He behaved in this way, he told himself, purely in order to spare
Elizabeth anxiety. There had been in the past a fool of a doctor
who had prescribed total abstinence for Nutty, and Elizabeth knew
this. Therefore, Nutty held, to take the mildest of drinks with
her knowledge would have been to fill her with fears for his
safety. So he went to considerable inconvenience to keep the
matter from her notice, and thought rather highly of himself for
doing so.
It certainly was inconvenient - there was no doubt of that. It made
him feel like a cross between a hunted fawn and a burglar. But he
had to some extent diminished the possibility of surprise by
leaving his door open; and to-night he approached the cupboard
where he kept the materials for refreshment with a certain
confidence. He had left Elizabeth on the porch in a hammock,
apparently anchored for some time. Lord Dawlish was out in the
grounds somewhere. Presently he would come in and join Elizabeth
on the porch. The risk of interruption was negligible.
Nutty mixed himself a drink and settled down to brood bitterly, as
he often did, on the doctor who had made that disastrous
statement. Doctors were always saying things like that - sweeping
things which nervous people took too literally. It was true that
he had been in pretty bad shape at the moment when the words had
been spoken. It was just at the end of his Broadway career, when,
as he handsomely admitted, there was a certain amount of truth in
the opinion that his interior needed a vacation. But since then he
had been living in the country, breathing good air, taking things
easy. In these altered conditions and after this lapse of time it
was absurd to imagine that a moderate amount of alcohol could do
him any harm.
It hadn't done him any harm, that was the point. He had tested the
doctor's statement and found it incorrect. He had spent three
hectic days and nights in New York, and - after a reasonable
interval - had felt much the same as usual. And since then he had
imbibed each night, and nothing had happened. What it came to was
that the doctor was a chump and a blighter. Simply that and
nothing more.
Having come to this decision, Nutty mixed another drink. He went
to the head of the stairs and listened. He heard nothing. He
returned to his room.
Yes, that was it, the doctor was a chump. So far from doing him
any harm, these nightly potations brightened Nutty up, gave him
heart, and enabled him to endure life in this hole of a place. He
felt a certain scornful amusement. Doctors, he supposed, had to
get off that sort of talk to earn their money.
He reached out for the bottle, and as he grasped it his eye was
caught by something on the floor. A brown monkey with a long, grey
tail was sitting there staring at him.
There was one of those painful pauses. Nutty looked at the monkey
rather like an elongated Macbeth inspecting the ghost of Banquo.
The monkey looked at Nutty. The pause continued. Nutty shut his
eyes, counted ten slowly, and opened them.
The monkey was still there.
'Boo!' said Nutty, in an apprehensive undertone.
The monkey looked at him.
Nutty shut his eyes again. He would count sixty this time. A cold
fear had laid its clammy fingers on his heart. This was what that
doctor - not such a chump after all - must have meant!
Nutty began to count. There seemed to be a heavy lump inside him,
and his mouth was dry; but otherwise he felt all right. That was
the gruesome part of it - this dreadful thing had come upon him at
a moment when he could have sworn that he was sound as a bell. If
this had happened in the days when he ranged the Great White Way,
sucking up deleterious moisture like a cloud, it would have been
intelligible. But it had sneaked upon him like a thief in the
night; it had stolen unheralded into his life when he had
practically reformed. What was the good of practically reforming
if this sort of thing was going to happen to one?
'... Fifty-nine ... sixty.'
He opened his eyes. The monkey was still there, in precisely the
same attitude, as if it was sitting for its portrait. Panic surged
upon Nutty. He lost his head completely. He uttered a wild yell
and threw the bottle at the apparition.
Life had not been treating Eustace well that evening. He seemed to
have happened upon one of those days when everything goes wrong.
The cat had scratched him, the odd-job man had swathed him in an
apron, and now this stranger, in whom he had found at first a
pleasant restfulness, soothing after the recent scenes of violence
in which he had participated, did this to him. He dodged the
missile and clambered on to the top of the wardrobe. It was his
instinct in times of stress to seek the high spots. And then
Elizabeth hurried into the room.
Elizabeth had been lying in the hammock on the porch when her
brother's yell had broken forth. It was a lovely, calm, moonlight
night, and she had been revelling in the peace of it, when
suddenly this outcry from above had shot her out of her hammock
like an explosion. She ran upstairs, fearing she knew not what.
She found Nutty sitting on the bed, looking like an overwrought
giraffe.
