IT was broad daylight when he woke. Splashes of sunlight were on the floor, and outside a cart clattered cheerfully. Rising stiffly, he was aware of a crick in the neck and of that unpleasant sensation of semi-suffocation which comes to those who spend the night in a disused room with the windows closed. More even than a bath and a shave, he desired fresh air. He made his way down the passage to the window by which he had entered. Outside, glimpses of a garden were visible. He climbed through and drew a deep breath.
The rain of the night had left the world sweet and clean. The ragged grass was all jewelled in the sunshine, and birds were singing in the trees. Sam stood drinking in the freshness of it all, feeling better every instant.
Finally, having performed a few of those bending and stretching exercises which form such an admirable corrective to the effects of a disturbed night, he strolled down the garden path, wishing he could somehow and at no very distant date connect with a little breakfast.
“For goodness sake!”
He looked up. Over the fence which divided the garden from the one next door a familiar face waspeering. It was his hostess of last night. But, whereas then she had been curling-pinned and dressing-gowned, she was now neatly clad in print and wore on her head a becoming cap. Her face, moreover, which had been hard and hostile, was softened by a friendly grin.
“Good morning,” said Sam.
“How did you get there?”
“When you turned me out into the night,” said Sam reproachfully, “I took refuge next door.”
“I say, I’m sorry about that,” said the girl remorsefully. “But how was I to know that you were telling the truth?” She giggled happily. “Mr. Braddock came back half an hour after you had left. He made such a rare old row that I came down again——”
“And shot him, I hope. No? A mistake, I think.”
“Well, then, he asked where you were. He said your name was Evans.”
“He was a little confused. My name is Shotter. I warned you that he was not quite himself. What became of him then?”
“He went up to bed. I’ve just taken him up a tray, but all he did was to look at it and moan and shut his eyes again. I say, have you had any breakfast?”
“Don’t torture me.”
“Well, hop over the fence then. I’ll get you some in two ticks.”
Sam hopped. The sun seemed very bright now, and the birds were singing with a singular sweetness.
“Would it also run to a shave and a bath?” he asked, as they walked toward the house.
“You’ll find Mr. Wrenn’s shaving things in the bathroom.”
“Is this heaven?” said Sam. “Shall I also find Mr. Wrenn by any chance?”
“Oh, no, him and Miss Kay have been gone half an hour.”
“Excellent! Where is this bathroom?”
“Up those stairs, first door to the left. When you come down, go into that room there, and I’ll bring the tray in. It’s the drawing-room, but the dining-room table isn’t cleared yet.”
“I shall enjoy seeing your drawing-room, of which I have heard so much.”
“Do you like eggs?”
“I do—and plenty of them. Also bacon—a good deal of bacon. Oh, and by the way——” added Sam, leaning over the banisters.
“Yes?”
“——toast—lots and lots of toast.”
“I’ll get you all you can eat.”
“You will? Tell me,” said Sam, “it has been puzzling me greatly. How do you manage to get that dress on over your wings?”
SAM, when he came downstairs some twenty minutes later, was definitely in what Mr. Hash Todhunter would have described as the pink. The night had been bad, but joy had certainly come in the morning. The sight of the breakfast tray on a small table by the window set the seal on his mood of well-being; and for a long, luxurious space he had eyes for nothing else. It was only after he had consumed the eggs, the bacon, the toast, the coffee and the marmalade that he yielded to what is usually the first impulse of a man who finds himself in a strange room and began to explore.
It was some half minute later that Claire Lippett, clearing the dining-room table, was startled to the extent of dropping a butter dish by a loud shout or cry that seemed to proceed from the room where she had left her guest.
Hurrying thither, she found him behaving in a strange manner. He was pointing at a photograph on the mantelpiece and gesticulating wildly.
“Who’s that?” he cried as she entered. He seemed to have difficulty with his vocal cords.
“Eh?”
“Who the devil’s that?”
“Language!”
“Who is it? That girl—who is she? What’s her name?”
