The mutiny of Mutsu, culminating at so opportune a time for Louise, was
the result of an enmity for his employer which had been slumbering for a
long time in the mind of the Japanese valet. It had its origin in
Jesse's treatment of several women and girl victims for the entrapment
of whom Jesse had invoked the unwilling services of his Japanese man.
Mutsu had been employed as an attendant at New York clubs long enough to
know the meaning of the word "thoroughbred" in its vernacular
application to men; and he knew very well that the "thoroughbred" man
did not go in for the sort of women-corraling machinations to which
Jesse devoted more than half of his time. Thus formed and grew Mutsu's
contempt for his employer as a coward who preyed upon the
defencelessness of inveigled women; and his contempt had reached a focal
point when, after having been made the instrument to accomplish the
enmeshment of Louise Treharne, he had returned to the Curzon Street
house to find her in a peril with which he had become all too familiar
since entering Jesse's service. Louise's beauty and palpable purity had
touched a sympathetic chord in the Japanese; so that, after
accomplishing his vigil, his knowledge, based upon experience, of the
indignities and perhaps worse to which she was bound to be subjected by
his employer had impelled him, in a sudden surge of Oriental wrath, to
follow her after he had seen her start for the Curzon Street house.
Mutsu had no difficulty in making a leisurely departure from Jesse's
establishment and service after having released Louise from his
employer's toils. He retained his tendon-stretching jiu-jitsu hold on
Jesse until he was sure that Louise had reached the street, while Jesse,
literally foaming at the mouth in his rage, cursed him with an almost
Arabic variety and profusion of epithets. Then Mutsu, suddenly releasing
his employer, darted to the center of the room and faced Jesse with a
teeth-exhibiting smile that was also half a snarl.
"Now I quit," said Mutsu, briefly. "I am glad for a quit. I despise-hate
your typical. You not come near me--" as Jesse, rubbing his
sorely-stretched arm, made a step toward him--"or I break your two-both
arms. I pack. You pay me. I quit permanent-forever."
Jesse came to a full stop at the threat of being treated to a pair of
broken arms. He was twice the size of the Japanese, but the difference
in their sizes was more than compensated for by his own cravenness and
the valet's mastery of the bone-breaking art. Mutsu, never taking his
eyes off Jesse, got out his two suit-cases and packed them carefully and
deliberately. Jesse, striding up and down and storming, seized a heavy
jade ornament from a mantel, when Mutsu was about half through with his
packing task, and drew it back as if to heave it at the valet; but
Mutsu, making two agile backward steps, grabbed one of Jesse's pistols
which lay on top of the tray of an open trunk, and thus waited for the
missile. Jesse replaced the jade ornament on the mantel and resumed his
striding up and down. When the Japanese had finished his packing, he
consulted a little notebook and, totting up a column of expenditures,
found that Jesse owed him fifteen pounds.
"You pay now and permanent I quit," the Japanese said to Jesse, and the
latter threw his wallet on a table.
"Take it out of that, you dirty little mandril," he growled to Mutsu,
"and be on your way before I have you handed over on the charge of being
a thief."
"Just that you try," replied Mutsu, breathing hard, as he counted over
the money that was due him, "and I--you see where you get off--just that
you try! Your name like fertilizer I would make!"
Then Mutsu stuffed the amount that was due him into his pocket, tossing
the rest of the money on to the table, clapped on his hat, picked up his
pair of suit-cases, and walked out, flying the gonfalon of victory. He
went straight to the Savoy, and was taken into the service of Laura
Stedham the instant he made his appearance before her.
Jesse, wearing a thoroughly whipped look, huddled in a deep chair for
hours after Mutsu's departure. The chair was close enough to his brandy
bottle to enable him to apply himself to it at startlingly frequent
intervals. The first "transaction" of his life, having to do with women,
had gone flatly against him. He ground his teeth as he drunkenly
pondered that irrefutable fact. He had no fear of the consequences of
his attempt to enmesh Louise Treharne. Her only male protector, he knew,
was on the other side of the sea. But it was the knowledge that he had
utterly and finally lost out in the most diligent and ingenious attempt
he had ever made upon a feminine citadel that enraged him. He did not
even have the satisfaction of framing reprisals. What reprisals could he
attempt? And they could avail him nothing even if he succeeded in
setting such revengeful machinery in motion.
