Of all the useless and irritating things in this world, lines are
probably the most useless and the most irritating. In fact, I only
know of two people who ever got any good out of them. Dunstable, of
Day’s, was one, Linton, of Seymour’s, the other. For a portion of one
winter term they flourished on lines. The more there were set, the
better they liked it. They would have been disappointed if masters had
given up the habit of doling them out.

Dunstable was a youth of ideas. He saw far more possibilities in the
routine of life at Locksley than did the majority of his
contemporaries, and every now and then he made use of these
possibilities in a way that caused a considerable sensation in the
school.

In the ordinary way of school work, however, he was not particularly
brilliant, and suffered in consequence. His chief foe was his
form-master, Mr. Langridge. The feud between them had begun on
Dunstable’s arrival in the form two terms before, and had continued
ever since. The balance of points lay with the master. The staff has
ways of scoring which the school has not. This story really begins
with the last day but one of the summer term. It happened that
Dunstable’s people were going to make their annual migration to
Scotland on that day, and the Headmaster, approached on the subject
both by letter and in person, saw no reason why–the examinations
being over–Dunstable should not leave Locksley a day before the
end of term.

He called Dunstable to his study one night after preparation.

“Your father has written to me, Dunstable,” he said, “to ask that you
may be allowed to go home on Wednesday instead of Thursday. I think
that, under the special circumstances, there will be no objection to
this. You had better see that the matron packs your boxes.”

“Yes, sir,” said Dunstable. “Good business,” he added to himself, as
he left the room.

When he got back to his own den, he began to ponder over the matter,
to see if something could not be made out of it. That was Dunstable’s
way. He never let anything drop until he had made certain that he had
exhausted all its possibilities.

Just before he went to bed he had evolved a neat little scheme for
scoring off Mr. Langridge. The knowledge of his plans was confined to
himself and the Headmaster. His dorm-master would imagine that he was
going to stay on till the last day of term. Therefore, if he
misbehaved himself in form, Mr. Langridge would set him lines in
blissful ignorance of the fact that he would not be there next day to
show them up. At the beginning of the following term, moreover, he
would not be in Mr. Langridge’s form, for he was certain of his move
up.

He acted accordingly.

He spent the earlier part of Wednesday morning in breaches of the
peace. Mr. Langridge, instead of pulling him up, put him on to
translate; Dunstable went on to translate. As he had not prepared the
lesson and was not an adept at construing unseen, his performance was
poor.

After a minute and a half, the form-master wearied.

“Have you looked at this, Dunstable?” he asked.

There was a time-honoured answer to this question.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

Public-school ethics do not demand that you should reply truthfully to
the spirit of a question. The letter of it is all that requires
attention. Dunstable had looked at the lesson. He was looking
at it then. Masters should practise exactness of speech. A certain
form at Harrow were in the habit of walking across a copy of a Latin
author before morning-school. They could then say with truth that they
“had been over it.” This is not an isolated case.

“Go on,” said Mr. Langridge.

Dunstable smiled as he did so.

Mr. Langridge was annoyed.

“What are you laughing at? What do you mean by it? Stand up. You will
write out the lesson in Latin and English, and show it up to me by
four this afternoon. I know what you are thinking. You imagine that
because this is the end of the term you can do as you please, but you
will find yourself mistaken. Mind–by four o’clock.”

At four o’clock Dunstable was enjoying an excellent tea in Green
Street, Park Lane, and telling his mother that he had had a most
enjoyable term, marred by no unpleasantness whatever. His holidays
were sweetened by the thought of Mr. Langridge’s baffled wrath on
discovering the true inwardness of the recent episode.

        *       *         *        *       *

When he returned to Locksley at the beginning of the winter term, he
was at once made aware that that episode was not to be considered
closed. On the first evening, Mr. Day, his housemaster, sent for him.

“Well, Dunstable,” he said, “where is that imposition?”

Dunstable affected ignorance.

“Please, sir, you set me no imposition.”

“No, Dunstable, no.” Mr. Day peered at him gravely through his
spectacles. “I set you no imposition; but Mr. Langridge did.”

Dunstable imitated that eminent tactician, Br’er Rabbit. He “lay low
and said nuffin.”

“Surely,” continued Mr. Day, in tones of mild reproach, “you did not
think that you could take Mr. Langridge in?”

Dunstable rather thought he had taken Mr. Langridge in; but he
made no reply.

“Well,” said Mr. Day. “I must set you some punishment. I shall give
the butler instructions to hand you a note from me at three o’clock
to-morrow.” (The next day was a half-holiday.) “In that note you will
find indicated what I wish you to write out.”

Why this comic-opera secret-society business, Dunstable wondered. Then
it dawned upon him. Mr. Day wished to break up his half-holiday
thoroughly.

That afternoon Dunstable retired in disgust to his study to brood over
his wrongs; to him entered Charles, his friend, one C. J. Linton, to
wit, of Seymour’s, a very hearty sportsman.

“Good,” said Linton. “Didn’t think I should find you in. Thought you
might have gone off somewhere as it’s such a ripping day. Tell you
what we’ll do. Scull a mile or two up the river and have tea
somewhere.”

“I should like to awfully,” said Dunstable, “but I’m afraid I can’t.”

And he explained Mr. Day’s ingenious scheme for preventing him from
straying that afternoon.

“Rot, isn’t it,” he said.

“Beastly. Wouldn’t have thought old Day had it in him. But I’ll tell
you what,” he said. “Do the impot now, and then you’ll be able to
start at three sharp, and we shall get in a good time on the river.
Day always sets the same thing. I’ve known scores of chaps get impots
from him, and they all had to do the Greek numerals. He’s mad on the
Greek numerals. Never does anything else. You’ll be as safe as
anything if you do them. Buck up, I’ll help.”

They accordingly sat down there and then. By three o’clock an imposing
array of sheets of foolscap covered with badly-written Greek lay on
the study table.

“That ought to be enough,” said Linton, laying down his pen. “He can’t
set you more than we’ve done, I should think.”

“Rummy how alike our writing looks,” said Dunstable, collecting the
sheets and examining them. “You can hardly tell which is which even
when you know. Well, there goes three. My watch is slow, as it always
is. I’ll go and get that note.”

Two minutes later he returned, full of abusive references to Mr. Day.
The crafty pedagogue appeared to have foreseen Dunstable’s attempt to
circumvent him by doing the Greek numerals on the chance of his
setting them. The imposition he had set in his note was ten pages of
irregular verbs, and they were to be shown up in his study before five
o’clock. Linton’s programme for the afternoon was out of the question
now. But he loyally gave up any other plans which he might have formed
in order to help Dunstable with his irregular verbs. Dunstable was too
disgusted with fate to be properly grateful.

“And the worst of it is,” he said, as they adjourned for tea at
half-past four, having deposited the verbs on Mr. Day’s table, “that
all those numerals will be wasted now.”

“I should keep them, though,” said Linton. “They may come in useful.
You never know.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Towards the end of the second week of term Fate, by way of
compensation, allowed Dunstable a distinct stroke of luck. Mr. Forman,
the master of his new form, set him a hundred lines of Virgil, and
told him to show them up next day. To Dunstable’s delight, the next
day passed without mention of them; and when the day after that went
by, and still nothing was said, he came to the conclusion that Mr.
Forman had forgotten all about them.

Which was indeed the case. Mr. Forman was engaged in editing a new
edition of the “Bacchae,” and was apt to be absent-minded in
consequence. So Dunstable, with a glad smile, hove the lines into a
cupboard in his study to keep company with the Greek numerals which he
had done for Mr. Day, and went out to play fives with Linton.

Linton, curiously enough, had also had a stroke of luck in a rather
similar way. He told Dunstable about it as they strolled back to the
houses after their game.

“Bit of luck this afternoon,” he said. “You remember Appleby setting
me a hundred-and-fifty the day before yesterday? Well, I showed
them up to-day, and he looked through them and chucked them into the
waste-paper basket under his desk. I thought at the time I hadn’t seen
him muck them up at all with his pencil, which is his usual game, so
after he had gone at the end of school I nipped to the basket and
fished them out. They were as good as new, so I saved them up in case
I get any more.”

Dunstable hastened to tell of his own good fortune. Linton was
impressed by the coincidence.

“I tell you what,” he said, “we score either way. Because if we never
get any more lines—-”

Dunstable laughed.

“Yes, I know,” Linton went on, “we’re bound to. But even supposing we
don’t, what we’ve got in stock needn’t be wasted.”

“I don’t see that,” said Dunstable. “Going to have ‘em bound in cloth
and published? Or were you thinking of framing them?”

“Why, don’t you see? Sell them, of course. There are dozens of chaps
in the school who would be glad of a few hundred lines cheap.”

“It wouldn’t work. They’d be spotted.”

“Rot. It’s been done before, and nobody said anything. A chap in
Seymour’s who left last Easter sold all his stock lines by auction on
the last day of term. They were Virgil mostly and Greek numerals. They
sold like hot cakes. There were about five hundred of them altogether.
And I happen to know that every word of them has been given up and
passed all right.”

“Well, I shall keep mine,” said Dunstable. “I am sure to want all the
lines in stock that I can get. I used to think Langridge was fairly
bad in the way of impots, but Forman takes the biscuit easily. It
seems to be a sort of hobby of his. You can’t stop him.”

But it was not until the middle of preparation that the great idea
flashed upon Dunstable’s mind.

It was the simplicity of the thing that took his breath away. That and
its possibilities. This was the idea. Why not start a Lines Trust in
the school? An agency for supplying lines at moderate rates to all who
desired them? There did not seem to be a single flaw in the scheme. He
and Linton between them could turn out enough material in a week to
give the Trust a good working capital. And as for the risk of
detection when customers came to show up the goods supplied to them,
that was very slight. As has been pointed out before, there was
practically one handwriting common to the whole school when it came to
writing lines. It resembled the movements of a fly that had fallen
into an ink-pot, and subsequently taken a little brisk exercise on a
sheet of foolscap by way of restoring the circulation. Then, again,
the attitude of the master to whom the lines were shown was not likely
to be critical. So that everything seemed in favour of Dunstable’s
scheme.

Linton, to whom he confided it, was inclined to scoff at first, but
when he had had the beauties of the idea explained to him at length,
became an enthusiastic supporter of the scheme.

“But,” he objected, “it’ll take up all our time. Is it worth it? We
can’t spend every afternoon sweating away at impots for other people.”

“It’s all right,” said Dunstable, “I’ve thought of that. We shall need
to pitch in pretty hard for about a week or ten days. That will give
us a good big stock, and after that if we turn out a hundred each
every day it will be all right. A hundred’s not much fag if you spread
them over a day.”

Linton admitted that this was sound, and the Locksley Lines Supplying
Trust, Ltd., set to work in earnest.

It must not be supposed that the Agency left a great deal to chance.
The writing of lines in advance may seem a very speculative business;
but both Dunstable and Linton had had a wide experience of Locksley
masters, and the methods of the same when roused, and they were thus
enabled to reduce the element of chance to a minimum. They knew, for
example, that Mr. Day’s favourite imposition was the Greek numerals,
and that in nine cases out of ten that would be what the youth who had
dealings with him would need to ask for from the Lines Trust. Mr.
Appleby, on the other hand, invariably set Virgil. The oldest
inhabitant had never known him to depart from this custom. For the
French masters extracts from the works of Victor Hugo would probably
pass muster.

A week from the date of the above conversation, everyone in the
school, with the exception of the prefects and the sixth form, found
in his desk on arriving at his form-room a printed slip of paper.
(Spiking, the stationer in the High Street, had printed it.) It was
nothing less than the prospectus of the new Trust. It set forth in
glowing terms the advantages offered by the agency. Dunstable had
written it–he had a certain amount of skill with his pen–and Linton
had suggested subtle and captivating additions. The whole presented
rather a striking appearance.

The document was headed with the name of the Trust in large letters.
Under this came a number of “scare headlines” such as:

SEE WHAT YOU SAVE!

NO MORE WORRY!

PEACE, PERFECT PEACE!

WHY DO LINES WHEN WE DO THEM
FOR YOU?

Then came the real prospectus:

The Locksley Lines Supplying Trust, Ltd. has been instituted to
meet the growing demand for lines and other impositions. While
there are masters at our public schools there will always be lines.
At Locksley the crop of masters has always flourished–and still
flourishes–very rankly, and the demand for lines has greatly taxed
the powers of those to whom has been assigned the task of supplying
them.

It is for the purpose of affording relief to these that the Lines
Trust has been formed. It is proposed that all orders for lines
shall be supplied out of our vast stock. Our charges are moderate,
and vary between threepence and sixpence per hundred lines. The
higher charge is made for Greek impositions, which, for obvious
reasons, entail a greater degree of labour on our large and
efficient staff of writers.

All orders, which will be promptly executed, should be forwarded to
Mr. P. A. Dunstable, 6 College Grounds, Locksley, or to Mr. C. J.
Linton, 10 College Grounds, Locksley. Payment must be inclosed
with order, or the latter will not be executed. Under no
conditions will notes of hand or cheques be accepted as legal
tender. There is no trust about us except the name.

Come in your thousands. We have lines for all. If the Trust’s
stock of lines were to be placed end to end it would reach part
of the way to London. “You pay the threepence. We do the rest.”

Then a blank space, after which came a few “unsolicited testimonials”:

“Lower Fifth” writes: “I was set two hundred lines of Virgil on
Saturday last at one o’clock. Having laid in a supply from your
agency I was enabled to show them up at five minutes past one.
The master who gave me the commission was unable to restrain his
admiration at the rapidity and neatness of my work. You may make
what use of this you please.”

“Dexter’s House” writes: “Please send me one hundred (100) lines
from Aeneid, Book Two. Mr. Dexter was so delighted with the last
I showed him that he has asked me to do some more.”

“Enthusiast” writes: “Thank you for your Greek numerals. Day took
them without blinking. So beautifully were they executed that I can
hardly believe even now that I did not write them myself.”

        *       *       *       *       *

There could be no doubt about the popularity of the Trust. It caught
on instantly.

Nothing else was discussed in the form-rooms at the quarter to eleven
interval, and in the houses after lunch it was the sole topic of
conversation. Dunstable and Linton were bombarded with questions and
witticisms of the near personal sort. To the latter they replied with
directness, to the former evasively.

“What’s it all about?” someone would ask, fluttering the
leaflet before Dunstable’s unmoved face.

“You should read it carefully,” Dunstable would reply. “It’s all
there.”

“But what are you playing at?”

“We tried to make it clear to the meanest intelligence. Sorry you
can’t understand it.”

While at the same time Linton, in his form-room, would be explaining
to excited inquirers that he was sorry, but it was impossible to reply
to their query as to who was running the Trust. He was not at liberty
to reveal business secrets. Suffice it that there the lines were,
waiting to be bought, and he was there to sell them. So that if
anybody cared to lay in a stock, large or small, according to taste,
would he kindly walk up and deposit the necessary coin?

But here the public showed an unaccountable disinclination to deal. It
was gratifying to have acquaintances coming up and saying admiringly:
“You are an ass, you know,” as if they were paying the highest of
compliments–as, indeed, they probably imagined that they were. All
this was magnificent, but it was not business. Dunstable and Linton
felt that the whole attitude of the public towards the new enterprise
was wrong. Locksley seemed to regard the Trust as a huge joke, and its
prospectus as a literary jeu d’esprit.

In fact, it looked very much as if–from a purely commercial point of
view–the great Lines Supplying Trust was going to be what is known in
theatrical circles as a frost.

For two whole days the public refused to bite, and Dunstable and
Linton, turning over the stacks of lines in their studies, thought
gloomily that this world is no place for original enterprise.

Then things began to move.

It was quite an accident that started them. Jackson, of Dexter’s, was
teaing with Linton, and, as was his habit, was giving him a condensed
history of his life since he last saw him. In the course of this he
touched on a small encounter with M. Gaudinois which had occurred that
afternoon.

“So I got two pages of ‘Quatre-Vingt Treize’ to write,” he concluded,
“for doing practically nothing.”

All Jackson’s impositions, according to him, were given him for doing
practically nothing. Now and then he got them for doing literally
nothing–when he ought to have been doing form-work.

“Done ‘em?” asked Linton.

“Not yet; no,” replied Jackson. “More tea, please.”

“What you want to do, then,” said Linton, “is to apply to the Locksley
Lines Supplying Trust. That’s what you must do.”

“You needn’t rot a chap on a painful subject,” protested Jackson.

“I wasn’t rotting,” said Linton. “Why don’t you apply to the Lines
Trust?”

“Then do you mean to say that there really is such a thing?” Jackson
said incredulously. “Why I thought it was all a rag.”

“I know you did. It’s the rotten sort of thing you would think. Rag,
by Jove! Look at this. Now do you understand that this is a genuine
concern?”

He got up and went to the cupboard which filled the space between the
stove and the bookshelf. From this resting-place he extracted a great
pile of manuscript and dumped it down on the table with a bang which
caused a good deal of Jackson’s tea to spring from its native cup on
to its owner’s trousers.

“When you’ve finished,” protested Jackson, mopping himself with a
handkerchief that had seen better days.

“Sorry. But look at these. What did you say your impot was? Oh, I
remember. Here you are. Two pages of ‘Quatre-Vingt Treize.’ I don’t
know which two pages, but I suppose any will do.”

Jackson was amazed.

“Great Scott! what a wad of stuff! When did you do it all?”

“Oh, at odd times. Dunstable’s got just as much over at Day’s. So you
see the Trust is a jolly big show. Here are your two pages. That looks
just like your scrawl, doesn’t it? These would be fourpence in the
ordinary way, but you can have ‘em for nothing this time.”

“Oh, I say,” said Jackson gratefully, “that’s awfully good of you.”

After that the Locksley Lines Supplying Trust, Ltd. went ahead with
a rush. The brilliant success which attended its first specimen–M.
Gaudinois took Jackson’s imposition without a murmur–promoted
confidence in the public, and they rushed to buy. Orders poured in
from all the houses, and by the middle of the term the organisers of
the scheme were able to divide a substantial sum.

“How are you getting on round your way?” asked Linton of Dunstable at
the end of the sixth week of term.

“Ripping. Selling like hot cakes.”

“So are mine,” said Linton. “I’ve almost come to the end of my stock.
I ought to have written some more, but I’ve been a bit slack lately.”

“Yes, buck up. We must keep a lot in hand.”

“I say, did you hear that about Merrett in our house?” asked Linton.

“What about him?”

“Why, he tried to start a rival show. Wrote a prospectus and
everything. But it didn’t catch on a bit. The only chap who bought any
of his lines was young Shoeblossom. He wanted a couple of hundred for
Appleby. Appleby was on to them like bricks. Spotted Shoeblossom
hadn’t written them, and asked who had. He wouldn’t say, so he got
them doubled. Everyone in the house is jolly sick with Merrett. They
think he ought to have owned up.”

“Did that smash up Merrett’s show? Is he going to turn out any more?”

“Rather not. Who’d buy ‘em?”

It would have been better for the Lines Supplying Trust if Merrett had
not received this crushing blow and had been allowed to carry on a
rival business on legitimate lines. Locksley was conservative in its
habits, and would probably have continued to support the old firm.

As it was, the baffled Merrett, a youth of vindictive nature, brooded
over his defeat, and presently hit upon a scheme whereby things might
be levelled up.

One afternoon, shortly before lock-up, Dunstable was surprised by the
advent of Linton to his study in a bruised and dishevelled condition.
One of his expressive eyes was closed and blackened. He also wore what
is known in ring circles as a thick ear.

“What on earth’s up?” inquired Dunstable, amazed at these phenomena.
“Have you been scrapping?”

“Yes–Merrett–I won. What are you up to–writing lines? You may as
well save yourself the trouble. They won’t be any good.” Dunstable
stared.

“The Trust’s bust,” said Linton.

He never wasted words in moments of emotion.

“What!”

“‘Bust’ was what I said. That beast Merrett gave the show away.”

“What did he do? Surely he didn’t tell a master?”

“Well, he did the next thing to it. He hauled out that prospectus, and
started reading it in form. I watched him do it. He kept it under the
desk and made a foul row, laughing over it. Appleby couldn’t help
spotting him. Of course, he told him to bring him what he was reading.
Up went Merrett with the prospectus.”

“Was Appleby sick?”

“I don’t believe he was, really. At least, he laughed when he read the
thing. But he hauled me up after school and gave me a long jaw, and
made me take all the lines I’d got to his house. He burnt them. I had
it out with Merrett just now. He swears he didn’t mean to get the
thing spotted, but I knew he did.”

“Where did you scrag him!”

“In the dormitory. He chucked it after the third round.”

There was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” shouted Dunstable.

Buxton appeared, a member of Appleby’s house.

“Oh, Dunstable, Appleby wants to see you.”

“All right,” said Dunstable wearily.

Mr. Appleby was in facetious mood. He chaffed Dunstable genially about
his prospectus, and admitted that it had amused him. Dunstable smiled
without enjoyment. It was a good thing, perhaps, that Mr. Appleby saw
the humorous rather than the lawless side of the Trust; but all the
quips in the world could not save that institution from ruin.

Presently Mr. Appleby’s manner changed. “I am a funny dog, I know,” he
seemed to say; “but duty is duty, and must be done.”

“How many lines have you at your house, Dunstable?” he asked.

“About eight hundred, sir.”

“Then you had better write me eight hundred lines, and show them up to
me in this room at–shall we say at ten minutes to five? It is now a
quarter to, so that you will have plenty of time.”

Dunstable went, and returned five minutes later, bearing an armful of
manuscript.

“I don’t think I shall need to count them,” said Mr. Appleby. “Kindly
take them in batches of ten sheets, and tear them in half, Dunstable.”

“Yes, sir.”

The last sheet fluttered in two sections into the surfeited
waste-paper basket.

“It’s an awful waste, sir,” said Dunstable regretfully.

Mr. Appleby beamed.

“We must, however,” he said, “always endeavour to look on the bright
side, Dunstable. The writing of these eight hundred lines will have
given you a fine grip of the rhythm of Virgil, the splendid prose of
Victor Hugo, and the unstudied majesty of the Greek Numerals. Good-night,
Dunstable.”

“Good-night, sir,” said the President of the Locksley Lines Supplying
Trust, Ltd.

Katie had never been more surprised in her life than when the serious
young man with the brown eyes and the Charles Dana Gibson profile
spirited her away from his friend and Genevieve. Till that moment she
had looked on herself as playing a sort of ‘villager and retainer’ part
to the brown-eyed young man’s hero and Genevieve’s heroine. She knew
she was not pretty, though somebody (unidentified) had once said that
she had nice eyes; whereas Genevieve was notoriously a beauty,
incessantly pestered, so report had it, by musical comedy managers to
go on the stage.

Genevieve was tall and blonde, a destroyer of masculine peace of mind.
She said ‘harf’ and ‘rahther’, and might easily have been taken for an
English duchess instead of a cloak-model at Macey’s. You would have
said, in short, that, in the matter of personable young men, Genevieve
would have swept the board. Yet, here was this one deliberately
selecting her, Katie, for his companion. It was almost a miracle.

He had managed it with the utmost dexterity at the merry-go-round. With
winning politeness he had assisted Genevieve on her wooden steed, and
then, as the machinery began to work, had grasped Katie’s arm and led
her at a rapid walk out into the sunlight. Katie’s last glimpse of
Genevieve had been the sight of her amazed and offended face as it
whizzed round the corner, while the steam melodeon drowned protests
with a spirited plunge into ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’.

Katie felt shy. This young man was a perfect stranger. It was true she
had had a formal introduction to him, but only from Genevieve, who had
scraped acquaintance with him exactly two minutes previously. It had
happened on the ferry-boat on the way to Palisades Park. Genevieve’s
bright eye, roving among the throng on the lower deck, had singled out
this young man and his companion as suitable cavaliers for the
expedition. The young man pleased her, and his friend, with the broken
nose and the face like a good-natured bulldog, was obviously suitable
for Katie.

Etiquette is not rigid on New York ferry-boats. Without fuss or delay
she proceeded to make their acquaintance–to Katie’s concern, for she
could never get used to Genevieve’s short way with strangers. The quiet
life she had led had made her almost prudish, and there were times when
Genevieve’s conduct shocked her. Of course, she knew there was no harm
in Genevieve. As the latter herself had once put it, ‘The feller that
tries to get gay with me is going to get a call-down that’ll make him
holler for his winter overcoat.’ But all the same she could not
approve. And the net result of her disapproval was to make her shy and
silent as she walked by this young man’s side.

The young man seemed to divine her thoughts.

‘Say, I’m on the level,’ he observed. ‘You want to get that. Right on
the square. See?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Katie, relieved but yet embarrassed. It was awkward to
have one’s thoughts read like this.

‘You ain’t like your friend. Don’t think I don’t see that.’

‘Genevieve’s a sweet girl,’ said Katie, loyally.

‘A darned sight too sweet. Somebody ought to tell her mother.’

‘Why did you speak to her if you did not like her?’

‘Wanted to get to know you,’ said the young man simply.

They walked on in silence. Katie’s heart was beating with a rapidity
that forbade speech. Nothing like this very direct young man had ever
happened to her before. She had grown so accustomed to regarding
herself as something too insignificant and unattractive for the notice
of the lordly male that she was overwhelmed. She had a vague feeling
that there was a mistake somewhere. It surely could not be she who was
proving so alluring to this fairy prince. The novelty of the situation
frightened her.

‘Come here often?’ asked her companion.

‘I’ve never been here before.’

‘Often go to Coney?’

‘I’ve never been.’

He regarded her with astonishment.

‘You’ve never been to Coney Island! Why, you don’t know what this sort
of thing is till you’ve taken in Coney. This place isn’t on the map
with Coney. Do you mean to say you’ve never seen Luna Park, or
Dreamland, or Steeplechase, or the diving ducks? Haven’t you had a look
at the Mardi Gras stunts? Why, Coney during Mardi Gras is the greatest
thing on earth. It’s a knockout. Just about a million boys and girls
having the best time that ever was. Say, I guess you don’t go out much,
do you?’

‘Not much.’

‘If it’s not a rude question, what do you do? I been trying to place you
all along. Now I reckon your friend works in a store, don’t she?’

‘Yes. She’s a cloak-model. She has a lovely figure, hasn’t she?’

‘Didn’t notice it. I guess so, if she’s what you say. It’s what they
pay her for, ain’t it? Do you work in a store, too?’

‘Not exactly. I keep a little shop.’

‘All by yourself?’

‘I do all the work now. It was my father’s shop, but he’s dead. It
began by being my grandfather’s. He started it. But he’s so old now
that, of course, he can’t work any longer, so I look after things.’

‘Say, you’re a wonder! What sort of a shop?’

‘It’s only a little second-hand bookshop. There really isn’t much to
do.’

‘Where is it?’

‘Sixth Avenue. Near Washington Square.’

‘What name?’

‘Bennett.’

‘That’s your name, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Anything besides Bennett?’

‘My name’s Kate.’

The young man nodded.

‘I’d make a pretty good district attorney,’ he said, disarming possible
resentment at this cross-examination. ‘I guess you’re wondering if I’m
ever going to stop asking you questions. Well, what would you like to
do?’

‘Don’t you think we ought to go back and find your friend and
Genevieve? They will be wondering where we are.’

‘Let ‘em,’ said the young man briefly. ‘I’ve had all I want of Jenny.’

‘I can’t understand why you don’t like her.’

‘I like you. Shall we have some ice-cream, or would you rather go on
the Scenic Railway?’

Katie decided on the more peaceful pleasure. They resumed their walk,
socially licking two cones. Out of the corner of her eyes Katie cast
swift glances at her friend’s face. He was a very grave young man.
There was something important as well as handsome about him. Once, as
they made their way through the crowds, she saw a couple of boys look
almost reverently at him. She wondered who he could be, but was too shy
to inquire. She had got over her nervousness to a great extent, but
there were still limits to what she felt herself equal to saying. It
did not strike her that it was only fair that she should ask a few
questions in return for those which he had put. She had always
repressed herself, and she did so now. She was content to be with him
without finding out his name and history.

He supplied the former just before he finally consented to let her go.

They were standing looking over the river. The sun had spent its force,
and it was cool and pleasant in the breeze which was coming up the
Hudson. Katie was conscious of a vague feeling that was almost
melancholy. It had been a lovely afternoon, and she was sorry that it
was over.

The young man shuffled his feet on the loose stones.

‘I’m mighty glad I met you,’ he said. ‘Say, I’m coming to see you. On
Sixth Avenue. Don’t mind, do you?’

He did not wait for a reply.

‘Brady’s my name. Ted Brady, Glencoe Athletic Club,’ he paused. ‘I’m on
the level,’ he added, and paused again. ‘I like you a whole lot. There’s
your friend, Genevieve. Better go after her, hadn’t you? Good-bye.’ And
he was gone, walking swiftly through the crowd about the bandstand.

Katie went back to Genevieve, and Genevieve was simply horrid. Cold and
haughty, a beautiful iceberg of dudgeon, she refused to speak a single
word during the whole long journey back to Sixth Avenue. And Katie,
whose tender heart would at other times have been tortured by this
hostility, leant back in her seat, and was happy. Her mind was far away
from Genevieve’s frozen gloom, living over again the wonderful
happenings of the afternoon.

Yes, it had been a wonderful afternoon, but trouble was waiting for her
in Sixth Avenue. Trouble was never absent for very long from Katie’s
unselfish life. Arriving at the little bookshop, she found Mr Murdoch,
the glazier, preparing for departure. Mr Murdoch came in on Mondays,
Wednesdays, and Fridays to play draughts with her grandfather, who was
paralysed from the waist, and unable to leave the house except when
Katie took him for his outing in Washington Square each morning in his
bath-chair.

Mr Murdoch welcomed Katie with joy.

‘I was wondering whenever you would come back, Katie. I’m afraid the
old man’s a little upset.’

‘Not ill?’

‘Not ill. Upset. And it was my fault, too. Thinking he’d be interested,
I read him a piece from the paper where I seen about these English
Suffragettes, and he just went up in the air. I guess he’ll be all
right now you’ve come back. I was a fool to read it, I reckon. I kind
of forgot for the moment.’

‘Please don’t worry yourself about it, Mr Murdoch. He’ll be all right
soon. I’ll go to him.’

In the inner room the old man was sitting. His face was flushed, and he
gesticulated from time to time.

‘I won’t have it,’ he cried as Katie entered. ‘I tell you I won’t have
it. If Parliament can’t do anything, I’ll send Parliament about its
business.’

‘Here I am, grandpapa,’ said Katie quickly. ‘I’ve had the greatest
time. It was lovely up there. I–’

‘I tell you it’s got to stop. I’ve spoken about it before. I won’t have
it.’

‘I expect they’re doing their best. It’s your being so far away that
makes it hard for them. But I do think you might write them a very
sharp letter.’

