.”
It was amazing what a fluent and convincing liar she had become of a
sudden.
“Needless to say, I’m heartbroken,” he vowed, pressing her hand. “But
perhaps I can hope that you’ll come again? I’ll talk as seriously as
you want me to—I think I can understand your difficulty, and perhaps,
with all due respect to Miss Girton, I’m the best qualified person in
Baycombe to advise you. Perhaps you could even arrange to bring Mr.
Templar with you? He needn’t know that I have your confidence.”
“I’ll try to get him to see you,” she averred truthfully.
“I’d be delighted. I’m very idle, and I hate ceremony, so we don’t
have to bother about a formal invitation. Just drop in without
notice—you’ll find me at your service.”
She thanked him, and he escorted her to the gate. She had just passed
through it when an inspiration struck her. And the blow staggered her,
so desperate and daring was the idea. But she carried it out before
she had time to falter.
“By the way,” she said, “how’s Harry the Duke?”
The question sprang to her lips so artlessly and naturally, so _à
propos_ of nothing that they had been talking about for a long time,
that she could not have contrived it better to take him off his guard.
She was watching his face keenly, knowing how much depended on his
reaction. But not a muscle twitched and his eyes did not change—she
was studying those intently, well aware that the expression of the
eyes is a hard thing for even the most masterly bluffer to control. He
looked surprised, thought for a second.
“Why, whatever makes you ask that?” he inquired in frank bewilderment.
“Simon—Mr. Templar mentioned that you’d once sentenced a dangerous
criminal of that name, and he said he thought the man might make an
attempt on your life.”
He nodded.
“Yes, I remember—Templar said as much to me the first time we met.
Harry the Duke swore from the dock that he’d get even with me. But
I’ve heard the same threat several times, and I’m still alive, and it
hasn’t spoilt my sleep.”
Patricia made her escape as soon after that as she could. She had to
confess herself utterly baffled. However Lapping had behaved earlier
in the afternoon, his response to that startling question of hers
could not have been more open or more genuine. The name of Harry the
Duke conveyed nothing more to Lapping than a crook he had sent to
prison in the course of his duty—she would have given her oath for it.
He had been unaffectedly taken off his guard, and yet there had been
no vestige of fear or suspicion in his puzzlement. Could a guilty man
have accomplished such a feat—even if he were the most consummate
actor that was ever born?
The girl felt a crying need for Simon Templar’s superior knowledge and
acuter judgment. She was helpless—beaten. But for the amusement she
had detected in Lapping’s eyes, she would not have hesitated to acquit
him. Even now she was strongly impelled to do so, in the light of
developments subsequent to that, and she was casting around for some
theory that would eliminate any malevolent motive and still account
satisfactorily for the indisputable fact that he had seen at once what
she had been driving at and had calmly and effectively refused to
allow himself to be inveigled into saying any more than he chose to
say.
But then—the realisation only came to her with stunning conviction
when she was walking up the drive to the Manor—if Lapping were
blameless, then the only person who could be the Tiger was Agatha
Girton!