“You needn’t shout,” said Claire, annoyed.
The photograph which had so excited this young man was the large one that stood in the centre of the mantelpiece. It represented a girl in hunting costume, standing beside her horse, and it was Claire’s favourite. A dashing and vigorous duster, with an impressive record of smashed china and broken glass to her name, she always handled this particular work of art with a gentle tenderness.
“That?” she said. “Why, that’s Miss Kay, of course.”
She came forward and flicked a speck of dust off the glass.
“Taken at Midways, that was,” she said, “two or three years ago, before the old colonel lost his money. I was Miss Kay’s maid then—personal maid,” she added with pride. She regarded the photograph wistfully, for it stood to her for all the pomps and glories of a vanished yesterday, for the brave days when there had been horses and hunting costumes and old red chimneys against a blue sky and rabbits in the park and sunlight on the lake and all the rest of the things that made up Midways and prosperity. “I remember the day that photograph was took. It was printed in the papers, that photograph was.”
Sam continued to be feverish.
“Miss Kay? Who’s Miss Kay?”
“Miss Kay Derrick, Mr. Wrenn’s niece.”
“The man who lives here, do you mean?”
“Yes. He gave Miss Kay a home when everything went smash. That’s how I come to be here. I could have stopped at Midways if I’d of liked,” she said. “The new people who took the place would have kept me on if I’d of wanted. But I said, ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m going with Miss Kay,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to desert her in her mis-for-chewn,’ I said.”
Sam started violently.
“You don’t mean—you can’t mean—you don’t mean she lives here?”
“Of course she does.”
“Not actually lives here—not in this very house?”
“Certainly.”
“My gosh!”
Sam quivered from head to foot. A stupendous idea had come to him.
“My gosh!” he cried again, with bulging eyes. Then, with no more words—for it was a time not for words but for action—he bounded from the room.
To leap out of the front door and clatter down the steps to the board which stood against the fence was with Sam the work of a moment. Beneath the large letters of the To Let, Furnished, he now perceived other smaller letters informing all who might be interested that applications for the tenancy of that desirable semi-detached residence, Mon Repos, should be made to Messrs. Matters & Cornelius, House Agents, of Ogilvy Street, Valley Fields, S. E. He galloped up the steps again and beat wildly upon the door.
“Now what?” inquired Claire.
“Where is Ogilvy Street?”
“Up the road, first turning to the left.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Out on the gravel, he paused, pondered and returned.
“Back again?” said Claire.
“Did you say left or right?”
“Left.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” said Claire.
This time Sam performed the descent of the steps in a single leap. But reaching the gate, he was struck by a thought.
“Fond of exercise, aren’t you?” said Claire patiently.
“Suddenly occurred to me,” explained Sam, “that I’d got no money.”
“What do you want me to do about it?”
“These house-agent people would expect a bit of money down in advance, wouldn’t they?”
“Sounds possible. Are you going to take a house?”
“I’m going to take Mon Repos,” said Sam. “And I must have money. Where’s Mr. Braddock?”
“In bed.”
“Where’s his room?”
“Top floor back.”
“Thanks.”
“Dee-lighted,” said Claire.
Her statement that the guest of the house was in bed proved accurate. Sam, entering the apartment indicated, found his old school friend lying on his back with open mouth and matted hair. He was snoring rhythmically. On a chair at his side stood a tray containing a teapot, toast and a cold poached egg of suchraffish and leering aspect that Sam, moving swiftly to the dressing table, averted his eyes as he passed.
The dressing table presented an altogether more pleasing picture. Heaped beside Mr. Braddock’s collar box and hair-brushes was a small mountain of notes and silver—a fascinating spectacle with the morning sunshine playing on them. With twitching fingers, Sam scooped them up; and finding pencil and paper, paused for a moment, seeking for words.