‘I will. I will. Get out the paper. Are you ready?’ He stopped, and
looked piteously at Katie. ‘I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how
to begin.’

Katie scribbled a few lines.

‘How would this do? “His Majesty informs his Government that he is
greatly surprised and indignant that no notice has been taken of his
previous communications. If this goes on, he will be reluctantly
compelled to put the matter in other hands.”‘

She read it glibly as she had written it. The formula had been a
favourite one of her late father, when roused to fall upon offending
patrons of the bookshop.

The old man beamed. His resentment was gone. He was soothed and happy.

‘That’ll wake ‘em up,’ he said. ‘I won’t have these goings on while I’m
king, and if they don’t like it, they know what to do. You’re a good
girl, Katie.’

He chuckled.

‘I beat Lord Murdoch five games to nothing,’ he said.

It was now nearly two years since the morning when old Matthew Bennett
had announced to an audience consisting of Katie and a smoky blue cat,
which had wandered in from Washington Square to take pot-luck, that he
was the King of England.

This was a long time for any one delusion of the old man’s to last.
Usually they came and went with a rapidity which made it hard for
Katie, for all her tact, to keep abreast of them. She was not likely to
forget the time when he went to bed President Roosevelt and woke up the
Prophet Elijah. It was the only occasion in all the years they had
passed together when she had felt like giving way and indulging in the
fit of hysterics which most girls of her age would have had as a matter
of course.

She had handled that crisis, and she handled the present one with equal
smoothness. When her grandfather made his announcement, which he did
rather as one stating a generally recognized fact than as if the
information were in any way sensational, she neither screamed nor
swooned, nor did she rush to the neighbours for advice. She merely gave
the old man his breakfast, not forgetting to set aside a suitable
portion for the smoky cat, and then went round to notify Mr Murdoch of
what had happened.

Mr Murdoch, excellent man, received the news without any fuss or
excitement at all, and promised to look in on Schwartz, the stout
saloon-keeper, who was Mr Bennett’s companion and antagonist at
draughts on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and, as he expressed
it, put him wise.

Life ran comfortably in the new groove. Old Mr Bennett continued to
play draughts and pore over his second-hand classics. Every morning he
took his outing in Washington Square where, from his invalid’s chair,
he surveyed somnolent Italians and roller-skating children with his old
air of kindly approval. Katie, whom circumstances had taught to be
thankful for small mercies, was perfectly happy in the shadow of the
throne. She liked her work; she liked looking after her grandfather;
and now that Ted Brady had come into her life, she really began to look
on herself as an exceptionally lucky girl, a spoilt favourite of
Fortune.

For Ted Brady had called, as he said he would, and from the very first
he had made plain in his grave, direct way the objects of his visits.
There was no subtlety about Ted, no finesse. He was as frank as a
music-hall love song.

On his first visit, having handed Katie a large bunch of roses with the
stolidity of a messenger boy handing over a parcel, he had proceeded,
by way of establishing his bona fides, to tell her all about
himself. He supplied the facts in no settled order, just as they
happened to occur to him in the long silences with which his speech was
punctuated. Small facts jostled large facts. He spoke of his morals and
his fox-terrier in the same breath.

‘I’m on the level. Ask anyone who knows me. They’ll tell you that. Say,
I got the cutest little dog you ever seen. Do you like dogs? I’ve never
been a fellow that’s got himself mixed up with girls. I don’t like ‘em
as a general thing. A fellow’s got too much to do keeping himself in
training, if his club expects him to do things. I belong to the Glencoe
Athletic. I ran the hundred yards dash in evens last sports there was.
They expect me to do it at the Glencoe, so I’ve never got myself mixed
up with girls. Till I seen you that afternoon I reckon I’d hardly
looked at a girl, honest. They didn’t seem to kind of make any hit with
me. And then I seen you, and I says to myself, “That’s the one.” It
sort of came over me in a flash. I fell for you directly I seen you.
And I’m on the level. Don’t forget that.’

And more in the same strain, leaning on the counter and looking into
Katie’s eyes with a devotion that added emphasis to his measured
speech.

Next day he came again, and kissed her respectfully but firmly, making
a sort of shuffling dive across the counter. Breaking away, he fumbled
in his pocket and produced a ring, which he proceeded to place on her
finger with the serious air which accompanied all his actions.

‘That looks pretty good to me,’ he said, as he stepped back and eyed
it.

It struck Katie, when he had gone, how differently different men did
things. Genevieve had often related stories of men who had proposed to
her, and according to Genevieve, they always got excited and emotional,
and sometimes cried. Ted Brady had fitted her with the ring more like a
glover’s assistant than anything else, and he had hardly spoken a word
from beginning to end. He had seemed to take her acquiescence for
granted. And yet there had been nothing flat or disappointing about the
proceedings. She had been thrilled throughout. It is to be supposed
that Mr Brady had the force of character which does not require the aid
of speech.

It was not till she took the news of her engagement to old Mr Bennett
that it was borne in upon Katie that Fate did not intend to be so
wholly benevolent to her as she supposed.

That her grandfather could offer any opposition had not occurred to her
as a possibility. She took his approval for granted. Never, as long as
she could remember, had he been anything but kind to her. And the only
possible objections to marriage from a grandfather’s point of
view–badness of character, insufficient means, or inferiority of
social position–were in this case gloriously absent.

She could not see how anyone, however hypercritical, could find a flaw
in Ted. His character was spotless. He was comfortably off. And so far
from being in any way inferior socially, it was he who condescended.
For Ted, she had discovered from conversation with Mr Murdoch, the
glazier, was no ordinary young man. He was a celebrity. So much so that
for a moment, when told the news of the engagement, Mr Murdoch,
startled out of his usual tact, had exhibited frank surprise that the
great Ted Brady should not have aimed higher.

‘You’re sure you’ve got the name right, Katie?’ he had said. ‘It’s
really Ted Brady? No mistake about the first name? Well-built,
good-looking young chap with brown eyes? Well, this beats me. Not,’ he
went on hurriedly, ‘that any young fellow mightn’t think himself lucky
to get a wife like you, Katie, but Ted Brady! Why, there isn’t a girl
in this part of the town, or in Harlem or the Bronx, for that matter,
who wouldn’t give her eyes to be in your place. Why, Ted Brady is the
big noise. He’s the star of the Glencoe.’

‘He told me he belonged to the Glencoe Athletic.’

‘Don’t you believe it. It belongs to him. Why, the way that boy runs
and jumps is the real limit. There’s only Billy Burton, of the
Irish-American, that can touch him. You’ve certainly got the pick of
the bunch, Katie.’

He stared at her admiringly, as if for the first time realizing her
true worth. For Mr Murdoch was a great patron of sport.

With these facts in her possession Katie had approached the interview
with her grandfather with a good deal of confidence.

The old man listened to her recital of Mr Brady’s qualities in silence.
Then he shook his head.

‘It can’t be, Katie. I couldn’t have it.’

‘Grandpapa!’

‘You’re forgetting, my dear.’

‘Forgetting?’

‘Who ever heard of such a thing? The grand-daughter of the King of
England marrying a commoner! It wouldn’t do at all.’

Consternation, surprise, and misery kept Katie dumb. She had learned in
a hard school to be prepared for sudden blows from the hand of fate,
but this one was so entirely unforeseen that it found her unprepared,
and she was crushed by it. She knew her grandfather’s obstinacy too
well to argue against the decision.

‘Oh, no, not at all,’ he repeated. ‘Oh, no, it wouldn’t do.’

Katie said nothing; she was beyond speech. She stood there wide-eyed
and silent among the ruins of her little air-castle. The old man patted
her hand affectionately. He was pleased at her docility. It was the
right attitude, becoming in one of her high rank.

‘I am very sorry, my dear, but–oh, no! oh, no! oh, no–’ His voice
trailed away into an unintelligible mutter. He was a very old man, and
he was not always able to concentrate his thoughts on a subject for any
length of time.

So little did Ted Brady realize at first the true complexity of the
situation that he was inclined, when he heard of the news, to treat the
crisis in the jaunty, dashing, love-laughs-at-locksmith fashion so
popular with young men of spirit when thwarted in their loves by the
interference of parents and guardians.

It took Katie some time to convince him that, just because he had the
licence in his pocket, he could not snatch her up on his saddle-bow and
carry her off to the nearest clergyman after the manner of young
Lochinvar.

In the first flush of his resentment at restraint he saw no reason why
he should differentiate between old Mr Bennett and the conventional
banns-forbidding father of the novelettes with which he was accustomed
to sweeten his hours of idleness. To him, till Katie explained the
intricacies of the position, Mr Bennett was simply the proud
millionaire who would not hear of his daughter marrying the artist.

‘But, Ted, dear, you don’t understand,’ Katie said. ‘We simply couldn’t
do that. There’s no one but me to look after him, poor old man. How
could I run away like that and get married? What would become of him?’

‘You wouldn’t be away long,’ urged Mr Brady, a man of many parts, but
not a rapid thinker. ‘The minister would have us fixed up inside of
half an hour. Then we’d look in at Mouquin’s for a steak and fried,
just to make a sort of wedding breakfast. And then back we’d come,
hand-in-hand, and say, “Well, here we are. Now what?”‘

‘He would never forgive me.’

‘That,’ said Ted judicially, ‘would be up to him.’

‘It would kill him. Don’t you see, we know that it’s all nonsense, this
idea of his; but he really thinks he is the king, and he’s so old that
the shock of my disobeying him would be too much. Honest, Ted, dear, I
couldn’t.’

Gloom unutterable darkened Ted Brady’s always serious countenance. The
difficulties of the situation were beginning to come home to him.

‘Maybe if I went and saw him–’ he suggested at last.

‘You could,’ said Katie doubtfully.

Ted tightened his belt with an air of determination, and bit resolutely
on the chewing-gum which was his inseparable companion.

‘I will,’ he said.

‘You’ll be nice to him, Ted?’

He nodded. He was the man of action, not words.

It was perhaps ten minutes before he came out of the inner room in
which Mr Bennett passed his days. When he did, there was no light of
jubilation on his face. His brow was darker than ever.

Katie looked at him anxiously. He returned the look with a sombre shake
of the head.

‘Nothing doing,’ he said shortly. He paused. ‘Unless,’ he added, ‘you
count it anything that he’s made me an earl.’

In the next two weeks several brains busied themselves with the
situation. Genevieve, reconciled to Katie after a decent interval of
wounded dignity, said she supposed there was a way out, if one could
only think of it, but it certainly got past her. The only approach to a
plan of action was suggested by the broken-nosed individual who had
been Ted’s companion that day at Palisades Park, a gentleman of some
eminence in the boxing world, who rejoiced in the name of the Tennessee
Bear-Cat.

What they ought to do, in the Bear-Cat’s opinion, was to get the old
man out into Washington Square one morning. He of Tennessee would then
sasshay up in a flip manner and make a break. Ted, waiting close by,
would resent his insolence. There would be words, followed by blows.

‘See what I mean?’ pursued the Bear-Cat. ‘There’s you and me mixing it.
I’ll square the cop on the beat to leave us be; he’s a friend of mine.
Pretty soon you land me one on the plexus, and I take th’ count. Then
there’s you hauling me up by th’ collar to the old gentleman, and me
saying I quits and apologizing. See what I mean?’

The whole, presumably, to conclude with warm expressions of gratitude
and esteem from Mr Bennett, and an instant withdrawal of the veto.

Ted himself approved of the scheme. He said it was a cracker-jaw, and
he wondered how one so notoriously ivory-skulled as the other could
have had such an idea. The Bear-Cat said modestly that he had ‘em
sometimes. And it is probable that all would have been well, had it not
been necessary to tell the plan to Katie, who was horrified at the very
idea, spoke warmly of the danger to her grandfather’s nervous system,
and said she did not think the Bear-Cat could be a nice friend for Ted.
And matters relapsed into their old state of hopelessness.

And then, one day, Katie forced herself to tell Ted that she thought it
would be better if they did not see each other for a time. She said
that these meetings were only a source of pain to both of them. It
would really be better if he did not come round for–well, quite some
time.

It had not been easy for her to say it. The decision was the outcome of
many wakeful nights. She had asked herself the question whether it was
fair for her to keep Ted chained to her in this hopeless fashion, when,
left to himself and away from her, he might so easily find some other
girl to make him happy.

So Ted went, reluctantly, and the little shop on Sixth Avenue knew him
no more. And Katie spent her time looking after old Mr Bennett (who had
completely forgotten the affair by now, and sometimes wondered why
Katie was not so cheerful as she had been), and–for, though unselfish,
she was human–hating those unknown girls whom in her mind’s eye she
could see clustering round Ted, smiling at him, making much of him, and
driving the bare recollection of her out of his mind.

The summer passed. July came and went, making New York an oven. August
followed, and one wondered why one had complained of July’s tepid
advances.

It was on the evening of September the eleventh that Katie, having
closed the little shop, sat in the dusk on the steps, as many thousands
of her fellow-townsmen and townswomen were doing, turning her face to
the first breeze which New York had known for two months. The hot spell
had broken abruptly that afternoon, and the city was drinking in the
coolness as a flower drinks water.

From round the corner, where the yellow cross of the Judson Hotel shone
down on Washington Square, came the shouts of children, and the
strains, mellowed by distance, of the indefatigable barrel-organ which
had played the same tunes in the same place since the spring.

Katie closed her eyes, and listened. It was very peaceful this evening,
so peaceful that for an instant she forgot even to think of Ted. And it
was just during this instant that she heard his voice.

‘That you, kid?’

He was standing before her, his hands in his pockets, one foot on the
pavement, the other in the road; and if he was agitated, his voice did
not show it.

‘Ted!’

‘That’s me. Can I see the old man for a minute, Katie?’

This time it did seem to her that she could detect a slight ring of
excitement.

‘It’s no use, Ted. Honest.’

‘No harm in going in and passing the time of day, is there? I’ve got
something I want to say to him.’

‘What?’

‘Tell you later, maybe. Is he in his room?’

He stepped past her, and went in. As he went, he caught her arm and
pressed it, but he did not stop. She saw him go into the inner room and
heard through the door as he closed it behind him, the murmur of
voices. And almost immediately, it seemed to her, her name was called.
It was her grandfather’s voice which called, high and excited. The door
opened, and Ted appeared.

‘Come here a minute, Katie, will you?’ he said. ‘You’re wanted.’

The old man was leaning forward in his chair. He was in a state of
extraordinary excitement. He quivered and jumped. Ted, standing by the
wall, looked as stolid as ever; but his eyes glittered.

‘Katie,’ cried the old man, ‘this is a most remarkable piece of news.
This gentleman has just been telling me–extraordinary. He–’

He broke off, and looked at Ted, as he had looked at Katie when he had
tried to write the letter to the Parliament of England.

Ted’s eye, as it met Katie’s, was almost defiant.

‘I want to marry you,’ he said.

‘Yes, yes,’ broke in Mr Bennett, impatiently, ‘but–’

‘And I’m a king.’

‘Yes, yes, that’s it, that’s it, Katie. This gentleman is a king.’

Once more Ted’s eye met Katie’s, and this time there was an imploring
look in it.

‘That’s right,’ he said, slowly. ‘I’ve just been telling your
grandfather I’m the King of Coney Island.’

‘That’s it. Of Coney Island.’

‘So there’s no objection now to us getting married, kid–Your Royal
Highness. It’s a royal alliance, see?’

‘A royal alliance,’ echoed Mr Bennett.

Out in the street, Ted held Katie’s hand, and grinned a little
sheepishly.

‘You’re mighty quiet, kid,’ he said. ‘It looks as if it don’t make much
of a hit with you, the notion of being married to me.’

‘Oh, Ted! But–’

He squeezed her hand.

‘I know what you’re thinking. I guess it was raw work pulling a tale
like that on the old man. I hated to do it, but gee! when a fellow’s up
against it like I was, he’s apt to grab most any chance that comes
along. Why, say, kid, it kind of looked to me as if it was sort of
meant. Coming just now, like it did, just when it was wanted,
and just when it didn’t seem possible it could happen. Why, a week ago
I was nigh on two hundred votes behind Billy Burton. The Irish-American
put him up, and everybody thought he’d be King at the Mardi Gras. And
then suddenly they came pouring in for me, till at the finish I had
Billy looking like a regular has-been.

‘It’s funny the way the voting jumps about every year in this Coney
election. It was just Providence, and it didn’t seem right to let it go
by. So I went in to the old man, and told him. Say, I tell you I was
just sweating when I got ready to hand it to him. It was an outside
chance he’d remember all about what the Mardi Gras at Coney was, and
just what being a king at it amounted to. Then I remembered you telling
me you’d never been to Coney, so I figured your grandfather wouldn’t be
what you’d call well fixed in his information about it, so I took the
chance.

‘I tried him out first. I tried him with Brooklyn. Why, say, from the
way he took it, he’d either never heard of the place, or else he’d
forgotten what it was. I guess he don’t remember much, poor old fellow.
Then I mentioned Yonkers. He asked me what Yonkers were. Then I
reckoned it was safe to bring on Coney, and he fell for it right away.
I felt mean, but it had to be done.’

He caught her up, and swung her into the air with a perfectly impassive
face. Then, having kissed her, he lowered her gently to the ground
again. The action seemed to have relieved his feelings, for when he
spoke again it was plain that his conscience no longer troubled him.

‘And say,’ he said, ‘come to think of it, I don’t see where there’s so
much call for me to feel mean. I’m not so far short of being a regular
king. Coney’s just as big as some of those kingdoms you read about on
the other side; and, from what you see in the papers about the
goings-on there, it looks to me that, having a whole week on the throne
like I’m going to have, amounts to a pretty steady job as kings go.’

I

The room was the typical bedroom of the typical boarding-house,
furnished, insofar as it could be said to be furnished at all, with a
severe simplicity. It contained two beds, a pine chest of drawers, a
strip of faded carpet, and a wash basin. But there was that on the
floor which set this room apart from a thousand rooms of the same kind.
Flat on his back, with his hands tightly clenched and one leg twisted
oddly under him and with his teeth gleaming through his grey beard in a
horrible grin, Captain John Gunner stared up at the ceiling with eyes
that saw nothing.

Until a moment before, he had had the little room all to himself. But
now two people were standing just inside the door, looking down at him.
One was a large policeman, who twisted his helmet nervously in his
hands. The other was a tall, gaunt old woman in a rusty black dress,
who gazed with pale eyes at the dead man. Her face was quite
expressionless.

The woman was Mrs. Pickett, owner of the Excelsior Boarding-House. The
policeman’s name was Grogan. He was a genial giant, a terror to the
riotous element of the waterfront, but obviously ill at ease in the
presence of death. He drew in his breath, wiped his forehead, and
whispered: “Look at his eyes, ma’am!”

Mrs. Pickett had not spoken a word since she had brought the policeman
into the room, and she did not do so now. Constable Grogan looked at
her quickly. He was afraid of Mother Pickett, as was everybody else
along the waterfront. Her silence, her pale eyes, and the quiet
decisiveness of her personality cowed even the tough old salts who
patronized the Excelsior. She was a formidable influence in that little
community of sailormen.

“That’s just how I found him,” said Mrs. Pickett. She did not speak
loudly, but her voice made the policeman start.

He wiped his forehead again. “It might have been apoplexy,” he
hazarded.

Mrs. Pickett said nothing. There was a sound of footsteps outside, and
a young man entered, carrying a black bag.

“Good morning, Mrs. Pickett. I was told that–Good Lord!” The young
doctor dropped to his knees beside the body and raised one of the arms.
After a moment he lowered it gently to the floor, and shook his head in
grim resignation.

“He’s been dead for hours,” he announced. “When did you find him?”

“Twenty minutes back,” replied the old woman. “I guess he died last
night. He never would be called in the morning. Said he liked to sleep
on. Well, he’s got his wish.”

“What did he die of, sir?” asked the policeman.

“It’s impossible to say without an examination,” the doctor answered.
“It looks like a stroke, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t. It might be a
coronary attack, but I happen to know his blood pressure was normal,
and his heart sound. He called in to see me only a week ago, and I
examined him thoroughly. But sometimes you can be deceived. The inquest
will tell us.” He eyed the body almost resentfully. “I can’t understand
it. The man had no right to drop dead like this. He was a tough old
sailor who ought to have been good for another twenty years. If you
want my honest opinion–though I can’t possibly be certain until after
the inquest–I should say he had been poisoned.”

“How would he be poisoned?” asked Mrs. Pickett quietly.

“That’s more than I can tell you. There’s no glass about that he could
have drunk it from. He might have got it in capsule form. But why
should he have done it? He was always a pretty cheerful sort of old
man, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, sir,” said the Constable. “He had the name of being a joker in
these parts. Kind of sarcastic, they tell me, though he never tried it
on me.”

“He must have died quite early last night,” said the doctor. He turned
to Mrs. Pickett. “What’s become of Captain Muller? If he shares this
room he ought to be able to tell us something about it.”

“Captain Muller spent the night with some friends at Portsmouth,” said
Mrs. Pickett. “He left right after supper, and hasn’t returned.”

The doctor stared thoughtfully about the room, frowning.

“I don’t like it. I can’t understand it. If this had happened in India
I should have said the man had died from some form of snakebite. I was
out there two years, and I’ve seen a hundred cases of it. The poor
devils all looked just like this. But the thing’s ridiculous. How could
a man be bitten by a snake in a Southampton waterfront boarding-house?
Was the door locked when you found him, Mrs. Pickett?”

Mrs. Pickett nodded. “I opened it with my own key. I had been calling
to him and he didn’t answer, so I guessed something was wrong.”

The Constable spoke: “You ain’t touched anything, ma’am? They’re always
very particular about that. If the doctor’s right, and there’s been
anything up, that’s the first thing they’ll ask.”

“Everything’s just as I found it.”

“What’s that on the floor beside him?” the doctor asked.

“Only his harmonica. He liked to play it of an evening in his room.
I’ve had some complaints about it from some of the gentlemen, but I
never saw any harm, so long as he didn’t play it too late.”

“Seems as if he was playing it when–it happened,” Constable Grogan
said. “That don’t look much like suicide, sir.”

“I didn’t say it was suicide.”

Grogan whistled. “You don’t think—-”

“I’m not thinking anything–until after the inquest. All I say is that
it’s queer.”

Another aspect of the matter seemed to strike the policeman. “I guess
this ain’t going to do the Excelsior any good, ma’am,” he said
sympathetically.

Mrs. Pickett shrugged her shoulders.

“I suppose I had better go and notify the coroner,” said the doctor.

He went out, and after a momentary pause the policeman followed him.
Constable Grogan was not greatly troubled with nerves, but he felt a
decided desire to be somewhere where he could not see the dead man’s
staring eyes.

Mrs. Pickett remained where she was, looking down at the still form on
the floor. Her face was expressionless, but inwardly she was tormented
and alarmed. It was the first time such a thing as this had happened at
the Excelsior, and, as Constable Grogan had hinted, it was not likely
to increase the attractiveness of the house in the eyes of possible
boarders. It was not the threatened pecuniary loss which was troubling
her. As far as money was concerned, she could have lived comfortably on
her savings, for she was richer than most of her friends supposed. It
was the blot on the escutcheon of the Excelsior–the stain on its
reputation–which was tormenting her.

The Excelsior was her life. Starting many years before, beyond the
memory of the oldest boarder, she had built up the model establishment,
the fame of which had been carried to every corner of the world. Men
spoke of it as a place where you were fed well, cleanly housed, and
where petty robbery was unknown.

Such was the chorus of praise that it is not likely that much harm
could come to the Excelsior from a single mysterious death but Mother
Pickett was not consoling herself with such reflections.

She looked at the dead man with pale, grim eyes. Out in the hallway the
doctor’s voice further increased her despair. He was talking to the
police on the telephone, and she could distinctly hear his every word.

II

The offices of Mr. Paul Snyder’s Detective Agency in New Oxford Street
had grown in the course of a dozen years from a single room to an
impressive suite bright with polished wood, clicking typewriters, and
other evidences of success. Where once Mr. Snyder had sat and waited
for clients and attended to them himself, he now sat in his private
office and directed eight assistants.

He had just accepted a case–a case that might be nothing at all or
something exceedingly big. It was on the latter possibility that he had
gambled. The fee offered was, judged by his present standards of
prosperity, small. But the bizarre facts, coupled with something in the
personality of the client, had won him over. He briskly touched the
bell and requested that Mr. Oakes should be sent in to him.

Elliot Oakes was a young man who both amused and interested Mr. Snyder,
for though he had only recently joined the staff, he made no secret of
his intention of revolutionizing the methods of the agency. Mr. Snyder
himself, in common with most of his assistants, relied for results on
hard work and plenty of common sense. He had never been a detective of
the showy type. Results had justified his methods, but he was perfectly
aware that young Mr. Oakes looked on him as a dull old man who had been
miraculously favored by luck.

Mr. Snyder had selected Oakes for the case in hand principally because
it was one where inexperience could do no harm, and where the brilliant
guesswork which Oakes preferred to call his inductive reasoning might
achieve an unexpected success.

Another motive actuated Mr. Snyder in his choice. He had a strong
suspicion that the conduct of this case was going to have the
beneficial result of lowering Oakes’ self-esteem. If failure achieved
this end, Mr. Snyder felt that failure, though it would not help the
Agency, would not be an unmixed ill.

The door opened and Oakes entered tensely. He did everything tensely,
partly from a natural nervous energy, and partly as a pose. He was a
lean young man, with dark eyes and a thin-lipped mouth, and he looked
quite as much like a typical detective as Mr. Snyder looked like a
comfortable and prosperous stock broker.

“Sit down, Oakes,” said Mr. Snyder. “I’ve got a job for you.”

Oakes sank into a chair like a crouching leopard, and placed the tips
of his fingers together. He nodded curtly. It was part of his pose to
be keen and silent.

“I want you to go to this address”–Mr. Snyder handed him an
envelope–”and look around. The address on that envelope is of a
sailors’ boarding-house down in Southampton. You know the sort of
place–retired sea captains and so on live there. All most respectable.
In all its history nothing more sensational has ever happened than a
case of suspected cheating at halfpenny nap. Well, a man had died
there.”

“Murdered?” Oakes asked.

“I don’t know. That’s for you to find out. The coroner left it open.
‘Death by Misadventure’ was the verdict, and I don’t blame him. I don’t
see how it could have been murder. The door was locked on the inside,
so nobody could have got in.”

“The window?”

“The window was open, granted. But the room is on the second floor.
Anyway, you may dismiss the window. I remember the old lady saying
there was a bar across it, and that nobody could have squeezed
through.”

Oakes’ eyes glistened. He was interested. “What was the cause of
death?” he asked.

Mr. Snyder coughed. “Snake bite,” he said.

Oakes’ careful calm deserted him. He uttered a cry of astonishment.
“Why, that’s incredible!”

“It’s the literal truth. The medical examination proved that the fellow
had been killed by snake poison–cobra, to be exact, which is found
principally in India.”

“Cobra!”

“Just so. In a Southampton boarding-house, in a room with a locked
door, this man was stung by a cobra. To add a little mystification to
the limpid simplicity of the affair, when the door was opened there was
no sign of any cobra. It couldn’t have got out through the door,
because the door was locked. It couldn’t have got out of the window,
because the window was too high up, and snakes can’t jump. And it
couldn’t have gotten up the chimney, because there was no chimney. So
there you have it.”

He looked at Oakes with a certain quiet satisfaction. It had come to
his ears that Oakes had been heard to complain of the infantile nature
and unworthiness of the last two cases to which he had been assigned.
He had even said that he hoped some day to be given a problem which
should be beyond the reasoning powers of a child of six. It seemed to
Mr. Snyder that Oakes was about to get his wish.

“I should like further details,” said Oakes, a little breathlessly.

“You had better apply to Mrs. Pickett, who owns the boarding-house,”
Mr. Snyder said. “It was she who put the case in my hands. She is
convinced that it is murder. But, if we exclude ghosts, I don’t see how
any third party could have taken a hand in the thing at all. However,
she wanted a man from this agency, and was prepared to pay for him, so
I promised her I would send one. It is not our policy to turn business
away.”

He smiled wryly. “In pursuance of that policy I want you to go and put
up at Mrs. Pickett’s boarding house and do your best to enhance the
reputation of our agency. I would suggest that you pose as a ship’s
chandler or something of that sort. You will have to be something
maritime or they’ll be suspicious of you. And if your visit produces no
other results, it will, at least, enable you to make the acquaintance
of a very remarkable woman. I commend Mrs. Pickett to your notice. By
the way, she says she will help you in your investigations.”

Oakes laughed shortly. The idea amused him.

“It’s a mistake to scoff at amateur assistance, my boy,” said Mr.
Snyder in the benevolently paternal manner which had made a score of
criminals refuse to believe him a detective until the moment when the
handcuffs snapped on their wrists. “Crime investigation isn’t an exact
science. Success or failure depends in a large measure on applied
common sense, and the possession of a great deal of special
information. Mrs. Pickett knows certain things which neither you nor I
know, and it’s just possible that she may have some stray piece of
information which will provide the key to the entire mystery.”

Oakes laughed again. “It is very kind of Mrs. Pickett,” he said, “but I
prefer to trust to my own methods.” Oakes rose, his face purposeful.
“I’d better be starting at once,” he said. “I’ll send you reports from
time to time.”

“Good. The more detailed the better,” said Mr. Snyder genially. “I hope
your visit to the Excelsior will be pleasant. And cultivate Mrs.
Pickett. She’s worth while.”

The door closed, and Mr. Snyder lighted a fresh cigar. “Dashed young
fool,” he murmured, as he turned his mind to other matters.

III

A day later Mr. Snyder sat in his office reading a typewritten report.
It appeared to be of a humorous nature, for, as he read, chuckles
escaped him. Finishing the last sheet he threw his head back and
laughed heartily. The manuscript had not been intended by its author
for a humorous effort. What Mr. Snyder had been reading was the first
of Elliott Oakes’ reports from the Excelsior. It read as follows:

I am sorry to be unable to report any real progress. I have
formed several theories which I will put forward later, but at
present I cannot say that I am hopeful.

Directly I arrived here I sought out Mrs. Pickett, explained
who I was, and requested her to furnish me with any further
information which might be of service to me. She is a strange,
silent woman, who impressed me as having very little
intelligence. Your suggestion that I should avail myself of
her assistance seems more curious than ever, now that I have
seen her.

The whole affair seems to me at the moment of writing quite
inexplicable. Assuming that this Captain Gunner was murdered,
there appears to have been no motive for the crime whatsoever.
I have made careful inquiries about him, and find that he was
a man of fifty-five; had spent nearly forty years of his life
at sea, the last dozen in command of his own ship; was of a
somewhat overbearing disposition, though with a fund of rough
humour; had travelled all over the world, and had been an inmate
of the Excelsior for about ten months. He had a small annuity,
and no other money at all, which disposes of money as the motive
for the crime.