Jesse was considerably more than middling drunk when, his brandy having
receded to the lees, he summoned the obsequious Gaskins.
"Anybody above or below me here now?" he inquired of Gaskins.
"No, sir," replied Gaskins. "The gentleman that 'as the hapartment below
is abroad, hand the gentleman that 'as the hapartment above only comes
'ere occasionally, sir, for a little hamusement--'e's married now, sir."
"Well, that's good," said Jesse, reeling about. "That'll let me have the
whole damned outfit for my parties for the next ten days or so, eh?"
"Hat your service, sir," replied Gaskins, familiar with Jesse's
prodigality in devising and settling for his diversions.
"I'm going to have a series of rough-houses here," said Jesse, minus
even a crumb of dignity in the presence of a man who had been a flunky
all his life, "to celebrate a defeat--or make me forget a defeat; it all
comes to the same thing. Fellows have been defeated before my time,
haven't they? Yes, and they'll be defeated after I'm dead, by hell!
You've got your work cut out for you, Gaskins; I'm going to paint this
sheltered little corner of London a luminous red for a week or so, and
then damn your England! I'll have you fix up the suppers and that sort
of thing. Engage all the help you want, and right away. And, say, get me
another man, will you? I've fired that dirty little Japanese
chimpanzee--he's a thief."
"You may leave heverything to me, sir," said Gaskins, rubbing his
hands. "Hi quite understand, sir."
The saturnalia in the Curzon Street house began that very night. Certain
London stage managers of musical comedies still remember that week as
one during which, for several nights running, they had to present their
extravaganzas with mere apologies for feminine choruses, and, in some
instances, with many of the female principals' shrill understudies doing
their dismal best with only half-learned lines and songs.
* * * * *
John Blythe, making the _Mauretania_ a quarter of an hour before that
leviathan started on one of her East-bound record-breaking voyages,
reached London on the sixth day after having received Laura's cablegram.
He surmised why he had been summoned. So sure was he that his surmise
was correct that, when he walked in upon Laura and Louise at the Savoy,
he did not even inquire why so urgent a summons had been sent to him. He
preferred to postpone that question until he had an opportunity to be
alone with Laura.
Laura had told Louise that Blythe was coming. But neither of the women
had been expecting him so soon. When he was announced by telephone from
the hotel desk Louise flushed and paled alternately. Laura watched her
amusedly.
"Such hardened unconcern is dreadful to see in one so young, Louise,"
she was beginning to chaff when Blythe was ushered in by a diminutive
Buttons. Louise gave him both of her hands. He held them, looking into
her eyes with his wide smile.
"May I?" he asked her, a little unsteadily.
"As Louise's chaperon, I shall never forgive her if she refuses--nor
you, if you accept her refusal," said Laura.
Louise upraised her face to his. It was a simple but eloquent confession
that she knew her lips were for him.
"Not as your guardian, I hope, Louise?" said Blythe, putting it in the
form of a question.
Her face still upraised and her eyes partly closed, she shook her head;
and Blythe, drawing her to him, kissed her full on the lips. Then he
quickly released her and took Laura's outstretched hands.
It was the luncheon hour, and Laura had luncheon served in the rooms.
They chatted upon little intimate matters quite as if they had been
lunching in Laura's New York apartment. Blythe, in fact, mentioned
Laura's apartment.
"I met your decorator the other day," he said, "and he wore a very
puzzled expression. He told me that you had charged him by cable to do
your place over in Tyrian purple, and he was afraid that color would be
too dark, or too obtrusive, or something--I forget his exact words."
