CHAPTER IV
I
If you go up Beeston Street in the southwestern postal division of London and follow the pavement on the right-hand side, you come to a blind alley called Hayling Court. If you enter the first building on the left of this blind alley and mount a flight of stairs you find yourself facing a door, on the ground glass of which is the legend:
ARGUSENQUIRYAGENCYLTD.
and below it, to one side, the smaller legend
P. FROBISHER PILBEAM, MGR.
And if, at about the hour when Ronnie Fish had stepped into his two-seater in the garage of Blandings Castle, you had opened this door and gone in and succeeded in convincing the gentlemanly office boy that yours was a bona fide visit, having nothing to do with the sale of life insurance, proprietary medicines, or handsomely bound sets of Dumas, you would have been admitted to the august presence of the manager himself. P. Frobisher Pilbeam was seated at his desk, reading a telegram which had arrived during his absence at lunch.
This is peculiarly an age of young men starting out in business for themselves; of rare, unfettered spirits chafing at the bonds of employment and refusing to spend their lives working forty-eight weeks in the year for a salary. Quite early in his career Pilbeam had seen where the big money lay and decided to go after it.
As editor of that celebrated weekly scandal sheet,Society Spice, Percy Pilbeam had had exceptional opportunities of discovering in good time the true bent of his genius; with the result that, after three years of nosing out people's discreditable secrets on behalf of the Mammoth Publishing Company, his employers, he had come to the conclusion that a man of his gifts would be doing far better for himself nosing out such secrets on his own behalf. Considerably to the indignation of Lord Tilbury, the Mammoth's guiding spirit, he had borrowed some capital, handed in his portfolio, and was now in an extremely agreeable financial position.
The telegram over which he sat brooding with wrinkled forehead was just the sort of telegram an inquiry agent ought to have been delighted to receive, being thoroughly cryptic and consequently a pleasing challenge to his astuteness as a detective; but Percy Pilbeam, in his ten minutes' acquaintance with it, had come to dislike it heartily. He preferred his telegrams easier.
It ran as follows:
Be sure send best man investigate big robbery.
Be sure send best man investigate big robbery.
It was unsigned.
What made the thing particularly annoying was that it was so tantalizing. A big robbery probably meant jewels, with a correspondingly big fee attached to their recovery. But you cannot scour England at random asking people if they have had a big robbery in their neighbourhood.
Reluctantly he gave the problem up and, producing a pocket mirror, began with the aid of a pen nib to curl his small and revolting moustache. His thoughts had drifted now to Sue. They were not altogether sunny thoughts, for the difficulty of making Sue's acquaintance was beginning to irk Percy Pilbeam. He had written her notes. He had sent her flowers. And nothing had happened. She ignored the notes, and what she did with the flowers he did not know. She certainly never thanked him for them.
Brooding upon these matters, he was interrupted by the opening of the door. The gentlemanly office boy entered. Pilbeam looked up, annoyed.
"How many times have I told you not to come in here without knocking?" he asked sternly.
The office boy reflected.
"Seven," he replied.
"What would you have done if I had been in conference with an important client?"
"Gone out again," said the office boy. Working in a Private Enquiry Agency, you drop into the knack of solving problems.
"Well, go out now."
"Very good, sir. I merely wished to say that while you were absent at lunch a gentleman called."
"Eh? Who was he?"
The office boy, who liked atmosphere and hoped some day to be promoted to the company of Mr. Murphy and Mr. Jones, the two active assistants who had their lair on the ground floor, thought for a moment of saying that, beyond the obvious facts that the caller was a Freemason, left-handed, a vegetarian and a traveller in the East, he had made no deductions from his appearance. He perceived, however, that his employer was not in the vein for that sort of thing.
"A Mr. Carmody, sir. Mr. Hugo Carmody."
"Ah!" Pilbeam displayed interest. "Did he say he would call again?"
"He mentioned the possibility, sir."
"Well, if he does, inform Mr. Murphy and tell him to be ready when I ring."
The office boy retired, and Pilbeam returned to his thoughts of Sue. He was quite certain now that he did not like her attitude. Her attitude wounded him. Another thing he deplored was the reluctance of stage-door keepers to reveal the private addresses of the personnel of the company. Really, there seemed to be no way of getting to know the girl at all.
Eight respectful knocks sounded on the door. The office boy, though occasionally forgetful, was conscientious. He had restored the average.
"Well?"
"Mr. Carmody to see you, sir."