In my character of James Burton, a retired ship’s chandler, I have
mixed with the other boarders, and have heard all they have to say
about the affair. I gather that the deceased was by no means
popular. He appears to have had a bitter tongue, and I have not
met one man who seems to regret his death. On the other hand, I
have heard nothing which would suggest that he had any active and
violent enemies. He was simply the unpopular boarder–there is
always one in every boarding-house–but nothing more.

I have seen a good deal of the man who shared his room–another
sea captain, named Muller. He is a big, silent person, and it is
not easy to get him to talk. As regards the death of Captain Gunner
he can tell me nothing. It seems that on the night of the tragedy
he was away at Portsmouth with some friends. All I have got from
him is some information as to Captain Gunner’s habits, which leads
nowhere. The dead man seldom drank, except at night when he would
take some whisky. His head was not strong, and a little of the
spirit was enough to make him semi-intoxicated, when he would be
hilarious and often insulting. I gather that Muller found him a
difficult roommate, but he is one of those placid persons who can
put up with anything. He and Gunner were in the habit of playing
draughts together every night in their room, and Gunner had a
harmonica which he played frequently. Apparently, he was playing
it very soon before he died, which is significant, as seeming to
dispose of the idea of suicide.

As I say, I have one or two theories, but they are in a very
nebulous state. The most plausible is that on one of his visits
to India–I have ascertained that he made several voyages
there–Captain Gunner may in some way have fallen foul of
the natives. The fact that he certainly died of the poison of an
Indian snake supports this theory. I am making inquiries as to
the movements of several Indian sailors who were here in
their ships at the time of the tragedy.

I have another theory. Does Mrs. Pickett know more about
this affair than she appears to? I may be wrong in my estimate
of her mental qualities. Her apparent stupidity may be
cunning. But here again, the absence of motive brings me up
against a dead wall. I must confess that at present I do not see
my way clearly. However, I will write again shortly.

Mr. Snyder derived the utmost enjoyment from the report. He liked the
substance of it, and above all, he was tickled by the bitter tone of
frustration which characterized it. Oakes was baffled, and his knowledge
of Oakes told him that the sensation of being baffled was gall and
wormwood to that high-spirited young man. Whatever might be the result
of this investigation, it would teach him the virtue of patience.

He wrote his assistant a short note:

Dear Oakes,

Your report received. You certainly seem to have got the hard
case which, I hear, you were pining for. Don’t build too much
on plausible motives in a case of this sort. Fauntleroy, the
London murderer, killed a woman for no other reason than that
she had thick ankles. Many years ago, I myself was on a case
where a man murdered an intimate friend because of a dispute
about a bet. My experience is that five murderers out of ten
act on the whim of the moment, without anything which, properly
speaking, you could call a motive at all.

Yours very cordially,
Paul Snyder

P. S. I don’t think much of your Pickett theory. However, you’re
in charge. I wish you luck.

IV

Young Mr. Oakes was not enjoying himself. For the first time in his
life, the self-confidence which characterized all his actions seemed to
be failing him. The change had taken place almost overnight. The fact
that the case had the appearance of presenting the unusual had merely
stimulated him at first. But then doubts had crept in and the problem
had begun to appear insoluble.

True, he had only just taken it up, but something told him that, for
all the progress he was likely to make, he might just as well have been
working on it steadily for a month. He was completely baffled. And
every moment which he spent in the Excelsior Boarding-House made it
clearer to him that that infernal old woman with the pale eyes thought
him an incompetent fool. It was that, more than anything, which made
him acutely conscious of his lack of success. His nerves were being
sorely troubled by the quiet scorn of Mrs. Pickett’s gaze. He began to
think that perhaps he had been a shade too self-confident and abrupt in
the short interview which he had had with her on his arrival.

As might have been expected, his first act, after his brief interview
with Mrs. Pickett, was to examine the room where the tragedy had taken
place. The body was gone, but otherwise nothing had been moved.

Oakes belonged to the magnifying-glass school of detection. The first
thing he did on entering the room was to make a careful examination of
the floor, the walls, the furniture, and the windowsill. He would have
hotly denied the assertion that he did this because it looked well, but
he would have been hard put to it to advance any other reason.

If he discovered anything, his discoveries were entirely negative, and
served only to deepen the mystery of the case. As Mr. Snyder had said,
there was no chimney, and nobody could have entered through the locked
door.

There remained the window. It was small, and apprehensiveness, perhaps,
of the possibility of burglars, had caused the proprietress to make it
doubly secure with an iron bar. No human being could have squeezed his
way through it.

It was late that night that he wrote and dispatched to headquarters the
report which had amused Mr. Snyder.

V

Two days later Mr. Snyder sat at his desk, staring with wide, unbelieving
eyes at a telegram he had just received. It read as follows:

HAVE SOLVED GUNNER MYSTERY. RETURNING…. OAKES.

Mr. Snyder narrowed his eyes and rang the bell. “Send Mr. Oakes to me
directly he arrives,” he said.

He was pained to find that his chief emotion was one of bitter
annoyance. The swift solution of such an apparently insoluble problem
would reflect the highest credit on the Agency, and there were
picturesque circumstances connected with the case which would make it
popular with the newspapers and lead to its being given a great deal of
publicity.

Yet, in spite of all this, Mr. Snyder was annoyed. He realized now how
large a part the desire to reduce Oakes’ self-esteem had played with
him. He further realized, looking at the thing honestly, that he had
been firmly convinced that the young man would not come within a mile
of a reasonable solution of the mystery. He had desired only that his
failure would prove a valuable educational experience for him. For he
believed that failure at this particular point in his career would make
Oakes a more valuable asset to the Agency. But now here Oakes was,
within a ridiculously short space of time, returning to the fold, not
humble and defeated, but triumphant. Mr. Snyder looked forward with
apprehension to the young man’s probable demeanor under the
intoxicating influence of victory.

His apprehensions were well grounded. He had barely finished the third
of the series of cigars, which, like milestones, marked the progress of
his afternoon, when the door opened and young Oakes entered. Mr. Snyder
could not repress a faint moan at the sight of him. One glance was
enough to tell him that his worst fears were realised.

“I got your telegram,” said Mr. Snyder.

Oakes nodded. “It surprised you, eh?” he asked.

Mr. Snyder resented the patronizing tone of the question, but he had
resigned himself to be patronized, and keep his anger in check.

“Yes,” he replied, “I must say it did surprise me. I didn’t gather from
your report that you had even found a clue. Was it the Indian theory
that turned the trick?”

Oakes laughed tolerantly. “Oh, I never really believed that
preposterous theory for one moment. I just put it in to round out my
report. I hadn’t begun to think about the case then–not really think.”

Mr. Snyder, nearly exploding with wrath, extended his cigar-case.
“Light up, and tell me all about it,” he said, controlling his anger.

“Well, I won’t say I haven’t earned this,” said Oakes, puffing away. He
let the ash of his cigar fall delicately to the floor–another action
which seemed significant to his employer. As a rule, his assistants,
unless particularly pleased with themselves, used the ashtray.

“My first act on arriving,” Oakes said, “was to have a talk with Mrs.
Pickett. A very dull old woman.”

“Curious. She struck me as rather intelligent.”

“Not on your life. She gave me no assistance whatever. I then examined
the room where the death had taken place. It was exactly as you described
it. There was no chimney, the door had been locked on the inside, and
the one window was very high up. At first sight, it looked extremely
unpromising. Then I had a chat with some of the other boarders. They had
nothing of any importance to contribute. Most of them simply gibbered.
I then gave up trying to get help from the outside, and resolved to rely
on my own intelligence.”

He smiled triumphantly. “It is a theory of mine, Mr. Snyder, which I
have found valuable that, in nine cases out of ten, remarkable things
don’t happen.”

“I don’t quite follow you there,” Mr. Snyder interrupted.

“I will put it another way, if you like. What I mean is that the simplest
explanation is nearly always the right one. Consider this case. It seemed
impossible that there should have been any reasonable explanation of the
man’s death. Most men would have worn themselves out guessing at wild
theories. If I had started to do that, I should have been guessing now.
As it is–here I am. I trusted to my belief that nothing remarkable ever
happens, and I won out.”

Mr. Snyder sighed softly. Oakes was entitled to a certain amount of
gloating, but there could be no doubt that his way of telling a story
was downright infuriating.

“I believe in the logical sequence of events. I refuse to accept
effects unless they are preceded by causes. In other words, with all
due respect to your possibly contrary opinions, Mr. Snyder, I simply
decline to believe in a murder unless there was a motive for it. The
first thing I set myself to ascertain was–what was the motive for the
murder of Captain Gunner? And, after thinking it over and making every
possible inquiry, I decided that there was no motive. Therefore, there
was no murder.”

Mr. Snyder’s mouth opened, and he obviously was about to protest. But
he appeared to think better of it and Oakes proceeded: “I then tested
the suicide theory. What motive was there for suicide? There was no
motive. Therefore, there was no suicide.”

This time Mr. Snyder spoke. “You haven’t been spending the last few
days in the wrong house by any chance, have you? You will be telling me
next that there wasn’t any dead man.”

Oakes smiled. “Not at all. Captain John Gunner was dead, all right. As
the medical evidence proved, he died of the bite of a cobra. It was a
small cobra which came from Java.”

Mr. Snyder stared at him. “How do you know?”

“I do know, beyond any possibility of doubt.”

“Did you see the snake?”

Oakes shook his head.

“Then, how in heaven’s name—-”

“I have enough evidence to make a jury convict Mr. Snake without
leaving the box.”

“Then suppose you tell me this. How did your cobra from Java get out of
the room?”

“By the window,” replied Oakes, impassively.

“How can you possibly explain that? You say yourself that the window
was high up.”

“Nevertheless, it got out by the window. The logical sequence of events
is proof enough that it was in the room. It killed Captain Gunner
there, and left traces of its presence outside. Therefore, as the
window was the only exit, it must have escaped by that route. It may
have climbed or it may have jumped, but somehow it got out of that
window.”

“What do you mean–it left traces of its presence outside?”

“It killed a dog in the backyard behind the house,” Oakes said. “The
window of Captain Gunner’s room projects out over it. It is full of
boxes and litter and there are a few stunted shrubs scattered about. In
fact, there is enough cover to hide any small object like the body of a
dog. That’s why it was not discovered at first. The maid at the
Excelsior came on it the morning after I sent you my report while she
was emptying a box of ashes in the yard. It was just an ordinary stray
dog without collar or license. The analyst examined the body, and found
that the dog had died of the bite of a cobra.”

“But you didn’t find the snake?”

“No. We cleaned out that yard till you could have eaten your breakfast
there, but the snake had gone. It must have escaped through the door of
the yard, which was standing ajar. That was a couple of days ago, and
there has been no further tragedy. In all likelihood it is dead. The
nights are pretty cold now, and it would probably have died of
exposure.”

“But, I just don’t understand how a cobra got to Southampton,” said the
amazed Mr. Snyder.

“Can’t you guess it? I told you it came from Java.”

“How did you know it did?”

“Captain Muller told me. Not directly, but I pieced it together from
what he said. It seems that an old shipmate of Captain Gunner’s was
living in Java. They corresponded, and occasionally this man would send
the captain a present as a mark of his esteem. The last present he sent
was a crate of bananas. Unfortunately, the snake must have got in
unnoticed. That’s why I told you the cobra was a small one. Well,
that’s my case against Mr. Snake, and short of catching him with the
goods, I don’t see how I could have made out a stronger one. Don’t you
agree?”

It went against the grain for Mr. Snyder to acknowledge defeat, but he
was a fair-minded man, and he was forced to admit that Oakes did
certainly seem to have solved the impossible.

“I congratulate you, my boy,” he said as heartily as he could. “To be
completely frank, when you started out, I didn’t think you could do it.
By the way, I suppose Mrs. Pickett was pleased?”

“If she was, she didn’t show it. I’m pretty well convinced she hasn’t
enough sense to be pleased at anything. However, she has invited me to
dinner with her tonight. I imagine she’ll be as boring as usual, but
she made such a point of it, I had to accept.”

VI

For some time after Oakes had gone, Mr. Snyder sat smoking and
thinking, in embittered meditation. Suddenly there was brought the card
of Mrs. Pickett, who would be grateful if he could spare her a few
moments. Mr. Snyder was glad to see Mrs. Pickett. He was a student of
character, and she had interested him at their first meeting. There was
something about her which had seemed to him unique, and he welcomed
this second chance of studying her at close range.

She came in and sat down stiffly, balancing herself on the extreme edge
of the chair in which a short while before young Oakes had lounged so
luxuriously.

“How are you, Mrs. Pickett?” said Mr. Snyder genially. “I’m very glad
that you could find time to pay me a visit. Well, so it wasn’t murder
after all.”

“Sir?”

“I’ve just been talking to Mr. Oakes, whom you met as James Burton,”
said the detective. “He has told me all about it.”

“He told me all about it,” said Mrs. Pickett dryly.

Mr. Snyder looked at her inquiringly. Her manner seemed more suggestive
than her words.

“A conceited, headstrong young fool,” said Mrs. Pickett.

It was no new picture of his assistant that she had drawn. Mr. Snyder
had often drawn it himself, but at the present juncture it surprised
him. Oakes, in his hour of triumph, surely did not deserve this
sweeping condemnation.

“Did not Mr. Oakes’ solution of the mystery satisfy you, Mrs. Pickett?”

“No!”

“It struck me as logical and convincing,” Mr. Snyder said.

“You may call it all the fancy names you please, Mr. Snyder. But Mr.
Oakes’ solution was not the right one.”

“Have you an alternative to offer?”

Mrs. Pickett tightened her lips.

“If you have, I should like to hear it.”

“You will–at the proper time.”

“What makes you so certain that Mr. Oakes is wrong?”

“He starts out with an impossible explanation, and rests his whole case
on it. There couldn’t have been a snake in that room because it
couldn’t have gotten out. The window was too high.”

“But surely the evidence of the dead dog?”

Mrs. Pickett looked at him as if he had disappointed her. “I had always
heard you spoken of as a man with common sense, Mr. Snyder.”

“I have always tried to use common sense.”

“Then why are you trying now to make yourself believe that something
happened which could not possibly have happened just because it fits in
with something which isn’t easy to explain?”

“You mean that there is another explanation of the dead dog?” Mr.
Snyder asked.

“Not another. What Mr. Oakes takes for granted is not an
explanation. But there is a common sense explanation, and if he had not
been so headstrong and conceited he might have found it.”

“You speak as if you had found it,” chided Mr. Snyder.

“I have.” Mrs. Pickett leaned forward as she spoke, and stared at him
defiantly.

Mr. Snyder started. “You have?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“You will know before tomorrow. In the meantime try and think it out
for yourself. A successful and prosperous detective agency like yours,
Mr. Snyder, ought to do something in return for a fee.”

There was something in her manner so reminiscent of the school teacher
reprimanding a recalcitrant pupil that Mr. Snyder’s sense of humor came
to his rescue. “We do our best, Mrs. Pickett,” he said. “But you
mustn’t forget that we are only human and cannot guarantee results.”

Mrs. Pickett did not pursue the subject. Instead, she proceeded to
astonish Mr. Snyder by asking him to swear out a warrant for the arrest
of a man known to them both on a charge of murder.

Mr. Snyder’s breath was not often taken away in his own office. As a
rule, he received his clients’ communications calmly, strange as they
often were. But at her words he gasped. The thought crossed his mind
that Mrs. Pickett might well be mentally unbalanced. The details of the
case were fresh in his memory, and he distinctly recollected that the
person she mentioned had been away from the boarding house on the night
of Captain Gunner’s death, and could, he imagined, produce witnesses to
prove it.

Mrs. Pickett was regarding him with an unfaltering stare. To all
outward appearances, she was the opposite of unbalanced.

“But you can’t swear out a warrant without evidence,” he told her.

“I have evidence,” she replied firmly.

“Precisely what kind of evidence?” he demanded.

“If I told you now you would think that I was out of my mind.”

“But, Mrs. Pickett, do you realize what you are asking me to do? I
cannot make this agency responsible for the arbitrary arrest of a man
on the strength of a single individual’s suspicions. It might ruin me.
At the least it would make me a laughing stock.”

“Mr. Snyder, you may use your own judgment whether or not to make the
arrest on that warrant. You will listen to what I have to say, and you
will see for yourself how the crime was committed. If after that you
feel that you cannot make the arrest I will accept your decision. I
know who killed Captain Gunner,” she said. “I knew it from the
beginning. It was like a vision. But I had no proof. Now things have
come to light and everything is clear.”

Against his judgment, Mr. Snyder was impressed. This woman had the
magnetism which makes for persuasiveness.

“It–it sounds incredible.” Even as he spoke, he remembered that it had
long been a professional maxim of his that nothing was incredible, and
he weakened still further.

“Mr. Snyder, I ask you to swear out that warrant.”

The detective gave in. “Very well,” he said.

Mrs. Pickett rose. “If you will come and dine at my house to-night I
think I can prove to you that it will be needed. Will you come?”

“I’ll come,” promised Mr. Snyder.

VII

When Mr. Snyder arrived at the Excelsior and shortly after he was shown
into the little private sitting room where he found Oakes, the third
guest of the evening unexpectedly arrived.

Mr. Snyder looked curiously at the newcomer. Captain Muller had a
peculiar fascination for him. It was not Mr. Snyder’s habit to trust
overmuch to appearances. But he could not help admitting that there was
something about this man’s aspect which brought Mrs. Pickett’s charges
out of the realm of the fantastic into that of the possible. There was
something odd–an unnatural aspect of gloom–about the man. He bore
himself like one carrying a heavy burden. His eyes were dull, his face
haggard. The next moment the detective was reproaching himself with
allowing his imagination to run away with his calmer judgment.

The door opened, and Mrs. Pickett came in. She made no apology for her
lateness.

To Mr. Snyder one of the most remarkable points about the dinner was
the peculiar metamorphosis of Mrs. Pickett from the brooding silent
woman he had known to the gracious and considerate hostess.

Oakes appeared also to be overcome with surprise, so much so that he
was unable to keep his astonishment to himself. He had come prepared to
endure a dull evening absorbed in grim silence, and he found himself
instead opposite a bottle of champagne of a brand and year which
commanded his utmost respect. What was even more incredible, his
hostess had transformed herself into a pleasant old lady whose only aim
seemed to be to make him feel at home.

Beside each of the guests’ plates was a neat paper parcel. Oakes picked
his up, and stared at it in wonderment. “Why, this is more than a party
souvenir, Mrs. Pickett,” he said. “It’s the kind of mechanical marvel
I’ve always wanted to have on my desk.”

“I’m glad you like it, Mr. Oakes,” Mrs. Pickett said, smiling. “You
must not think of me simply as a tired old woman whom age has
completely defeated. I am an ambitious hostess. When I give these
little parties, I like to make them a success. I want each of you to
remember this dinner.”

“I’m sure I will.”

Mrs. Pickett smiled again. “I think you all will. You, Mr. Snyder.” She
paused. “And you, Captain Muller.”

To Mr. Snyder there was so much meaning in her voice as she said this
that he was amazed that it conveyed no warning to Muller. Captain
Muller, however, was already drinking heavily. He looked up when
addressed and uttered a sound which might have been taken for an
expression of polite acquiescence. Then he filled his glass again.

Mr. Snyder’s parcel revealed a watch-charm fashioned in the shape of a
tiny, candid-eye camera. “That,” said Mrs. Pickett, “is a compliment to
your profession.” She leaned toward the captain. “Mr. Snyder is a
detective, Captain Muller.”

He looked up. It seemed to Mr. Snyder that a look of fear lit up his
heavy eyes for an instant. It came and went, if indeed it came at all,
so swiftly that he could not be certain.

“So?” said Captain Muller. He spoke quite evenly, with just the amount
of interest which such an announcement would naturally produce.

“Now for yours, Captain,” said Oakes. “I guess it’s something special.
It’s twice the size of mine, anyway.”

It may have been something in the old woman’s expression as she watched
Captain Muller slowly tearing the paper that sent a thrill of
excitement through Mr. Snyder. Something seemed to warn him of the
approach of a psychological moment. He bent forward eagerly.

There was a strangled gasp, a thump, and onto the table from the
captain’s hands there fell a little harmonica. There was no mistaking
the look on Muller’s face now. His cheeks were like wax, and his eyes,
so dull till then, blazed with a panic and horror which he could not
repress. The glasses on the table rocked as he clutched at the cloth.

Mrs. Pickett spoke. “Why, Captain Muller, has it upset you? I thought
that, as his best friend, the man who shared his room, you would value
a memento of Captain Gunner. How fond you must have been of him for the
sight of his harmonica to be such a shock.”

The captain did not speak. He was staring fascinated at the thing on
the table. Mrs. Pickett turned to Mr. Snyder. Her eyes, as they met
his, held him entranced.

“Mr. Snyder, as a detective, you will be interested in a curious and
very tragic affair which happened in this house a few days ago. One of
my boarders, Captain Gunner, was found dead in his room. It was the
room which he shared with Captain Muller. I am very proud of the
reputation of my house, Mr. Snyder, and it was a blow to me that this
should have happened. I applied to an agency for a detective, and they
sent me a stupid boy, with nothing to recommend him except his belief
in himself. He said that Captain Gunner had died by accident, killed by
a snake which had come out of a crate of bananas. I knew better. I knew
that Captain Gunner had been murdered. Are you listening, Captain
Muller? This will interest you, as you were such a friend of his.”

The captain did not answer. He was staring straight before him, as if
he saw something invisible in eyes forever closed in death.

“Yesterday we found the body of a dog. It had been killed, as Captain
Gunner had been, by the poison of a snake. The boy from the agency said
that this was conclusive. He said that the snake had escaped from the
room after killing Captain Gunner and had in turn killed the dog. I
knew that to be impossible, for, if there had been a snake in that room
it could not have made its escape.”

Her eyes flashed, and became remorselessly accusing. “It was not a
snake that killed Captain Gunner. It was a cat. Captain Gunner had a
friend who hated him. One day, in opening a crate of bananas, this
friend found a snake. He killed it, and extracted the poison. He knew
Captain Gunner’s habits. He knew that he played a harmonica. This man
also had a cat. He knew that cats hated the sound of a harmonica. He
had often seen this particular cat fly at Captain Gunner and scratch
him when he played. He took the cat and covered its claws with the
poison. And then he left it in the room with Captain Gunner. He knew
what would happen.”

Oakes and Mr. Snyder were on their feet. Captain Muller had not moved.
He sat there, his fingers gripping the cloth. Mrs. Pickett rose and
went to a closet. She unlocked the door. “Kitty!” she called. “Kitty!
Kitty!”

A black cat ran swiftly out into the room. With a clatter and a crash
of crockery and a ringing of glass the table heaved, rocked and
overturned as Muller staggered to his feet. He threw up his hands as if
to ward something off. A choking cry came from his lips. “Gott! Gott!”

Mrs. Pickett’s voice rang through the room, cold and biting: “Captain
Muller, you murdered Captain Gunner!”

The captain shuddered. Then mechanically he replied: “Gott! Yes, I
killed him.”

“You heard, Mr. Snyder,” said Mrs. Pickett. “He has confessed before
witnesses. Take him away.”

Muller allowed himself to be moved toward the door. His arm in Mr.
Snyder’s grip felt limp. Mrs. Pickett stopped and took something from
the debris on the floor. She rose, holding the harmonica.

“You are forgetting your souvenir, Captain Muller,” she said.

Historians of the social life of the later Roman Empire speak of a
certain young man of Ariminum, who would jump into rivers and swim in
‘em. When his friends said, ‘You fish!’ he would answer, ‘Oh, pish!
Fish can’t swim like me, they’ve no vim in ‘em.’

Just such another was George Barnert Callender.

On land, in his land clothes, George was a young man who excited little
remark. He looked very much like other young men. He was much about the
ordinary height. His carriage suggested the possession of an ordinary
amount of physical strength. Such was George–on shore. But remove his
clothes, drape him in a bathing-suit, and insert him in the water, and
instantly, like the gentleman in The Tempest, he ’suffered a
sea-change into something rich and strange.’ Other men puffed, snorted,
and splashed. George passed through the ocean with the silent dignity of
a torpedo. Other men swallowed water, here a mouthful, there a pint,
anon, maybe, a quart or so, and returned to the shore like foundering
derelicts. George’s mouth had all the exclusiveness of a fashionable
club. His breast-stroke was a thing to see and wonder at. When he did
the crawl, strong men gasped. When he swam on his back, you felt that
that was the only possible method of progression.

George came to Marvis Bay at about five o’clock one evening in July.
Marvis Bay has a well-established reputation as a summer resort, and,
while not perhaps in every respect the paradise which the excitable
writer of the local guide-book asserts it to be, on the whole it earns
its reputation. Its sands are smooth and firm, sloping almost
imperceptibly into the ocean. There is surf for those who like it, and
smoother water beyond for those whose ideals in bathing are not
confined to jumping up and down on a given jelly-fish. At the northern
end of the beach there is a long pier. It was to this that George made
his way on his arrival.

It was pleasant on the pier. Once you had passed the initial zareba of
fruit stands, souvenir stands, ice-cream stands, and the lair of the
enthusiast whose aim in life it was to sell you picture post-cards, and
had won through to the long walk where the seats were, you were
practically alone with Nature. At this hour of the day the place was
deserted; George had it to himself. He strolled slowly along. The water
glittered under the sun-rays, breaking into a flurry of white foam as
it reached the beach. A cool breeze blew. The whole scenic arrangements
were a great improvement on the stuffy city he had left. Not that
George had come to Marvis Bay with the single aim of finding an
antidote to metropolitan stuffiness. There was a more important reason.
In three days Marvis Bay was to be the scene of the production of
Fate’s Footballs, a comedy in four acts by G. Barnert Callender.
For George, though you would not have suspected it from his exterior,
was one of those in whose cerebra the grey matter splashes restlessly
about, producing strong curtains and crisp dialogue. The company was
due at Marvis Bay on the following evening for the last spasm of
rehearsals.

George’s mind, as he paced the pier, was divided between the beauties
of Nature and the forthcoming crisis in his affairs in the ratio of
one-eighth to the former and seven-eighths to the latter. At the moment
when he had left London, thoroughly disgusted with the entire
theatrical world in general and the company which was rehearsing
Fate’s Footballs in particular, rehearsals had just reached that
stage of brisk delirium when the author toys with his bottle of poison
and the stage-manager becomes icily polite. The Footpills–as
Arthur Mifflin, the leading juvenile in the great play, insisted upon
calling it, much to George’s disapproval–was his first piece. Never
before had he been in one of those kitchens where many cooks prepare,
and sometimes spoil, the theatrical broth. Consequently the chaos
seemed to him unique. Had he been a more experienced dramatist, he would
have said to himself, ‘Twas ever thus.’ As it was, what he said to
himself–and others–was more forcible.

He was trying to dismiss the whole thing from his mind–a feat which
had hitherto proved beyond his powers–when Fate, in an unusually
kindly mood, enabled him to do so in a flash by presenting to his
jaundiced gaze what, on consideration, he decided was the most
beautiful girl he had ever seen. ‘When a man’s afraid,’ shrewdly sings
the bard, ‘a beautiful maid is a cheering sight to see’. In the present
instance the sight acted on George like a tonic. He forgot that the lady
to whom an injudicious management had assigned the role of heroine in
Fate’s Footballs invariably–no doubt from the best motives–omitted
to give the cynical roue his cue for the big speech in Act III
His mind no longer dwelt on the fact that Arthur Mifflin, an estimable
person in private life, and one who had been a friend of his at
Cambridge, preferred to deliver the impassioned lines of the great
renunciation scene in a manner suggesting a small boy (and a sufferer
from nasal catarrh at that) speaking a piece at a Sunday-school treat.
The recollection of the hideous depression and gloom which the leading
comedian had radiated in great clouds fled from him like some grisly
nightmare before the goddess of day. Every cell in his brain was
occupied, to the exclusion of all other thoughts, by the girl swimming
in the water below.

She swam well. His practised eye saw that. Her strong, easy strokes
carried her swiftly over the swell of the waves. He stared, transfixed.
He was a well-brought-up young man, and he knew how ill-bred it was to
stare; but this was a special occasion. Ordinary rules of conventional
etiquette could not apply to a case like this. He stared. More, he
gaped. As the girl passed on into the shadow of the pier he leaned
farther over the rail, and his neck extended in joints like a
telescope.

At this point the girl turned to swim on her back. Her eyes met his.
Hers were deep and clear; his, bulging. For what seemed an eternity to
George, she continued to look at him. Then, turning over again, she
shot past under the pier.

George’s neck was now at its full stretch. No power of will or muscle
could add another yard to it. Realizing this, he leaned farther over
the rail, and farther still. His hat slid from his hand. He grabbed at
it, and, overbalancing, fell with a splash into the water.

Now, in ordinary circumstances, to fall twelve feet into the ocean with
all his clothes on would have incommoded George little. He would hardly
have noticed it. He would have swum to shore with merely a feeling of
amused self-reproach akin to that of the man who absent-mindedly walks
into a lamp-post in the street. When, therefore, he came to the
surface he prepared without agitation to strike out in his usual bold
fashion. At this moment, however, two hands, grasping him beneath the
arms, lifted his head still farther from the waves, and a voice in his
ear said, ‘Keep still; don’t struggle. There’s no danger.’

George did not struggle. His brain, working with the cool rapidity of a
buzz-saw in an ice-box, had planned a line of action. Few things are
more difficult in this world for a young man than the securing of an
introduction to the right girl under just the right conditions. When he
is looking his best he is presented to her in the midst of a crowd, and
is swept away after a rapid hand-shake. When there is no crowd he has
toothache, or the sun has just begun to make his nose peel. Thousands
of young lives have been saddened in this manner.

How different was George’s case! By this simple accident, he reflected,
as, helping the good work along with an occasional surreptitious
leg-stroke, he was towed shorewards, there had been formed an
acquaintanceship, if nothing more, which could not lightly be broken. A
girl who has saved a man from drowning cannot pass him by next day with
a formal bow. And what a girl, too! There had been a time, in extreme
youth, when his feminine ideal was the sort of girl who has fuzzy,
golden hair, and drops things. Indeed in his first year at the
University he had said–and written–as much to one of the type, the
episode concluding with a strong little drama, in which a wrathful,
cheque-signing father had starred, supported by a subdued, misogynistic
son. Which things, aided by the march of time, had turned George’s
tastes towards the healthy, open-air girl, who did things instead of
dropping them.

The pleasantest functions must come to an end sooner or later; and in
due season George felt his heels grate on the sand. His preserver
loosed her hold. They stood up and faced each other. George began to
express his gratitude as best he could–it was not easy to find neat,
convincing sentences on the spur of the moment–but she cut him short.

‘Of course, it was nothing. Nothing at all,’ she said, brushing the
sea-water from her eyes. ‘It was just lucky I happened to be there.’