'Whatever is the - ?' she began; and then things began to impress
themselves on her senses.
The bottle which Nutty had thrown at Eustace had missed the
latter, but it had hit the wall, and was now lying in many pieces
on the floor, and the air was heavy with the scent of it. The
remains seemed to leer at her with a kind of furtive swagger,
after the manner of broken bottles. A quick thrill of anger ran
through Elizabeth. She had always felt more like a mother to Nutty
than a sister, and now she would have liked to exercise the
maternal privilege of slapping him.
'Nutty!'
'I saw a monkey!' said her brother, hollowly. 'I was standing over
there and I saw a monkey! Of course, it wasn't there really. I
flung the bottle at it, and it seemed to climb on to that
wardrobe.'
'This wardrobe?'
'Yes.'
Elizabeth struck it a resounding blow with the palm of her hand,
and Eustace's face popped over the edge, peering down anxiously.
'I can see it now,' said Nutty. A sudden, faint hope came to him.
'Can you see it?' he asked.
Elizabeth did not speak for a moment. This was an unusual
situation, and she was wondering how to treat it. She was sorry
for Nutty, but Providence had sent this thing and it would be
foolish to reject it. She must look on herself in the light of a
doctor. It would be kinder to Nutty in the end. She had the
feminine aversion from the lie deliberate. Her ethics on the
_suggestio falsi_ were weak. She looked at Nutty questioningly.
'See it?' she said.
'Don't you see a monkey on the top of the wardrobe?' said Nutty,
becoming more definite.
'There's a sort of bit of wood sticking out - '
Nutty sighed.
'No, not that. You didn't see it. I don't think you would.'
He spoke so dejectedly that for a moment Elizabeth weakened, but
only for an instant.
'Tell me all about this, Nutty,' she said.
Nutty was beyond the desire for evasion and concealment. His one
wish was to tell. He told all.
'But, Nutty, how silly of you!'
'Yes.'
'After what the doctor said.'
'I know.'
'You remember his telling you - '
'I know. Never again!'
'What do you mean?'
'I quit. I'm going to give it up.'
Elizabeth embraced him maternally.
'That's a good child!' she said. 'You really promise?'
'I don't have to promise, I'm just going to do it.'
Elizabeth compromised with her conscience by becoming soothing.
'You know, this isn't so very serious, Nutty, darling. I mean,
it's just a warning.'
'It's warned me all right.'
'You will be perfectly all right if - '
Nutty interrupted her.
'You're sure you can't see anything?'
'See what?'
Nutty's voice became almost apologetic.
'I know it's just imagination, but the monkey seems to me to be
climbing down from the wardrobe.'
'I can't see anything climbing down the wardrobe,' said Elizabeth,
as Eustace touched the floor.
'It's come down now. It's crossing the carpet.'
'Where?'
'It's gone now. It went out of the door.'
'Oh!'
'I say, Elizabeth, what do you think I ought to do?'
'I should go to bed and have a nice long sleep, and you'll feel - '
'Somehow I don't feel much like going to bed. This sort of thing
upsets a chap, you know.'
'Poor dear!'
'I think I'll go for a long walk.'
'That's a splendid idea.'
'I think I'd better do a good lot of walking from now on. Didn't
Chalmers bring down some Indian clubs with him? I think I'll
borrow them. I ought to keep out in the open a lot, I think. I
wonder if there's any special diet I ought to have. Well, anyway,
I'll be going for that walk.'
At the foot of the stairs Nutty stopped. He looked quickly into
the porch, then looked away again.
'What's the matter?' asked Elizabeth.
'I thought for a moment I saw the monkey sitting on the hammock.'
He went out of the house and disappeared from view down the drive,
walking with long, rapid strides.
Elizabeth's first act, when he had gone, was to fetch a banana
from the ice-box. Her knowledge of monkeys was slight, but she
fancied they looked with favour on bananas. It was her intention
to conciliate Eustace.
She had placed Eustace by now. Unlike Nutty, she read the papers,
and she knew all about Lady Wetherby and her pets. The fact that
Lady Wetherby, as she had been informed by the grocer in friendly
talk, had rented a summer house in the neighbourhood made
Eustace's identity positive.