Pilbeam once more relegated Sue to the hinterland of his mind. Business was business.
"Show him in."
"This way, sir," said the office boy with a graceful courtliness which, even taking into account the fact that he suffered from adenoids, had an old-world flavour, and Hugo sauntered across the threshold.
Hugo felt, and was looking, quietly happy. He seemed to bring the sunshine with him. Nobody could have been more wholeheartedly attached than he to Blandings Castle and the society of his Millicent, but he was finding London, revisited, singularly attractive.
"And this, if I mistake not, Watson, is our client now," said Hugo genially.
Such was his feeling of universal benevolence that he embraced with his goodwill even the repellent-looking young man who had risen from the desk. Percy Pilbeam's eyes were too small and too close together, and he marcelled his hair in a manner distressing to right-thinking people, but to-day he had to be lumped in with the rest of the species as a man and a brother, so Hugo bestowed a dazzling smile upon him. He still thought Pilbeam should not have been wearing pimples with a red tie. One or the other if he liked, but not both. Nevertheless, he smiled upon him.
"Fine day," he said.
"Quite," said Pilbeam.
"Very jolly, the smell of the asphalt and carbonic gas."
"Quite."
"Some people might call London a shade on the stuffy side on an afternoon like this, but not Hugo Carmody."
"No?"
"No. H. Carmody finds it just what the doctor ordered." He sat down. "Well, sleuth," he said, "to business. I called before lunch but you were out."
"Yes."
"But here I am again. And I suppose you want to know what I've come about?"
"When you're ready to get round to it," said Pilbeam patiently.
Hugo stretched his long legs comfortably.
"Well, I know you detective blokes always want a fellow to begin at the beginning and omit no detail, for there is no saying how important some seemingly trivial fact may be. Omitting birth and early education, then, I am at the moment private secretary to Lord Emsworth at Blandings Castle in Shropshire. And," said Hugo, "I maintain, a jolly good secretary. Others may think differently, but that is my view."
"Blandings Castle?"
A thought had struck the proprietor of the Argus Enquiry Agency. He fumbled in his desk and produced the mysterious telegram. Yes, as he had fancied, it had been handed in at a place called Market Blandings.
"Do you know anything about this?" he asked, pushing it across the desk.
Hugo glanced at the document.
"The old boy must have sent that after I left," he said. "The absence of signature is, no doubt, due to mental stress. Lord Emsworth is greatly perturbed. A-twitter. Shaken to the core, you might say."
"About this robbery?"
"Exactly. It has got right in amongst him."
Pilbeam reached for pen and paper. There was a stern, set, bloodhound sort of look in his eyes.
"Kindly give me the details."
Hugo pondered for a moment.
"It was a dark and stormy night——No, I'm a liar. The moon was riding serenely in the sky——"
"This big robbery—tell me about it."
Hugo raised his eyebrows.
"Big?"
"The telegram says 'big.'"
"These telegraph operators will try to make sense. You can't stop them editing. The word should be 'pig.' Lord Emsworth's pig has been stolen!"
"Pig!" cried Percy Pilbeam.
Hugo looked at him a little anxiously.
"You know what a pig is, surely? If not, I'm afraid there is a good deal of tedious spade work ahead of us."
The roseate dreams which the proprietor of the Argus had had of missing jewels broke like bubbles. He was deeply affronted. A man of few ideals, the one deep love of his life was for the inquiry agency which he had created and nursed to prosperity through all the dangers and vicissitudes which beset inquiry agencies in their infancy. And the thought of being expected to apply its complex machinery to a search for lost pigs cut him, as Millicent had predicted, to the quick.
"Does Lord Emsworth seriously suppose that I have time to waste looking for stolen pigs?" he demanded shrilly. "I never heard such nonsense in my life."
"Almost the exact words which all the other Hawkshaws used. Finding you not at home," explained Hugo, "I spent the morning going round to other agencies. I think I visited six in all, and every one of them took the attitude you do."
"I am not surprised."
"Nevertheless, it seemed to me that they, like you, lacked vision. This pig, you see, is a prize pig. Don't picture to yourself something with a kink in its tail sporting idly in the mud. Imagine, rather, a favourite daughter kidnapped from her ancestral home. This is heavy stuff, I assure you. Restore the animal in time for the Agricultural Show and you may ask of Lord Emsworth what you will, even unto half his kingdom."
Percy Pilbeam rose. He had heard enough.
