CHAPTER V
The Law of Great Britain is a remorseless machine which, once set in motion, ignores first causes and takes into account only results. It will not accept shattered dreams as an excuse for shattering glassware; nor will you get far by pleading a broken heart in extenuation of your behaviour in breaking waiters. Haled on the morrow before the awful majesty of Justice at Bosher Street Police Court and charged with disorderly conduct in a public place—to wit, Mario's Restaurant—and resisting an officer—to wit, P. C. Murgatroyd—in the execution of his duties, Ronald Fish made no impassioned speeches. He did not raise clenched fists aloft and call upon Heaven to witness that he was a good man wronged. Experience, dearly bought in the days of his residence at the university, had taught him that when the Law gripped you with its talons the only thing to do was to give a false name, say nothing, and hope for the best.
Shortly before noon, accordingly, on the day following the painful scene just described, Edwin Jones, of 7 Nasturtium Villas, Cricklewood, poorer by the sum of five pounds, was being conveyed in a swift taxicab to his friend Hugo Carmody's hotel, there to piece together his broken life and try to make a new start.
On the part of the man Jones himself during the ride there was a disposition toward silence. He gazed before him bleakly and gnawed his lower lip. Hugo Carmody, on the other hand, was inclined to be rather jubilant. It seemed to Hugo that, after a rocky start, things had panned out pretty well.
"A nice smooth job," he said approvingly. "I was scanning the beak's face closely during the summing up, and I couldn't help fearing for a moment that it was going to be a case of fourteen days without the option. As it is, here you are, a free man, and no chance of your name being in the paper. A moral victory, I call it."
Ronnie released his lower lip in order to bare his teeth in a bitter sneer.
"I wouldn't care if my name were in every paper in London."
"Oh, come, old loofah! The honoured name of Fish?"
"What do I care about anything now?"
Hugo was concerned. This morbid strain, he felt, was unworthy of a Nasturtium Villas Jones.
"Aren't you rather tending to make a bit too much heavy weather over this?"
"Heavy weather!"
"I think you are. After all, when you come right down to it, what has happened? You find poor little Sue——"
"Don't call her 'poor little Sue!'"
"You find the party of the second part," amended Hugo, "at a dance place. Well, why not? What, if you follow me, of it? Where's the harm in her going out to dance?"
"With a man she swore she didn't know!"
"Well, at the time when you asked her probably she didn't know him. Things move quickly in a great city. I wish I had a quid for every girl I've been out dancing with whom I hadn't known from Eve a couple of days before."
"She promised me she wouldn't go out with a soul."
"Ah, but with a merry twinkle in her eye, no doubt? I mean to say, you can't expect a girl nowadays to treat a promise like that seriously. I mean, dash it, be reasonable!"
"And with that little worm of all people!"
Hugo cleared his throat. He was conscious of a slight embarrassment. He had not wished to touch on this aspect of the affair, but Ronnie's last words gave a Carmody and a gentleman no choice.
"As a matter of fact, Ronnie, old man," he said, "you are wrong in supposing that she went to Mario's with the above Pilbeam. She went with me. Blameless Hugo, what. I mean, more like a brother than anything."
Ronnie declined to be comforted.
"I don't believe you."
"My dear chap!"
"I suppose you think you're damned clever, trying to smooth things over. She was at Mario's with Pilbeam."
"I took her there."
"You may have taken her, but she was dining with Pilbeam."
"Nothing of the kind."
"Do you think I can't believe my own eyes? It's no use your saying anything, Hugo, I'm through with her. She's let me down. Less than a week I've been away," said Ronnie, his voice trembling, "and she lets me down. Well, it serves me right for being such a fool as to think she ever cared a curse for me."
He relapsed into silence. And Hugo, after turning over in his mind a few specimen remarks, decided not to make them. The cab drew up before the hotel, and Ronnie, getting out, uttered a wordless exclamation.