She had no very clear plans as to what she intended to do with
Eustace, beyond being quite resolved that she was going to board
and lodge him for a few days. Nutty had had the jolt he needed,
but it might be that the first freshness of it would wear away, in
which event it would be convenient to have Eustace on the
premises. She regarded Eustace as a sort of medicine. A second
dose might not be necessary, but it was as well to have the
mixture handy. She took another banana, in case the first might
not be sufficient. She then returned to the porch.
Eustace was sitting on the hammock, brooding. The complexities of
life were weighing him down a good deal. He was not aware of
Elizabeth's presence until he found her standing by him. He had
just braced himself for flight, when he perceived that she bore
rich gifts.
Eustace was always ready for a light snack - readier now than
usual, for air and exercise had sharpened his appetite. He took
the banana in a detached manner, as it to convey the idea that it
did not commit him to any particular course of conduct. It was a
good banana, and he stretched out a hand for the other. Elizabeth
sat down beside him, but he did not move. He was convinced now of
her good intentions. It was thus that Lord Dawlish found them when
he came in from the garden.
'Where has your brother gone to?' he asked. 'He passed me just now
at eight miles an hour. Great Scot! What's that?'
'It's a monkey. Don't frighten him; he's rather nervous.'
She tickled Eustace under the ear, for their relations were now
friendly.
'Nutty went for a walk because he thought he saw it.'
'Thought he saw it?'
'Thought he saw it,' repeated Elizabeth, firmly. 'Will you
remember, Mr Chalmers, that, as far as he is concerned, this
monkey has no existence?'
'I don't understand.'
Elizabeth explained.
'You see now?'
'I see. But how long are you going to keep the animal?'
'Just a day or two - in case.'
'Where are you going to keep it?'
'In the outhouse. Nutty never goes there, it's too near the
bee-hives.'
'I suppose you don't know who the owner is?'
'Yes, I do; it must be Lady Wetherby.'
'Lady Wetherby!'
'She's a woman who dances at one of the restaurants. I read in a
Sunday paper about her monkey. She has just taken a house near
here. I don't see who else the animal could belong to. Monkeys are
rarities on Long Island.'
Bill was silent. 'Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose,
flushing his brow.' For days he had been trying to find an excuse
for calling on Lady Wetherby as a first step toward meeting Claire
again. Here it was. There would be no need to interfere with
Elizabeth's plans. He would be vague. He would say he had just
seen the runaway, but would not add where. He would create an
atmosphere of helpful sympathy. Perhaps, later on, Elizabeth would
let him take the monkey back.
'What are you thinking about?' asked Elizabeth.
'Oh, nothing,' said Bill.
'Perhaps we had better stow away our visitor for the night.'
'Yes.'
Elizabeth got up.
'Poor, dear Nutty may be coming back at any moment now,' she said.
But poor, dear Nutty did not return for a full two hours. When he
did he was dusty and tired, but almost cheerful.
'I didn't see the brute once all the time I was out,' he told
Elizabeth. 'Not once!'
Elizabeth kissed him fondly and offered to heat water for a bath;
but Nutty said he would take it cold. From now on, he vowed,
nothing but cold baths. He conveyed the impression of being a
blend of repentant sinner and hardy Norseman. Before he went to
bed he approached Bill on the subject of Indian clubs.
'I want to get myself into shape, old top,' he said.
'Yes?'
'I've got to cut it out - to-night I thought I saw a monkey.'
'Really?'
'As plain as I see you now.' Nutty gave the clubs a tentative
swing. 'What do you do with these darned things? Swing them about
and all that? All right, I see the idea. Good night.'
But Bill did not pass a good night. He lay awake long, thinking
over his plans for the morrow.
15
Lady Wetherby was feeling battered. She had not realized how
seriously Roscoe Sherriff took the art of publicity, nor what
would be the result of the half-hour he had spent at the telephone
on the night of the departure of Eustace.
Roscoe Sherriff's eloquence had fired the imagination of editors.
There had been a notable lack of interesting happenings this
summer. Nobody seemed to be striking or murdering or having
violent accidents. The universe was torpid. In these circumstances,
the escape of Eustace seemed to present possibilities. Reporters
had been sent down. There were three of them living in the house
now, and Wrench's air of disapproval was deepening every hour.
It was their strenuousness which had given Lady Wetherby that
battered feeling. There was strenuousness in the air, and she
resented it on her vacation. She had come to Long Island to
vegetate, and with all this going on round her vegetation was
impossible. She was not long alone. Wrench entered.
'A gentleman to see you, m'lady.'