"I will not trouble Lord Emsworth. The Argus Enquiry Agency——"
"—does not detect pigs? I feared as much. Well, well, so be it. And now," said Hugo affably, "may I take advantage of the beautiful friendship which has sprung up between us to use your telephone?"
Without waiting for permission—for which, indeed, he would have had to wait some time—he drew the instrument to him and gave a number. He then began to chat again.
"You seem a knowledgable sort of bloke," he said. "Perhaps you can tell me where the village swains go these days when they want to dance upon the green? I have been absent for some little time from the centre of the vortex, and I have become as a child in these matters. What is the best that London has to offer to a young man with his blood up and the vine leaves more or less in his hair?"
Pilbeam was a man of business. He had no wish to converse with this client who had disappointed him and wounded his finest feelings, but it so happened that he had recently bought shares in a rising restaurant.
"Mario's," he replied promptly. "It's the only place."
Hugo sighed. Once he had dreamed that the answer to a question like that would have been "The Hot Spot." But where was the Hot Spot now? Gone like the flowers that wither in the first frost. The lion and the lizard kept the courts where Jamshyd gloried and—after hours, unfortunately, which had started all the trouble—drank deep. Ah, well, life was pretty complex.
A voice from the other end of the wire broke in on his reverie. He recognized it as that of the porter of the block of flats where Sue had her tiny abode.
"Hullo? Bashford? Mr. Carmody speaking. Will you make a long arm and haul Miss Brown to the instrument. Eh? Miss Sue Brown, of course. No other Browns are any use to me whatsoever. Right ho, I'll wait."
The astute detective never permits himself to exhibit emotion. Pilbeam turned his start of surprise into a grave, distrait nod, as if he were thinking out deep problems. He took up his pen and drew three crosses and a squiggle on the blotting paper. He was glad that no gentlemanly instinct had urged him to leave his visitor alone to do his telephoning.
"Mario's, eh?" said Hugo. "What's the band like?"
"It's Leopard's."
"Good enough for me," said Hugo with enthusiasm. He hummed a bar or two and slid his feet dreamily about the carpet. "I'm shockingly out of practice, dash it. Well, that's that. Touching this other matter, you're sure you won't come to Blandings?"
"Quite."
"Nice place. Gravel soil, spreading views, well laid out pleasure ground, company's own water. I would strongly advise you to bring your magnifying glass and spend the summer. However, if you really feel——Sue! Hullo-ullo-ullo! This is Hugo. Yes, just up in town for the night on a mission of extraordinary secrecy and delicacy which I am not empowered to reveal. Speaking from the Argus Enquiry Agency, by courtesy of proprietor. I was wondering if you would care to come out and help me restore my lost youth, starting at about eight-thirty. Eh?"
A silence had fallen at the other end of the wire. What was happening was that in the hall of the block of flats Sue's conscience was fighting a grim battle against heavy odds. Ranged in opposition to it were her loneliness, her love of dancing, and her desire once more to see Hugo, who, though he was not a man one could take seriously, always cheered her up and made her laugh. And she had been needing a laugh for days.
Hugo thought he had been cut off.
"Hullo-ullo-ullo-ullo-ullo-ullo!" he barked peevishly.
"Don't yodel like that," said Sue. "You've nearly made me deaf."
"Sorry, dear heart. I thought the machine had conked. Well, how do you react? Is it a bet?"
"I do want to see you again," said Sue hesitatingly.
"You shall. In person. Clean shirt, white waistcoat, the Carmody studs, and everything."
"Well...."
A psychically gifted bystander, standing in the hall of the block of flats, would have heard at this moment a faint moan. It was Sue's conscience collapsing beneath an unexpected flank attack. She had just remembered that if she went to dine with Hugo she would learn all the latest news about Ronnie. It put the whole thing in an entirely different light. Surely Ronnie himself could have no objection to the proposed feast if he knew that all she was going for was to talk about him? She might dance a little, of course, but purely by the way. Her real motive in accepting the invitation, she now realized quite clearly, was to hear all about Ronnie.
"All right," she said. "Where?"
"Mario's. They tell me it's the posh spot these days."
"Mario's?"
"Yes. M for mange, A for asthma, R for rheumatism.... Oh, you've got it? All right, then. At eight-thirty."
Hugo put the receiver back. Once more he allowed his dazzling smile to play upon the Argus's proprietor.
"Much obliged for use of instrument," he said. "Thank you."
"Thankyou," said Pilbeam.