They knew, however, that his banter was simply a device. Both of the
women, taking Blythe's manner as their cue, and observing how pointedly
he refrained from asking why he had been sent for, knew at once that he
had formed his surmise. Louise, for her part, was awaiting Laura's
signal for her to withdraw. When she had gone, Blythe turned a
suddenly-sobered face upon Laura.
"It's Jesse, I suppose?" he said to her.
"Yes," said Laura, and she told him of what had happened at the Curzon
Street house. Also she told him of Jesse's attempted advances upon
Louise in New York.
"I reprove myself now, of course, that I did not tell you at the time
about how the man sought to force his attentions upon her in New York,"
she said, "but you will understand, I know, why I hesitated to tell you.
I felt that you would have found it too hard to keep your hands off of
him, and I feared to put you to the test. Of course I should have known
that you would do nothing, no matter how sorely tempted, that would have
involved Louise; but my timidity, I suppose, is of a piece with that of
other women in such circumstances."
"Don't worry about that part of it, Laura," said Blythe, consolingly.
"You've atoned, if any atonement were necessary, by getting me here now.
After all, I could scarcely have taken it upon myself to chastise him in
New York. The blackguard did not go quite far enough there, as I
understand it, to permit of me getting out on the firing line, even if I
had known about it. It is just as well that you waited, for that and
some other reasons. There is everything in having a good case," and his
face wreathed in a dry sort of a smile which Laura analyzed as boding
little good for the man of whom they were speaking.
"What are your plans, John?" Laura asked him presently. "London, you
know, is quite as fruitful a field as New York for the achieving of an
unmerited and distorted notoriety. I lean upon your judgment, of
course."
"You are not supposing that I am going to call the cur out, or tweak his
nose in public, or any such yellow-covered thing as that, are you,
Laura?" Blythe asked her with another of his reflective smiles.
"I know that you are going to punish him," replied Laura. "I want you to
punish him. Heaven knows that I am not bloodthirsty, but I should dearly
love to be by while you are in the article of punishing him. Only it is
an affair that must be handled with extreme caution. I promise not to
say that again. But, really, John, you must----"
"The only thing I am afraid of," interrupted Blythe, meditatively, "is
that he might have left London. Where did you say his place is? I'll
have to devise some way to find out if he is still there."
"Mutsu can do that," said Laura. She had told Blythe of the Japanese
valet's fine part in saving Louise from Jesse, and now she summoned him.
Blythe, studying the wiry little man, who wore a distinctively agreeable
smile when he made his appearance, commended him warmly for his conduct
and asked him if he knew whether Jesse still remained at the Curzon
Street house. Mutsu replied that he did not know but that he could find
out; and he went to the telephone and called up Gaskins, representing
himself to be a club servant who had been directed to ascertain if Mr.
Jesse still remained in town. Gaskins replied that he was, and Mutsu
gave that word to Blythe.
"You go there, sir?" inquired Mutsu, evidently sensing that Blythe's
contemplated visit to the Curzon Street house was not to be in the
nature of a peace errand. "Let it be that I shall go with you, sir? I
can the help-assist you."
Blythe laughingly told the Japanese that he considered that he had done
his share and that he would not be needing any help-assistance; and
Mutsu withdrew.
"Shall we all dine together here?" Blythe asked Laura, rising after the
Japanese had gone. "I am staying at the Carlton, and I want to run over
there to----"
"Listen, John: are you going to see that man at his place now, at once?"
Laura asked him, with an expression of mingled worriment and curiosity.
"You know you are!"
"Oh," said Blythe, "I have a bit of running about to do, and----"
"But listen, please: supposing the coward were to try to use some weapon
on you and----"
"Tush, Laura. What became of Louise? But stay: make my devoirs to her,
won't you, please? I am off to keep an appointment. We are dining here
this evening then? You may expect me by eight o'clock," and off he
rushed. He had, in fact, been "straining at his leash," as Laura
thought, watching him, ever since he had found that Jesse still was in
town.
Louise came back a few moments after Blythe's departure, and she looked
rueful when she saw that he had gone.