In the good old days, when she had been plain Polly Davis, of the
personnel of the chorus of various musical comedies, Lady Wetherby
would have suggested a short way of disposing of this untimely
visitor; but she had a position to keep up now.
'From some darned paper?' she asked, wearily.
'No, m'lady. I fancy he is not connected with the Press.'
There was something in Wrench's manner that perplexed Lady
Wetherby, something almost human, as if Wrench were on the point
of coming alive. She did not guess it, but the explanation was
that Bill, quite unwittingly, had impressed Wrench. There was that
about Bill that reminded the butler of London and dignified
receptions at the house of the Dowager Duchess of Waveney. It was
deep calling unto deep.
'Where is he?'
'I have shown him into the drawing-room, m'lady.'
Lady Wetherby went downstairs and found a large young man awaiting
her, looking nervous.
Bill was feeling nervous. A sense of the ridiculousness of his
mission had come upon him. After all, he asked himself, what on
earth had he got to say? A presentiment had come upon him that he
was about to look a perfect ass. At the sight of Lady Wetherby his
nervousness began to diminish. Lady Wetherby was not a formidable
person. In spite of her momentary peevishness, she brought with
her an atmosphere of geniality and camaraderie.
'It's about your monkey,' he said, coming to the point at once.
Lady Wetherby brightened.
'Oh! Have you seen it?'
He was glad that she put it like that.
'Yes. It came round our way last night.'
'Where is that?'
'I am staying at a farm near here, a place they call Flack's. The
monkey got into one of the rooms.'
'Yes?'
'And then - er - then it got out again, don't you know.'
Lady Wetherby looked disappointed.
'So it may be anywhere now?' she said.
In the interests of truth, Bill thought it best to leave this
question unanswered.
'Well, it's very good of you to have bothered to come out and tell
me,' said Lady Wetherby. 'It gives us a clue, at any rate. Thank
you. At least, we know now in which direction it went.'
There was a pause. Bill gathered that the other was looking on the
interview as terminated, and that she was expecting him to go, and
he had not begun to say what he wanted to say. He tried to think
of a way of introducing the subject of Claire that should not seem
too abrupt.
'Er - ' he said.
'Well?' said Lady Wetherby, simultaneously.
'I beg your pardon.'
'You have the floor,' said Lady Wetherby. 'Shoot!'
It was not what she had intended to say. For months she had been
trying to get out of the habit of saying that sort of thing, but
she still suffered relapses. Only the other day she had told
Wrench to check some domestic problem or other with his hat, and
he had nearly given notice. But if she had been intending to put
Bill at his ease she could not have said anything better.
'You have a Miss Fenwick staying with you, haven't you?' he said.
Lady Wetherby beamed.
'Do you know Claire?'
'Yes, rather!'
'She's my best friend. We used to be in the same company when I
was in England.'
'So she has told me.'
'She was my bridesmaid when I married Lord Wetherby.'
'Yes.'
Lady Wetherby was feeling perfectly happy now, and when Lady
Wetherby felt happy she always became garrulous. She was one of
those people who are incapable of looking on anybody as a stranger
after five minutes' acquaintance. Already she had begun to regard
Bill as an old friend.
'Those were great days,' she said, cheerfully. 'None of us had a
bean, and Algie was the hardest up of the whole bunch. After we
were married we went to the Savoy for the wedding-breakfast, and
when it was over and the waiter came with the check, Algie said he
was sorry, but he had had a bad week at Lincoln and hadn't the
price on him. He tried to touch me, but I passed. Then he had a go
at the best man, but the best man had nothing in the world but one
suit of clothes and a spare collar. Claire was broke, too, so the
end of it was that the best man had to sneak out and pawn my watch
and the wedding-ring.'
The room rang with her reminiscent laughter, Bill supplying a bass
accompaniment. Bill was delighted. He had never hoped that it
would be granted to him to become so rapidly intimate with
Claire's hostess. Why, he had only to keep the conversation in
this chummy vein for a little while longer and she would give him
the run of the house.
'Miss Fenwick isn't in now, I suppose?' he asked.
'No, Claire's out with Dudley Pickering. You don't know him, do
you?'
'No.'
'She's engaged to him.'