"Well, I'll be pushing along. Ring us up if you change your mind. Market Blandings 32X. If you don't take on the job no one will. I suppose there are other sleuths in London besides the bevy I've interviewed to-day, but I'm not going to see them. I consider that I have done my bit and am through." He looked about him. "Make a good thing out of this business?" he asked, for he was curious on these points and was never restrained by delicacy from seeking information.
"Quite."
"What does the work consist of? I've often wondered. Measuring footprints and putting the tips of your fingers together and all that, I suppose?"
"We are frequently asked to follow people and report on their movements."
Hugo laughed amusedly.
"Well, don't go following me and reporting on my movements. Much trouble might ensue. Bung-oh."
"Good-bye," said Percy Pilbeam.
He pressed a bell on the desk and moved to the door to show his visitor out.
II
Leopard's justly famous band, its cheeks puffed out and its eyeballs rolling, was playing a popular melody with lots of stomp in it, and for the first time since she had accepted Hugo's invitation to the dance Sue, gliding round the floor, was conscious of a spiritual calm. Her conscience, quieted by the moaning of the saxophones, seemed to have retired from business. It realized, no doubt, the futility of trying to pretend that there was anything wrong in a girl enjoying this delightful exercise.
How absurd, she felt, Ronnie's objections were. It was, considered Sue, becoming analytical, as if she were to make a tremendous fuss because he played tennis and golf with girls. Dancing was just a game like those two pastimes, and it so happened that you had to have a man with you or you couldn't play it. To get all jealous and throaty just because one went out dancing was simply ridiculous.
On the other hand, placid though her conscience now was, she had to admit that it was a relief to feel that he would never know of this little outing.
Men were such children when they were in love. Sue found herself sighing over the opposite sex's eccentricities. If they were only sensible, how simple life would be. It amazed her that Ronnie could ever have any possible doubt, however she might spend her leisure hours, that her heart belonged to him alone. She marvelled that he should suppose for a moment that even if she danced all night and every night with every other man in the world it would make any difference to her feelings toward him.
All the same, holding the peculiar views he did, he must undoubtedly be humoured.
"You won't breathe a word to Ronnie about our coming here, will you, Hugo?" she said, repeating an injunction which had been her opening speech on arriving at the restaurant.
"Not a syllable."
"I can trust you?"
"Implicitly. Telegraphic address, Discretion, Market Blandings."
"Ronnie's funny, you see."
"One long scream."
"I mean, he wouldn't understand."
"No. Great surprise it was to me," said Hugo, doing complicated things with his feet, "to hear that you and the old leper had decided to team up. You could have knocked me down with a feather. Odd he never confided in his boyhood friend."
"Well, it wouldn't do for it to get about."
"Are you suggesting that Hugo Carmody is a babbler?"
"You do like gossipping. You know you do."
"I know nothing of the sort," said Hugo with dignity. "If I were asked to give my opinion I should say that I was essentially a strong, silent man."
He made a complete circle of the floor in that capacity. His taciturnity surprised Sue.
"What's the matter?" she asked.
"Dudgeon," said Hugo.
"What?"
"I'm sulking. That remark of yours rankles. That totally unfounded accusation that I cannot keep a secret. It may interest you to know that I, too, am secretly engaged and have never so much as mentioned it to a soul."
"Hugo!"
"Yes. Betrothed. And so at long last came a day when Love wound his silken fetters about Hugo Carmody."
"Who's the unfortunate girl?"
"There is no unfortunate girl. The lucky girl——Was that your foot?"
"Yes."
"Sorry. I haven't got the hang of these new steps yet. The lucky girl, I was saying, is Miss Millicent Threepwood."
As if stunned by the momentousness of the announcement the band stopped playing; and, chancing to be immediately opposite their table, the man who never revealed secrets led his partner to her chair. She was gazing at him ecstatically.
"You don't mean that?"
"I do mean that. What did you think I meant?"
"I never heard anything so wonderful in my life!"
"Good news?"
"I'm simply delighted."
"I'm pleased, too," said Hugo.
"I've been trying not to admit it to myself, but I was very scared about Millicent. Ronnie told me the family wanted him and her to marry, and you never know what may happen when families throw their weight about. And now it's all right!"
"Quite all right."
The music had started again, but Sue remained in her seat.
"Not?" said Hugo, astonished.
"Not just yet. I want to talk. You don't realize what this means to me. Besides, your dancing's gone off, Hugo. You're not the man you were."
"I need practice." He lighted a cigarette and tapped a philosophical vein of thought, eying the gyrating couples meditatively. "It's the way they're always introducing new steps that bothers the man who has been living out in the woods. I have become a rusty rustic."