"Don't take it so excessively to heart, dear," Laura said to her. "He
left all sorts of messages of apology for going without seeing you, but
he had an appointment--er--I mean he had to go to----" Laura came to a
somewhat feeble pause, and Louise, moreover, had noticed that her tone
was a bit forced. Louise, trembling slightly, placed her hands on
Laura's shoulders.
"Dear, he has gone to Curzon Street, has he not?" she asked the older
woman.
"Of course he has!--why shouldn't he?" replied Laura, with a bravado
which immediately gave away to tears. Louise promptly followed her
example. It was merely another repetition of the age-old story wherein
women weep when men go forth. And, although they of course did not know
it at the time, no doubt both women enjoyed their tears quite as
heartily as if they had been justified in feeling the least fear for the
safety of John Blythe.
* * * * *
Jesse, his fiesta "in celebration of a defeat" at an end, was
supervising the packing of his trunks by the young English valet
obtained for him by Gaskins. His face was puffed and there were purplish
pouches under his restless eyes. Three New York men, two of them
somewhat youngish, the third of about Jesse's age, who had been drawn
into the current of the recent gayety at the Curzon Street house,
lounged about, smoking rather dismally, glancing occasionally into the
mantel glass at their furred tongues and shaking their heads in the
spirit of self-accusation which comes with the aftermath.
"Back to little old New York and at least a year's exemplary conduct
for mine," observed the eldest of Jesse's three visitors, Jermyn
Scammel, a stock broker widely known in New York for the catholicity of
his views as to his associates.
"The veil for me," chorused the two younger men, sepulchrally.
Jesse accepted their vows of amendment as tributes to his lavishness as
an entertainer and smiled flaccidly. The self-gratulating smile still
flickered on his face when there came a knock, and Gaskins, grown
unceremonious during the recent gay proceedings, opened the door without
waiting for a "Come in" and said:
"Gentleman with an happointment with you, sir."
Blythe had told Gaskins that he had an appointment with Jesse and that
therefore there would be no need to announce him.
Jesse's smile congealed, his jaw fell, and he stood with mouth agape,
when John Blythe stepped into the room. Blythe bestowed a mere nod upon
him and then glanced around at the other men. He knew Scammel.
"Hul-lo!" exclaimed that now repentent _bon vivant_, advancing upon
Blythe with outstretched hand. "John Blythe it is, but too late for the
doings! But who'd have thought you ever participated in doings, old
man!"
Something in Blythe's eye, as well as the panic-stricken appearance of
Jesse, stopped Scammel's airy greeting when he had got that far. "Why,
what the devil----" he muttered, looking first at Blythe and then at
Jesse, whose face had taken on a sickly, chalky pallor. The two younger
men, seated a-straddle of chairs, watched the scene with curious eyes.
Blythe rather liked Scammel, in spite of the latter's excessively
careless way of living. The man was genuine, at any rate, and Blythe was
not displeased to find him there; he knew that Scammel would be a
trustworthy witness as to anything that might happen. Blythe bowed to
the two younger men, and turned to the still agape Jesse.
"Would you prefer to see me privately, or do you elect to have these
gentlemen remain?" he asked Jesse in a quiet tone.
"I have nothing to see you about," spluttered Jesse, "and you are
intruding upon----"
"You know what I have crossed the Atlantic to see you about," Blythe
broke in upon him in an even tone.
"This is no place for a clergyman's son--I can see that!" ejaculated
Scammel, picking up his hat and stick, the two younger men doing
likewise; the fact having become very obvious by this time that
something unusual between Blythe and Jesse was in the wind.
"Don't you people go!" gasped Jesse, and they all saw, not without a
certain immediate disgust, that the man was in positive terror. "I want
all of you as witnesses! This man," staring with protrusive eyes at
Blythe, "has no appointment with me. He wasn't asked to come here, and
he has no right here. He is intruding upon my----"
"Easy has it, Jesse," put in Scammel, putting off his airiness of a
sudden and assuming the dignity which belonged to him. "I know Blythe.