It is foolish to attempt to improve on the style of a master. Hash Todhunter had shown himself in a class of his own at this kind of literary composition, and Sam was content to take him as a model. He wrote:
“Dear Bradder: You will doubtless be surprised to learn that I have borrowed your money. I will return it in God’s good time. Meanwhile, as Sir Philip Sidney said to the wounded soldier, my need is greater than yours.“Trusting this finds you in the pink,“Yrs. Obedtly,“S. Shotter.”
“Dear Bradder: You will doubtless be surprised to learn that I have borrowed your money. I will return it in God’s good time. Meanwhile, as Sir Philip Sidney said to the wounded soldier, my need is greater than yours.
“Trusting this finds you in the pink,
“Yrs. Obedtly,“S. Shotter.”
Then, having propped the note against the collar box, he left the room.
A sense of something omitted, some little kindly act forgotten, arrested him at the head of the stairs. He returned; and taking the poached egg, placed it gently on the pillow beside his friend’s head. This done, he went downstairs again, and so out on the broad trail that led to the premises of Messrs. Matters & Cornelius, House Agents, of Ogilvy Street.
WHAT Mr. Matters would have thought of Sam as he charged breezily into the office a few minutes later we shall never know, for Mr. Matters died in the year 1910. Mr. Cornelius thought him perfectly foul. After one swift, appraising stare through his gold-rimmed spectacles, he went so far as to share this opinion with his visitor.
“I never give to beggars,” he said. He was a venerable old man with a white beard and bushy eyebrows, and he spoke with something of the intonation of a druid priest chanting at the altar previous to sticking the knife into the human sacrifice. “I do not believe in indiscriminate charity.”
“I will fill in your confession book some other time,” said Sam. “For the moment, let us speak of houses. I want to take Mon Repos in Burberry Road.”
The druid was about to recite that ancient rune which consists of the solemn invocation to a policeman, when he observed with considerable surprise that his young visitor was spraying currency in great quantities over the table. He gulped. It was unusual for clients at his office to conduct business transactions in a manner more suitable to the Bagdad of theArabian Nightsthan a respectable modern suburb. He couldhardly have been more surprised if camels laden with jewels and spices had paraded down Ogilvy Street.
“What is all this?” he asked, blinking.
“Money,” said Sam.
“Where did you get it?”
He eyed Sam askance. And Sam, who, as the heady result of a bath, shave, breakfast and the possession of cash, had once more forgotten that there was anything noticeable about his appearance, gathered that here was another of the long line of critics who had failed to recognise his true worth at first sight.
“Do not judge me by the outer crust,” he said. “I am shabby because I have been through much. When I stepped aboard the boat at New York I was as natty a looking young fellow as you could wish to see. People nudged one another as I passed along the pier and said, ‘Who is he?’”
“You come from America?”
“From America.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Cornelius, as if that explained everything.
“My uncle,” said Sam, sensing the change in the atmosphere and pursuing his advantage, “is Mr. John B. Pynsent, the well-to-do millionaire of whom you have doubtless heard.... You haven’t? One of our greatest captains of industry. He made a vast fortune in fur.”
“In fur? Really?”
“Got the concession for providing the snakes at the Bronx Zoo with earmuffs, and from that moment never looked back.”
“You surprise me,” said Mr. Cornelius. “Most interesting.”
“A romance of commerce,” agreed Sam. “And now, returning to this matter of the house——”
“Ah, yes,” said Mr. Cornelius. His voice, as he eyed the money on the table, was soft and gentle. He still looked like a druid priest, but a druid priest on his afternoon off. “For how long a period did you wish to rent Mon Repos, Mr.—er——”
“Shotter is the name.... Indefinitely.”
“Shall we say three months rent in advance?”
“Let us say just those very words.”
“And as to references——”
Sam was on the point of giving Mr. Wrenn’s name, until he recollected that he had not yet met that gentleman. Using his shaving brush and razor and eating food from his larder seemed to bring them very close together. He reflected.
“Lord Tilbury,” he said. “That’s the baby.”
“Lord Tilbury, of the Mammoth Publishing Company?” said Mr. Cornelius, plainly awed. “Do you know him?”