‘It was splendid,’ said the infatuated dramatist. ‘It was magnificent.
It–’

He saw that she was smiling.

‘You’re very wet,’ she said.

George glanced down at his soaked clothes. It had been a nice suit
once.

‘Hadn’t you better hurry back and change into something dry?’

Looking round about him, George perceived that sundry of the
inquisitive were swooping down, with speculation in their eyes. It was
time to depart.

‘Have you far to go?’

‘Not far. I’m staying at the Beach View Hotel.’

‘Why, so am I. I hope we shall meet again.’

‘We shall,’ said George confidently.

‘How did you happen to fall in?’

‘I was–er–I was looking at something in the water.’

‘I thought you were,’ said the girl, quietly.

George blushed.

‘I know,’ he said, ‘it was abominably rude of me to stare like that;
but–’

‘You should learn to swim,’ interrupted the girl. ‘I can’t understand
why every boy in the country isn’t made to learn to swim before he’s
ten years old. And it isn’t a bit difficult, really. I could teach you
in a week.’

The struggle between George and George’s conscience was brief. The
conscience, weak by nature and flabby from long want of exercise, had
no sort of chance from the start.

‘I wish you would,’ said George. And with those words he realized that
he had definitely committed himself to his hypocritical role. Till
that moment explanation would have been difficult, but possible. Now it
was impossible.

‘I will,’ said the girl. ‘I’ll start tomorrow if you like.’ She waded
into the water.

‘We’ll talk it over at the hotel,’ she said, hastily. ‘Here comes a
crowd of horrid people. I’m going to swim out again.’

She hurried into deeper water, while George, turning, made his way
through a growing throng of goggling spectators. Of the fifteen who got
within speaking distance of him, six told him that he was wet. The
other nine asked him if he had fallen.

       *       *       *       *       *

Her name was Vaughan, and she was visiting Marvis Bay in company with
an aunt. So much George ascertained from the management of the hotel.
Later, after dinner, meeting both ladies on the esplanade, he gleaned
further information–to wit, that her first name was Mary, that her
aunt was glad to make his acquaintance, liked Marvis Bay but preferred
Trouville, and thought it was getting a little chilly and would go
indoors.

The elimination of the third factor had a restorative effect upon
George’s conversation, which had begun to languish. In feminine society
as a rule he was apt to be constrained, but with Mary Vaughan it was
different. Within a couple of minutes he was pouring out his troubles.
The cue-withholding leading lady, the stick-like Mifflin, the funereal
comedian–up they all came, and she, gently sympathetic, was
endeavouring, not without success, to prove to him that things were not
so bad as they seemed.

‘It’s sure to be all right on the night,’ she said.

How rare is the combination of beauty and intelligence! George thought
he had never heard such a clear-headed, well-expressed remark.

‘I suppose it will,’ he said, ‘but they were very bad when I left.
Mifflin, for instance. He seems to think Nature intended him for a
Napoleon of Advertising. He has a bee in his bonnet about booming the
piece. Sits up at nights, when he ought to be sleeping or studying his
part, thinking out new schemes for advertising the show. And the
comedian. His speciality is drawing me aside and asking me to write in
new scenes for him. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I just came away
and left them to fight it out among themselves.’

‘I’m sure you have no need to worry. A play with such a good story is
certain to succeed.’

George had previously obliged with a brief description of the plot of
The Footpills.

‘Did you like the story?’ he said, tenderly.

‘I thought it was fine.’

‘How sympathetic you are!’ cooed George, glutinously, edging a little
closer. ‘Do you know–’

‘Shall we be going back to the hotel?’ said the girl.

       *       *       *       *       *

Those noisome creatures, the hired murderers of Fate’s Footpills,
descended upon Marvis Bay early next afternoon, and George, meeting
them at the station, in reluctant pursuance of a promise given to
Arthur Mifflin, felt moodily that, if only they could make their
acting one-half as full of colour as their clothes, the play would be
one of the most pronounced successes of modern times. In the forefront
gleamed, like the white plumes of Navarre, the light flannel suit of
Arthur Mifflin, the woodenest juvenile in captivity.

His woodenness was, however, confined to stage rehearsals. It may be
mentioned that, once the run of a piece had begun, he was sufficiently
volatile, and in private life he was almost excessively so–a fact
which had been noted at an early date by the keen-eyed authorities of
his University, the discovery leading to his tearing himself away from
Alma Mater by request with some suddenness. He was a long, slender
youth, with green eyes, jet-black hair, and a passionate fondness for
the sound of his own voice.

‘Well, here we are,’ he said, kicking breezily at George’s leg with his
cane.

‘I saw you,’ said George, coldly, side-stepping.

‘The whole team,’ continued Mr Mifflin; ‘all bright, bonny, and trained
to the minute.’

‘What happened after I left?’ George asked. ‘Has anybody begun to act
yet? Or are they waiting till the dress-rehearsal?’

‘The rehearsals,’ admitted Mr Mifflin, handsomely, ‘weren’t perfect;
but you wait. It’ll be all right on the night.’

George thought he had never heard such a futile, vapid remark.

‘Besides,’ said Mr Mifflin, ‘I have an idea which will make the show.
Lend me your ear–both ears. You shall have them back. Tell me: what
pulls people into a theatre? A good play? Sometimes. But failing that,
as in the present case, what? Fine acting by the leading juvenile? We
have that, but it is not enough. No, my boy; advertisement is the
thing. Look at all these men on the beach. Are they going to roll in of
their own free wills to see a play like The Footpills? Not on
your life. About the time the curtain rises every man of them will be
sitting in his own private corner of the beach–’

‘How many corners do you think the beach has?’

‘Gazing into a girl’s eyes, singing, “Shine on, thou harvest moon”, and
telling her how his boss is practically dependent on his advice. You
know.’

‘I don’t,’ said George, coldly.

‘Unless,’ proceeded Mr Mifflin, ‘we advertise. And by advertise, I
mean advertise in the right way. We have a Press-agent, but for all the
good he does he might be back on the old farm, gathering in the hay.
Luckily for us, I am among those present. I have brains, I have
resource. What’s that?’

‘I said nothing.’

‘I thought you did. Well, I have an idea which will drag these people
like a magnet. I thought it out coming down in the train.’

‘What is it?’

‘I’ll tell you later. There are a few details to be worked upon first.
Meanwhile, let us trickle to the sea-front and take a sail in one of
those boats. I am at my best in a boat. I rather fancy Nature intended
me for a Viking.’

Matters having been arranged with the financier to whom the boat
belonged, they set forth. Mr Mifflin, having remarked, ‘Yo-ho!’ in a
meditative voice, seated himself at the helm, somewhat saddened by his
failure to borrow a quid of tobacco from the Ocean Beauty’s
proprietor. For, as he justly observed, without properties and make-up,
where were you? George, being skilled in the ways of boats, was in
charge of the sheet. The summer day had lost its oppressive heat. The
sun no longer beat down on the face of the waters. A fresh breeze had
sprung up. George, manipulating the sheet automatically, fell into a
reverie. A moment comes in the life of every man when an inward voice
whispers to him, ‘This is The One!’ In George’s case the voice had not
whispered; it had shouted. From now onward there could be but one woman
in the world for him. From now onwards–The Ocean Beauty gave a
sudden plunge. George woke up.

‘What the deuce are you doing with that tiller?’ he inquired.

‘My gentle somnambulist,’ said Mr Mifflin, aggrieved, ‘I was doing
nothing with this tiller. We will now form a commission to inquire into
what you were doing with that sheet. Were you asleep?’

‘My fault,’ said George; ‘I was thinking.’

‘If you must break the habit of a lifetime,’ said Mr Mifflin,
complainingly, ‘I wish you would wait till we get ashore. You nearly
upset us.’

‘It shan’t happen again. They are tricky, these sailing boats–turn
over in a second. Whatever you do, don’t get her broadside on. There’s
more breeze out here than I thought there was.’

Mr Mifflin uttered a startled exclamation.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked George.

‘Just like a flash,’ said Mr Mifflin, complacently. ‘It’s always the
way with me. Give me time, and the artistic idea is bound to come. Just
some little thought, some little, apparently obvious, idea which stamps
the man of genius. It beats me why I didn’t think of it before. Why, of
course, a costume piece with a male star is a hundred times more
effective.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I see now,’ continued Mr Mifflin, ‘that there was a flaw in my
original plan. My idea was this. We were talking in the train about
the bathing down here, and Jane happened to say she could swim some,
and it suddenly came to me.’

Jane was the leading woman, she who omitted to give cues.

‘I said to myself, “George is a sportsman. He will be delighted to do
a little thing like that”.’

‘Like to do what?’

‘Why, rescue Jane.’

‘What!’

‘She and you,’ said Mr Mifflin, ‘were to go in swimming together,
while I waited on the sands, holding our bone-headed Press-agent on a
leash. About a hundred yards from the shore up go her arms. Piercing
scream. Agitated crowds on the beach. What is the matter? What has
happened? A touch of cramp. Will she be drowned? No! G. Barnert
Callender, author of Fate’s Footballs, which opens at the Beach
Theatre on Monday evening next, at eight-fifteen sharp, will save her.
See! He has her. He is bringing her in. She is safe. How pleased her
mother will be! And the public, what a bit of luck for them! They will
be able to see her act at eight-fifteen sharp on Monday after all. Back
you come to the shore. Cheering crowds. Weeping women. Strong
situation. I unleash the Press-agent, and off he shoots, in time to get
the story into the evening paper. It was a great idea, but I see now
there were one or two flaws in it.’

‘You do, do you?’ said George.

‘It occurs to me on reflection that after all you wouldn’t have agreed
to it. A something, I don’t know what, which is lacking in your nature,
would have made you reject the scheme.’

‘I’m glad that occurred to you.’

‘And a far greater flaw was that it was too altruistic. It boomed you
and it boomed Jane, but I didn’t get a thing out of it. My revised
scheme is a thousand times better in every way.’

‘Don’t say you have another.’

‘I have. And,’ added Mr Mifflin, with modest pride, ‘it is a winner.
This time I unhesitatingly assert that I have the goods. In about one
minute from now you will hear me exclaim, in a clear musical voice, the
single word, “Jump!” That is your cue to leap over the side as quick as
you can move, for at that precise moment this spanking craft is going
to capsize.’

George spun round in his seat. Mr Mifflin’s face was shining with
kindly enthusiasm. The shore was at least two hundred yards away, and
that morning he had had his first swimming-lesson.

‘A movement of the tiller will do it. These accidents are common
objects of the seashore. I may mention that I can swim just enough to
keep myself afloat; so it’s up to you. I wouldn’t do this for everyone,
but, seeing that we were boys together–Are you ready?’

‘Stop!’ cried George. ‘Don’t do it! Listen!’

‘Are you ready?’

The Ocean Beauty gave a plunge.

‘You lunatic! Listen to me. It–’

‘Jump!’ said Mr Mifflin.

George came to the surface some yards from the overturned boat, and,
looking round for Mr Mifflin, discovered that great thinker treading
water a few feet away.

‘Get to work, George,’ he remarked.

It is not easy to shake one’s fist at a man when in deep water, but
George managed it.

‘For twopence,’ he cried, ‘I’d leave you to look after yourself.’

‘You can do better than that,’ said Mr Mifflin. ‘I’ll give you
threepence to tow me in. Hurry up. It’s cold.’

In gloomy silence George gripped him by the elbows. Mr Mifflin looked
over his shoulder.

‘We shall have a good house,’ he said. ‘The stalls are full already,
and the dress-circle’s filling. Work away, George, you’re doing fine.
This act is going to be a scream from start to finish.’

With pleasant conversation he endeavoured to while away the monotony of
the journey; but George made no reply. He was doing some rapid
thinking. With ordinary luck, he felt bitterly, all would have been
well. He could have gone on splashing vigorously under his teacher’s
care for a week, gradually improving till he emerged into a reasonably
proficient swimmer. But now! In an age of miracles he might have
explained away his present performance; but how was he to–And then
there came to him an idea–simple, as all great ideas are, but
magnificent.

He stopped and trod water.

‘Tired?’ said Mr Mifflin. ‘Well, take a rest,’ he added, kindly, ‘take
a rest. No need to hurry.’

‘Look here,’ said George, ‘this piece is going to be recast. We’re
going to exchange parts. You’re rescuing me. See? Never mind why. I
haven’t time to explain it to you now. Do you understand?’

‘No,’ said Mr Mifflin.

‘I’ll get behind you and push you; but don’t forget, when we get to the
shore, that you’ve done the rescuing.’

Mr Mifflin pondered.

‘Is this wise?’ he said. ‘It is a strong part, the rescuer, but I’m not
sure the other wouldn’t suit my style better. The silent hand-grip, the
catch in the voice. You want a practised actor for that. I don’t think
you’d be up to it, George.’

‘Never mind about me. That’s how it’s going to be.’

Mr Mifflin pondered once more.

‘No,’ he said at length, ‘it wouldn’t do. You mean well, George, but it
would kill the show. We’ll go on as before.’

‘Will we?’ said George, unpleasantly. ‘Would you like to know what I’m
going to do to you, then? I’m going to hit you very hard under the jaw,
and I’m going to take hold of your neck and squeeze it till you lose
consciousness, and then I’m going to drag you to the beach and tell
people I had to hit you because you lost your head and struggled.’

Mr Mifflin pondered for the third time.

‘You are?’ he said.

‘I am,’ said George.

‘Then,’ said Mr Mifflin, cordially, ’say no more. I take your point. My
objections are removed. But,’ he concluded, ‘this is the last time I
come bathing with you, George.’

Mr Mifflin’s artistic misgivings as to his colleague’s ability to
handle so subtle a part as that of rescuee were more than justified on
their arrival. A large and interested audience had collected by the
time they reached the shore, an audience to which any artist should
have been glad to play; but George, forcing his way through, hurried to
the hotel without attempting to satisfy them. Not a single silent
hand-shake did he bestow on his rescuer. There was no catch in his voice
as he made the one remark which he did make–to a man with whiskers who
asked him if the boat had upset. As an exhibition of rapid footwork
his performance was good. In other respects it was poor.

He had just changed his wet clothes–it seemed to him that he had
been doing nothing but change his wet clothes since he had come to
Marvis Bay–when Mr Mifflin entered in a bathrobe.

‘They lent me this downstairs,’ he explained, ‘while they dried my
clothes. They would do anything for me. I’m the popular hero. My boy,
you made the mistake of your life when you threw up the rescuer part.
It has all the fat. I see that now. The rescuer plays the other man off
the stage every time. I’ve just been interviewed by the fellow on the
local newspaper. He’s correspondent to a couple of London papers. The
country will ring with this thing. I’ve told them all the parts I’ve
ever played and my favourite breakfast food. There’s a man coming up to
take my photograph tomorrow. Footpills stock has gone up with a
run. Wait till Monday and see what sort of a house we shall draw. By
the way, the reporter fellow said one funny thing. He asked if you
weren’t the same man who was rescued yesterday by a girl. I said of
course not–that you had only come down yesterday. But he stuck to it
that you were.’

‘He was quite right.’

‘What!’

‘I was.’

Mr Mifflin sat down on the bed.

‘This fellow fell off the pier, and a girl brought him in.’

George nodded.

‘And that was you?’

George nodded.

Mr Mifflin’s eyes opened wide.

‘It’s the heat,’ he declared, finally. ‘That and the worry of
rehearsals. I expect a doctor could give the technical name for it.
It’s a what-do-you-call-it–an obsession. You often hear of cases.
Fellows who are absolutely sane really, but cracked on one particular
subject. Some of them think they’re teapots and things. You’ve got a
craving for being rescued from drowning. What happens, old man? Do you
suddenly get the delusion that you can’t swim? No, it can’t be that,
because you were doing all the swimming for the two of us just now. I
don’t know, though. Maybe you didn’t realize that you were swimming?’

George finished lacing his shoe and looked up.

‘Listen,’ he said; ‘I’ll talk slow, so that you can understand. Suppose
you fell off a pier, and a girl took a great deal of trouble to get you
to the shore, would you say, “Much obliged, but you needn’t have been
so officious. I can swim perfectly well?”‘

Mr Mifflin considered this point. Intelligence began to dawn in his
face. ‘There is more in this than meets the eye,’ he said. ‘Tell me
all.’

‘This morning’–George’s voice grew dreamy–’she gave me a
swimming-lesson. She thought it was my first. Don’t cackle like that.
There’s nothing to laugh at.’

Mr Mifflin contradicted this assertion.

‘There is you,’ he said, simply. ‘This should be a lesson to you,
George. Avoid deceit. In future be simple and straightforward. Take me
as your model. You have managed to scrape through this time. Don’t risk
it again. You are young. There is still time to make a fresh start. It
only needs will-power. Meanwhile, lend me something to wear. They are
going to take a week drying my clothes.’

       *       *       *       *       *

There was a rehearsal at the Beach Theatre that evening. George
attended it in a spirit of resignation and left it in one of elation.
Three days had passed since his last sight of the company at work, and
in those three days, apparently, the impossible had been achieved.
There was a snap and go about the piece now. The leading lady had at
length mastered that cue, and gave it out with bell-like clearness.
Arthur Mifflin, as if refreshed and braced by his salt-water bath, was
infusing a welcome vigour into his part. And even the comedian, George
could not help admitting, showed signs of being on the eve of becoming
funny. It was with a light heart and a light step that he made his way
back to the hotel.

In the veranda were a number of basket-chairs. Only one was occupied.
He recognized the occupant.

‘I’ve just come back from a rehearsal,’ he said, seating himself beside
her.

‘Really?’

‘The whole thing is different,’ he went on, buoyantly. ‘They know their
lines. They act as if they meant it. Arthur Mifflin’s fine. The
comedian’s improved till you wouldn’t know him. I’m awfully pleased
about it.’

‘Really?’

George felt damped.

‘I thought you might be pleased, too,’ he said, lamely.

‘Of course I am glad that things are going well. Your accident this
afternoon was lucky, too, in a way, was it not? It will interest people
in the play.’

‘You heard about it?’

‘I have been hearing about nothing else.’

‘Curious it happening so soon after–’

‘And so soon before the production of your play. Most curious.’

There was a silence. George began to feel uneasy. You could never tell
with women, of course. It might be nothing; but it looked uncommonly as
if–

He changed the subject.

‘How is your aunt this evening, Miss Vaughan?’

‘Quite well, thank you. She went in. She found it a little chilly.’

George heartily commended her good sense. A little chilly did not begin
to express it. If the girl had been like this all the evening, he
wondered her aunt had not caught pneumonia. He tried again.

‘Will you have time to give me another lesson tomorrow?’ he said.

She turned on him.

‘Mr Callender, don’t you think this farce has gone on long enough?’

Once, in the dear, dead days beyond recall, when but a happy child,
George had been smitten unexpectedly by a sportive playmate a bare
half-inch below his third waistcoat-button. The resulting emotions
were still green in his memory. As he had felt then, so did he feel
now.

‘Miss Vaughan! I don’t understand.’

‘Really?’

‘What have I done?’

‘You have forgotten how to swim.’

A warm and prickly sensation began to manifest itself in the region of
George’s forehead.

‘Forgotten!’

‘Forgotten. And in a few months. I thought I had seen you before, and
today I remembered. It was just about this time last year that I saw
you at Hayling Island swimming perfectly wonderfully, and today you are
taking lessons. Can you explain it?’

A frog-like croak was the best George could do in that line.

She went on.

‘Business is business, I suppose, and a play has to be advertised
somehow. But–’

‘You don’t think–’ croaked George.

‘I should have thought it rather beneath the dignity of an author; but,
of course, you know your own business best. Only I object to being a
conspirator. I am sorry for your sake that yesterday’s episode
attracted so little attention. Today it was much more satisfactory,
wasn’t it? I am so glad.’

There was a massive silence for about a hundred years.

‘I think I’ll go for a short stroll,’ said George.

       *       *       *       *       *

Scarcely had he disappeared when the long form of Mr Mifflin emerged
from the shadow beyond the veranda.

‘Could you spare me a moment?’

The girl looked up. The man was a stranger. She inclined her head
coldly.

‘My name is Mifflin,’ said the other, dropping comfortably into the
chair which had held the remains of George.

The girl inclined her head again more coldly; but it took more than
that to embarrass Mr Mifflin. Dynamite might have done it, but not
coldness.

‘The Mifflin,’ he explained, crossing his legs. ‘I overheard
your conversation just now.’

‘You were listening?’ said the girl, scornfully.

‘For all I was worth,’ said Mr Mifflin. ‘These things are very much a
matter of habit. For years I have been playing in pieces where I have
had to stand concealed up stage, drinking in the private conversation
of other people, and the thing has become a second nature to me.
However, leaving that point for a moment, what I wish to say is that I
heard you–unknowingly, of course–doing a good man a grave injustice.’

‘Mr Callender could have defended himself if he had wished.’

‘I was not referring to George. The injustice was to myself.’

‘To you?’

‘I was the sole author of this afternoon’s little drama. I like George,
but I cannot permit him to pose in any way as my collaborator. George
has old-fashioned ideas. He does not keep abreast of the times. He can
write plays, but he needs a man with a big brain to boom them for him.
So, far from being entitled to any credit for this afternoon’s work, he
was actually opposed to it.’

‘Then why did he pretend you had saved him?’ she demanded.

‘George’s,’ said Mr Mifflin, ‘is essentially a chivalrous nature. At
any crisis demanding a display of the finer feelings he is there with
the goods before you can turn round. His friends frequently wrangle
warmly as to whether he is most like Bayard, Lancelot, or Happy
Hooligan. Some say one, some the other. It seems that yesterday you
saved him from a watery grave without giving him time to explain that
he could save himself. What could he do? He said to himself, “She must
never know!” and acted accordingly. But let us leave George, and
return–’

‘Thank you, Mr Mifflin.’ There was a break in her laugh. ‘I don’t think
there is any necessity. I think I understand now. It was very clever of
you.’

‘It was more than cleverness,’ said Mr Mifflin, rising. ‘It was
genius.’

       *       *       *       *       *

A white form came to meet George as he re-entered the veranda.

‘Mr Callender!’

He stopped.

‘I’m very sorry I said such horrid things to you just now. I have been
talking to Mr Mifflin, and I want to say I think it was ever so nice
and thoughtful of you. I understand everything.’

George did not, by a good deal; but he understood sufficient for his
needs. He shot forward as if some strong hand were behind him with a
needle.

‘Miss Vaughan–Mary–I–’

‘I think I hear aunt calling,’ said she.

       *       *       *       *       *

But a benevolent Providence has ordained that aunts cannot call for
ever; and it is on record that when George entered his box on the two
hundredth night of that great London success, Fate’s Footballs,
he did not enter it alone.

Have you ever thought about–and, when I say thought about, I mean
really carefully considered the question of–the coolness, the cheek,
or, if you prefer it, the gall with which Woman, as a sex, fairly
bursts? I have, by Jove! But then I’ve had it thrust on my
notice, by George, in a way I should imagine has happened to pretty
few fellows. And the limit was reached by that business of the
Yeardsley “Venus.”

To make you understand the full what-d’you-call-it of the situation, I
shall have to explain just how matters stood between Mrs. Yeardsley and
myself.

When I first knew her she was Elizabeth Shoolbred. Old Worcestershire
family; pots of money; pretty as a picture. Her brother Bill was at
Oxford with me.

I loved Elizabeth Shoolbred. I loved her, don’t you know. And there was
a time, for about a week, when we were engaged to be married. But just
as I was beginning to take a serious view of life and study furniture
catalogues and feel pretty solemn when the restaurant orchestra played
“The Wedding Glide,” I’m hanged if she didn’t break it off, and a month
later she was married to a fellow of the name of Yeardsley–Clarence
Yeardsley, an artist.

What with golf, and billiards, and a bit of racing, and fellows at the
club rallying round and kind of taking me out of myself, as it were, I
got over it, and came to look on the affair as a closed page in the
book of my life, if you know what I mean. It didn’t seem likely to me
that we should meet again, as she and Clarence had settled down in the
country somewhere and never came to London, and I’m bound to own that,
by the time I got her letter, the wound had pretty well healed, and I
was to a certain extent sitting up and taking nourishment. In fact, to
be absolutely honest, I was jolly thankful the thing had ended as it
had done.

This letter I’m telling you about arrived one morning out of a blue
sky, as it were. It ran like this:

“MY DEAR OLD REGGIE,–What ages it seems since I saw anything of
you. How are you? We have settled down here in the most perfect old
house, with a lovely garden, in the middle of delightful country.
Couldn’t you run down here for a few days? Clarence and I would be
so glad to see you. Bill is here, and is most anxious to meet you
again. He was speaking of you only this morning. Do come.
Wire your train, and I will send the car to meet you.
–Yours most sincerely,

ELIZABETH YEARDSLEY.

“P.S.–We can give you new milk and fresh eggs. Think of that!

“P.P.S.–Bill says our billiard-table is one of the best he has
ever played on.

Well, a fellow comes down to breakfast one morning, with a bit of a
head on, and finds a letter like that from a girl who might quite
easily have blighted his life! It rattled me rather, I must confess.

However, that bit about the golf settled me. I knew Bill knew what he
was talking about, and, if he said the course was so topping, it must
be something special. So I went.

Old Bill met me at the station with the car. I hadn’t come across him
for some months, and I was glad to see him again. And he apparently was
glad to see me.

“Thank goodness you’ve come,” he said, as we drove off. “I was just
about at my last grip.”

“What’s the trouble, old scout?” I asked.

“If I had the artistic what’s-its-name,” he went on, “if the mere
mention of pictures didn’t give me the pip, I dare say it wouldn’t be
so bad. As it is, it’s rotten!”

“Pictures?”

“Pictures. Nothing else is mentioned in this household. Clarence is an
artist. So is his father. And you know yourself what Elizabeth is like
when one gives her her head?”

I remembered then–it hadn’t come back to me before–that most of my
time with Elizabeth had been spent in picture-galleries. During the
period when I had let her do just what she wanted to do with me, I had
had to follow her like a dog through gallery after gallery, though
pictures are poison to me, just as they are to old Bill. Somehow it had
never struck me that she would still be going on in this way after
marrying an artist. I should have thought that by this time the mere
sight of a picture would have fed her up. Not so, however, according to
old Bill.

“They talk pictures at every meal,” he said. “I tell you, it makes a
chap feel out of it. How long are you down for?”

“A few days.”

“Take my tip, and let me send you a wire from London. I go there
to-morrow. I promised to play against the Scottish. The idea was
that I was to come back after the match. But you couldn’t get me
back with a lasso.”

I tried to point out the silver lining.

“But, Bill, old scout, your sister says there’s a most corking links
near here.”

He turned and stared at me, and nearly ran us into the bank.

“You don’t mean honestly she said that?”

“She said you said it was better than St. Andrews.”

“So I did. Was that all she said I said?”

“Well, wasn’t it enough?”

“She didn’t happen to mention that I added the words, ‘I don’t think’?”

“No, she forgot to tell me that.”

“It’s the worst course in Great Britain.”

I felt rather stunned, don’t you know. Whether it’s a bad habit to have
got into or not, I can’t say, but I simply can’t do without my daily
allowance of golf when I’m not in London.

I took another whirl at the silver lining.

“We’ll have to take it out in billiards,” I said. “I’m glad the table’s
good.”

“It depends what you call good. It’s half-size, and there’s a seven-inch
cut just out of baulk where Clarence’s cue slipped. Elizabeth has mended
it with pink silk. Very smart and dressy it looks, but it doesn’t improve
the thing as a billiard-table.”

“But she said you said—-”

“Must have been pulling your leg.”

We turned in at the drive gates of a good-sized house standing well
back from the road. It looked black and sinister in the dusk, and I
couldn’t help feeling, you know, like one of those Johnnies you read
about in stories who are lured to lonely houses for rummy purposes and
hear a shriek just as they get there. Elizabeth knew me well enough to
know that a specially good golf course was a safe draw to me. And she
had deliberately played on her knowledge. What was the game? That was
what I wanted to know. And then a sudden thought struck me which brought
me out in a cold perspiration. She had some girl down here and was going
to have a stab at marrying me off. I’ve often heard that young married
women are all over that sort of thing. Certainly she had said there was
nobody at the house but Clarence and herself and Bill and Clarence’s
father, but a woman who could take the name of St. Andrews in vain as
she had done wouldn’t be likely to stick at a trifle.

“Bill, old scout,” I said, “there aren’t any frightful girls or any rot
of that sort stopping here, are there?”

“Wish there were,” he said. “No such luck.”

As we pulled up at the front door, it opened, and a woman’s figure
appeared.

“Have you got him, Bill?” she said, which in my present frame of mind
struck me as a jolly creepy way of putting it. The sort of thing Lady
Macbeth might have said to Macbeth, don’t you know.

“Do you mean me?” I said.

She came down into the light. It was Elizabeth, looking just the same
as in the old days.

“Is that you, Reggie? I’m so glad you were able to come. I was afraid
you might have forgotten all about it. You know what you are. Come
along in and have some tea.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Have you ever been turned down by a girl who afterwards married and
then been introduced to her husband? If so you’ll understand how I felt
when Clarence burst on me. You know the feeling. First of all, when you
hear about the marriage, you say to yourself, “I wonder what he’s like.”
Then you meet him, and think, “There must be some mistake. She can’t have
preferred this to me!” That’s what I thought, when I set eyes on
Clarence.

He was a little thin, nervous-looking chappie of about thirty-five. His
hair was getting grey at the temples and straggly on top. He wore
pince-nez, and he had a drooping moustache. I’m no Bombardier Wells
myself, but in front of Clarence I felt quite a nut. And Elizabeth,
mind you, is one of those tall, splendid girls who look like princesses.
Honestly, I believe women do it out of pure cussedness.

“How do you do, Mr. Pepper? Hark! Can you hear a mewing cat?” said
Clarence. All in one breath, don’t you know.

“Eh?” I said.

“A mewing cat. I feel sure I hear a mewing cat. Listen!”

While we were listening the door opened, and a white-haired old
gentleman came in. He was built on the same lines as Clarence, but was
an earlier model. I took him correctly, to be Mr. Yeardsley, senior.
Elizabeth introduced us.

“Father,” said Clarence, “did you meet a mewing cat outside? I feel
positive I heard a cat mewing.”

“No,” said the father, shaking his head; “no mewing cat.”

“I can’t bear mewing cats,” said Clarence. “A mewing cat gets on my
nerves!”

“A mewing cat is so trying,” said Elizabeth.

“I dislike mewing cats,” said old Mr. Yeardsley.

That was all about mewing cats for the moment. They seemed to think
they had covered the ground satisfactorily, and they went back to
pictures.

We talked pictures steadily till it was time to dress for dinner. At
least, they did. I just sort of sat around. Presently the subject of
picture-robberies came up. Somebody mentioned the “Monna Lisa,” and
then I happened to remember seeing something in the evening paper, as I
was coming down in the train, about some fellow somewhere having had a
valuable painting pinched by burglars the night before. It was the
first time I had had a chance of breaking into the conversation with
any effect, and I meant to make the most of it. The paper was in the
pocket of my overcoat in the hall. I went and fetched it.