He doesn't intrude anywhere. This is a quarrel between you two. I am
your guest and I'll stay if you want me to and if Blythe is agreeable.
How about it, Blythe?"
"I would a little prefer that you and these other gentlemen remain,"
replied Blythe, quite at his ease. "I think it fair to tell you in
advance, however, that you are to witness the chastisement of your
host."
Jesse gave an audible gasp, and Scammel looked at him and then at
Blythe.
"Well, since you both want us to stay, there is no other way for it, is
there?" turning to the two younger men, who nodded acquiescently. "But
it's a bit unusual, isn't it, Blythe? Coming to a man's house with a
chastising programme?"
"You won't think so, Scammel, nor will your friends here, when I explain
the reason," replied Blythe, no trace of excitement in his tone; "and,
since you are going to remain, you are of course entitled to an
explanation."
"It's all a put-up job!" broke out Jesse, hoarsely. "I've had no affair
with this man. He's meddling, that's what he is doing--meddling! I swear
it, by God!"
"Just a moment, Jesse," put in Scammel, squarely facing the man he
addressed. "Blythe doesn't meddle. I know that as well as I know that I
wear a hat. He wouldn't be here with any such purpose as he announces
unless he had some pretty good reason. Don't try to prejudice his case
in advance. That isn't the square thing."
"But," almost screamed Jesse, "he is picking up other people's affairs
and trying to make them his----"
"Stop that, Jesse!" broke in Scammel, raising an authoritative arm, a
trace of anger in his tone. "Good God, man, can't you play the game?
You've got a man's gizzard, haven't you? What the devil are you
trembling and quaking about? Is your case so bad as all that? Go ahead,
Blythe. It's your say now, and we're listening."
Jesse, knowing that the verdict of this court of arbitration could not
but be against him, glanced at the portieres as if upon the point of
bolting for it. Scammel, noticing this, passed behind Jesse and took his
stand at the parting of the portieres. The two younger men rose from
their straddled chairs and viewed the proceedings standing, their eyes
slitting perceptibly when they perceived Jesse's manifest cravenness.
"Gentlemen," said Blythe, glancing from Scammel to the younger men and
not even seeming to see Jesse, "I don't think it will be necessary to
pledge you to secrecy as to what happens here, even if no names are to
be mentioned. If the affair involved a man it would be different. But it
does not. It involves a young New York lady, now in London, who has been
out of school less than half a year. The young lady is my ward.
Moreover, she is to be my wife."
"But I didn't know that!" broke in Jesse with a hideous shrillness of
tone. "I swear to God that I did not know that, or----"
Scammel glared Jesse into silence, and Blythe went on.
"It makes no difference, as you will discover, whether he knew it or
not," he said, speaking of Jesse as if he had not been present. "The
thing that he did, in this place, a week ago, was a thing so incredibly
base that my account of it might well tax your credulity. But that it
happened precisely as I am going to tell it to you is of course true,
else I should not be here. The young New York lady of whom I speak is in
London under the protection of a chaperon, a friend of her mother's. A
week ago, by means of a trick, this man enticed my ward, who is wholly
lacking in experience, to this house. He caused a telephone message to
be sent to her at her hotel, informing her that her chaperon, who had
left the hotel on a shopping tour, had been overtaken by an illness and
had been brought to this house. This house was represented in the
telephone message to be the home of a 'Mrs. Hammond,' an imaginary
friend of my ward's chaperon. The young lady came here with all haste to
see, as she supposed, her chaperon and protectress. This man, waiting
for her, not only insulted her grossly, subjecting her to indignities
and physical violence which I can scarcely speak of in the presence of
gentlemen, but he told her, virtually in so many words, that it was his
deliberate purpose to deflower her. His own valet, a Japanese, appeared
in her moment of peril; and it was the valet's physical intervention
alone that saved her from the fate this man had ingeniously and
malignantly planned for her."