“Know him? We’re more like brothers than anything. There’s precious little Lord Tilbury ever does without consulting me. It might be a good idea to call him up on the phone now. I ought to let him know that I’ve arrived.”
Mr. Cornelius turned to the telephone, succeeded after an interval in getting the number, and after speaking with various unseen underlings, tottered reverently as he found himself talking to the great man in person. He handed the instrument to Sam.
“His Lordship would like to speak to you, Mr. Shotter.”
“I knew it, I knew it,” said Sam. “Hello! Lord Tilbury? This is Sam. How are you? I’ve just arrived. I came over in a tramp steamer, and I’ve been having all sorts of adventures. Give you a good laugh. I’m down at Valley Fields at the moment, taking a house. I’ve given your name as a reference. You don’t mind? Splendid! Lunch? Delighted. I’ll be along as soon as I can. Got to get a new suit first. I slept in my clothes last night.... Well, good-bye. It’s all right about the references,” he said, turning to Mr. Cornelius. “Carry on.”
“I will draw up the lease immediately, Mr. Shotter. If you will tell me where I am to send it——”
“Send it?” said Sam surprised. “Why, to Mon Repos, of course.”
“But——”
“Can’t I move in at once?”
“I suppose so, if you wish it. But I fancy the house is hardly ready for immediate tenancy. You will need linen.”
“That’s all right. A couple of hours shopping will fix that.”
Mr. Cornelius smiled indulgently. He was thoroughly pro-Sam by now.
“True American hustle,” he observed, waggling his white beard. “Well, I see no objection, if you make a point of it. I will find the key for you. Tell me, Mr. Shotter,” he asked as he rummaged about in drawers, “what has caused this great desire on your part to settle in Valley Fields? Of course, as a patriotic inhabitant,I ought not to be surprised. I have lived in Valley Fields all my life, and would not live anywhere else if you offered me a million pounds.”
“I won’t.”
“I was born in Valley Fields, Mr. Shotter, and I love the place, and I am not ashamed to say so.
“‘Breathes there the man with soul so dead,’”inquired Mr. Cornelius, “‘Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land! Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned as home his footsteps he hath turn’d from wandering on a foreign strand?’”
“Ah!” said Sam. “That’s what we’d all like to know, wouldn’t we?”
“‘If such there breathe,’”proceeded Mr. Cornelius, “‘go mark him well! For him no minstrel raptures swell. High though his titles, proud his name, boundless his wealth as wish can claim, despite those titles, power, and pelf, the wretch, concentred all in self——’”
“I have a luncheon engagement at 1:30,” said Sam.
“‘——Living, shall forfeit fair renown, and, doubly dying, shall go down to the vile dust from whence he sprung, unwept, unhonour’d and unsung.’ Those words, Mr. Shotter——”
“A little thing of your own?”
“Those words, Mr. Shotter, will appear on the title page of the history of Valley Fields, which I am compiling—a history dealing not only with its historical associations, which are numerous, but also with those aspects of its life which my occupation as house agent has given me peculiar opportunities of examining. I get some queer clients, Mr. Shotter.”
Sam was on the point of saying that the clients got a queer house agent, thus making the thing symmetrical, but he refrained.
“It may interest you to know that a very well-known criminal, a man who might be described as a second Charles Peace, once resided in the very house which you are renting.”
“I shall raise the tone.”
“Like Charles Peace, he was a most respectable man to all outward appearances. His name was Finglass. Nobody seems to have had any suspicion of his real character until the police, acting on information received, endeavoured to arrest him for the perpetration of a great bank robbery.”
“Catch him?” said Sam, only faintly interested.
“No; he escaped and fled the country. But I was asking you what made you settle on Valley Fields as a place of residence. You would seem to have made up your mind very quickly.”
“Well, the fact is, I happened to catch sight of my next-door neighbours, and it struck me that they would be pleasant people to live near.”
Mr. Cornelius nodded.
“Mr. Wrenn is greatly respected by all who know him.”
“I liked his razor,” said Sam.