It is an ironical fact that Lady Wetherby was by nature one of the
firmest believers in existence in the policy of breaking things
gently to people. She had a big, soft heart, and she hated hurting
her fellows. As a rule, when she had bad news to impart to any one
she administered the blow so gradually and with such mystery as to
the actual facts that the victim, having passed through the
various stages of imagined horrors, was genuinely relieved, when
she actually came to the point, to find that all that had happened
was that he had lost all his money. But now in perfect innocence,
thinking only to pass along an interesting bit of information, she
had crushed Bill as effectively as if she had used a club for that
purpose.
'I'm tickled to death about it,' she went on, as it were over her
hearer's prostrate body. It was I who brought them together, you
know. I wrote telling Claire to come out here on the _Atlantic,_
knowing that Dudley was sailing on that boat. I had an idea they
would hit it off together. Dudley fell for her right away, and she
must have fallen for him, for they had only known each other
for a few weeks when they came and told me they were engaged.
It happened last Sunday.'
'Last Sunday!'
It had seemed to Bill a moment before that he would never again be
capable of speech, but this statement dragged the words out of
him. Last Sunday! Why, it was last Sunday that Claire had broken
off her engagement with him!
'Last Sunday at nine o'clock in the evening, with a full moon
shining and soft music going on off-stage. Real third-act stuff.'
Bill felt positively dizzy. He groped back in his memory for
facts. He had gone out for his walk after dinner. They had dined
at eight. He had been walking some time. Why, in Heaven's name,
this was the quickest thing in the amatory annals of civilization!
His brain was too numbed to work out a perfectly accurate
schedule, but it looked as if she must have got engaged to this
Pickering person before she met him, Bill, in the road that night.
'It's a wonderful match for dear old Claire,' resumed Lady
Wetherby, twisting the knife in the wound with a happy unconsciousness.
'Dudley's not only a corking good fellow, but he has thirty million
dollars stuffed away in the stocking and a business that brings him
in a perfectly awful mess of money every year. He's the Pickering of
the Pickering automobiles, you know.'
Bill got up. He stood for a moment holding to the back of his
chair before speaking. It was almost exactly thus that he had felt
in the days when he had gone in for boxing and had stopped
forceful swings with the more sensitive portions of his person.
'That - that's splendid!' he said. 'I - I think I'll be going.'
'I heard the car outside just now,' said Lady Wetherby. 'I think
it's probably Claire and Dudley come back. Won't you wait and see
her?'
Bill shook his head.
'Well, good-bye for the present, then. You must come round again.
Any friend of Claire's - and it was bully of you to bother about
looking in to tell of Eustace.'
Bill had reached the door. He was about to turn the handle when
someone turned it on the other side.
'Why, here is Dudley,' said Lady Wetherby. 'Dudley, this is a
friend of Claire's.'
Dudley Pickering was one of those men who take the ceremony of
introduction with a measured solemnity. It was his practice to
grasp the party of the second part firmly by the hand, hold it,
look into his eyes in a reverent manner, and get off some little
speech of appreciation, short but full of feeling. The opening
part of this ceremony he performed now. He grasped Bill's hand
firmly, held it, and looked into his eyes. And then, having
performed his business, he fell down on his lines. Not a word
proceeded from him. He dropped the hand and stared at Bill
amazedly and - more than that - with fear.
Bill, too, uttered no word. It was not one of those chatty
meetings.
But if they were short on words, both Bill and Mr Pickering were
long on looks. Bill stared at Mr Pickering. Mr Pickering stared at
Bill.
Bill was drinking in Mr Pickering. The stoutness of Mr Pickering - the
orderliness of Mr Pickering - the dullness of Mr Pickering - all these
things he perceived. And illumination broke upon him.
Mr Pickering was drinking in Bill. The largeness of Bill - the
embarrassment of Bill - the obvious villainy of Bill - none of these
things escaped his notice. And illumination broke upon him also.
For Dudley Pickering, in the first moment of their meeting, had
recognized Bill as the man who had been lurking in the grounds and
peering in at the window, the man at whom on the night when he had
become engaged to Claire he had shouted 'Hi!'
'Where's Claire, Dudley?' asked Lady Wetherby.
Mr Pickering withdrew his gaze reluctantly from Bill.
'Gone upstairs.'
I'll go and tell her that you're here, Mr - You never told me your
name.'
Bill came to life with an almost acrobatic abruptness. There were
many things of which at that moment he felt absolutely incapable,
and meeting Claire was one of them.
'No; I must be going,' he said, hurriedly. 'Good-bye.'
He came very near running out of the room. Lady Wetherby regarded
the practically slammed door with wide eyes.