"I didn't mean you were bad. Only you used to be such a marvel. Dancing with you was like floating on a pink cloud above an ocean of bliss."
"A very accurate description, I should imagine," agreed Hugo. "But don't blame me. Blame these Amalgamated Professors of the Dance, or whatever they call themselves—the birds who get together every couple of weeks or so to decide how they can make things more difficult. Amazing thing that they won't leave well alone."
"You must have change."
"I disagree with you," said Hugo. "No other walk in life is afflicted by a gang of thugs who are perpetually altering the rules of the game. When you learn to play golf the professional doesn't tell you to bring the club up slowly and keep the head steady and roll the forearms and bend the left knee and raise the left heel and keep your eye on the ball and not sway back, and a few more things, and then, after you've sweated yourself to the bone learning all that, suddenly add, 'Of course you understand that this is merely intended to see you through till about three weeks from next Thursday. After that the Supreme Grand Council of Consolidated Divot Shifters will scrap these methods and invent an entirely new set!'"
"Is this more dudgeon?"
"No. Not dudgeon."
"It sounds like dudgeon. I believe your little feelings are hurt because I said your dancing wasn't as good as it used to be."
"Not at all. We welcome criticism."
"Well, get your mind off it and tell me all about you and Millicent and...."
"When I was about five," resumed Hugo, removing his cigarette from the holder and inserting another, "I attended my first dancing school. I'm a bit shaky on some of the incidents of the days when I was trailing clouds of glory, but I do remember that dancing school. At great trouble and expense I was taught to throw up a rubber ball with my left hand and catch it with my right, keeping the small of the back rigid and generally behaving in a graceful and attractive manner. It doesn't sound a likely sort of thing to learn at a dancing school, but I swear to you that that's what the curriculum was. Now, the point I am making——"
"Did you fall in love with Millicent right away, or was it gradual?"
"The point I am making is this. I became very good at throwing and catching that rubber ball. I dislike boasting, but I stood out conspicuously among a pretty hot bunch. People would nudge each other and say, 'Who is he?' behind their hands. I don't suppose, when I was feeling right, I missed the rubber ball more than once in twenty goes. But what good does it do me now? Absolutely none. Long before I got a chance of exhibiting my accomplishment in public and having beautiful women fawn on me for my skill, the Society of Amalgamated Professors of the Dance decided that the Rubber-Ball Glide, or whatever it was called, was out of date."
"Is she very pretty?"
"And what I say is that all this chopping and changing handicaps a chap. I am perfectly prepared at this moment to step out on that floor and heave a rubber ball about, but it simply isn't being done nowadays. People wouldn't understand what I was driving at. In other words, all the time and money and trouble that I spent on mastering the Rubber-Ball Shimmy is a dead loss. I tell you, if the Amalgamated Professors want to make people cynics, they're going the right way to work."
"I wish you would tell me all about Millicent."
"In a moment. Dancing, they taught me at school, dates back to the early Egyptians, who ascribed the invention to the god Thoth. The Phrygian Corybantes danced in honour of somebody whose name I've forgotten, and every time the festival of Rhea Silvia came round the ancient Roman hoofers were there with their hair in a braid. But what was good enough for the god Thoth isn't good enough for these blighted Amalgamated Professors! Oh, no! And it's been the same all through the ages. I don't suppose there has been a moment in history when some poor, well-meaning devil, with ambition at one end of him and two left feet at the other, wasn't getting it in the neck."
"And all this," said Sue, "because you trod on my foot for just one half second."
"Hugo Carmody dislikes to tread on women's feet, even for half a second. He has his pride. Ever hear of Father Mariana?"
"No."
"Mariana, George. Born twelve hundred and something. Educated privately and at Leipsic University. Hobbies, fishing, illuminating vellum, and mangling the wurzel. You must have heard of old Pop Mariana?"
"I haven't and I don't want to. I want to hear about Millicent."
"It was the opinion of Father Mariana that dancing was a deadly sin. He was particularly down, I may mention, on the saraband. He said the saraband did more harm than the plague. I know just how he felt. I'll bet he had worked like a dog at twenty-five pazazas the complete course of twelve lessons, guaranteed to teach the fandango: and, just when his instructor had finally told him that he was fit to do it at the next Saturday Night Social, along came the Amalgamated Brothers with their new-fangled saraband, and where was Pop? Leaning against the wall with the other foot-and-mouth diseasers, trying to pretend dancing bored him. Did I hear you say you wanted a few facts about Millicent?"