“Here it is,” I said. “A Romney belonging to Sir Bellamy Palmer—-”

They all shouted “What!” exactly at the same time, like a chorus.
Elizabeth grabbed the paper.

“Let me look! Yes. ‘Late last night burglars entered the residence of
Sir Bellamy Palmer, Dryden Park, Midford, Hants—-’”

“Why, that’s near here,” I said. “I passed through Midford—-”

“Dryden Park is only two miles from this house,” said Elizabeth. I
noticed her eyes were sparkling.

“Only two miles!” she said. “It might have been us! It might have been
the ‘Venus’!”

Old Mr. Yeardsley bounded in his chair.

“The ‘Venus’!” he cried.

They all seemed wonderfully excited. My little contribution to the
evening’s chat had made quite a hit.

Why I didn’t notice it before I don’t know, but it was not till Elizabeth
showed it to me after dinner that I had my first look at the Yeardsley
“Venus.” When she led me up to it, and switched on the light, it seemed
impossible that I could have sat right through dinner without noticing
it. But then, at meals, my attention is pretty well riveted on the
foodstuffs. Anyway, it was not till Elizabeth showed it to me that I
was aware of its existence.

She and I were alone in the drawing-room after dinner. Old Yeardsley
was writing letters in the morning-room, while Bill and Clarence were
rollicking on the half-size billiard table with the pink silk tapestry
effects. All, in fact, was joy, jollity, and song, so to speak, when
Elizabeth, who had been sitting wrapped in thought for a bit, bent
towards me and said, “Reggie.”

And the moment she said it I knew something was going to happen. You
know that pre-what-d’you-call-it you get sometimes? Well, I got it
then.

“What-o?” I said nervously.

“Reggie,” she said, “I want to ask a great favour of you.”

“Yes?”

She stooped down and put a log on the fire, and went on, with her back
to me:

“Do you remember, Reggie, once saying you would do anything in the
world for me?”

There! That’s what I meant when I said that about the cheek of Woman as
a sex. What I mean is, after what had happened, you’d have thought she
would have preferred to let the dead past bury its dead, and all that
sort of thing, what?

Mind you, I had said I would do anything in the world for her.
I admit that. But it was a distinctly pre-Clarence remark. He hadn’t
appeared on the scene then, and it stands to reason that a fellow who
may have been a perfect knight-errant to a girl when he was engaged to
her, doesn’t feel nearly so keen on spreading himself in that direction
when she has given him the miss-in-baulk, and gone and married a man
who reason and instinct both tell him is a decided blighter.

I couldn’t think of anything to say but “Oh, yes.”

“There’s something you can do for me now, which will make me
everlastingly grateful.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you know, Reggie,” she said suddenly, “that only a few months ago
Clarence was very fond of cats?”

“Eh! Well, he still seems–er–interested in them, what?”

“Now they get on his nerves. Everything gets on his nerves.”

“Some fellows swear by that stuff you see advertised all over the—-”

“No, that wouldn’t help him. He doesn’t need to take anything. He wants
to get rid of something.”

“I don’t quite fellow. Get rid of something?”

“The ‘Venus,’” said Elizabeth.

She looked up and caught my bulging eye.

“You saw the ‘Venus,’” she said.

“Not that I remember.”

“Well, come into the dining-room.”

We went into the dining-room, and she switched on the lights.

“There,” she said.

On the wall close to the door–that may have been why I hadn’t noticed
it before; I had sat with my back to it–was a large oil-painting. It
was what you’d call a classical picture, I suppose. What I mean is–well,
you know what I mean. All I can say is that it’s funny I hadn’t
noticed it.

“Is that the ‘Venus’?” I said.

She nodded.

“How would you like to have to look at that every time you sat down to
a meal?”

“Well, I don’t know. I don’t think it would affect me much. I’d worry
through all right.”

She jerked her head impatiently.

“But you’re not an artist,” she said. “Clarence is.”

And then I began to see daylight. What exactly was the trouble I didn’t
understand, but it was evidently something to do with the good old
Artistic Temperament, and I could believe anything about that. It
explains everything. It’s like the Unwritten Law, don’t you know,
which you plead in America if you’ve done anything they want to send
you to chokey for and you don’t want to go. What I mean is, if you’re
absolutely off your rocker, but don’t find it convenient to be scooped
into the luny-bin, you simply explain that, when you said you were a
teapot, it was just your Artistic Temperament, and they apologize and
go away. So I stood by to hear just how the A.T. had affected Clarence,
the Cat’s Friend, ready for anything.

And, believe me, it had hit Clarence badly.

It was this way. It seemed that old Yeardsley was an amateur artist and
that this “Venus” was his masterpiece. He said so, and he ought to have
known. Well, when Clarence married, he had given it to him, as a wedding
present, and had hung it where it stood with his own hands. All right so
far, what? But mark the sequel. Temperamental Clarence, being a
professional artist and consequently some streets ahead of the dad at
the game, saw flaws in the “Venus.” He couldn’t stand it at any price.
He didn’t like the drawing. He didn’t like the expression of the face.
He didn’t like the colouring. In fact, it made him feel quite ill to
look at it. Yet, being devoted to his father and wanting to do anything
rather than give him pain, he had not been able to bring himself to
store the thing in the cellar, and the strain of confronting the
picture three times a day had begun to tell on him to such an extent
that Elizabeth felt something had to be done.

“Now you see,” she said.

“In a way,” I said. “But don’t you think it’s making rather heavy
weather over a trifle?”

“Oh, can’t you understand? Look!” Her voice dropped as if she was in
church, and she switched on another light. It shone on the picture next
to old Yeardsley’s. “There!” she said. “Clarence painted that!”

She looked at me expectantly, as if she were waiting for me to swoon,
or yell, or something. I took a steady look at Clarence’s effort. It
was another Classical picture. It seemed to me very much like the other
one.

Some sort of art criticism was evidently expected of me, so I made a
dash at it.

“Er–’Venus’?” I said.

Mark you, Sherlock Holmes would have made the same mistake. On the
evidence, I mean.

“No. ‘Jocund Spring,’” she snapped. She switched off the light. “I see
you don’t understand even now. You never had any taste about pictures.
When we used to go to the galleries together, you would far rather have
been at your club.”

This was so absolutely true, that I had no remark to make. She came up
to me, and put her hand on my arm.

“I’m sorry, Reggie. I didn’t mean to be cross. Only I do want to make you
understand that Clarence is suffering. Suppose–suppose–well, let
us take the case of a great musician. Suppose a great musician had to sit
and listen to a cheap vulgar tune–the same tune–day after day, day after
day, wouldn’t you expect his nerves to break! Well, it’s just like that
with Clarence. Now you see?”

“Yes, but—-”

“But what? Surely I’ve put it plainly enough?”

“Yes. But what I mean is, where do I come in? What do you want me to
do?”

“I want you to steal the ‘Venus.’”

I looked at her.

“You want me to—-?”

“Steal it. Reggie!” Her eyes were shining with excitement. “Don’t you
see? It’s Providence. When I asked you to come here, I had just got the
idea. I knew I could rely on you. And then by a miracle this robbery of
the Romney takes place at a house not two miles away. It removes the
last chance of the poor old man suspecting anything and having his
feelings hurt. Why, it’s the most wonderful compliment to him. Think!
One night thieves steal a splendid Romney; the next the same gang take
his ‘Venus.’ It will be the proudest moment of his life. Do it to-night,
Reggie. I’ll give you a sharp knife. You simply cut the canvas out of
the frame, and it’s done.”

“But one moment,” I said. “I’d be delighted to be of any use to you,
but in a purely family affair like this, wouldn’t it be better–in
fact, how about tackling old Bill on the subject?”

“I have asked Bill already. Yesterday. He refused.”

“But if I’m caught?”

“You can’t be. All you have to do is to take the picture, open one of
the windows, leave it open, and go back to your room.”

It sounded simple enough.

“And as to the picture itself–when I’ve got it?”

“Burn it. I’ll see that you have a good fire in your room.”

“But—-”

She looked at me. She always did have the most wonderful eyes.

“Reggie,” she said; nothing more. Just “Reggie.”

She looked at me.

“Well, after all, if you see what I mean–The days that are no more,
don’t you know. Auld Lang Syne, and all that sort of thing. You follow
me?”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

I don’t know if you happen to be one of those Johnnies who are steeped
in crime, and so forth, and think nothing of pinching diamond necklaces.
If you’re not, you’ll understand that I felt a lot less keen on the job
I’d taken on when I sat in my room, waiting to get busy, than I had done
when I promised to tackle it in the dining-room. On paper it all seemed
easy enough, but I couldn’t help feeling there was a catch somewhere,
and I’ve never known time pass slower. The kick-off was scheduled for
one o’clock in the morning, when the household might be expected to be
pretty sound asleep, but at a quarter to I couldn’t stand it any longer.
I lit the lantern I had taken from Bill’s bicycle, took a grip of my
knife, and slunk downstairs.

The first thing I did on getting to the dining-room was to open the
window. I had half a mind to smash it, so as to give an extra bit of
local colour to the affair, but decided not to on account of the noise.
I had put my lantern on the table, and was just reaching out for it,
when something happened. What it was for the moment I couldn’t have
said. It might have been an explosion of some sort or an earthquake.
Some solid object caught me a frightful whack on the chin. Sparks and
things occurred inside my head and the next thing I remember is feeling
something wet and cold splash into my face, and hearing a voice that
sounded like old Bill’s say, “Feeling better now?”

I sat up. The lights were on, and I was on the floor, with old Bill
kneeling beside me with a soda siphon.

“What happened?” I said.

“I’m awfully sorry, old man,” he said. “I hadn’t a notion it was you. I
came in here, and saw a lantern on the table, and the window open and a
chap with a knife in his hand, so I didn’t stop to make inquiries. I
just let go at his jaw for all I was worth. What on earth do you think
you’re doing? Were you walking in your sleep?”

“It was Elizabeth,” I said. “Why, you know all about it. She said she
had told you.”

“You don’t mean—-”

“The picture. You refused to take it on, so she asked me.”

“Reggie, old man,” he said. “I’ll never believe what they say about
repentance again. It’s a fool’s trick and upsets everything. If I
hadn’t repented, and thought it was rather rough on Elizabeth not to
do a little thing like that for her, and come down here to do it after
all, you wouldn’t have stopped that sleep-producer with your chin. I’m
sorry.”

“Me, too,” I said, giving my head another shake to make certain it was
still on.

“Are you feeling better now?”

“Better than I was. But that’s not saying much.”

“Would you like some more soda-water? No? Well, how about getting this
job finished and going to bed? And let’s be quick about it too. You made
a noise like a ton of bricks when you went down just now, and it’s on
the cards some of the servants may have heard. Toss you who carves.”

“Heads.”

“Tails it is,” he said, uncovering the coin. “Up you get. I’ll hold the
light. Don’t spike yourself on that sword of yours.”

It was as easy a job as Elizabeth had said. Just four quick cuts, and
the thing came out of its frame like an oyster. I rolled it up. Old
Bill had put the lantern on the floor and was at the sideboard,
collecting whisky, soda, and glasses.

“We’ve got a long evening before us,” he said. “You can’t burn a picture
of that size in one chunk. You’d set the chimney on fire. Let’s do the
thing comfortably. Clarence can’t grudge us the stuff. We’ve done him
a bit of good this trip. To-morrow’ll be the maddest, merriest day of
Clarence’s glad New Year. On we go.”

We went up to my room, and sat smoking and yarning away and sipping our
drinks, and every now and then cutting a slice off the picture and
shoving it in the fire till it was all gone. And what with the cosiness
of it and the cheerful blaze, and the comfortable feeling of doing good
by stealth, I don’t know when I’ve had a jollier time since the days
when we used to brew in my study at school.

We had just put the last slice on when Bill sat up suddenly, and
gripped my arm.

“I heard something,” he said.

I listened, and, by Jove, I heard something, too. My room was just over
the dining-room, and the sound came up to us quite distinctly. Stealthy
footsteps, by George! And then a chair falling over.

“There’s somebody in the dining-room,” I whispered.

There’s a certain type of chap who takes a pleasure in positively
chivvying trouble. Old Bill’s like that. If I had been alone, it would
have taken me about three seconds to persuade myself that I hadn’t
really heard anything after all. I’m a peaceful sort of cove, and
believe in living and letting live, and so forth. To old Bill, however,
a visit from burglars was pure jam. He was out of his chair in one
jump.

“Come on,” he said. “Bring the poker.”

I brought the tongs as well. I felt like it. Old Bill collared the
knife. We crept downstairs.

“We’ll fling the door open and make a rush,” said Bill.

“Supposing they shoot, old scout?”

“Burglars never shoot,” said Bill.

Which was comforting provided the burglars knew it.

Old Bill took a grip of the handle, turned it quickly, and in he went.
And then we pulled up sharp, staring.

The room was in darkness except for a feeble splash of light at the
near end. Standing on a chair in front of Clarence’s “Jocund Spring,”
holding a candle in one hand and reaching up with a knife in the other,
was old Mr. Yeardsley, in bedroom slippers and a grey dressing-gown. He
had made a final cut just as we rushed in. Turning at the sound, he
stopped, and he and the chair and the candle and the picture came down
in a heap together. The candle went out.

“What on earth?” said Bill.

I felt the same. I picked up the candle and lit it, and then a most
fearful thing happened. The old man picked himself up, and suddenly
collapsed into a chair and began to cry like a child. Of course, I
could see it was only the Artistic Temperament, but still, believe me,
it was devilish unpleasant. I looked at old Bill. Old Bill looked at
me. We shut the door quick, and after that we didn’t know what to do. I
saw Bill look at the sideboard, and I knew what he was looking for. But
we had taken the siphon upstairs, and his ideas of first-aid stopped
short at squirting soda-water. We just waited, and presently old
Yeardsley switched off, sat up, and began talking with a rush.

“Clarence, my boy, I was tempted. It was that burglary at Dryden Park.
It tempted me. It made it all so simple. I knew you would put it down
to the same gang, Clarence, my boy. I—-”

It seemed to dawn upon him at this point that Clarence was not among
those present.

“Clarence?” he said hesitatingly.

“He’s in bed,” I said.

“In bed! Then he doesn’t know? Even now–Young men, I throw myself
on your mercy. Don’t be hard on me. Listen.” He grabbed at Bill, who
sidestepped. “I can explain everything–everything.”

He gave a gulp.

“You are not artists, you two young men, but I will try to make you
understand, make you realise what this picture means to me. I was two
years painting it. It is my child. I watched it grow. I loved it. It
was part of my life. Nothing would have induced me to sell it. And then
Clarence married, and in a mad moment I gave my treasure to him. You
cannot understand, you two young men, what agonies I suffered. The
thing was done. It was irrevocable. I saw how Clarence valued the
picture. I knew that I could never bring myself to ask him for it back.
And yet I was lost without it. What could I do? Till this evening I
could see no hope. Then came this story of the theft of the Romney from
a house quite close to this, and I saw my way. Clarence would never
suspect. He would put the robbery down to the same band of criminals
who stole the Romney. Once the idea had come, I could not drive it out.
I fought against it, but to no avail. At last I yielded, and crept down
here to carry out my plan. You found me.” He grabbed again, at me this
time, and got me by the arm. He had a grip like a lobster. “Young man,”
he said, “you would not betray me? You would not tell Clarence?”

I was feeling most frightfully sorry for the poor old chap by this
time, don’t you know, but I thought it would be kindest to give it him
straight instead of breaking it by degrees.

“I won’t say a word to Clarence, Mr. Yeardsley,” I said. “I quite
understand your feelings. The Artistic Temperament, and all that sort
of thing. I mean–what? I know. But I’m afraid–Well, look!”

I went to the door and switched on the electric light, and there,
staring him in the face, were the two empty frames. He stood goggling
at them in silence. Then he gave a sort of wheezy grunt.

“The gang! The burglars! They have been here, and they have
taken Clarence’s picture!” He paused. “It might have been mine! My
Venus!” he whispered It was getting most fearfully painful, you know,
but he had to know the truth.

“I’m awfully sorry, you know,” I said. “But it was.”

He started, poor old chap.

“Eh? What do you mean?”

“They did take your Venus.”

“But I have it here.”

I shook my head.

“That’s Clarence’s ‘Jocund Spring,’” I said.

He jumped at it and straightened it out.

“What! What are you talking about? Do you think I don’t know my own
picture–my child–my Venus. See! My own signature in the corner. Can
you read, boy? Look: ‘Matthew Yeardsley.’ This is my picture!”

And–well, by Jove, it was, don’t you know!

       *       *       *       *       *

Well, we got him off to bed, him and his infernal Venus, and we settled
down to take a steady look at the position of affairs. Bill said it was
my fault for getting hold of the wrong picture, and I said it was Bill’s
fault for fetching me such a crack on the jaw that I couldn’t be expected
to see what I was getting hold of, and then there was a pretty massive
silence for a bit.

“Reggie,” said Bill at last, “how exactly do you feel about facing
Clarence and Elizabeth at breakfast?”

“Old scout,” I said. “I was thinking much the same myself.”

“Reggie,” said Bill, “I happen to know there’s a milk-train leaving
Midford at three-fifteen. It isn’t what you’d call a flier. It gets to
London at about half-past nine. Well–er–in the circumstances, how
about it?”

She sprang it on me before breakfast. There in seven words you have a
complete character sketch of my Aunt Agatha. I could go on indefinitely
about brutality and lack of consideration. I merely say that she routed
me out of bed to listen to her painful story somewhere in the small
hours. It can’t have been half past eleven when Jeeves, my man, woke me
out of the dreamless and broke the news:

‘Mrs Gregson to see you, sir.’

I thought she must be walking in her sleep, but I crawled out of bed
and got into a dressing-gown. I knew Aunt Agatha well enough to know
that, if she had come to see me, she was going to see me. That’s the
sort of woman she is.

She was sitting bolt upright in a chair, staring into space. When I
came in she looked at me in that darn critical way that always makes me
feel as if I had gelatine where my spine ought to be. Aunt Agatha is
one of those strong-minded women. I should think Queen Elizabeth must
have been something like her. She bosses her husband, Spencer Gregson,
a battered little chappie on the Stock Exchange. She bosses my cousin,
Gussie Mannering-Phipps. She bosses her sister-in-law, Gussie’s mother.
And, worst of all, she bosses me. She has an eye like a man-eating
fish, and she has got moral suasion down to a fine point.

I dare say there are fellows in the world–men of blood and iron, don’t
you know, and all that sort of thing–whom she couldn’t intimidate; but
if you’re a chappie like me, fond of a quiet life, you simply curl into
a ball when you see her coming, and hope for the best. My experience is
that when Aunt Agatha wants you to do a thing you do it, or else you
find yourself wondering why those fellows in the olden days made such a
fuss when they had trouble with the Spanish Inquisition.

‘Halloa, Aunt Agatha!’ I said

‘Bertie,’ she said, ‘you look a sight. You look perfectly dissipated.’

I was feeling like a badly wrapped brown-paper parcel. I’m never at my
best in the early morning. I said so.

‘Early morning! I had breakfast three hours ago, and have been walking
in the park ever since, trying to compose my thoughts.’

If I ever breakfasted at half past eight I should walk on the
Embankment, trying to end it all in a watery grave.

‘I am extremely worried, Bertie. That is why I have come to you.’

And then I saw she was going to start something, and I bleated weakly
to Jeeves to bring me tea. But she had begun before I could get it.

‘What are your immediate plans, Bertie?’

‘Well, I rather thought of tottering out for a bite of lunch later on,
and then possibly staggering round to the club, and after that, if I
felt strong enough, I might trickle off to Walton Heath for a round of
golf.’

I am not interested in your totterings and tricklings. I mean, have you
any important engagements in the next week or so?’

I scented danger.

‘Rather,’ I said. ‘Heaps! Millions! Booked solid!’

‘What are they?’

‘I–er–well, I don’t quite know.’

‘I thought as much. You have no engagements. Very well, then, I want
you to start immediately for America.’

‘America!’

Do not lose sight of the fact that all this was taking place on an
empty stomach, shortly after the rising of the lark.

‘Yes, America. I suppose even you have heard of America?’

‘But why America?’

‘Because that is where your Cousin Gussie is. He is in New York, and I
can’t get at him.’

‘What’s Gussie been doing?’

‘Gussie is making a perfect idiot of himself.’

To one who knew young Gussie as well as I did, the words opened up a
wide field for speculation.

‘In what way?’

‘He has lost his head over a creature.’

On past performances this rang true. Ever since he arrived at man’s
estate Gussie had been losing his head over creatures. He’s that sort
of chap. But, as the creatures never seemed to lose their heads over
him, it had never amounted to much.

‘I imagine you know perfectly well why Gussie went to America, Bertie.
You know how wickedly extravagant your Uncle Cuthbert was.’

She alluded to Gussie’s governor, the late head of the family, and I am
bound to say she spoke the truth. Nobody was fonder of old Uncle
Cuthbert than I was, but everybody knows that, where money was
concerned, he was the most complete chump in the annals of the nation.
He had an expensive thirst. He never backed a horse that didn’t get
housemaid’s knee in the middle of the race. He had a system of beating
the bank at Monte Carlo which used to make the administration hang out
the bunting and ring the joy-bells when he was sighted in the offing.
Take him for all in all, dear old Uncle Cuthbert was as willing a
spender as ever called the family lawyer a bloodsucking vampire because
he wouldn’t let Uncle Cuthbert cut down the timber to raise another
thousand.

‘He left your Aunt Julia very little money for a woman in her
position. Beechwood requires a great deal of keeping up, and
poor dear Spencer, though he does his best to help, has not
unlimited resources. It was clearly understood why Gussie went
to America. He is not clever, but he is very good-looking, and,
though he has no title, the Mannering-Phippses are one of the best
and oldest families in England. He had some excellent letters of
introduction, and when he wrote home to say that he had met the
most charming and beautiful girl in the world I felt quite happy.
He continued to rave about her for several mails, and then this
morning a letter has come from him in which he says, quite casually
as a sort of afterthought, that he knows we are broadminded enough
not to think any the worse of her because she is on the vaudeville
stage.’

‘Oh, I say!’

‘It was like a thunderbolt. The girl’s name, it seems, is Ray Denison,
and according to Gussie she does something which he describes as a
single on the big time. What this degraded performance may be I have
not the least notion. As a further recommendation he states that she
lifted them out of their seats at Mosenstein’s last week. Who she may
be, and how or why, and who or what Mr Mosenstein may be, I cannot tell
you.’

‘By jove,’ I said, ‘it’s like a sort of thingummybob, isn’t it? A sort
of fate, what?’

‘I fail to understand you.’

‘Well, Aunt Julia, you know, don’t you know? Heredity, and so forth.
What’s bred in the bone will come out in the wash, and all that kind of
thing, you know.’

‘Don’t be absurd, Bertie.’

That was all very well, but it was a coincidence for all that. Nobody
ever mentions it, and the family have been trying to forget it for
twenty-five years, but it’s a known fact that my Aunt Julia, Gussie’s
mother, was a vaudeville artist once, and a very good one, too, I’m
told. She was playing in pantomime at Drury Lane when Uncle Cuthbert
saw her first. It was before my time, of course, and long before I was
old enough to take notice the family had made the best of it, and Aunt
Agatha had pulled up her socks and put in a lot of educative work, and
with a microscope you couldn’t tell Aunt Julia from a genuine
dyed-in-the-wool aristocrat. Women adapt themselves so quickly!

I have a pal who married Daisy Trimble of the Gaiety, and when I meet
her now I feel like walking out of her presence backwards. But there
the thing was, and you couldn’t get away from it. Gussie had vaudeville
blood in him, and it looked as if he were reverting to type, or
whatever they call it.

‘By Jove,’ I said, for I am interested in this heredity stuff, ‘perhaps
the thing is going to be a regular family tradition, like you read
about in books–a sort of Curse of the Mannering-Phippses, as it were.
Perhaps each head of the family’s going to marry into vaudeville for
ever and ever. Unto the what-d’you-call-it generation, don’t you know?’

‘Please do not be quite idiotic, Bertie. There is one head of the
family who is certainly not going to do it, and that is Gussie. And you
are going to America to stop him.’

‘Yes, but why me?’

‘Why you? You are too vexing, Bertie. Have you no sort of feeling for
the family? You are too lazy to try to be a credit to yourself, but at
least you can exert yourself to prevent Gussie’s disgracing us. You are
going to America because you are Gussie’s cousin, because you have
always been his closest friend, because you are the only one of the
family who has absolutely nothing to occupy his time except golf and
night clubs.’

‘I play a lot of auction.’

‘And as you say, idiotic gambling in low dens. If you require another
reason, you are going because I ask you as a personal favour.’

What she meant was that, if I refused, she would exert the full bent of
her natural genius to make life a Hades for me. She held me with her
glittering eye. I have never met anyone who can give a better imitation
of the Ancient Mariner.

‘So you will start at once, won’t you, Bertie?’

I didn’t hesitate.

‘Rather!’ I said. ‘Of course I will’

Jeeves came in with the tea.

‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘we start for America on Saturday.’

‘Very good, sir,’ he said; ‘which suit will you wear?’

New York is a large city conveniently situated on the edge of America,
so that you step off the liner right on to it without an effort. You
can’t lose your way. You go out of a barn and down some stairs, and
there you are, right in among it. The only possible objection any
reasonable chappie could find to the place is that they loose you into
it from the boat at such an ungodly hour.

I left Jeeves to get my baggage safely past an aggregation of
suspicious-minded pirates who were digging for buried treasures among
my new shirts, and drove to Gussie’s hotel, where I requested the squad
of gentlemanly clerks behind the desk to produce him.

That’s where I got my first shock. He wasn’t there. I pleaded with them
to think again, and they thought again, but it was no good. No Augustus
Mannering-Phipps on the premises.

I admit I was hard hit. There I was alone in a strange city and no
signs of Gussie. What was the next step? I am never one of the master
minds in the early morning; the old bean doesn’t somehow seem to get
into its stride till pretty late in the p.m.s, and I couldn’t think
what to do. However, some instinct took me through a door at the back
of the lobby, and I found myself in a large room with an enormous
picture stretching across the whole of one wall, and under the picture
a counter, and behind the counter divers chappies in white, serving
drinks. They have barmen, don’t you know, in New York, not barmaids.
Rum idea!

I put myself unreservedly into the hands of one of the white chappies.
He was a friendly soul, and I told him the whole state of affairs. I
asked him what he thought would meet the case.

He said that in a situation of that sort he usually prescribed a
‘lightning whizzer’, an invention of his own. He said this was what
rabbits trained on when they were matched against grizzly bears, and
there was only one instance on record of the bear having lasted three
rounds. So I tried a couple, and, by Jove! the man was perfectly right.
As I drained the second a great load seemed to fall from my heart, and
I went out in quite a braced way to have a look at the city.

I was surprised to find the streets quite full. People were bustling
along as if it were some reasonable hour and not the grey dawn. In the
tramcars they were absolutely standing on each other’s necks. Going to
business or something, I take it. Wonderful johnnies!

The odd part of it was that after the first shock of seeing all this
frightful energy the thing didn’t seem so strange. I’ve spoken to
fellows since who have been to New York, and they tell me they found it
just the same. Apparently there’s something in the air, either the
ozone or the phosphates or something, which makes you sit up and take
notice. A kind of zip, as it were. A sort of bally freedom, if you know
what I mean, that gets into your blood and bucks you up, and makes you
feel that–

    God's in His Heaven:
    All's right with the world,

and you don’t care if you’ve got odd socks on. I can’t express it
better than by saying that the thought uppermost in my mind, as I
walked about the place they call Times Square, was that there were
three thousand miles of deep water between me and my Aunt Agatha.

It’s a funny thing about looking for things. If you hunt for a needle
in a haystack you don’t find it. If you don’t give a darn whether you
ever see the needle or not it runs into you the first time you lean
against the stack. By the time I had strolled up and down once or
twice, seeing the sights and letting the white chappie’s corrective
permeate my system, I was feeling that I wouldn’t care if Gussie and I
never met again, and I’m dashed if I didn’t suddenly catch sight of the
old lad, as large as life, just turning in at a doorway down the
street.

I called after him, but he didn’t hear me, so I legged it in pursuit
and caught him going into an office on the first floor. The name on the
door was Abe Riesbitter, Vaudeville Agent, and from the other side of
the door came the sound of many voices.

He turned and stared at me.

‘Bertie! What on earth are you doing? Where have you sprung from? When
did you arrive?’

‘Landed this morning. I went round to your hotel, but they said you
weren’t there. They had never heard of you.’

‘I’ve changed my name. I call myself George Wilson.’

‘Why on earth?’

‘Well, you try calling yourself Augustus Mannering-Phipps over here,
and see how it strikes you. You feel a perfect ass. I don’t know what
it is about America, but the broad fact is that it’s not a place where
you can call yourself Augustus Mannering-Phipps. And there’s another
reason. I’ll tell you later. Bertie, I’ve fallen in love with the
dearest girl in the world.’

The poor old nut looked at me in such a deuced cat-like way, standing
with his mouth open, waiting to be congratulated, that I simply hadn’t
the heart to tell him that I knew all about that already, and had come
over to the country for the express purpose of laying him a stymie.

So I congratulated him.

‘Thanks awfully, old man,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit premature, but I fancy
it’s going to be all right. Come along in here, and I’ll tell you about
it.’

‘What do you want in this place? It looks a rummy spot.’

‘Oh, that’s part of the story. I’ll tell you the whole thing.’

We opened the door marked ‘Waiting Room’. I never saw such a crowded
place in my life. The room was packed till the walls bulged.

Gussie explained.

‘Pros,’ he said, ‘music-hall artistes, you know, waiting to see old Abe
Riesbitter. This is September the first, vaudeville’s opening day. The
early fall,’ said Gussie, who is a bit of a poet in his way, ‘is
vaudeville’s springtime. All over the country, as August wanes,
sparkling comediennes burst into bloom, the sap stirs in the veins of
tramp cyclists, and last year’s contortionists, waking from their
summer sleep, tie themselves tentatively into knots. What I mean is,
this is the beginning of the new season, and everybody’s out hunting
for bookings.’

‘But what do you want here?’

‘Oh, I’ve just got to see Abe about something. If you see a fat man
with about fifty-seven chins come out of that door there grab him, for
that’ll be Abe. He’s one of those fellows who advertise each step up
they take in the world by growing another chin. I’m told that way back
in the nineties he only had two. If you do grab Abe, remember that he
knows me as George Wilson.’

‘You said that you were going to explain that George Wilson business to
me, Gussie, old man.’