'Quick exit of Nut Comedian!' she said. 'Whatever was the matter
with the man? He's scorched a trail in the carpet.'
Mr Pickering was trembling violently.
'Do you know who that was? He was the man!' said Mr Pickering.
'What man?'
'The man I caught looking in at the window that night!'
'What nonsense! You must be mistaken. He said he knew Claire quite
well.'
'But when you suggested that he should meet her he ran.'
This aspect of the matter had not occurred to Lady Wetherby.
'So he did!'
'What did he tell you that showed he knew Claire?'
'Well, now that I come to think of it, he didn't tell me anything.
I did the talking. He just sat there.'
Mr Pickering quivered with combined fear and excitement and
inductive reasoning.
'It was a trick!' he cried. 'Remember what Sherriff said that
night when I told you about finding the man looking in at the
window? He said that the fellow was spying round as a preliminary
move. To-day he trumps up an obviously false excuse for getting
into the house. Was he left alone in the rooms at all?'
'Yes. Wrench loosed him in here and then came up to tell me.'
'For several minutes, then, he was alone in the house. Why, he had
time to do all he wanted to do!'
'Calm down!'
'I am perfectly calm. But - '
'You've been seeing too many crook plays, Dudley. A man isn't
necessarily a burglar because he wears a decent suit of clothes.'
'Why was he lurking in the grounds that night?'
'You're just imagining that it was the same man.'
'I am absolutely positive it was the same man.'
'Well, we can easily settle one thing about him, at any rate. Here
comes Claire. Claire, old girl,' she said, as the door opened, 'do
you know a man named - Darn it! I never got his name, but he's - '
Claire stood in the doorway, looking from one to the other.
'What's the matter, Dudley?' she said.
'Dudley's gone clean up in the air,' explained Lady Wetherby,
tolerantly. 'A friend of yours called to tell me he had seen
Eustace - '
'So that was his excuse, was it?' said Dudley Pickering. 'Did he
say where Eustace was?'
'No; he said he had seen him; that was all'
'An obviously trumped-up story. He had heard of Eustace's escape
and he knew that any story connected with him would be a passport
into the house.'
Lady Wetherby turned to Claire.
'You haven't told us yet if you know the man. He was a big, tall,
broad gazook,' said Lady Wetherby. 'Very English'
'He faked the English,' said Dudley Pickering. 'That man was no
more an Englishman than I am.'
'Be patient with him, Claire,' urged Lady Wetherby. 'He's been
going to the movies too much, and thinks every man who has had his
trousers pressed is a social gangster. This man was the most
English thing I've ever seen - talked like this.'
She gave a passable reproduction of Bill's speech. Claire started.
'I don't know him!' she cried.
Her mind was in a whirl of agitation. Why had Bill come to the
house? What had he said? Had he told Dudley anything?
'I don't recognize the description,' she said, quickly. 'I don't
know anything about him.'
'There!' said Dudley Pickering, triumphantly.
'It's queer,' said Lady Wetherby. 'You're sure you don't know him,
Claire?'
'Absolutely sure.'
'He said he was living at a place near here, called Flack's.'
'I know the place,' said Dudley Pickering. 'A sinister, tumbledown
sort of place. Just where a bunch of crooks would be living.'
'I thought it was a bee-farm,' said Lady Wetherby. 'One of the
tradesmen told me about it. I saw a most corkingly pretty girl
bicycling down to the village one morning, and they told me she
was named Boyd and kept a bee-farm at Flack's.'
'A blind!' said Mr Pickering, stoutly. 'The girl's the man's
accomplice. It's quite easy to see the way they work. The girl
comes and settles in the place so that everybody knows her. That's
to lull suspicion. Then the man comes down for a visit and goes
about cleaning up the neighbouring houses. You can't get away from
the fact that this summer there have been half a dozen burglaries
down here, and nobody has found out who did them.'
Lady Wetherby looked at him indulgently.
'And now,' she said, 'having got us scared stiff, what are you
going to do about it?'
'I am going,' he said, with determination, 'to take steps.'
He went out quickly, the keen, tense man of affairs.
'Bless him!' said Lady Wetherby. 'I'd no idea your Dudley had so
much imagination, Claire. He's a perfect bomb-shell.'
Claire laughed shakily.
'It is odd, though,' said Lady Wetherby, meditatively, 'that this
man should have said that he knew you, when you don't - '
Claire turned impulsively.