"You did."
"Sweetest girl on earth."
"Really?"
"Absolutely. It's well known. All over Shropshire."
"And she really loves you?"
"Between you and me," said Hugo confidentially, "I don't wonder you speak in that amazed tone. If you saw her you'd be still more surprised. I am a man who thinks before he speaks. I weigh my words. And I tell you solemnly that that girl is too good for me."
"But you're a sweet darling precious pet."
"I know I'm a sweet darling precious pet. Nevertheless, I still maintain that she is too good for me. She is the nearest thing to an angel that ever came glimmering through the laurels in the quiet evenfall in the garden by the turrets of the old manorial hall."
"Hugo! I'd no idea you were so poetical."
"Enough to make a chap poetical, loving a girl like that."
"And you really do love her?"
Hugo took a feverish gulp of champagne and rolled his eyeballs as if he had been a member of Leopold's justly famous band.
"Madly. Devotedly. And when I think how I have deceived her my soul sickens."
"Have you deceived her?"
"Not yet. But I'm going to in about five minutes. I put in a 'phone call to Blandings just now, and when I get through I shall tell her I'm speaking from my hotel bedroom, where I am on the point of going to bed. You see," said Hugo confidentially, "Millicent, though practically perfect in every other respect, is one of those girls who might misunderstand this little night out of mine did it but come to her ears. Speaking of which, you ought to see them. Like alabaster shells."
"I know what you mean. Ronnie's like that."
Hugo stared.
"Ronnie?"
"Yes."
"You mean to sit there and tell me that Ronnie's ears are like alabaster shells?"
"No, I meant that he would be furious if he knew that I had come out dancing. And, oh, I do love dancing so," sighed Sue.
"He must never know!"
"No. That's why I asked you just now not to tell him."
"I won't. Secrecy and silence. Thank goodness, there's nobody who could tell Millicent even if they wanted to. Ah! this must be the bringer of glad tidings, come to say my call is through. All set?" he asked the page boy who had threaded his way through the crowd to their table.
"Yes, sir."
Hugo rose.
"Amuse yourself somehow till I return."
"I shan't be dull," said Sue.
She watched him disappear, then leaned back in her seat, watching the dancers. Her eyes were bright, and Hugo's news had brought a flush to her cheeks. Percy Pilbeam, who had been hovering in the background, hoping for such an opportunity ever since his arrival at the restaurant, thought he had never seen her looking prettier. He edged between the tables and took Hugo's vacated chair. There are men who, approaching a member of the other sex, wait for permission before sitting down, and men who sit down without permission. Pilbeam was one of the latter.
"Good-evening," he said.
She turned and was aware of a nasty-looking little man at her elbow. He seemed to have materialized from nowhere.
"May I introduce myself, Miss Brown?" said this blot. "My name is Pilbeam."
At the same moment there appeared in the doorway and stood there raking the restaurant with burning eyes the flannel-suited figure of Ronald Overbury Fish.
III
Ronnie Fish's estimate of the time necessary for reaching London from Blandings Castle in a sports-model two-seater had been thrown out of gear by two mishaps. Halfway down the drive the car had developed some mysterious engine trouble, which had necessitated taking it back to the stables and having it overhauled by Lord Emsworth's chauffeur. It was not until nearly an hour later that he had been able to resume his journey, and a blow-out near Oxford had delayed him still further. He arrived at Sue's flat just as Sue and Hugo were entering Mario's.
Ringing Sue's front-door bell produced no result. Ronnie regretted that in the stress of all the other matters that occupied his mind he had forgotten to send her a telegram. He was about to creep away and have a bite of dinner at the Drones Club—a prospect which pleased him not at all, for the Drones at dinner time was always full of hearty eggs who talked much too loud for a worried man's nerves and might even go so far as to throw bread at him, when, descending the stairs into the hall, he came upon Bashford, the porter.
Bashford, who knew Ronnie well, said, "'Ullo, Mr. Fish," and Ronnie said, "Hullo, Bashford," and Bashford said the weather seemed to keep up, and Ronnie said, Yes, that's right, it did, and it was at this point that the porter uttered these memorable and, as events proved, epoch-making words:
"If you're looking for Miss Brown, Mr. Fish, I've an idea she's gone to a place called Mario's."