‘Well, it’s this way–’

At this juncture dear old Gussie broke off short, rose from his seat,
and sprang with indescribable vim at an extraordinarily stout chappie
who had suddenly appeared. There was the deuce of a rush for him, but
Gussie had got away to a good start, and the rest of the singers,
dancers, jugglers, acrobats, and refined sketch teams seemed to
recognize that he had won the trick, for they ebbed back into their
places again, and Gussie and I went into the inner room.

Mr Riesbitter lit a cigar, and looked at us solemnly over his zareba of
chins.

‘Now, let me tell ya something,’ he said to Gussie. ‘You lizzun t’ me.’

Gussie registered respectful attention. Mr Riesbitter mused for a
moment and shelled the cuspidor with indirect fire over the edge of the
desk.

‘Lizzun t’ me,’ he said again. ‘I seen you rehearse, as I promised Miss
Denison I would. You ain’t bad for an amateur. You gotta lot to learn,
but it’s in you. What it comes to is that I can fix you up in the
four-a-day, if you’ll take thirty-five per. I can’t do better than
that, and I wouldn’t have done that if the little lady hadn’t of kep’
after me. Take it or leave it. What do you say?’

‘I’ll take it,’ said Gussie, huskily. ‘Thank you.’

In the passage outside, Gussie gurgled with joy and slapped me on the
back. ‘Bertie, old man, it’s all right. I’m the happiest man in New
York.’

‘Now what?’

‘Well, you see, as I was telling you when Abe came in, Ray’s father
used to be in the profession. He was before our time, but I remember
hearing about him–Joe Danby. He used to be well known in London before
he came over to America. Well, he’s a fine old boy, but as obstinate as
a mule, and he didn’t like the idea of Ray marrying me because I wasn’t
in the profession. Wouldn’t hear of it. Well, you remember at Oxford I
could always sing a song pretty well; so Ray got hold of old Riesbitter
and made him promise to come and hear me rehearse and get me bookings
if he liked my work. She stands high with him. She coached me for
weeks, the darling. And now, as you heard him say, he’s booked me in
the small time at thirty-five dollars a week.’

I steadied myself against the wall. The effects of the restoratives
supplied by my pal at the hotel bar were beginning to work off, and I
felt a little weak. Through a sort of mist I seemed to have a vision of
Aunt Agatha hearing that the head of the Mannering-Phippses was about
to appear on the vaudeville stage. Aunt Agatha’s worship of the family
name amounts to an obsession. The Mannering-Phippses were an
old-established clan when William the Conqueror was a small boy going
round with bare legs and a catapult. For centuries they have called
kings by their first names and helped dukes with their weekly rent; and
there’s practically nothing a Mannering-Phipps can do that doesn’t blot
his escutcheon. So what Aunt Agatha would say–beyond saying that it
was all my fault–when she learned the horrid news, it was beyond me to
imagine.

‘Come back to the hotel, Gussie,’ I said. ‘There’s a sportsman there
who mixes things he calls “lightning whizzers”. Something tells me I
need one now. And excuse me for one minute, Gussie. I want to send a
cable.’

It was clear to me by now that Aunt Agatha had picked the wrong man for
this job of disentangling Gussie from the clutches of the American
vaudeville profession. What I needed was reinforcements. For a moment I
thought of cabling Aunt Agatha to come over, but reason told me that
this would be overdoing it. I wanted assistance, but not so badly as
that. I hit what seemed to me the happy mean. I cabled to Gussie’s
mother and made it urgent.

‘What were you cabling about?’ asked Gussie, later.

‘Oh just to say I had arrived safely, and all that sort of tosh,’ I
answered.

       *       *       *       *       *

Gussie opened his vaudeville career on the following Monday at a rummy
sort of place uptown where they had moving pictures some of the time
and, in between, one or two vaudeville acts. It had taken a lot of
careful handling to bring him up to scratch. He seemed to take my
sympathy and assistance for granted, and I couldn’t let him down. My
only hope, which grew as I listened to him rehearsing, was that he
would be such a frightful frost at his first appearance that he would
never dare to perform again; and, as that would automatically squash
the marriage, it seemed best to me to let the thing go on.

He wasn’t taking any chances. On the Saturday and Sunday we practically
lived in a beastly little music-room at the offices of the publishers
whose songs he proposed to use. A little chappie with a hooked nose
sucked a cigarette and played the piano all day. Nothing could tire
that lad. He seemed to take a personal interest in the thing.

Gussie would cleat his throat and begin:

‘There’s a great big choo-choo waiting at the deepo.’

THE CHAPPIE (playing chords): ‘Is that so? What’s it waiting for?’

GUSSIE (rather rattled at the interruption): ‘Waiting for me.’

THE CHAPPIE (surprised): For you?’

GUSSIE (sticking to it): ‘Waiting for me-e-ee!’

THE CHAPPIE (sceptically): ‘You don’t say!’

GUSSIE: ‘For I’m off to Tennessee.’

THE CHAPPIE (conceding a point): ‘Now, I live at Yonkers.’

He did this all through the song. At first poor old Gussie asked him to
stop, but the chappie said, No, it was always done. It helped to get
pep into the thing. He appealed to me whether the thing didn’t want a
bit of pep, and I said it wanted all the pep it could get. And the
chappie said to Gussie, ‘There you are!’ So Gussie had to stand it.

The other song that he intended to sing was one of those moon songs. He
told me in a hushed voice that he was using it because it was one of
the songs that the girl Ray sang when lifting them out of their seats
at Mosenstein’s and elsewhere. The fact seemed to give it sacred
associations for him.

You will scarcely believe me, but the management expected Gussie to
show up and start performing at one o’clock in the afternoon. I told
him they couldn’t be serious, as they must know that he would be
rolling out for a bit of lunch at that hour, but Gussie said this was
the usual thing in the four-a-day, and he didn’t suppose he would ever
get any lunch again until he landed on the big time. I was just
condoling with him, when I found that he was taking it for granted that
I should be there at one o’clock, too. My idea had been that I should
look in at night, when–if he survived–he would be coming up for the
fourth time; but I’ve never deserted a pal in distress, so I said
good-bye to the little lunch I’d been planning at a rather decent
tavern I’d discovered on Fifth Avenue, and trailed along. They were
showing pictures when I reached my seat. It was one of those Western
films, where the cowboy jumps on his horse and rides across country at
a hundred and fifty miles an hour to escape the sheriff, not knowing,
poor chump! that he might just as well stay where he is, the sheriff
having a horse of his own which can do three hundred miles an hour
without coughing. I was just going to close my eyes and try to forget
till they put Gussie’s name up when I discovered that I was sitting
next to a deucedly pretty girl.

No, let me be honest. When I went in I had seen that there was a
deucedly pretty girl sitting in that particular seat, so I had taken
the next one. What happened now was that I began, as it were, to drink
her in. I wished they would turn the lights up so that I could see her
better. She was rather small, with great big eyes and a ripping smile.
It was a shame to let all that run to seed, so to speak, in
semi-darkness.

Suddenly the lights did go up, and the orchestra began to play a tune
which, though I haven’t much of an ear for music, seemed somehow
familiar. The next instant out pranced old Gussie from the wings in a
purple frock-coat and a brown top-hat, grinned feebly at the audience,
tripped over his feet blushed, and began to sing the Tennessee song.

It was rotten. The poor nut had got stage fright so badly that it
practically eliminated his voice. He sounded like some far-off echo of
the past ‘yodelling’ through a woollen blanket.

For the first time since I had heard that he was about to go into
vaudeville I felt a faint hope creeping over me. I was sorry for the
wretched chap, of course, but there was no denying that the thing had
its bright side. No management on earth would go on paying thirty-five
dollars a week for this sort of performance. This was going to be
Gussie’s first and only. He would have to leave the profession. The old
boy would say, ‘Unhand my daughter’. And, with decent luck, I saw
myself leading Gussie on to the next England-bound liner and handing
him over intact to Aunt Agatha.

He got through the song somehow and limped off amidst roars of silence
from the audience. There was a brief respite, then out he came again.

He sang this time as if nobody loved him. As a song, it was not a very
pathetic song, being all about coons spooning in June under the moon,
and so on and so forth, but Gussie handled it in such a sad, crushed
way that there was genuine anguish in every line. By the time he
reached the refrain I was nearly in tears. It seemed such a rotten sort
of world with all that kind of thing going on in it.

He started the refrain, and then the most frightful thing happened. The
girl next to me got up in her seat, chucked her head back, and began to
sing too. I say ‘too’, but it wasn’t really too, because her first note
stopped Gussie dead, as if he had been pole-axed.

I never felt so bally conspicuous in my life. I huddled down in my seat
and wished I could turn my collar up. Everybody seemed to be looking at
me.

In the midst of my agony I caught sight of Gussie. A complete change
had taken place in the old lad. He was looking most frightfully bucked.
I must say the girl was singing most awfully well, and it seemed to act
on Gussie like a tonic. When she came to the end of the refrain, he
took it up, and they sang it together, and the end of it was that he
went off the popular hero. The audience yelled for more, and were only
quieted when they turned down the lights and put on a film.

When I had recovered I tottered round to see Gussie. I found him
sitting on a box behind the stage, looking like one who had seen
visions.

‘Isn’t she a wonder, Bertie?’ he said, devoutly. ‘I hadn’t a notion she
was going to be there. She’s playing at the Auditorium this week, and
she can only just have had time to get back to her matinee. She
risked being late, just to come and see me through. She’s my good
angel, Bertie. She saved me. If she hadn’t helped me out I don’t know
what would have happened. I was so nervous I didn’t know what I was
doing. Now that I’ve got through the first show I shall be all right.’

I was glad I had sent that cable to his mother. I was going to need
her. The thing had got beyond me.

       *       *       *       *       *

During the next week I saw a lot of old Gussie, and was introduced to
the girl. I also met her father, a formidable old boy with quick
eyebrows and a sort of determined expression. On the following
Wednesday Aunt Julia arrived. Mrs Mannering-Phipps, my aunt Julia, is,
I think, the most dignified person I know. She lacks Aunt Agatha’s
punch, but in a quiet way she has always contrived to make me feel,
from boyhood up, that I was a poor worm. Not that she harries me like
Aunt Agatha. The difference between the two is that Aunt Agatha conveys
the impression that she considers me personally responsible for all the
sin and sorrow in the world, while Aunt Julia’s manner seems to suggest
that I am more to be pitied than censured.

If it wasn’t that the thing was a matter of historical fact, I should
be inclined to believe that Aunt Julia had never been on the vaudeville
stage. She is like a stage duchess.

She always seems to me to be in a perpetual state of being about to
desire the butler to instruct the head footman to serve lunch in the
blue-room overlooking the west terrace. She exudes dignity. Yet,
twenty-five years ago, so I’ve been told by old boys who were lads
about town in those days, she was knocking them cold at the Tivoli in a
double act called ‘Fun in a Tea-Shop’, in which she wore tights and
sang a song with a chorus that began, ‘Rumpty-tiddley-umpty-ay’.

There are some things a chappie’s mind absolutely refuses to picture,
and Aunt Julia singing ‘Rumpty-tiddley-umpty-ay’ is one of them.

She got straight to the point within five minutes of our meeting.

‘What is this about Gussie? Why did you cable for me, Bertie?’

‘It’s rather a long story,’ I said, ‘and complicated. If you don’t
mind, I’ll let you have it in a series of motion pictures. Suppose we
look in at the Auditorium for a few minutes.’

The girl, Ray, had been re-engaged for a second week at the Auditorium,
owing to the big success of her first week. Her act consisted of three
songs. She did herself well in the matter of costume and scenery. She
had a ripping voice. She looked most awfully pretty; and altogether the
act was, broadly speaking, a pippin.

Aunt Julia didn’t speak till we were in our seats. Then she gave a sort
of sigh.

‘It’s twenty-five years since I was in a music-hall!’

She didn’t say any more, but sat there with her eyes glued on the
stage.

After about half an hour the johnnies who work the card-index system at
the side of the stage put up the name of Ray Denison, and there was a
good deal of applause.

‘Watch this act, Aunt Julia,’ I said.

She didn’t seem to hear me.

‘Twenty-five years! What did you say, Bertie?’

‘Watch this act and tell me what you think of it.’

‘Who is it? Ray. Oh!’

‘Exhibit A,’ I said. ‘The girl Gussie’s engaged to.’

The girl did her act, and the house rose at her. They didn’t want to
let her go. She had to come back again and again. When she had finally
disappeared I turned to Aunt Julia.

‘Well?’ I said.

‘I like her work. She’s an artist.’

‘We will now, if you don’t mind, step a goodish way uptown.’

And we took the subway to where Gussie, the human film, was earning his
thirty-five per. As luck would have it, we hadn’t been in the place ten
minutes when out he came.

‘Exhibit B,’ I said. ‘Gussie.’

I don’t quite know what I had expected her to do, but I certainly
didn’t expect her to sit there without a word. She did not move a
muscle, but just stared at Gussie as he drooled on about the moon. I
was sorry for the woman, for it must have been a shock to her to see
her only son in a mauve frockcoat and a brown top-hat, but I thought it
best to let her get a strangle-hold on the intricacies of the situation
as quickly as possible. If I had tried to explain the affair without
the aid of illustrations I should have talked all day and left her
muddled up as to who was going to marry whom, and why.

I was astonished at the improvement in dear old Gussie. He had got back
his voice and was putting the stuff over well. It reminded me of the
night at Oxford when, then but a lad of eighteen, he sang ‘Let’s All Go
Down the Strand’ after a bump supper, standing the while up to his
knees in the college fountain. He was putting just the same zip into
the thing now.

When he had gone off Aunt Julia sat perfectly still for a long time,
and then she turned to me. Her eyes shone queerly.

‘What does this mean, Bertie?’

She spoke quite quietly, but her voice shook a bit.

‘Gussie went into the business,’ I said, ‘because the girl’s father
wouldn’t let him marry her unless he did. If you feel up to it perhaps
you wouldn’t mind tottering round to One Hundred and Thirty-third
Street and having a chat with him. He’s an old boy with eyebrows, and
he’s Exhibit C on my list. When I’ve put you in touch with him I rather
fancy my share of the business is concluded, and it’s up to you.’

The Danbys lived in one of those big apartments uptown which look as if
they cost the earth and really cost about half as much as a hall-room
down in the forties. We were shown into the sitting-room, and presently
old Danby came in.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Danby,’ I began.

I had got as far as that when there was a kind of gasping cry at my
elbow.

‘Joe!’ cried Aunt Julia, and staggered against the sofa.

For a moment old Danby stared at her, and then his mouth fell open and
his eyebrows shot up like rockets.

‘Julie!’

And then they had got hold of each other’s hands and were shaking them
till I wondered their arms didn’t come unscrewed.

I’m not equal to this sort of thing at such short notice. The
change in Aunt Julia made me feel quite dizzy. She had shed her
grande-dame manner completely, and was blushing and smiling. I
don’t like to say such things of any aunt of mine, or I would go
further and put it on record that she was giggling. And old Danby, who
usually looked like a cross between a Roman emperor and Napoleon
Bonaparte in a bad temper, was behaving like a small boy.

‘Joe!’

‘Julie!’

‘Dear old Joe! Fancy meeting you again!’

‘Wherever have you come from, Julie?’

Well, I didn’t know what it was all about, but I felt a bit out of it.
I butted in:

‘Aunt Julia wants to have a talk with you, Mr Danby.’

‘I knew you in a second, Joe!’

‘It’s twenty-five years since I saw you, kid, and you don’t look a day
older.’

‘Oh, Joe! I’m an old woman!’

‘What are you doing over here? I suppose’–old Danby’s cheerfulness
waned a trifle–’I suppose your husband is with you?’

‘My husband died a long, long while ago, Joe.’

Old Danby shook his head.

‘You never ought to have married out of the profession, Julie. I’m
not saying a word against the late–I can’t remember his name; never
could–but you shouldn’t have done it, an artist like you. Shall I ever
forget the way you used to knock them with “Rumpty-tiddley-umpty-ay”?’

‘Ah! how wonderful you were in that act, Joe.’ Aunt Julia sighed. ‘Do
you remember the back-fall you used to do down the steps? I always have
said that you did the best back-fall in the profession.’

‘I couldn’t do it now!’

‘Do you remember how we put it across at the Canterbury, Joe? Think of
it! The Canterbury’s a moving-picture house now, and the old Mogul runs
French revues.’

‘I’m glad I’m not there to see them.’

‘Joe, tell me, why did you leave England?’

‘Well, I–I wanted a change. No I’ll tell you the truth, kid. I wanted
you, Julie. You went off and married that–whatever that stage-door
johnny’s name was–and it broke me all up.’

Aunt Julia was staring at him. She is what they call a well-preserved
woman. It’s easy to see that, twenty-five years ago, she must have been
something quite extraordinary to look at. Even now she’s almost
beautiful. She has very large brown eyes, a mass of soft grey hair, and
the complexion of a girl of seventeen.

‘Joe, you aren’t going to tell me you were fond of me yourself!’

‘Of course I was fond of you. Why did I let you have all the fat in
“Fun in a Tea-Shop”? Why did I hang about upstage while you sang
“Rumpty-tiddley-umpty-ay”? Do you remember my giving you a bag of buns
when we were on the road at Bristol?’

‘Yes, but–’

‘Do you remember my giving you the ham sandwiches at Portsmouth?’

‘Joe!’

‘Do you remember my giving you a seed-cake at Birmingham? What did you
think all that meant, if not that I loved you? Why, I was working up by
degrees to telling you straight out when you suddenly went off and
married that cane-sucking dude. That’s why I wouldn’t let my daughter
marry this young chap, Wilson, unless he went into the profession.
She’s an artist–’

‘She certainly is, Joe.’

‘You’ve seen her? Where?’

‘At the Auditorium just now. But, Joe, you mustn’t stand in the way of
her marrying the man she’s in love with. He’s an artist, too.’

‘In the small time.’

‘You were in the small time once, Joe. You mustn’t look down on him
because he’s a beginner. I know you feel that your daughter is marrying
beneath her, but–’

‘How on earth do you know anything about young Wilson?

‘He’s my son.’

‘Your son?’

‘Yes, Joe. And I’ve just been watching him work. Oh, Joe, you can’t
think how proud I was of him! He’s got it in him. It’s fate. He’s my
son and he’s in the profession! Joe, you don’t know what I’ve been
through for his sake. They made a lady of me. I never worked so hard in
my life as I did to become a real lady. They kept telling me I had got
to put it across, no matter what it cost, so that he wouldn’t be
ashamed of me. The study was something terrible. I had to watch myself
every minute for years, and I never knew when I might fluff my lines or
fall down on some bit of business. But I did it, because I didn’t want
him to be ashamed of me, though all the time I was just aching to be
back where I belonged.’

Old Danby made a jump at her, and took her by the shoulders.

‘Come back where you belong, Julie!’ he cried. ‘Your husband’s dead,
your son’s a pro. Come back! It’s twenty-five years ago, but I haven’t
changed. I want you still. I’ve always wanted you. You’ve got to come
back, kid, where you belong.’

Aunt Julia gave a sort of gulp and looked at him.

‘Joe!’ she said in a kind of whisper.

‘You’re here, kid,’ said Old Danby, huskily. ‘You’ve come back….
Twenty-five years!… You’ve come back and you’re going to stay!’

She pitched forward into his arms, and he caught her.

‘Oh, Joe! Joe! Joe!’ she said. ‘Hold me. Don’t let me go. Take care of
me.’

And I edged for the door and slipped from the room. I felt weak. The
old bean will stand a certain amount, but this was too much. I groped
my way out into the street and wailed for a taxi.

Gussie called on me at the hotel that night. He curveted into the room
as if he had bought it and the rest of the city.

‘Bertie,’ he said, ‘I feel as if I were dreaming.’

‘I wish I could feel like that, old top,’ I said, and I took another
glance at a cable that had arrived half an hour ago from Aunt Agatha. I
had been looking at it at intervals ever since.

‘Ray and I got back to her flat this evening. Who do you think was
there? The mater! She was sitting hand in hand with old Danby.’

‘Yes?’

‘He was sitting hand in hand with her.’

‘Really?’

‘They are going to be married.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Ray and I are going to be married.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Bertie, old man, I feel immense. I look round me, and everything seems
to be absolutely corking. The change in the mater is marvellous. She is
twenty-five years younger. She and old Danby are talking of reviving
“Fun in a Tea-Shop”, and going out on the road with it.’

I got up.

‘Gussie, old top,’ I said, ‘leave me for a while. I would be alone. I
think I’ve got brain fever or something.’

‘Sorry, old man; perhaps New York doesn’t agree with you. When do you
expect to go back to England?’

I looked again at Aunt Agatha’s cable.

‘With luck,’ I said, ‘in about ten years.’

When he was gone I took up the cable and read it again.

‘What is happening?’ it read. ‘Shall I come over?’

I sucked a pencil for a while, and then I wrote the reply.

It was not an easy cable to word, but I managed it.

‘No,’ I wrote, ’stay where you are. Profession overcrowded.’

The main difficulty in writing a story is to convey to the reader
clearly yet tersely the natures and dispositions of one’s leading
characters. Brevity, brevity–that is the cry. Perhaps, after all, the
play-bill style is the best. In this drama of love, football
(Association code), and politics, then, the principals are as follows,
in their order of entry:

ISABEL RACKSTRAW (an angel).

THE HON. CLARENCE TRESILLIAN (a Greek god).

LADY RUNNYMEDE (a proud old aristocrat).

MR RACKSTRAW (a multi-millionaire City man and Radical politician).

More about Clarence later. For the moment let him go as a Greek god.
There were other sides, too, to Mr Rackstraw’s character, but for the
moment let him go as a multi-millionaire City man and Radical
politician. Not that it is satisfactory; it is too mild. The Radical
politics of other Radical politicians were as skim-milk to the Radical
politics of Radical Politician Rackstraw. Where Mr Lloyd George
referred to the House of Lords as blithering backwoodsmen and asinine
anachronisms, Mr Rackstraw scorned to be so guarded in his speech. He
did not mince his words. His attitude towards a member of the peerage
was that of the terrier to the perambulating cat.

It was at a charity bazaar that Isabel and Clarence first met. Isabel
was presiding over the Billiken, Teddy–bear, and Fancy Goods stall.
There she stood, that slim, radiant girl, bouncing Ardent Youth out of
its father’s hard–earned with a smile that alone was nearly worth the
money, when she observed, approaching, the handsomest man she had ever
seen. It was–this is not one of those mystery stories–it was
Clarence Tresillian. Over the heads of the bevy of gilded youths who
clustered round the stall their eyes met. A thrill ran through Isabel.
She dropped her eyes. The next moment Clarence had made his spring; the
gilded youths had shredded away like a mist, and he was leaning towards
her, opening negotiations for the purchase of a yellow Teddy-bear at
sixteen times its face value.

He returned at intervals during the afternoon. Over the second Teddy-bear
they became friendly, over the third intimate. He proposed as she was
wrapping up the fourth golliwog, and she gave him her heart and the
parcel simultaneously. At six o’clock, carrying four Teddy-bears, seven
photograph frames, five golliwogs, and a billiken, Clarence went home
to tell the news to his parents.

Clarence, when not at the University, lived with his father and mother
in Belgrave Square. His mother had been a Miss Trotter, of Chicago, and
it was on her dowry that the Runnymedes contrived to make both ends
meet. For a noble family they were in somewhat straitened circumstances
financially. They lived, simply and without envy of their rich
fellow-citizens, on their hundred thousand pounds a year. They asked no
more. It enabled them to entertain on a modest scale. Clarence had been
able to go to Oxford; his elder brother, Lord Staines, into the Guards.
The girls could buy an occasional new frock. On the whole, they were a
thoroughly happy, contented English family of the best sort. Mr Trotter,
it is true, was something of a drawback. He was a rugged old tainted
millionaire of the old school, with a fondness for shirt-sleeves and a
tendency to give undue publicity to toothpicks. But he had been made to
understand at an early date that the dead-line for him was the farther
shore of the Atlantic Ocean, and he now gave little trouble.

Having dressed for dinner, Clarence proceeded to the library, where he
found his mother in hysterics and his father in a state of collapse on
the sofa. Clarence was too well-bred to make any comment. A true
Runnymede, he affected to notice nothing, and, picking up the evening
paper, began to read. The announcement of his engagement could be
postponed to a more suitable time.

‘Clarence!’ whispered a voice from the sofa.

‘Yes, father?’

The silver-haired old man gasped for utterance.

‘I’ve lost my little veto,’ he said, brokenly, at length.

‘Where did you see it last?’ asked Clarence, ever practical.

‘It’s that fellow Rackstraw!’ cried the old man, in feeble rage. ‘That
bounder Rackstraw! He’s the man behind it all. The robber!’

‘Clarence!’

It was his mother who spoke. Her voice seemed to rip the air into a
million shreds and stamp on them. There are few things more terrible
than a Chicago voice raised in excitement or anguish.

‘Mother?’

‘Never mind your pop and his old veto. He didn’t know he had one till
the paper said he’d lost it. You listen to me. Clarence, we are
ruined.’

Clarence looked at her inquiringly.

‘Ruined much?’ he asked.

‘Bed-rock,’ said his mother. ‘If we have sixty thousand dollars a year
after this, it’s all we shall have.’

A low howl escaped from the stricken old man on the sofa.

Clarence betrayed no emotion.

‘Ah,’ he said, calmly. ‘How did it happen?’

‘I’ve just had a cable from Chicago, from your grand-pop. He’s been
trying to corner wheat. He always was an impulsive old gazook.’

‘But surely,’ said Clarence, a dim recollection of something he had
heard or read somewhere coming to him, ‘isn’t cornering wheat a rather
profitable process?’

‘Sure,’ said his mother. ‘Sure it is. I guess dad’s try at cornering
wheat was about the most profitable thing that ever happened–to the
other fellows. It seems like they got busy and clubbed fifty-seven
varieties of Hades out of your old grand-pop. He’s got to give up a lot
of his expensive habits, and one of them is sending money to us. That’s
how it is.’

‘And on top of that, mind you,’ moaned Lord Runnymede, ‘I lose my
little veto. It’s bitter–bitter.’

Clarence lit a cigarette and drew at it thoughtfully. ‘I don’t see how
we’re going to manage on twelve thousand quid a year,’ he said.

His mother crisply revised his pronouns.

‘We aren’t,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to get out and hustle.’

Clarence looked at her blankly.

‘Me?’

‘You.’

‘Work?’

‘Work.’

Clarence drew a deep breath.

‘Work? Well, of course, mind you, fellows do work,’ he went on,
thoughtfully. ‘I was lunching with a man at the Bachelor’s only
yesterday who swore he knew a fellow who had met a man whose cousin
worked. But I don’t see what I could do, don’t you know.’

His father raised himself on the sofa.

‘Haven’t I given you the education of an English gentleman?’

‘That’s the difficulty,’ said Clarence.

‘Can’t you do anything?’ asked his mother.

‘Well, I can play footer. By Jove, I’ll sign on as a pro. I’ll take a
new name. I’ll call myself Jones. I can get signed on in a minute. Any
club will jump at me.’

This was no idle boast. Since early childhood Clarence had concentrated
his energies on becoming a footballer, and was now an exceedingly fine
goal-keeper. It was a pleasing sight to see him, poised on one foot in
the attitude of a Salome dancer, with one eye on the man with the ball,
the other gazing coldly on the rest of the opposition forward line,
uncurl abruptly like the main-spring of a watch and stop a hot one.
Clarence in goal was the nearest approach to an india-rubber acrobat
and society contortionist to be seen off the music-hall stage. He was,
in brief, hot stuff. He had the goods.

Scarcely had he uttered these momentous words when the butler entered
with the announcement that he was wanted by a lady on the telephone.

It was Isabel, disturbed and fearful.

‘Oh, Clarence,’ she cried, ‘my precious angel wonder-child, I don’t
know how to begin.’

‘Begin just like that,’ said Clarence, approvingly. ‘It’s topping. You
can’t beat it.’

‘Clarence, a terrible thing has happened. I told papa of our
engagement, and he wouldn’t hear of it. He c-called you a a p-p-p–’

‘A what?’

‘A pr-pr-pr–’

‘He’s wrong. I’m nothing of the sort. He must be thinking of someone
else.’

‘A preposterous excrescence on the social cosmos. He doesn’t like your
father being an earl.’

‘A man may be an earl and still a gentleman,’ said Clarence, not
without a touch of coldness in his voice.

‘I forgot to tell him that. But I don’t think it would make any
difference. He says I shall only marry a man who works.’

‘I am going to work, dearest,’ said Clarence. ‘I am going to work like a
horse. Something–I know not what–tells me I shall be rather good at
work. And one day when I–’

‘Good-bye,’ said Isabel, hastily. ‘I hear papa coming.’

       *       *       *       *       *

Clarence, as he had predicted, found no difficulty in obtaining
employment. He was signed on at once, under the name of Jones, by
Houndsditch Wednesday, the premier metropolitan club, and embarked at
once on his new career.

The season during which Clarence Tresillian kept goal for Houndsditch
Wednesday is destined to live long in the memory of followers of
professional football. Probably never in the history of the game has
there been such persistent and widespread mortality among the more
distant relatives of office-boys and junior clerks. Statisticians have
estimated that if all the grandmothers alone who perished between the
months of September and April that season could have been placed end to
end, they would have reached from Hyde Park Corner to the outskirts of
Manchester. And it was Clarence who was responsible for this
holocaust. Previous to the opening of the season sceptics had shaken
their heads over the Wednesday’s chances in the First League. Other
clubs had bought up the best men in the market, leaving only a mixed
assortment of inferior Scotsmen, Irishmen, and Northcountrymen to
uphold the honour of the London club.

And then, like a meteor, Clarence Tresillian had flashed upon the world
of football. In the opening game he had behaved in the goal-mouth like
a Chinese cracker, and exhibited an absolutely impassable defence; and
from then onward, except for an occasional check, Houndsditch Wednesday
had never looked back.

Among the spectators who flocked to the Houndsditch ground to watch
Clarence perform there appeared week after week a little, grey, dried-up
man, insignificant except for a certain happy choice of language in
moments of emotion and an enthusiasm far surpassing that of the
ordinary spectator. To the trained eye there are subtle distinctions
between football enthusiasts. This man belonged to the comparatively
small class of those who have football on the cerebrum.

Fate had made Daniel Rackstraw a millionaire and a Radical, but at
heart he was a spectator of football. He never missed a match. His
library of football literature was the finest in the country. His
football museum had but one equal, that of Mr Jacob Dodson, of
Manchester. Between them the two had cornered, at enormous expense, the
curio market of the game. It was Rackstraw who had secured the
authentic pair of boots in which Bloomer had first played for England;
but it was Dodson who possessed the painted india-rubber ball used by
Meredith when a boy–probably the first thing except a nurse ever
kicked by that talented foot. The two men were friends, as far as rival
connoisseurs can be friends; and Mr Dodson, when at leisure, would
frequently pay a visit to Mr Rackstraw’s country house, where he would
spend hours gazing wistfully at the Bloomer boots, buoyed up only by
the thoughts of the Meredith ball at home.