'Polly, I want to tell you something. Promise you won't tell
Dudley. I wasn't telling the truth just now. I do know this man. I
was engaged to him once.'
'What!'
'For goodness' sake don't tell Dudley!'
'But - '
'It's all over now; but I used to be engaged to him.'
'Not when I was in England?'
'No, after that.'
'Then he didn't know you are engaged to Dudley now?'
'N-no. I - I haven't seen him for a long time.'
Lady Wetherby looked remorseful.
'Poor man! I must have given him a jolt! But why didn't you tell
me about him before?'
'Oh, I don't know.'
'Oh, well, I'm not inquisitive. There's no rubber in my
composition. It's your affair.'
'You won't tell Dudley?'
'Of course not. But why not? You've nothing to be ashamed of.'
'No; but - '
'Well, I won't tell him, anyway. But I'm glad you told me about
him. Dudley was so eloquent about burglars that he almost had me
going. I wonder where he rushed off to?'
Dudley Pickering had rushed off to his bedroom, and was examining
a revolver there. He examined it carefully, keenly. Preparedness
was Dudley Pickering's slogan. He looked rather like a stout
sheriff in a film drama.
16
In the interesting land of India, where snakes abound and
scorpions are common objects of the wayside, a native who has had
the misfortune to be bitten by one of the latter pursues an
admirably common-sense plan. He does not stop to lament, nor does
he hang about analysing his emotions. He runs and runs and runs,
and keeps on running until he has worked the poison out of his
system. Not until then does he attempt introspection.
Lord Dawlish, though ignorant of this fact, pursued almost
identically the same policy. He did not run on leaving Lady
Wetherby's house, but he took a very long and very rapid walk,
than which in times of stress there are few things of greater
medicinal value to the human mind. To increase the similarity, he
was conscious of a curious sense of being poisoned. He felt
stifled - in want of air.
Bill was a simple young man, and he had a simple code of ethics.
Above all things he prized and admired and demanded from his
friends the quality of straightness. It was his one demand. He had
never actually had a criminal friend, but he was quite capable of
intimacy with even a criminal, provided only that there was
something spacious about his brand of crime and that it did not
involve anything mean or underhand. It was the fact that Mr
Breitstein whom Claire had wished him to insinuate into his club,
though acquitted of actual crime, had been proved guilty of
meanness and treachery, that had so prejudiced Bill against him.
The worst accusation that he could bring against a man was that he
was not square, that he had not played the game.
Claire had not been square. It was that, more than the shock of
surprise of Lady Wetherby's news, that had sent him striding along
the State Road at the rate of five miles an hour, staring before
him with unseeing eyes. A sudden recollection of their last
interview brought a dull flush to Bill's face and accelerated his
speed. He felt physically ill.
It was not immediately that he had arrived at even this sketchy
outline of his feelings. For perhaps a mile he walked as the
scorpion-stung natives run - blindly, wildly, with nothing in his
mind but a desire to walk faster and faster, to walk as no man had
ever walked before. And then - one does not wish to be unduly
realistic, but the fact is too important to be ignored - he began
to perspire. And hard upon that unrefined but wonder-working flow
came a certain healing of spirit. Dimly at first but every moment
more clearly, he found it possible to think.
In a man of Bill's temperament there are so many qualities wounded
by a blow such as he had received, that it is hardly surprising
that his emotions, when he began to examine them, were mixed. Now
one, now another, of his wounds presented itself to his notice.
And then individual wounds would become difficult to distinguish
in the mass of injuries. Spiritually, he was in the position of a
man who has been hit simultaneously in a number of sensitive spots
by a variety of hard and hurtful things. He was as little able,
during the early stages of his meditations, to say where he was
hurt most as a man who had been stabbed in the back, bitten in the
ankle, hit in the eye, smitten with a blackjack, and kicked on the
shin in the same moment of time. All that such a man would be able
to say with certainty would be that unpleasant things had happened
to him; and that was all that Bill was able to say.
Little by little, walking swiftly the while, he began to make a
rough inventory. He sorted out his injuries, catalogued them. It
was perhaps his self-esteem that had suffered least of all, for he
was by nature modest. He had a savage humility, valuable in a
crisis of this sort.
But he looked up to Claire. He had thought her straight. And all
the time that she had been saying those things to him that night
of their last meeting she had been engaged to another man, a fat,
bald, doddering, senile fool, whose only merit was his money.