He poured further details into Ronnie's throbbing ear. Mr. Carmody had rung up on the 'phone, might have been ar-parse four, and he, Bashford, not listening but happening to hear, had thought he had caught something said about this place Mario's.
"Mario's?" said Ronnie. "Thanks, Bashford. Mario's, eh? Right!"
The porter, for Eton and Cambridge train their sons well, found nothing in the way Mr. Fish spoke to cause a thrill. Totally unaware that he had been conversing with Othello's younger brother he went back to his den in the basement and sat down with a good appetite to steak and chips. And Ronnie, quivering from head to foot, started the car and drove off.
Jealousy, said Shakespeare, and he was about right, is a green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat he feeds on. By the time Ronald Overbury Fish pushed through the swinging door that guards the revelry at Mario's from the gaze of the passer-by, he was, like the Othello he so much resembled, perplexed in the extreme. He felt hot all over, then cold all over, then hot again, and the waiter who stopped him on the threshold of the dining room to inform him that evening dress was indispensable on the dancing floor and that flannel suits must go up to the balcony, was running a risk which would have caused his insurance company to purse its lips and shake its head.
Fortunately for him Ronnie did not hear. He was scanning the crowd before him in an effort to find Sue.
"Plenty of room in the balcony, sir," urged the waiter, continuing to play with fire.
This time Ronnie did become dimly aware that somebody was addressing him, and he was about to turn and give the man one look when halfway down a grove of black coats and gaily coloured frocks he suddenly saw what he was searching for. The next moment he was pushing a path through the throng, treading on the toes of brave men and causing fair women to murmur bitterly that this sort of thing ought to be prevented by the management.
Five yards from Sue's table Ronnie Fish would have said that his cup was full and could not possibly be made any fuller. But when he had covered another two and pushed aside a fat man who was standing in the fairway he realized his mistake. It was not Hugo who was Sue's companion, but a reptilian-looking squirt with narrow eyes and his hair done in ridges. And as he saw him something seemed to go off in Ronnie's brain like a released spring.
A waiter, pausing with a tray of glasses, pointed out to him that on the dancing floor evening dress was indispensable.
Gentlemen in flannel suits, he added, could be accommodated in the balcony.
"Plenty of room in the balcony, sir," said the waiter.
Ronnie reached the table. Pilbeam at the moment was saying that he had wanted for a long time to meet Sue. He hoped she had got his flowers all right.
It was perhaps a natural desire to look at anything but this odious and thrusting individual who had forced his society upon her that caused Sue to raise her eyes.
Raising them, she met Ronnie's. And as she saw him her conscience, which she had supposed lulled for the night, sprang to life more vociferous than ever. It had but been crouching, the better to spring.
"Ronnie!"
She started up. Pilbeam also rose. The waiter with the glasses pressed the edge of his tray against Ronnie's elbow in a firm but respectful manner and told him that on the dancing floor evening dress was indispensable. Gentlemen in flannel suits, however, would find ample accommodation in the balcony.
Ronnie did not speak. And it would have been better if Sue had not done so. For at this crisis some subconscious instinct, of the kind which is always waiting to undo us at critical moments, suggested to her dazed mind that when two men who do not know each other are standing side by side in a restaurant one ought to introduce them.
"Mr. Fish, Mr. Pilbeam," murmured Sue.
Only the ringing of the bell that heralds the first round of a heavy-weight championship fight could have produced more instant and violent results. Through Ronnie's flannel-clad body a sort of galvanic shock seemed to pass. Pilbeam! He had come expecting Hugo, and Hugo would have been bad enough. But Pilbeam! The man she had said she didn't even know. The man she hadn't met. The man whose gifts of flowers she had professed to resent. In person! In the flesh! Hobnobbing with her in a restaurant! By God, he meant to say! By George! Good Gosh!
His fists clenched. Eton was forgotten, Cambridge not even a memory. He inhaled so sharply that a man at the next table who was eating a mousse of chicken stabbed himself in the chin with his fork. He turned on Pilbeam with a hungry look. And at this moment the waiter, raising his voice a little, for he was beginning to think that Ronnie's hearing was slightly affected, mentioned as an interesting piece of information that the management of Mario's preferred to reserve the dancing floor exclusively for clients in evening dress. But there was a bright side. Gentlemen in flannel suits could be accommodated in the balcony.