Isabel saw little of Clarence during the winter months, except from a
distance. She contented herself with clipping photographs of him from
the sporting papers. Each was a little more unlike him than the last,
and this lent variety to the collection. Her father marked her new-born
enthusiasm for the game with approval. It had been secretly a great
grief to the old gentleman that his only child did not know the
difference between a linesman and an inside right, and, more, did not
seem to care to know. He felt himself drawn closer to her. An
understanding, as pleasant as it was new and strange, began to spring
up between parent and child.

As for Clarence, how easy it would be to haul up one’s slacks to
practically an unlimited extent on the subject of his emotions at this
time. One can figure him, after the game is over and the gay throng has
dispersed, creeping moodily–but what’s the use? Brevity–that is the
cry. Brevity. Let us on.

The months sped by; the Cup-ties began, and soon it was evident that
the Final must be fought out between Houndsditch Wednesday and Mr Jacob
Dodson’s pet team, Manchester United. With each match the Wednesday
seemed to improve. Clarence was a Gibraltar among goal-keepers.

Those were delirious days for Daniel Rackstraw. Long before the fourth
round his voice had dwindled to a husky whisper. Deep lines appeared on
his forehead; for it is an awful thing for a football enthusiast to be
compelled to applaud, in the very middle of the Cup-ties, purely by
means of facial expression. In this time of affliction he found Isabel
an ever-increasing comfort to him. Side by side they would sit, and the
old man’s face would lose its drawn look, and light up, as her clear
young soprano pealed out over the din, urging this player to shoot,
that to kick some opponent in the face; or describing the referee in no
uncertain terms as a reincarnation of the late Mr Dick Turpin.

And now the day of the Final at the Crystal Palace approached, and all
England was alert, confident of a record-breaking contest. But alas!
How truly does Epictetus observe: ‘We know not what awaiteth us round
the corner, and the hand that counteth its chickens ere they be hatched
oft-times doth but step on the banana-skin.’ The prophets who
anticipated a struggle keener than any in football history were
destined to be proved false.

It was not that their judgement of form was at fault. On the run of the
season’s play Houndsditch Wednesday v. Manchester United should
have been the two most evenly-matched teams in the history of the game.
Forward, the latter held a slight superiority; but this was balanced by
the inspired goal-keeping of Clarence Tresillian. Even the keenest
supporters of either side were not confident. They argued at length,
figuring out the odds with the aid of stubs of pencils and the backs of
envelopes, but they were not confident. Out of all those frenzied
millions two men alone had no doubts. Mr Daniel Rackstraw said that he
did not desire to be unfair to Manchester United. He wished it to be
clearly understood that in their own class Manchester United might
quite possibly show to considerable advantage. In some rural league,
for instance, he did not deny that they might sweep all before them.
But when it came to competing with Houndsditch Wednesday–here words
failed Mr Rackstraw.

Mr Jacob Dodson, interviewed by the Manchester Weekly Football
Boot, stated that his decision, arrived at after a close and
careful study of the work of both teams, was that Houndsditch Wednesday
had rather less chance in the forthcoming tourney than a stuffed rat in
the Battersea Dogs’ Home. It was his carefully-considered opinion that
in a contest with the second eleven of a village Church Lads’ Brigade,
Houndsditch Wednesday might, with an effort (conceding them that slice
of luck which so often turns the tide of a game), scrape home. But when
it was a question of meeting a team like Manchester United–here Mr
Dodson, shrugging his shoulders despairingly, sank back in his chair,
and watchful secretaries brought him round with oxygen.

Throughout the whole country nothing but the approaching match was
discussed. Wherever civilization reigned, and in portions of Liverpool,
one question alone was on every lip: Who would win? Octogenarians
mumbled it. Infants lisped it. Tired City men, trampled under foot in
the rush for their tram, asked it of the ambulance attendants who
carried them to the hospital.

And then, one bright, clear morning, when the birds sang and all Nature
seemed fair and gay, Clarence Tresillian developed mumps.

London was in a ferment. I could have wished to go into details, to
describe in crisp, burning sentences the panic that swept like a
tornado through a million homes. A little encouragement, the slightest
softening of the editorial austerity and the thing would have been
done. But no. Brevity. That was the cry. Brevity. Let us on.

Houndsditch Wednesday met Manchester United at the Crystal Palace, and
for nearly two hours the sweat of agony trickled unceasingly down the
corrugated foreheads of the patriots in the stands. The men from
Manchester, freed from the fear of Clarence, smiled grim smiles and
proceeded to pile up points. It was in vain that the Houndsditch backs
and halfbacks skimmed like swallows about the field. They could not
keep the score down. From start to finish Houndsditch were a beaten
side.

London during that black period was a desert. Gloom gripped the City.
In distant Brixton red-eyed wives faced silently-scowling husbands at
the evening meal, and the children were sent early to bed. Newsboys
called the extras in a whisper.

Few took the tragedy more nearly to heart than Daniel Rackstraw.
Leaving the ground with the air of a father mourning over some prodigal
son, he encountered Mr Jacob Dodson, of Manchester.

Now, Mr Dodson was perhaps the slightest bit shy on the finer feelings.
He should have respected the grief of a fallen foe. He should have
abstained from exulting. But he was in too exhilarated a condition to
be magnanimous. Sighting Mr Rackstraw, he addressed himself joyously to
the task of rubbing the thing in. Mr Rackstraw listened in silent
anguish.

‘If we had had Jones–’ he said at length.

‘That’s what they all say,’ whooped Mr Dodson, ‘Jones! Who’s Jones?’

‘If we had had Jones, we should have–’ He paused. An idea had flashed
upon his overwrought mind. ‘Dodson,’ he said, ‘look here. Wait till
Jones is well again, and let us play this thing off again for anything
you like a side in my private park.’

Mr Dodson reflected.

‘You’re on,’ he said. ‘What side bet? A million? Two million? Three?’

Mr Rackstraw shook his head scornfully.

‘A million? Who wants a million? I’ll put up my Bloomer boot against
your Meredith ball. Does that go?’

‘I should say it did,’ said Mr Dodson, joyfully. ‘I’ve been wanting
that boot for years. It’s like finding it in one’s Christmas stocking.’

‘Very well,’ said Mr Rackstraw. ‘Then let’s get it fixed up.’

Honestly, it is but a dog’s life, that of the short-story writer. I
particularly wished at this point to introduce a description of Mr
Rackstraw’s country house and estate, featuring the private football
ground with its fringe of noble trees. It would have served a double
purpose, not only charming the lover of nature, but acting as a fine
stimulus to the youth of the country, showing them the sort of home
they would be able to buy some day if they worked hard and saved their
money. But no. You shall have three guesses as to what was the cry. You
give it up? It was Brevity–brevity! Let us on.

The two teams arrived at Mr Rackstraw’s house in time for lunch.
Clarence, his features once more reduced to their customary
finely-chiselled proportions, alighted from the automobile with a
swelling heart. Presently he found an opportunity to slip away and
meet Isabel. I will pass lightly over the meeting of the two lovers.
I will not describe the dewy softness of their eyes, the catching of
their breath, their murmured endearments. I could, mind you. It is at
just such descriptions that I am particularly happy. But I have grown
discouraged. My spirit is broken. It is enough to say that Clarence had
reached a level of emotional eloquence rarely met with among goal-keepers
of the First League, when Isabel broke from him with a startled
exclamation, and vanished; and, looking over his shoulder, Clarence
observed Mr Daniel Rackstraw moving towards him.

It was evident from the millionaire’s demeanour that he had seen
nothing. The look on his face was anxious, but not wrathful. He
sighted Clarence, and hurried up to him.

‘Jones,’ he said, ‘I’ve been looking for you. I want a word with you.’

‘A thousand, if you wish it,’ said Clarence, courteously.

‘Now, look here,’ said Mr Rackstraw. ‘I want to explain to you just
what this game means to me. Don’t run away with the idea I’ve had you
fellows down to play an exhibition game just to keep me merry and
bright. If Houndsditch wins today, K means that I shall be able to hold
up my head again and look my fellow-man in the face, instead of
crawling round on my stomach and feeling like a black-beetle under a
steam-roller. Do you get that?’

‘I do,’ replied Clarence.

‘And not only that,’ went on the millionaire. ‘There’s more. I have put
up my Bloomer boot against Mr Dodson’s Meredith hall as a side bet. You
understand what that means? It means that either you win or my life is
soured for ever. See?’

‘I have got you,’ said Clarence.

‘Good. Then what I wanted to say was this. Today is your day for
keeping goal as you’ve never kept goal before. Everything depends on
you. With you keeping goal like mother used to make it, Houndsditch are
safe. Otherwise they are completely in the bouillon. It’s one thing or
the other. It’s all up to you. Win, and there’s four thousand pounds
waiting for you above what you share with the others.’

Clarence waved his hand deprecatingly.

‘Mr Rackstraw,’ he said, ‘keep your dross. I care nothing for money.
All I ask of you,’ proceeded Clarence, ‘is your consent to my
engagement to your daughter.’

Mr Rackstraw looked sharply at him.

‘Repeat that,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I quite got it.’

‘All I ask is your consent to my engagement to your daughter.’

‘Young man,’ said Mr Rackstraw, not without a touch of admiration, ‘I
admire cheek. But there is a limit. That limit you have passed so far
that you’d need to look for it with a telescope.’

‘You refuse your consent?’

‘I never said you weren’t a clever guesser.’

‘Why?’

Mr Rackstraw laughed. One of those nasty, sharp, metallic laughs that
hit you like a bullet.

‘How would you support my daughter?’

‘I was thinking that you would help to some extent.’

‘You were, were you?’

‘I was.’

‘Oh?’

Mr Rackstraw emitted another of those laughs.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s off. You can take that as coming from an
authoritative source. No wedding-bells for you.’

Clarence drew himself up, fire flashing from his eyes and a bitter
smile curving his expressive lips.

‘And no Meredith ball for you!’ he cried.

Mr Rackstraw started as if some strong hand had plunged an auger into
him.

‘What?’ he shouted.

Clarence shrugged his superbly-modelled shoulders in silence.

‘Come, come,’ said Mr Rackstraw, ‘you wouldn’t let a little private
difference like that influence you in a really important thing like
this football match, would you?’

‘I would.’

‘You would practically blackmail the father of the girl you love?’

‘Every time.’

‘Her white-haired old father?’

‘The colour of his hair would not affect me.’

‘Nothing would move you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Then, by George, you’re just the son-in-law I want. You shall marry
Isabel; and I’ll take you into partnership in my business this very
day. I’ve been looking for a good able-bodied bandit like you for
years. You make Captain Kidd look like a preliminary three-round bout.
My boy, we’ll be the greatest combination, you and I, that the City has
ever seen. Shake hands.’

For a moment Clarence hesitated. Then his better nature prevailed, and
he spoke.

‘Mr Rackstraw,’ he said, ‘I cannot deceive you.’

‘That won’t matter,’ said the enthusiastic old man. ‘I bet you’ll be
able to deceive everybody else. I see it in your eye. My boy, we’ll be
the greatest–’

‘My name is not Jones.’

‘Nor is mine. What does that matter?’

‘My name is Tresillian. The Hon. Tresillian. I am the younger son of
the Earl of Runnymede. To a man of your political views–’

‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ said Mr Rackstraw. ‘What are political views
compared with the chance of getting a goal-keeper like you into the
family? I remember Isabel saying something to me about you, but I
didn’t know who you were then.’

‘I am a preposterous excrescence on the social cosmos,’ said Clarence,
eyeing him doubtfully.

‘Then I’ll be one too,’ cried Mr Rackstraw. ‘I own I’ve set my face
against it hitherto, but circumstances alter cases. I’ll ring up the
Prime Minister on the phone tomorrow, and buy a title myself.’

Clarence’s last scruple was removed. Silently he gripped the old man’s
hand, outstretched to meet his.

Little remains to be said, but I am going to say it, if it snows. I am
at my best in these tender scenes of idyllic domesticity.

Four years have passed. Once more we are in the Rackstraw home. A lady
is coming down the stairs, leading by the hand her little son. It is
Isabel. The years have dealt lightly with her. She is still the same
stately, beautiful creature whom I would have described in detail long
ago if I had been given half a chance. At the foot of the stairs the
child stops and points at a small, round object in a glass case.

‘Wah?’ he says.

‘That?’ said Isabel. ‘That is the ball Mr Meredith used to play with
when he was a little boy.’

She looks at a door on the left of the hall, and puts a finger to her
lip.

‘Hush!’ she says. ‘We must be quiet. Daddy and grandpa are busy in
there cornering wheat.’

And softly mother and child go out into the sunlit garden.

Any man under thirty years of age who tells you he is not afraid of an
English butler lies. He may not show his fear. Outwardly he may be
brave–aggressive even, perhaps to the extent of calling the great man
‘Here!’ or ‘Hi!’ But, in his heart, when he meets that, cold, blue,
introspective eye, he quakes.

The effect that Keggs, the butler at the Keiths’, had on Martin
Rossiter was to make him feel as if he had been caught laughing in a
cathedral. He fought against the feeling. He asked himself who Keggs
was, anyway; and replied defiantly that Keggs was a Menial–and an
overfed Menial. But all the while he knew that logic was useless.

When the Keiths had invited him to their country home he had been
delighted. They were among his oldest friends. He liked Mr Keith. He
liked Mrs Keith. He loved Elsa Keith, and had done so from boyhood.

But things had gone wrong. As he leaned out of his bedroom window at
the end of the first week, preparatory to dressing for dinner, he was
more than half inclined to make some excuse and get right out of the
place next day. The bland dignity of Keggs had taken all the heart out
of him.

Nor was it Keggs alone who had driven his thoughts towards flight.
Keggs was merely a passive evil, like toothache or a rainy day. What
had begun actively to make the place impossible was a perfectly
pestilential young man of the name of Barstowe.

The house-party at the Keiths had originally been, from Martin’s
view-point, almost ideal. The rest of the men were of the speechless,
moustache-tugging breed. They had come to shoot, and they shot. When
they were not shooting they congregated in the billiard-room and
devoted their powerful intellects exclusively to snooker-pool, leaving
Martin free to talk undisturbed to Elsa. He had been doing this for
five days with great contentment when Aubrey Barstowe arrived. Mrs
Keith had developed of late leanings towards culture. In her town house
a charge of small-shot, fired in any direction on a Thursday
afternoon, could not have failed to bring down a poet, a novelist, or a
painter. Aubrey Barstowe, author of The Soul’s Eclipse and other
poems, was a constant member of the crowd. A youth of insinuating
manners, he had appealed to Mrs Keith from the start; and unfortunately
the virus had extended to Elsa. Many a pleasant, sunshiny Thursday
afternoon had been poisoned for Martin by the sight of Aubrey and Elsa
together on a distant settee, matching temperaments. The rest is too
painful. It was a rout. The poet did not shoot, so that when Martin
returned of an evening his rival was about five hours of soul-to-soul
talk up and only two to play. And those two, the after-dinner hours,
which had once been the hours for which Martin had lived, were pure
torture.

So engrossed was he with his thoughts that the first intimation he had
that he was not alone in the room was a genteel cough. Behind him,
holding a small can, was Keggs.

‘Your ‘ot water, sir,’ said the butler, austerely but not unkindly.

Keggs was a man–one must use that word, though it seems grossly
inadequate–of medium height, pigeon-toed at the base, bulgy half-way
up, and bald at the apex. His manner was restrained and dignified, his
voice soft and grave.

But it was his eye that quelled Martin. That cold, blue,
dukes-have-treated-me-as-an-elder-brother eye.

He fixed it upon him now, as he added, placing the can on the floor.
‘It is Frederick’s duty, but tonight I hundertook it.’

Martin had no answer. He was dazed. Keggs had spoken with the proud
humility of an emperor compelled by misfortune to shine shoes.

‘Might I have a word with you, sir?’

‘Ye-e-ss, yes,’ stammered Martin. ‘Won’t you take a–I mean, yes,
certainly.’

‘It is perhaps a liberty,’ began Keggs. He paused, and raked Martin
with the eye that had rested on dining dukes.

‘Not at all,’ said Martin, hurriedly.

‘I should like,’ went on Keggs, bowing, ‘to speak to you on a somewhat
intimate subject–Miss Elsa.’

Martin’s eyes and mouth opened slowly.

‘You are going the wrong way to work, if you will allow me to say so,
sir.’

Martin’s jaw dropped another inch.

‘Wha-a–’

‘Women, sir,’ proceeded Keggs, ‘young ladies–are peculiar. I have had,
if I may say so, certain hopportunities of observing their ways. Miss
Elsa reminds me in some respects of Lady Angelica Fendall, whom I had
the honour of knowing when I was butler to her father, Lord Stockleigh.
Her ladyship was hinclined to be romantic. She was fond of poetry, like
Miss Elsa. She would sit by the hour, sir, listening to young Mr Knox
reading Tennyson, which was no part of his duties, he being employed by
his lordship to teach Lord Bertie Latin and Greek and what not. You may
have noticed, sir, that young ladies is often took by Tennyson,
hespecially in the summertime. Mr Barstowe was reading Tennyson to Miss
Elsa in the ‘all when I passed through just now. The Princess,
if I am not mistaken.’

‘I don’t know what the thing was,’ groaned Martin. ‘She seemed to be
enjoying it.’

‘Lady Angelica was greatly addicted to The Princess. Young Mr
Knox was reading portions of that poem to her when his lordship come
upon them. Most rashly his lordship made a public hexpose and packed Mr
Knox off next day. It was not my place to volunteer advice, but I could
have told him what would happen. Two days later her ladyship slips away
to London early in the morning, and they’re married at a
registry-office. That is why I say that you are going the wrong way to
work with Miss Elsa, sir. With certain types of ‘igh spirited young lady
hopposition is useless. Now, when Mr Barstowe was reading to Miss Elsa
on the occasion to which I ‘ave alluded, you were sitting by, trying to
engage her attention. It’s not the way, sir. You should leave them
alone together. Let her see so much of him, and nobody else but him,
that she will grow tired of him. Fondness for poetry, sir, is very much
like the whisky ‘abit. You can’t cure a man what has got that by
hopposition. Now, if you will permit me to offer a word of advice, sir,
I say, let Miss Elsa ‘ave all the poetry she wants.’

Martin was conscious of one coherent feeling at the conclusion of this
address, and that was one of amazed gratitude. A lesser man who had
entered his room and begun to discuss his private affairs would have
had reason to retire with some speed; but that Keggs should descend
from his pedestal and interest himself in such lowly matters was a
different thing altogether.

‘I’m very much obliged–’ he was stammering, when the butler raised a
deprecatory hand.

‘My interest in the matter,’ he said, smoothly, ‘is not entirely
haltruistic. For some years back, in fact, since Miss Elsa came out, we
have had a matrimonial sweepstake in the servants’ hall at each
house-party. The names of the gentlemen in the party are placed in a hat
and drawn in due course. Should Miss Elsa become engaged to any member
of the party, the pool goes to the drawer of his name. Should no
engagement occur, the money remains in my charge until the following
year, when it is added to the new pool. Hitherto I have ‘ad the
misfortune to draw nothing but married gentlemen, but on this occasion
I have secured you, sir. And I may tell you, sir,’ he added, with
stately courtesy, ‘that, in the opinion of the servants’ hall, your
chances are ‘ighly fancied,–very ‘ighly. The pool has now reached
considerable proportions, and, ‘aving had certain losses on the Turf
very recent, I am extremely anxious to win it. So I thought, if I might
take the liberty, sir, I would place my knowledge of the sex at your
disposal. You will find it sound in every respect. That is all. Thank
you, sir.’

Martin’s feelings had undergone a complete revulsion. In the last few
minutes the butler had shed his wings and grown horns, cloven feet, and
a forked tail. His rage deprived him of words. He could only gurgle.

‘Don’t thank me, sir,’ said the butler, indulgently. ‘I ask no thanks.
We are working together for a common hobject, and any little ‘elp I can
provide is given freely.’

‘You old scoundrel!’ shouted Martin, his wrath prevailing even against
that blue eye. ‘You have the insolence to come to me and–’

He stopped. The thought of these hounds, these demons, coolly gossiping
and speculating below stairs about Elsa, making her the subject of
little sporting flutters to relieve the monotony of country life,
choked him.

‘I shall tell Mr Keith,’ he said.

The butler shook his bald head gravely.

‘I shouldn’t, sir. It is a ‘ighly fantastic story, and I don’t think he
would believe it.’

‘Then I’ll–Oh, get out!’

Keggs bowed deferentially.

‘If you wish it, sir,’ he said, ‘I will withdraw. If I may make the
suggestion, sir, I think you should commence to dress. Dinner will be
served in a few minutes. Thank you, sir.’

He passed softly out of the room.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was more as a demonstration of defiance against Keggs than because
he really hoped that anything would come of it that Martin approached
Elsa next morning after breakfast. Elsa was strolling on the terrace in
front of the house with the bard, but Martin broke in on the conference
with the dogged determination of a steam-drill.

‘Coming out with the guns today, Elsa?’ he said.

She raised her eyes. There was an absent look in them.

‘The guns?’ she said. ‘Oh, no; I hate watching men shoot.’

‘You used to like it.’

‘I used to like dolls,’ she said, impatiently.

Mr Barstowe gave tongue. He was a slim, tall, sickeningly beautiful
young man, with large, dark eyes, full of expression.

‘We develop,’ he said. ‘The years go by, and we develop. Our souls
expand–timidly at first, like little, half-fledged birds stealing out
from the–’

‘I don’t know that I’m so set on shooting today, myself,’ said Martin.
‘Will you come round the links?’

‘I am going out in the motor with Mr Barstowe,’ said Elsa.

‘The motor!’ cried Mr Barstowe. ‘Ah, Rossiter, that is the very poetry
of motion. I never ride in a motor-car without those words of
Shakespeare’s ringing in my mind: “I’ll put a girdle round about the
earth in forty minutes.”‘

‘I shouldn’t give way to that sort of thing if I were you,’ said
Martin. ‘The police are pretty down on road-hogging in these parts.’

‘Mr Barstowe was speaking figuratively,’ said Elsa, with disdain.

‘Was he?’ grunted Martin, whose sorrows were tending to make him every
day more like a sulky schoolboy. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t got a poetic
soul.’

‘I’m afraid you haven’t,’ said Elsa.

There was a brief silence. A bird made itself heard in a neighbouring
tree.

‘”The moan of doves in immemorial elms,”‘ quoted Mr Barstowe, softly.

‘Only it happens to be a crow in a beech,’ said Martin, as the bird
flew out.

Elsa’s chin tilted itself in scorn. Martin turned on his heel and
walked away.

‘It’s the wrong way, sir; it’s the wrong way,’ said a voice. ‘I was
hobserving you from a window, sir. It’s Lady Angelica over again.
Hopposition is useless, believe me, sir.’

Martin faced round, flushed and wrathful. The butler went on unmoved:
‘Miss Elsa is going for a ride in the car today, sir.’

‘I know that.’

‘Uncommonly tricky things, these motor-cars. I was saying so to
Roberts, the chauffeur, just as soon as I ‘eard Miss Elsa was going out
with Mr Barstowe. I said, “Roberts, these cars is tricky; break down
when you’re twenty miles from hanywhere as soon as look at you.
Roberts,” I said, slipping him a sovereign, “‘ow awful it would be if
the car should break down twenty miles from hanywhere today!”‘

Martin stared.

‘You bribed Roberts to–’

‘Sir! I gave Roberts the sovereign because I am sorry for him. He is a
poor man, and has a wife and family to support.’

‘Very well,’ said Martin, sternly; ‘I shall go and warn Miss Keith.’

‘Warn her, sir!’

‘I shall tell her that you have bribed Roberts to make the car break
down so that–’

Keggs shook his head.

‘I fear she would hardly credit the statement, sir. She might even
think that you was trying to keep her from going for your own pussonal
ends.’

‘I believe you are the devil,’ said Martin.

‘I ‘ope you will come to look on me, sir,’ said Keggs, unctuously, ‘as
your good hangel.’

Martin shot abominably that day, and, coming home in the evening gloomy
and savage, went straight to his room, and did not reappear till
dinner-time. Elsa had been taken in by one of the moustache-tuggers.
Martin found himself seated on her other side. It was so pleasant to be
near her, and to feel that the bard was away at the other end of the
table, that for the moment his spirits revived.

‘Well, how did you like the ride?’ he asked, with a smile. ‘Did you put
that girdle round the world?’

She looked at him–once. The next moment he had an uninterrupted view
of her shoulder, and heard the sound of her voice as she prattled gaily
to the man on her other side.

His heart gave a sudden bound. He understood now. The demon butler had
had his wicked way. Good heavens! She had thought he was taunting her!
He must explain at once. He–

‘Hock or sherry, sir?’

He looked up into Kegg’s expressionless eyes. The butler was wearing
his on-duty mask. There was no sign of triumph in his face.

‘Oh, sherry. I mean hock. No, sherry. Neither.’

This was awful. He must put this right.

‘Elsa,’ he said.

She was engrossed in her conversation with her neighbour.

From down the table in a sudden lull in the talk came the voice of Mr
Barstowe. He seemed to be in the middle of a narrative.

‘Fortunately,’ he was saying, ‘I had with me a volume of Shelley, and
one of my own little efforts. I had read Miss Keith the whole of the
latter and much of the former before the chauffeur announced that it
was once more possible–’

‘Elsa,’ said the wretched man, ‘I had no idea–you don’t think–’

She turned to him.

‘I beg your pardon?’ she said, very sweetly.

‘I swear I didn’t know–I mean, I’d forgotten–I mean–’

She wrinkled her forehead.

‘I’m really afraid I don’t understand.’

‘I mean, about the car breaking down.’

‘The car? Oh, yes. Yes, it broke down. We were delayed quite a little
while. Mr Barstowe read me some of his poems. It was perfectly lovely.
I was quite sorry when Roberts told us we could go on again. But do you
really mean to tell me, Mr Lambert, that you–’

And once more the world became all shoulder.

When the men trailed into the presence of the ladies for that brief
seance on which etiquette insisted before permitting the stampede to
the billiard-room, Elsa was not to be seen.

‘Elsa?’ said Mrs Keith in answer to Martin’s question. ‘She has gone to
bed. The poor child has a headache. I am afraid she had a tiring day.’

There was an early start for the guns next morning, and as Elsa did not
appear at breakfast Martin had to leave without seeing her. His
shooting was even worse than it had been on the previous day.

It was not until late in the evening that the party returned to the
house. Martin, on the way to his room, met Mrs Keith on the stairs. She
appeared somewhat agitated.

‘Oh, Martin,’ she said. ‘I’m so glad you’re back. Have you seen
anything of Elsa?’

‘Elsa?’

‘Wasn’t she with the guns?’

‘With the guns’ said Martin, puzzled. ‘No.’

‘I have seen nothing of her all day. I’m getting worried. I can’t think
what can have happened to her. Are you sure she wasn’t with the guns?’

‘Absolutely certain. Didn’t she come in to lunch?’

‘No. Tom,’ she said, as Mr Keith came up, ‘I’m so worried about Elsa. I
haven’t seen her all day. I thought she must be out with the guns.’

Mr Keith was a man who had built up a large fortune mainly by
consistently refusing to allow anything to agitate him. He carried this
policy into private life.

‘Wasn’t she in at lunch?’ he asked, placidly.

‘I tell you I haven’t seen her all day. She breakfasted in her room–’

‘Late?’

‘Yes. She was tired, poor girl.’

‘If she breakfasted late,’ said Mr Keith, ’she wouldn’t need any lunch.
She’s gone for a stroll somewhere.’

‘Would you put back dinner, do you think?’ inquired Mrs Keith,
anxiously.

‘I am not good at riddles,’ said Mr Keith, comfortably, ‘but I can
answer that one. I would not put back dinner. I would not put back
dinner for the King.’

Elsa did not come back for dinner. Nor was hers the only vacant place.
Mr Barstowe had also vanished. Even Mr Keith’s calm was momentarily
ruffled by this discovery. The poet was not a favourite of his–it was
only reluctantly that he had consented to his being invited at all; and
the presumption being that when two members of a house-party disappear
simultaneously they are likely to be spending the time in each other’s
society, he was annoyed. Elsa was not the girl to make a fool of
herself, of course, but–He was unwontedly silent at dinner.

Mrs Keith’s anxiety displayed itself differently. She was frankly
worried, and mentioned it. By the time the fish had been reached
conversation at the table had fixed itself definitely on the one
topic.

‘It isn’t the car this time, at any rate,’ said Mr Keith. ‘It hasn’t
been out today.’

‘I can’t understand it,’ said Mrs Keith for the twentieth time. And
that was the farthest point reached in the investigation of the
mystery.

By the time dinner was over a spirit of unrest was abroad. The company
sat about in uneasy groups. Snooker-pool was, if not forgotten, at any
rate shelved. Somebody suggested search-parties, and one or two of the
moustache-tuggers wandered rather aimlessly out into the darkness.

Martin was standing in the porch with Mr Keith when Keggs approached.
As his eyes lit on him, Martin was conscious of a sudden solidifying of
the vague suspicion which had been forming in his mind. And yet that
suspicion seemed so wild. How could Keggs, with the worst intentions,
have had anything to do with this? He could not forcibly have abducted
the missing pair and kept them under lock and key. He could not have
stunned them and left them in a ditch. Nevertheless, looking at him
standing there in his attitude of deferential dignity, with the light
from the open door shining on his bald head, Martin felt perfectly
certain that he had in some mysterious fashion engineered the whole
thing.

‘Might I have a word, sir, if you are at leisure?’

‘Well, Keggs?’

‘Miss Elsa, sir.’

‘Yes?’

Kegg’s voice took on a sympathetic softness.

‘It was not my place, sir, to make any remark while in the dining-room,
but I could not ‘elp but hoverhear the conversation. I gathered from
remarks that was passed that you was somewhat hat a loss to account for
Miss Elsa’s non-appearance, sir.’

Mr Keith laughed shortly.

‘You gathered that, eh?’

Keggs bowed.

‘I think, sir, that possibly I may be hable to throw light on the
matter.’

‘What!’ cried Mr Keith. ‘Great Scott, man! then why didn’t you say so
at the time? Where is she?’

‘It was not my place, sir, to henter into the conversation of the
dinner-table,’ said the butler, with a touch of reproof. ‘If I might
speak now, sir?’

Mr Keith clutched at his forehead.

‘Heavens above! Do you want a signed permit to tell me where my
daughter is? Get on, man, get on!’