“If you are going to Tilbury House it is possible that you may meet him. He is the editor of Pyke’sHome Companion.”
“Is that so?” said Sam. “Pyke’sHome Companion, eh?”
“I take it in regularly.”
“And Mr. Wrenn’s niece? A charming girl, I thought.”
“I scarcely know her,” said Mr. Cornelius indifferently. “Young women do not interest me.”
The proverb about casting pearls before swine occurred to Sam.
“I must be going,” he said coldly. “Speed up that lease, will you. And if anyone else blows in and wants to take the house, bat them over the head with the office ruler.”
“Mr. Wrenn and I frequently play a game of chess together,” said Mr. Cornelius.
Sam was not interested in his senile diversions.
“Good morning,” he said stiffly, and passed out into Ogilvy Street.
THE clocks of London were striking twelve when Sam, entering the Strand, turned to the left and made his way toward Fleet Street to keep his tryst with Lord Tilbury at the offices of the Mammoth Publishing Company.
In the interval which had elapsed since his parting from Mr. Cornelius a striking change had taken place in his appearance, for he had paid a visit to that fascinating shop near Covent Garden which displays on its door the legend, “Cohen Bros., Ready-Made Clothiers,” and is the Mecca of all who prefer to pluck their garments ripe off the bough instead of waiting for them to grow. The kindly brethren had fitted him out with a tweed suit of bold pattern, a shirt of quality, underclothing, socks, a collar, sock suspenders, a handkerchief, a tie pin and a hat with the same swift and unemotional efficiency with which, had he desired it, they would have provided the full costume of an Arctic explorer, a duke about to visit Buckingham Palace, or a big-game hunter bound for Eastern Africa. Nor had they failed him in the matter of new shoes and a wanghee. It was, in short, an edition de luxe of S.Pynsent Shotter, richly bound and profusely illustrated, that now presented itself to the notice of the public.
The tonic of new clothes is recognised by all students of human nature. Sam walked with a springy jauntiness, and his gay bearing, combined with the brightness of his exterior, drew many eyes upon him.
Two of these eyes belonged to a lean and stringy man of mournful countenance who was moving in the opposite direction, away from London’s newspaper land. For a moment they rested upon Sam in a stare that had something of dislike in it, as if their owner resented the intrusion upon his notice of so much cheerfulness. Then they suddenly widened into a stare of horror, and the man stopped, spellbound. A hurrying pedestrian, bumping into him from behind, propelled him forward, and Sam, coming up at four miles an hour, bumped into him in front. The result of the collision was a complicated embrace, from which Sam was extricating himself with apologies when he perceived that this person with whom he had become entangled was no stranger, but an old friend.
“Hash!” he cried.
There was nothing in Mr. Todhunter’s aspect to indicate pleasure at the encounter. He breathed heavily and spoke no word.
“Hash, you old devil!” said Sam joyfully.
Mr. Todhunter licked his lips uncomfortably. He cast a swift glance over his shoulder, as if debating the practicability of a dive into the traffic. He endeavoured, without success, to loosen the grip of Sam’s hand on his coat sleeve.
“What are you wriggling for?” asked Sam, becoming aware of this.
“I’m not wriggling,” said Hash. He spoke huskily and in a tone that seemed timidly ingratiating. If the voice of Mr. Cornelius had resembled a druid priest’s, Clarence Todhunter’s might have been likened to that of the victim on the altar. “I’m not wriggling, Sam. What would I want to wriggle for?”
“Where did you spring from, Hash?”
Mr. Todhunter coughed.
“I was just coming from leaving a note for you, Sam, at that place Tilbury House, where you told me you’d be.”
“You’re a great letter writer, aren’t you?”
The allusion was not lost upon Mr. Todhunter. He gulped and his breathing became almost stertorous.