It was the waiter who saved Percy Pilbeam. Just as a mosquito may divert for an instant a hunter who is about to spring at and bite in the neck a tiger of the jungle, so did this importunate waiter divert Ronnie Fish. What it was all about he was too overwrought to ascertain, but he knew that the man was annoying him, pestering him, trying to chat with him when he had business elsewhere. With all the force of a generous nature sorely tried, he plugged the waiter in the stomach with his elbow. There was a crash which even Leopold's band could not drown. The man who had stabbed himself with the fork had his meal still further spoiled by the fact that it suddenly began to rain glass. And, as regards the other occupants of the restaurant, the word "sensation" about sums the situation up.
Ronnie and the management of Mario's now formed two sharply contrasted schools of thought. To Ronnie the only thing that seemed to matter was this Pilbeam—this creeping, slinking, cuckoo-in-the-nest Pilbeam, the Lothario who had lowered all speed records in underhand villainy by breaking up his home before he had got one. He concentrated all his faculties to the task of getting round the table, to the other side of which the object of his dislike had prudently withdrawn, and showing him in no uncertain manner where he got off.
To the management, on the other hand, the vital issue was all this broken glassware. The waiter had risen from the floor, but the glasses were still there, and scarcely one of them was in a condition ever to be used again for the refreshment of Mario's customers. The head waiter, swooping down on the fray like some god in the Iliad descending from a cloud, was endeavouring to place this point of view before Ronnie. Assisting him with word and gesture were two inferior waiters—Waiter A and Waiter B.
Ronnie was in no mood for abstract debate. He hit the head waiter in the abdomen, Waiter A in the ribs, and was just about to dispose of Waiter B when his activities were hampered by the sudden arrival of re-enforcements. From all parts of the room other waiters had assembled—to name but a few, Waiters C, D, E, F, G, and H—and he found himself hard pressed. It seemed to him that he had dropped into a Waiters' Convention. As far as the eye could reach the arena was crammed with waiters, and more coming. Pilbeam had disappeared altogether, and so busy was Ronnie now that he did not even miss him. He had reached that condition of mind which the old Vikings used to call "berserk" and which among modern Malays is termed "running amok."
Ronnie Fish, in the course of his life, had had many ambitions. As a child he had yearned some day to become an engine driver. At school it had seemed to him that the most attractive career the world had to offer was that of the professional cricketer. Later he had hoped to run a prosperous night club. But now, in his twenty-sixth year, all these desires were cast aside and forgotten. The only thing in life that seemed really worth while was to massacre waiters; and to this task he addressed himself with all the energy and strength at his disposal.
Matters now began to move briskly. Waiter C, who rashly clutched the sleeve of Ronnie's coat, reeled back with a hand pressed to his right eye. Waiter D, a married man, contented himself with standing on the outskirts and talking Italian. But Waiter E, made of sterner stuff, hit Ronnie rather hard with a dish containingomelette aux champignons; and it was as the latter reeled beneath this buffet that there suddenly appeared in the forefront of the battle a figure wearing a gay uniform and almost completely concealed behind a vast moustache, waxed at the ends. It was the commissionaire from the street door; and anybody who has ever been bounced from a restaurant knows that commissionaires are heavy metal.
This one, whose name was McTeague, and who had spent many lively years in the army before retiring to take up his present duties, had a grim face made of some hard kind of wood, and the muscles of a village blacksmith. A man of action rather than words, he clove his way through the press in silence. Only when he reached the centre of the maelstrom did he speak. This was when Ronnie, leaping onto a chair the better to perform the operation, hit him on the nose. On receipt of this blow he uttered the brief monosyllable "Ho!" and then, without more delay, scooped Ronnie into an embrace of steel and bore him toward the door, through which was now moving a long, large, leisurely policeman.
IV
It was some few minutes later that Hugo Carmody, emerging from the telephone booth on the lower floor where the cocktail bar is, sauntered back into the dancing room and was interested to find waiters massaging bruised limbs, other waiters replacing fallen tables, and Leopold's band playing in a sort of hushed undertone like a band that has seen strange things.
"Hullo!" said Hugo. "Anything up?"
He eyed Sue inquiringly. She looked to him like a girl who has had some sort of a shock. Not, or his eyes deceived him, at all her old bright self.
"What's up?" he asked.
"Take me home, Hugo!"
Hugo stared.
"Home? Already? With the night yet young?"
"Oh, Hugo! Take me home, quick."
"Just as you say," assented Hugo agreeably. He was now pretty certain that something was up. "One second to settle the bill, and then homeward ho. And on the way you shall tell me all about it. For I jolly well know," said Hugo, who prided himself on his keenness of observation, "that something is—or has been—up."