Scarcely a fair description of Mr Pickering, but in a man in
Bill's position a little bias is excusable.
Bill walked on. He felt as if he could walk for ever. Automobiles
whirred past, hooting peevishly, but he heeded them not. Dogs
trotted out to exchange civilities, but he ignored them. The
poison in his blood drove him on.
And then quite suddenly and unexpectedly the fever passed. Almost
in mid-stride he became another man, a healed, sane man, keenly
aware of a very vivid thirst and a desire to sit down and rest
before attempting the ten miles of cement road that lay between
him and home. Half an hour at a wayside inn completed the cure. It
was a weary but clear-headed Bill who trudged back through the
gathering dusk.
He found himself thinking of Claire as of someone he had known
long ago, someone who had never touched his life. She seemed so
far away that he wondered how she could ever have affected him for
pain or pleasure. He looked at her across a chasm. This is the
real difference between love and infatuation, that infatuation
can be slain cleanly with a single blow. In the hour of clear
vision which had come to him, Bill saw that he had never loved
Claire. It was her beauty that had held him, that and the appeal
which her circumstances had made to his pity. Their minds had not
run smoothly together. Always there had been something that
jarred, a subtle antagonism. And she was crooked.
Almost unconsciously his mind began to build up an image of the
ideal girl, the girl he would have liked Claire to be, the girl
who would conform to all that he demanded of woman. She would be
brave. He realized now that, even though it had moved his pity,
Claire's querulousness had offended something in him.
He had made allowances for her, but the ideal girl would have had
no need of allowances. The ideal girl would be plucky, cheerfully
valiant, a fighter. She would not admit the existence of hard
luck.
She would be honest. Here, too, she would have no need of allowances.
No temptation would be strong enough to make her do a mean act or
think a mean thought, for her courage would give her strength, and
her strength would make her proof against temptation. She would be
kind. That was because she would also be extremely intelligent,
and, being extremely intelligent, would have need of kindness to
enable her to bear with a not very intelligent man like himself.
For the rest, she would be small and alert and pretty, and fair
haired - and brown-eyed - and she would keep a bee farm and her name
would be Elizabeth Boyd.
Having arrived with a sense of mild astonishment at this
conclusion, Bill found, also to his surprise, that he had walked
ten miles without knowing it and that he was turning in at the
farm gate. Somebody came down the drive, and he saw that it was
Elizabeth.
She hurried to meet him, small and shadowy in the uncertain light.
James, the cat, stalked rheumatically at her side. She came up to
Bill, and he saw that her face wore an anxious look. He gazed at
her with a curious feeling that it was a very long time since he
had seen her last.
'Where have you been?' she said, her voice troubled. 'I couldn't
think what had become of you.'
'I went for a walk.'
'But you've been gone hours and hours.'
'I went to a place called Morrisville.'
'Morrisville!' Elizabeth's eyes opened wide. 'Have you walked
twenty miles?'
'Why, I - I believe I have.'
It was the first time he had been really conscious of it.
Elizabeth looked at him in consternation. Perhaps it was the
association in her mind of unexpected walks with the newly-born
activities of the repentant Nutty that gave her the feeling that
there must be some mental upheaval on a large scale at the back of
this sudden ebullition of long-distance pedestrianism. She
remembered that the thought had come to her once or twice during
the past week that all was not well with her visitor, and that he
had seemed downcast and out of spirits.
She hesitated.
'Is anything the matter, Mr Chalmers?'
'No,' said Bill, decidedly. He would have found a difficulty in
making that answer with any ring of conviction earlier in the day,
but now it was different. There was nothing whatever the matter
with him now. He had never felt happier.
'You're sure?'
'Absolutely. I feel fine.'
'I thought - I've been thinking for some days - that you might be in
trouble of some sort.'
Bill swiftly added another to that list of qualities which he had
been framing on his homeward journey. That girl of his would be
angelically sympathetic.
'It's awfully good of you,' he said, 'but honestly I feel like - I
feel great.'
The little troubled look passed from Elizabeth's face. Her eyes
twinkled.
'You're really feeling happy?'
'Tremendously.'
'Then let me damp you. We're in an awful fix!'
'What! In what way?'
'About the monkey.'
'Has he escaped?'
'That's the trouble - he hasn't.'
'I don't understand.'
'Come and sit down and I'll tell you. It's a shame to keep you
standing after your walk.'
They made their way to the massive stone seat which Mr Flack, the