Blythe paused. He had spoken quietly, but there was a menacing timbre in
his voice. Jesse, looking like a hunted animal, had attempted several
times to break in upon Blythe's recital, but each time Scammel had
stopped him with a warning gesture.
Now Scammel, with gathered brows, stepped in front of Jesse and inquired
of him:
"What have you to say to this, Jesse?"
"I didn't know, I tell you," Jesse broke out in a voice that was choked
with terror, "that she was to be married to Blythe, or----"
"Wait!" commanded Scammel, thrusting up a staying hand. "That convicts
you, Jesse. You're a damned scoundrel on your own say-so. What
difference does it make as to the main facts of your dirty bit of work
whether you knew that or not? I am not unmindful of the duties of a
guest; but, for all that, if I were Blythe I'd whale the everlasting
hell out of you, here and now, and I reckon he will; and I, for one, am
going to stick around to see fair play!"
"Same here" and "That goes for me, too," put in the two younger men.
Blythe stepped forward, and, drawing back his right arm, left the
quickly-crimsoning imprint of his palm upon Jesse's waxy cheek. Jesse
received the blow, merely meant to be introductory, with a shriek, and
wriggled back and sought to huddle in a corner of the room.
"Why, damnation take it, Jesse," exclaimed Scammel, reddening with the
shame of seeing a man he had been on terms with performing so cravenly,
"you're going to put up your hands, aren't you? You're not going to be
such a cur as to----Here, none of that, you know!" and he leaped at
Jesse and wrenched from his grasp the heavy teakwood tabouret which the
man, at bay and with no sense of fairness, had suddenly reached down and
grabbed from beneath the jardiniere which it supported.
"Keep out, Scammel, please," quietly enjoined Blythe, and he stepped
over to Jesse, pulled him to the center of the room by the lapel of his
coat, and then brought his right fist crashing to the point of Jesse's
jaw. Jesse, seeing the blow coming, squeaked like a rat; then he went
down like a log and lay unconscious before the fireplace. Blythe and the
three other men stood looking at him with wonderment mingled with
disgust.
[Illustration: HE SQUEAKED LIKE A RAT; THEN HE WENT DOWN LIKE A LOG.]
"Well, by St. George and the Dragon, that gets me--a man weighing two
hundred if he weighs an ounce, and well put together, too, even if he
may be not exactly fit--a man like that standing up and letting another
fellow bang away at him without ever so much as sticking up his hands--
Damn such carrion in a man's shape, I say! I consider that you've been
cheated, Blythe. I know that you'd a thousand times rather he had taken
at least one healthy swing at you!"
"I feel as if I had hit a woman," replied Blythe, a lump of loathing in
his throat.
One of the younger men went to the head of the stairs and called to
Gaskins to come up. Gaskins viewed the prone man imperturbably enough,
then dashed a glass of water in his face. Presently Jesse's eyelids
fluttered and after a moment he sat up, rubbing his chin, and staring
about confusedly.
Then the four men left the house, Scammel and his two companions lashing
out at themselves for having even unwittingly permitted themselves to
become the guests of a man of such monolithic cowardice. Blythe,
sickened by the spinelessness of the man whom he had called to account,
went to his rooms at the Carlton to dress for dinner at the Savoy.
Louise and Laura, neither of them in a conversational humor, had just
finished dressing when Blythe, ushered by the pompous three-foot
Buttons, walked in upon them, very "tall and wide" in his evening
clothes. As he came under the light of the electrolier both women
surveyed his face keenly and nervously for marks of a conflict.
"Of course he has been there," thought Laura, "but----"
Just then Blythe, in removing his right glove in rather a gingerly
fashion, pulled with it a piece of white sticking plaster, and Laura
perceived that the skin was missing from the middle knuckle of his right
hand. Then she knew that he had "been there." But she did not hear what
had happened that afternoon at the Curzon Street house until Scammel,
whom she had known all her life, told her several months later in New
York; Scammel, while Blythe had been making his explanation, having
correctly guessed, being acquainted with nearly all the Americans in
London, as to the identity of the chaperon of Blythe's ward.