"No, let me," said Hugo considerately. A bit rough on a man, he felt, after coughing up five quid to the hellhounds of the law, to be expected to pay the cab. He produced money and turned to the driver. It was some moments before he turned back again, for the driver, by the rules of the taxi chauffeurs' union, kept his petty cash tucked into his underclothing. When he did so he was considerably astonished to find that Ronnie, while his back was turned, had in some unaccountable manner become Sue. The changeling was staring unhappily at him from the exact spot where he had left his old friend.
"Hullo!" he said.
"Ronnie's gone," said Sue.
"Gone?"
"Yes. He walked off as quick as he could round the corner when he saw me. He—" Sue's voice broke—"he didn't say a word."
"How did you get here?" asked Hugo. There were other matters, of course, to be discussed later, but he felt he must get this point cleared up first.
"I thought you would bring him back to your hotel, and I thought that if I could see him I could—say something."
Hugo was alarmed. He was now practically certain that this girl was going to cry, and if there was one thing he disliked it was being with crying girls in a public spot. He would not readily forget the time when a female named Yvonne Something had given way to a sudden twinge of neuralgia in his company not far from Piccadilly Circus and an old lady had stopped and said that it was brutes like him who caused all the misery in the world.
"Come inside," he urged quickly. "Come and have a cocktail or a cup of tea or a bun or something. I say," he said, as he led the way into the hotel lobby and found two seats in a distant corner, "I'm frightfully sorry about all this. I can't help feeling it's my fault."
"Oh, no."
"If I hadn't asked you to dinner——"
"It isn't that that's the trouble. Ronnie might have been a little cross for a minute or two if he had found you and me together, but he would soon have got over it. It was finding me with that horrid little man Pilbeam. You see, I told him—and it was quite true—that I didn't know him."
"Yes, so he was saying to me in the cab."
"Did he—what did he say?"
"Well, he plainly resented the Pilbeam, I'm afraid. His manner, when touching on the Pilbeam, was austere. I tried to drive into his head that that was just an accidental meeting and that you had come to Mario's with me, but he would have none of it. I fear, old thing, there's nothing to be done but leave the whole binge to Time, the Great Healer."
A page boy was making a tour of the lobby. He seemed to be seeking a Mr. Gargery.
"If only I could get hold of him and make him listen. I haven't been given a chance to explain."
"You think you could explain, even if given a chance?"
"I could try. Surely he couldn't help seeing that I really loved him if we had a real talk?"
"And the trouble is you're here and he'll be back at Blandings in a few hours. Difficult," said Hugo, shaking his head. "Complex."
"Mr. Carmody," chanted the page boy, coming nearer. "Mr. Carmody."
"Hi!" cried Hugo.
"Mr. Carmody? Wanted on the telephone, sir."
Hugo's face became devout and saintlike.
"Awfully sorry to leave you for an instant," he said, "but do you mind if I rush? It must be Millicent. She's the only person who knows I'm here."
He sped away, and Sue, watching him, found herself choking with sudden tears. It seemed to emphasize her forlornness so, this untimely evidence of another love story that had not gone awry. She seemed to be listening to that telephone conversation, hearing Hugo's delighted yelps as the voice of the girl he loved floated to him over the wire.
She pulled herself together. Beastly of her to be jealous of Hugo just because he was happy....
Sue sat up abruptly. She had had an idea.
It was a breath-taking idea, but simple. It called for courage, for audacity, for a reckless disregard of consequences, but nevertheless it was simple.
"Hugo," she cried, as that lucky young man returned and dropped into the chair at her side. "Hugo, listen!"
"I say," said Hugo.
"I've suddenly thought——"
"I say," said Hugo.
"Do listen!"
"I say," said Hugo, "that was Millicent on the 'phone."
"Was it? How nice. Listen, Hugo."
"Speaking from Blandings."
"Yes. But——"
"And she has broken off the engagement!"
"What!"
"Broken off the bally engagement," repeated Hugo. He signalled urgently to a passing waiter. "Get me a brandy-and-soda, will you?" he said. His face was pale and set. "A stiffish brandy-and-soda, please."
"Brandy-and-soda, sir?"
"Yes," said Hugo. "Stiffish."