‘I think it ‘ighly possible, sir, that Miss Elsa and Mr Barstowe may be
on the hisland in the lake, sir.’ About half a mile from the house was
a picturesque strip of water, some fifteen hundred yards in width and a
little less in length, in the centre of which stood a small and densely
wooded island. It was a favourite haunt of visitors at the house when
there was nothing else to engage their attention, but during the past
week, with shooting to fill up the days, it had been neglected.

‘On the island?’ said Mr Keith. ‘What put that idea into your head?’

‘I ‘appened to be rowing on the lake this morning, sir. I frequently
row of a morning, sir, when there are no duties to detain me in the
‘ouse. I find the hexercise hadmirable for the ‘ealth. I walk briskly
to the boat-’ouse, and–’

‘Yes, yes. I don’t want a schedule of your daily exercises. Cut out the
athletic reminiscences and come to the point.’

‘As I was rowing on the lake this morning, sir, I ‘appened to see a
boat ‘itched up to a tree on the hisland. I think that possibly Miss
Elsa and Mr Barstowe might ‘ave taken a row out there. Mr Barstowe
would wish to see the hisland, sir, bein’ romantic.’

‘But you say you saw the boat there this morning?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, it doesn’t take all day to explore a small island. What’s kept
them all this while?’

‘It is possible, sir, that the rope might not have ‘eld. Mr Barstowe,
if I might say so, sir, is one of those himpetuous literary pussons,
and possibly he homitted to see that the knot was hadequately tied.
Or’–his eye, grave and inscrutable, rested for a moment on
Martin’s–’some party might ‘ave come along and huntied it a-puppus.’

‘Untied it on purpose?’ said Mr Keith. ‘What on earth for?’

Keggs shook his head deprecatingly, as one who, realizing his
limitations, declines to attempt to probe the hidden sources of human
actions.

‘I thought it right, sir, to let you know,’ he said.

‘Right? I should say so. If Elsa has been kept starving all day on that
island by that long-haired–Here, come along, Martin.’

He dashed off excitedly into the night. Martin remained for a moment
gazing fixedly at the butler.

‘I ‘ope, sir,’ said Keggs, cordially, ‘that my hinformation will prove
of genuine hassistance.’

‘Do you know what I should like to do to you?’ said Martin slowly.

‘I think I ‘ear Mr Keith calling you, sir.’

‘I should like to take you by the scruff of your neck and–’

‘There, sir! Didn’t you ‘ear ‘im then? Quite distinct it was.’

Martin gave up the struggle with a sense of blank futility. What could
you do with a man like this? It was like quarrelling with Westminster
Abbey.

‘I should ‘urry, sir,’ suggested Keggs, respectfully. ‘I think Mr Keith
must have met with some haccident.’

His surmise proved correct. When Martin came up he found his host
seated on the ground in evident pain.

‘Twisted my ankle in a hole,’ he explained, briefly. ‘Give me an arm
back to the house, there’s a good fellow, and then run on down to the
lake and see if what Keggs said is true.’

Martin did as he was requested–so far, that is to say, as the first
half of the commission was concerned. As regarded the second, he took
it upon himself to make certain changes. Having seen Mr Keith to his
room, he put the fitting-out of the relief ship into the good hands of
a group of his fellow guests whom he discovered in the porch. Elsa’s
feelings towards her rescuer might be one of unmixed gratitude; but it
might, on the other hand, be one of resentment. He did not wish her to
connect him in her mind with the episode in any way whatsoever. Martin
had once released a dog from a trap, and the dog had bitten him. He had
been on an errand of mercy, but the dog had connected him with his
sufferings and acted accordingly. It occurred to Martin that Elsa’s
frame of mind would be uncommonly like that dog’s.

The rescue-party set off. Martin lit a cigarette, and waited in the
porch.

It seemed a very long time before anything happened, but at last, as he
was lighting his fifth cigarette, there came from the darkness the
sound of voices. They drew nearer. Someone shouted:

‘It’s all right. We’ve found them.’

Martin threw away his cigarette and went indoors.

       *       *       *       *       *

Elsa Keith sat up as her mother came into the room. Two nights and a
day had passed since she had taken to her bed.

‘How are you feeling today, dear?’

‘Has he gone, mother?’

‘Who?’

‘Mr Barstowe?’

‘Yes, dear. He left this morning. He said he had business with his
publisher in London.’

‘Then I can get up,’ said Elsa, thankfully.

‘I think you’re a little hard on poor Mr Barstowe, Elsa. It was just an
accident, you know. It was not his fault that the boat slipped away.’

‘It was, it was, it was!’ cried Elsa, thumping the pillow
malignantly. ‘I believe he did it on purpose, so that he could read me
his horrid poetry without my having a chance to escape. I believe
that’s the only way he can get people to listen to it.’

‘But you used to like it, darling. You said he had such a musical
voice.’

‘Musical voice!’ The pillow became a shapeless heap. ‘Mother, it was
like a nightmare! If I had seen him again I should have had hysterics.
It was awful! If he had been even the least bit upset himself I
think I could have borne up. But he enjoyed it! He revelled
in it! He said it was like Omar Khayyam in the Wilderness and Shelley’s
Epipsychidion, whatever that is; and he prattled on and on and
read and read till my head began to split. Mother’–her voice sank to
a whisper–’I hit him!’

‘Elsa!’

‘I did!’ she went on, defiantly. ‘I hit him as hard as I could, and
he–he’–she broke off into a little gurgle of laughter–’he tripped
over a bush and fell right down; and I wasn’t a bit ashamed. I didn’t
think it unladylike or anything. I was just as proud as I could be. And
it stopped him talking.’

‘But, Elsa, dear! Why?’

‘The sun had just gone down; and it was a lovely sunset, and the sky
looked like a great, beautiful slice of underdone beef; and I said so
to him, and he said, sniffily, that he was afraid he didn’t see the
resemblance. And I asked him if he wasn’t starving. And he said no,
because as a rule all that he needed was a little ripe fruit. And that
was when I hit him.’

‘Elsa!’

‘Oh, I know it was awfully wrong, but I just had to. And now I’ll get
up. It looks lovely out.’

Martin had not gone out with the guns that day. Mrs Keith had assured
him that there was nothing wrong with Elsa, that she was only tired,
but he was anxious, and had remained at home, where bulletins could
reach him. As he was returning from a stroll in the grounds he heard
his name called, and saw Elsa lying in the hammock under the trees near
the terrace.

‘Why, Martin, why aren’t you out with the guns?’ she said.

‘I wanted to be on the spot so that I could hear how you were.’

‘How nice of you! Why don’t you sit down?’

‘May I?’

Elsa fluttered the pages of her magazine.

‘You know, you’re a very restful person, Martin. You’re so big and
outdoory. How would you like to read to me for a while? I feel so
lazy.’

Martin took the magazine.

‘What shall I read? Here’s a poem by–’

Elsa shuddered.

‘Oh, please, no,’ she cried. ‘I couldn’t bear it. I’ll tell you what I
should love–the advertisements. There’s one about sardines. I started
it, and it seemed splendid. It’s at the back somewhere.’

‘Is this it–Langley and Fielding’s sardines?’

‘That’s it.’

Martin began to read.

‘”Langley and Fielding’s sardines. When you want the daintiest, most
delicious sardines, go to your grocer and say, ‘Langley and Fielding’s,
please!’ You will then be sure of having the finest Norwegian smoked
sardines, packed in the purest olive oil.”‘

Elsa was sitting with her eyes closed and a soft smile of pleasure
curving her mouth.

‘Go on,’ she said, dreamily.

‘”Nothing nicer.”‘ resumed Martin, with an added touch of eloquence as
the theme began to develop, ‘”for breakfast, lunch, or supper. Probably
your grocer stocks them. Ask him. If he does not, write to us. Price
fivepence per tin. The best sardines and the best oil!”‘

‘Isn’t it lovely?’ she murmured.

Her hand, as it swung, touched his. He held it. She opened her eyes.

‘Don’t stop reading,’ she said. ‘I never heard anything so soothing.’

‘Elsa!’

He bent towards her. She smiled at him. Her eyes were dancing.

‘Elsa, I–’

‘Mr Keith,’ said a quiet voice, ‘desired me to say–’

Martin started away. He glared up furiously. Gazing down upon them
stood Keggs. The butler’s face was shining with a gentle benevolence.

‘Mr Keith desired me to say that he would be glad if Miss Elsa would
come and sit with him for a while.’

‘I’ll come at once,’ said Elsa, stepping from the hammock.

The butler bowed respectfully and turned away. They stood watching him
as he moved across the terrace.

‘What a saintly old man Keggs looks,’ said Elsa. ‘Don’t you think so?
He looks as if he had never even thought of doing anything he
shouldn’t. I wonder if he ever has?’

‘I wonder!’ said Martin.

‘He looks like a stout angel. What were you saying, Martin, when he
came up?’

In his Sunday suit (with ten shillings in specie in the right-hand
trouser pocket) and a brand-new bowler hat, the youngest of the
Shearnes, Thomas Beauchamp Algernon, was being launched by the
combined strength of the family on his public-school career. It was a
solemn moment. The landscape was dotted with relatives–here a small
sister, awed by the occasion into refraining from insult; there an
aunt, vaguely admonitory. “Well, Tom,” said Mr. Shearne, “you’ll soon
be off now. You’re sure to like Eckleton. Remember to cultivate your
bowling. Everyone can bat nowadays. And play forward, not outside. The
outsides get most of the fun, certainly, but then if you’re a forward,
you’ve got eight chances of getting into a team.”

“All right, father.”

“Oh, and work hard.” This by way of an afterthought.

“All right, father.”

“And, Tom,” said Mrs. Shearne, “you are sure to be comfortable at
school, because I asked Mrs. Davy to write to her sister, Mrs.
Spencer, who has a son at Eckleton, and tell her to tell him to look
after you when you get there. He is in Mr. Dencroft’s house, which is
next door to Mr. Blackburn’s, so you will be quite close to one
another. Mind you write directly you get there.”

“All right, mother.”

“And look here, Tom.” His eldest brother stepped to the front and
spoke earnestly. “Look here, don’t you forget what I’ve been telling
you?”

“All right.”

“You’ll be right enough if you don’t go sticking on side. Don’t forget
that, however much of a blood you may have been at that rotten little
private school of yours, you’re not one at Eckleton.”

“All right.”

“You look clean, which is the great thing. There’s nothing much wrong
with you except cheek. You’ve got enough of that to float a ship. Keep
it under.”

“All right. Keep your hair on.”

“There you go,” said the expert, with gloomy triumph. “If you say that
sort of thing at Eckleton, you’ll get jolly well sat on, by Jove!”

“Bai Jove, old chap!” murmured the younger brother, “we’re devils in
the Forty-twoth!”

The other, whose chief sorrow in life was that he could not get the
smaller members of the family to look with proper awe on the fact that
he had just passed into Sandhurst, gazed wistfully at the speaker,
but, realising that there was a locked door between them, tried no
active measures.

“Well, anyhow,” he said, “you’ll soon get it knocked out of you,
that’s one comfort. Look here, if you do get scrapping with anybody,
don’t forget all I’ve taught you. And I should go on boxing there if I
were you, so as to go down to Aldershot some day. You ought to make a
fairly decent featherweight if you practise.”

“All right.”

“Let’s know when Eckleton’s playing Haileybury, and I’ll come and look
you up. I want to see that match.”

“All right.”

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Tom.”

“Good-bye, Tom, dear.”

Chorus of aunts and other supers: “Goodbye, Tom.”

Tom (comprehensively): “G’bye.”

The train left the station.

       *       *       *       *       *

Kennedy, the head of Dencroft’s, said that when he wanted his study
turned into a beastly furnace, he would take care to let Spencer know.
He pointed out that just because it was his habit to warm the study
during the winter months, there was no reason why Spencer should light
the gas-stove on an afternoon in the summer term when the thermometer
was in the eighties. Spencer thought he might want some muffins cooked
for tea, did he? Kennedy earnestly advised Spencer to give up
thinking, as Nature had not equipped him for the strain. Thinking
necessitated mental effort, and Spencer, in Kennedy’s opinion, had no
mind, but rubbed along on a cheap substitute of mud and putty.

More chatty remarks were exchanged, and then Spencer tore himself away
from the pleasant interview, and went downstairs to the junior study,
where he remarked to his friend Phipps that Life was getting a bit
thick.

“What’s up now?” inquired Phipps.

“Everything. We’ve just had a week of term, and I’ve been in extra
once already for doing practically nothing, and I’ve got a hundred
lines, and Kennedy’s been slanging me for lighting the stove. How was
I to know he didn’t want it lit? Wish I was fagging for somebody
else.”

“All the while you’re jawing,” said Phipps, “there’s a letter for you
on the mantelpiece, staring at you?”

“So there is. Hullo!”

“What’s up? Hullo! is that a postal order? How much for?”

“Five bob. I say, who’s Shearne?”

“New kid in Blackburn’s. Why?”

“Great Scott! I remember now. They told me to look after him. I
haven’t seen him yet. And listen to this: ‘Mrs. Shearne has sent me
the enclosed to give to you. Her son writes to say that he is very
happy and getting on very well, so she is sure you must have been
looking after him.’ Why, I don’t know the kid by sight. I clean forgot
all about him.”

“Well, you’d better go and see him now, just to say you’ve done it.”

Spencer perpended.

“Beastly nuisance having a new kid hanging on to you. He’s probably a
frightful rotter.”

“Well, anyway, you ought to,” said Phipps, who possessed the
scenario of a conscience.

“I can’t.”

“All right, don’t, then. But you ought to send back that postal
order.”

“Look here, Phipps,” said Spencer plaintively, “you needn’t be an
idiot, you know.”

And the trivial matter of Thomas B. A. Shearne was shelved.

       *       *       *       *       *

Thomas, as he had stated in his letter to his mother, was exceedingly
happy at Eckleton, and getting on very nicely indeed. It is true that
there had been one or two small unpleasantnesses at first, but those
were over now, and he had settled down completely. The little troubles
alluded to above had begun on his second day at Blackburn’s. Thomas,
as the reader may have gathered from his glimpse of him at the station,
was not a diffident youth. He was quite prepared for anything Fate
might have up its sleeve for him, and he entered the junior day-room at
Blackburn’s ready for emergencies. On the first day nothing happened.
One or two people asked him his name, but none inquired what his father
was–a question which, he had understood from books of school life, was
invariably put to the new boy. He was thus prevented from replying
“coolly, with his eyes fixed on his questioner’s”: “A gentleman. What’s
yours?” and this, of course, had been a disappointment. But he reconciled
himself to it, and on the whole enjoyed his first day at Eckleton.

On the second there occurred an Episode.

Thomas had inherited from his mother a pleasant, rather meek cast of
countenance. He had pink cheeks and golden hair–almost indecently
golden in one who was not a choirboy.

Now, if you are going to look like a Ministering Child or a Little
Willie, the Sunbeam of the Home, when you go to a public school,
you must take the consequences. As Thomas sat by the window of the
junior day-room reading a magazine, and deeply interested in it,
there fell upon his face such a rapt, angelic expression that the
sight of it, silhouetted against the window, roused Master P. Burge,
his fellow-Blackburnite, as it had been a trumpet-blast. To seize a
Bradley Arnold’s Latin Prose Exercises and hurl it across the room
was with Master Burge the work of a moment. It struck Thomas on the
ear. He jumped, and turned some shades pinker. Then he put down his
magazine, picked up the Bradley Arnold, and sat on it. After which he
resumed his magazine.

The acute interest of the junior day-room, always fond of a break in
the monotony of things, induced Burge to go further into the matter.

“You with the face!” said Burge rudely.

Thomas looked up.

“What the dickens are you going with my book? Pass it back!”

“Oh, is this yours?” said Thomas. “Here you are.”

He walked towards him, carrying the book. At two yards range he fired
it in. It hit Burge with some force in the waistcoat, and there was a
pause while he collected his wind.

Then the thing may be said to have begun.

Yes, said Burge, interrogated on the point five minutes later, he
had had enough.

“Good,” said Thomas pleasantly. “Want a handkerchief?”

That evening he wrote to his mother and, thanking her for kind
inquiries, stated that he was not being bullied. He added, also in
answer to inquiries, that he had not been tossed in a blanket, and
that–so far–no Hulking Senior (with scowl) had let him down from the
dormitory window after midnight by a sheet, in order that he might
procure gin from the local public-house. As far as he could gather,
the seniors were mostly teetotallers. Yes, he had seen Spencer several
times. He did not add that he had seen him from a distance.

       *       *       *       *       *

“I’m so glad I asked Mrs. Davy to get her nephew to look after Tom,”
said Mrs. Shearne, concluding the reading of the epistle at breakfast.
“It makes such a difference to a new boy having somebody to protect
him at first.”

“Only drawback is,” said his eldest brother gloomily–”won’t get cheek
knocked out of him. Tom’s kid wh’ought get’sheadsmacked reg’ly. Be no
holding him.”

And he helped himself to marmalade, of which delicacy his mouth was
full, with a sort of magnificent despondency.

By the end of the first fortnight of his school career, Thomas
Beauchamp Algernon had overcome all the little ruggednesses which
relieve the path of the new boy from monotony. He had been taken in by
a primaeval “sell” which the junior day-room invariably sprang on the
new-comer. But as he had sat on the head of the engineer of the same
for the space of ten minutes, despite the latter’s complaints of pain
and forecasts of what he would do when he got up, the laugh had not
been completely against him. He had received the honourable
distinction of extra lesson for ragging in French. He had been
“touched up” by the prefect of his dormitory for creating a
disturbance in the small hours. In fact, he had gone through all the
usual preliminaries, and become a full-blown Eckletonian.

His letters home were so cheerful at this point that a second postal
order relieved the dwindling fortune of Spencer. And it was this,
coupled with the remonstrances of Phipps, that induced the Dencroftian
to break through his icy reserve.

“Look here, Spencer,” said Phipps, his conscience thoroughly stirred
by this second windfall, “it’s all rot. You must either send back that
postal order, or go and see the chap. Besides, he’s quite a decent
kid. We’re in the same game at cricket. He’s rather a good bowler. I’m
getting to know him quite well. I’ve got a jolly sight more right to
those postal orders than you have.”

“But he’s an awful ass to look at,” pleaded Spencer.

“What’s wrong with him? Doesn’t look nearly such a goat as you,” said
Phipps, with the refreshing directness of youth.

“He’s got yellow hair,” argued Spencer.

“Why shouldn’t he have?”

“He looks like a sort of young Sunday-school kid.”

“Well, he jolly well isn’t, then, because I happen to know that he’s
had scraps with some of the fellows in his house, and simply mopped
them.”

“Well, all right, then,” said Spencer reluctantly.

The historic meeting took place outside the school shop at the quarter
to eleven interval next morning. Thomas was leaning against the wall,
eating a bun. Spencer approached him with half a jam sandwich in his
hand. There was an awkward pause.

“Hullo!” said Spencer at last.

“Hullo!” said Thomas.

Spencer finished his sandwich and brushed the crumbs off his trousers.
Thomas continued operations on the bun with the concentrated
expression of a lunching python.

“I believe your people know my people,” said Spencer.

“We have some awfully swell friends,” said Thomas. Spencer chewed this
thoughtfully awhile.

“Beastly cheek,” he said at last.

“Sorry,” said Thomas, not looking it.

Spencer produced a bag of gelatines.

“Have one?” he asked.

“What’s wrong with ‘em?”

“All right, don’t.”

He selected a gelatine and consumed it.

“Ever had your head smacked?” he inquired courteously.

A slightly strained look came into Thomas’s blue eyes.

“Not often,” he replied politely. “Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Spencer. “I was only wondering.”

“Oh?”

“Look here,” said Spencer, “my mater told me to look after you.”

“Well, you can look after me now if you want to, because I’m going.”

And Thomas dissolved the meeting by walking off in the direction of
the junior block.

“That kid,” said Spencer to his immortal soul, “wants his head
smacked, badly.”

At lunch Phipps had questions to ask.

“Saw you talking to Shearne in the interval,” he said. “What were you
talking about?”

“Oh, nothing in particular.”

“What did you think of him?”

“Little idiot.”

“Ask him to tea this afternoon?”

“No.”

“You must. Dash it all, you must do something for him. You’ve had ten
bob out of his people.”

Spencer made no reply.

Going to the school shop that afternoon, he found Thomas seated there
with Phipps, behind a pot of tea. As a rule, he and Phipps tea’d
together, and he resented this desertion.

“Come on,” said Phipps. “We were waiting for you.”

“Pining away,” added Thomas unnecessarily.

Spencer frowned austerely.

“Come and look after me,” urged Thomas.

Spencer sat down in silence. For a minute no sound could be heard but
the champing of Thomas’s jaws as he dealt with a slab of gingerbread.

“Buck up,” said Phipps uneasily.

“Give me,” said Thomas, “just one loving look.”

Spencer ignored the request. The silence became tense once more.

“Coming to the house net, Phipps?” asked Spencer.

“We were going to the baths. Why don’t you come?”

“All right,” said Spencer.

Doctors tell us that we should allow one hour to elapse between taking
food and bathing, but the rule was not rigidly adhered to at Eckleton.
The three proceeded straight from the tea-table to the baths.

The place was rather empty when they arrived. It was a little earlier
than the majority of Eckletonians bathed. The bath filled up as lock-up
drew near. With the exception of a couple of infants splashing about in
the shallow end, and a stout youth who dived in from the spring-board,
scrambled out, and dived in again, each time flatter than the last, they
had the place to themselves.

“What’s it like, Gorrick,” inquired Phipps of the stout youth, who had
just appeared above the surface again, blowing like a whale. The
question was rendered necessary by the fact that many years before the
boiler at the Eckleton baths had burst, and had never been repaired,
with the consequence that the temperature of the water was apt to
vary. That is to say, most days it was colder than others.

“Simply boiling,” said the man of weight, climbing out. “I say, did I
go in all right then?”

“Not bad,” said Phipps.

“Bit flat,” added Thomas critically.

Gorrick blinked severely at the speaker. A head-waiter at a
fashionable restaurant is cordial in his manner compared with a boy
who has been at a public school a year, when addressed familiarly by a
new boy. After reflecting on the outrage for a moment, he dived in
again.

“Worse than ever,” said Truthful Thomas.

“Look here!” said Gorrick.

“Oh, come on!” exclaimed Phipps, and led Thomas away.

“That kid,” said Gorrick to Spencer, “wants his head smacked, badly.”

“That’s just what I say,” agreed Spencer, with the eagerness of a
great mind which has found another that thinks alike with itself.

Spencer was the first of the trio ready to enter the water. His
movements were wary and deliberate. There was nothing of the
professional diver about Spencer. First he stood on the edge and
rubbed his arms, regarding the green water beneath with suspicion and
dislike. Then, crouching down, he inserted three toes of his left
foot, drew them back sharply, and said “Oo!” Then he stood up again.
His next move was to slap his chest and dance a few steps, after which
he put his right foot into the water, again remarked “Oo!” and resumed
Position I.

“Thought you said it was warm,” he shouted to Gorrick.

“So it is; hot as anything. Come on in.”

And Spencer came on in. Not because he wanted to–for, by rights,
there were some twelve more movements to be gone through before he
should finally creep in at the shallow end–but because a cold hand,
placed suddenly on the small of his back, urged him forward. Down he
went, with the water fizzing and bubbling all over and all round him.
He swallowed a good deal of it, but there was still plenty left; and
what there was was colder than one would have believed possible.

He came to the surface after what seemed to him a quarter of an hour,
and struck out for the side. When he got out, Phipps and Thomas had
just got in. Gorrick was standing at the end of the cocoanut matting
which formed a pathway to the spring-board. Gorrick was blue, but
determined.

“I say! Did I go in all right then?” inquired Gorrick.

“How the dickens do I know?” said Spencer, stung to fresh wrath by the
inanity of the question.

“Spencer did,” said Thomas, appearing in the water below them and
holding on to the rail.

“Look here!” cried Spencer; “did you shove me in then?”

“Me! Shove!” Thomas’s voice expressed horror and pain. “Why, you dived
in. Jolly good one, too. Reminded me of the diving elephants at the
Hippodrome.”

And he swam off.

“That kid,” said Gorrick, gazing after him, “wants his head smacked.”

“Badly,” agreed Spencer. “Look here! did he shove me in? Did you see
him?”

“I was doing my dive. But it must have been him. Phipps never rags in
the bath.”

Spencer grunted–an expressive grunt–and, creeping down the steps,
entered the water again.

It was Spencer’s ambition to swim ten lengths of the bath. He was not
a young Channel swimmer, and ten lengths represented a very respectable
distance to him. He proceeded now to attempt to lower his record. It
was not often that he got the bath so much to himself. Usually, there
was barely standing-room in the water, and long-distance swimming was
impossible. But now, with a clear field, he should, he thought, be able
to complete the desired distance.

He was beginning the fifth length before interruption came. Just as he
reached halfway, a reproachful voice at his side said: “Oh, Percy,
you’ll tire yourself!” and a hand on the top of his head propelled him
firmly towards the bottom.

Every schoolboy, as Honble. Macaulay would have put it, knows the
sensation of being ducked. It is always unpleasant–sometimes more,
sometimes less. The present case belonged to the former class. There
was just room inside Spencer for another half-pint of water. He
swallowed it. When he came to the surface, he swam to the side without
a word and climbed out. It was the last straw. Honour could now be
satisfied only with gore.

He hung about outside the baths till Phipps and Thomas appeared, then,
with a steadfast expression on his face, he walked up to the latter
and kicked him.

Thomas seemed surprised, but not alarmed. His eyes grew a little
rounder, and the pink on his cheeks deepened. He looked like a
choir-boy in a bad temper.

“Hullo! What’s up, you ass, Spencer?” inquired Phipps.

Spencer said nothing.

“Where shall we go?” asked Thomas.

“Oh, chuck it!” said Phipps the peacemaker.

Spencer and Thomas were eyeing each other warily.

“You chaps aren’t going to fight?” said Phipps.

The notion seemed to distress him.

“Unless he cares to take a kicking,” said Spencer suavely.

“Not to-day, I think, thanks,” replied Thomas without heat.

“Then, look here!” said Phipps briskly, “I know a ripping little place
just off the Lelby Road. It isn’t five minutes’ walk, and there’s no
chance of being booked there. Rot if someone was to come and stop it
half-way through. It’s in a field; thick hedges. No one can see. And I
tell you what–I’ll keep time. I’ve got a watch. Two minute rounds,
and half-a-minute in between, and I’m the referee; so, if anybody
fouls the other chap, I’ll stop the fight. See? Come on!”

Of the details of that conflict we have no very clear record. Phipps
is enthusiastic, but vague. He speaks in eulogistic terms of a
“corker” which Spencer brought off in the second round, and, again, of
a “tremendous biff” which Thomas appears to have consummated in the
fourth. But of the more subtle points of the fighting he is content
merely to state comprehensively that they were “top-hole.” As to the
result, it would seem that, in the capacity of referee, he declared
the affair a draw at the end of the seventh round; and, later, in his
capacity of second to both parties, helped his principals home by back
and secret ways, one on each arm.

The next items to which the chronicler would call the attention of the
reader are two letters.

The first was from Mrs. Shearne to Spencer, and ran as follows–

My Dear Spencer,–I am writing to you direct, instead of through
your aunt, because I want to thank you so much for looking after
my boy so well. I know what a hard time a new boy has at a public
school if he has got nobody to take care of him at first. I heard
from Tom this morning. He seems so happy, and so fond of you. He
says you are “an awfully decent chap” and “the only chap who has
stood up to him at all.” I suppose he means “for him.” I hope you
will come and spend part of your holidays with us. (”Catch me!”
said Spencer.)

Yours sincerely,
Isabel Shearne

P.S.–I hope you will manage to buy something nice with
the enclosed.

The enclosed was yet another postal order for five shillings. As
somebody wisely observed, a woman’s P.S. is always the most important
part of her letter.

“That kid,” murmured Spencer between swollen lips, “has got cheek
enough for eighteen! ‘Awfully decent chap!’”

He proceeded to compose a letter in reply, and for dignity combined
with lucidity it may stand as a model to young writers.

5 College Grounds,
Eckleton.

Mr. C. F. Spencer begs to present his compliments to Mrs. Shearne,
and returns the postal order, because he doesn’t see why he should
have it. He notes your remarks re my being a decent chap in
your favour of the 13th prox., but cannot see where it quite
comes in, as the only thing I’ve done to Mrs. Shearne’s son is to
fight seven rounds with him in a field, W. G. Phipps refereeing. It
was a draw. I got a black eye and rather a whack in the mouth, but
gave him beans also, particularly in the wind, which I learned to do
from reading “Rodney Stone”–the bit where Bob Whittaker beats the
Eyetalian Gondoleery Cove. Hoping that this will be taken in the
spirit which is meant,

I remain
Yours sincerely,
C. F. Spencer

One enclosure.

He sent this off after prep., and retired to bed full of spiritual
pride.

On the following morning, going to the shop during the interval, he
came upon Thomas negotiating a hot bun.

“Hullo!” said Thomas.

As was generally the case after he had had a fair and spirited turn-out
with a fellow human being, Thomas had begun to feel that he loved his
late adversary as a brother. A wholesome respect, which had hitherto
been wanting, formed part of his opinion of him.

“Hullo!” said Spencer, pausing.

“I say,” said Thomas.

“What’s up?”

“I say, I don’t believe we shook hands, did we?”

“I don’t remember doing it.”

They shook hands. Spencer began to feel that there were points about
Thomas, after all.

“I say,” said Thomas.

“Hullo?”

“I’m sorry about in the bath, you know. I didn’t know you minded being
ducked.”

“Oh, all right!” said Spencer awkwardly.

Eight bars rest.

“I say,” said Thomas.

“Hullo!”

“Doing anything this afternoon?”

“Nothing special, Why?”

“Come and have tea?”

“All right. Thanks.”

“I’ll wait for you outside the house.”

“All right.”

It was just here that Spencer regretted that he had sent back that
five-shilling postal order. Five good shillings.

Simply chucked away.

Oh, Life, Life!

But they were not, after all. On his plate at breakfast next day Spencer
found a letter. This was the letter–

Messrs. J. K. Shearne (father of T. B. A. Shearne) and P. W. Shearne
(brother of same) beg to acknowledge receipt of Mr. C. F. Spencer’s
esteemed communication of yesterday’s date, and in reply desire to
inform Mr. Spencer of their hearty approval of his attentions to
Mr. T. B. A. Shearne’s wind. It is their opinion that the above,
a nice boy but inclined to cheek, badly needs treatment on these
lines occasionally. They therefore beg to return the postal order,
together with another for a like sum, and trust that this will meet
with Mr. Spencer’s approval.

(Signed) J. K. Shearne,
P. W. Shearne.

Two enclosures.

“Of course, what’s up really,” said Spencer to himself, after reading
this, “is that the whole family’s jolly well cracked.”

His eye fell on the postal orders.

“Still—-!” he said.

That evening he entertained Phipps and Thomas B. A. Shearne lavishly
at tea.