“I want to explain about that, Sam,” he said. “Explain, if I may use the term, fully. Sam,” said Mr. Todhunter thickly, “what I say and what I always have said is, when there’s been a little misunderstanding between pals—pals, if I may use the expression, what have stood together side by side through thick and through thin—pals what have shared and shared alike——” He broke off. He was not a man of acute sensibility, but he could see that the phrase, in the circumstances, was an unhappy one. “What I say is, Sam, when it’s like that—well, there’s nothing like letting bygones be bygones and, so to speak, burying the dead past. As a man of the world, you bein’ one and me bein’ another——”
“I take it,” said Sam, “from a certain something inyour manner, that that moth-eaten whippet of yours did not win his race.”
“Sam,” said Mr. Todhunter, “I will not conceal it from you. I will be frank, open and above board. That whippet did not win.”
“Your money then—and mine—is now going to support some bookie in the style to which he has been accustomed?”
“It’s gorn, Sam,” admitted Mr. Todhunter in a deathbed voice. “Yes, Sam, it’s gorn.”
“Then come and have a drink,” said Sam cordially.
“A drink?”
“Or two.”
He led the way to a hostelry that lurked coyly among shops and office buildings. Hash followed, marvelling. The first stunned horror had passed, and his mind, such as it was, was wrestling with the insoluble problem of why Sam, with the facts of the whippet disaster plainly before him, was so astoundingly amiable.
The hour being early even for a perpetually thirsty community like that of Fleet Street, the saloon bar into which they made their way was free from the crowds which would have interfered with a quiet chat between friends. Two men who looked like printers were drinking beer in a corner, while at the counter a haughty barmaid was mixing a cocktail for a solitary reveller in a velours hat. This individual had just made a remark about the weather in a rich and attractive voice, and his intonation was so unmistakably American that Sam glanced at him as he passed; and, glancing, half stopped, arrested by something strangely familiar about the man’s face.
It was not a face which anyone would be likely to forget if they had seen it often; and the fact that it brought no memories back to him inclined Sam to think that he could never have met this rather striking-looking person, but must have seen him somewhere on the street or in a hotel lobby. He was a handsome, open-faced man of middle-age.
“I’ve seen that fellow before somewhere,” he said, as he sat with Hash at a table by the window.
“’Ave you?” said Hash, and there was such a manifest lack of interest in his tone that Sam, surprised at his curtness, awoke to the realisation that he had not yet ordered refreshment. He repaired the omission and Hash’s drawn face relaxed.
“Hash,” said Sam, “I owe you a lot.”
“Me?” said Hash blankly.
“Yes. You remember that photograph I showed you?”
“The girl—Nimrod?”
“Yes. Hash, I’ve found her, and purely owing to you. If you hadn’t taken that money it would never have happened.”
Mr. Todhunter, though he was far from understanding, endeavoured to assume a simper of modest altruism. He listened attentively while Sam related the events of the night.
“And I’ve taken the house next door,” concluded Sam, “and I move in to-day. So, if you want a shore job, the post of cook in the Shotter household is open. How about it?”
A sort of spasm passed across Hash’s wooden features.
“You want me to come and cook?”
“I’ve got to get a cook somewhere. Can you leave the ship?”
“Can I leave the ship? Mister, you watch and see how quick I can leave that ruddy ocean-going steam kettle! I’ve been wanting a shore job ever since I was cloth-head enough to go to sea.”
“You surprise me,” said Sam. “I have always looked on you as one of those tough old salts who can’t be happy away from deep waters. I thought you sang chanteys in your sleep. Well, that’s splendid. You had better go straight down to the house and start getting things fixed up. Here’s the key. Write the address down—Mon Repos, Burberry Road, Valley Fields.”
A sharp crash rang through the room. The man at the bar, who had finished his cocktail and was drinking a whisky and soda, had dropped his glass.
“’Ere!” exclaimed the barmaid, startled, a large hand on the left side of her silken bosom.
The man paid no attention to her cry. He was staring with marked agitation at Sam and his companion.
“How do I get there?” asked Hash.
“By train or bus—there’s any number of ways.”
“And I can go straight into the house?”
“Yes; I’ve taken it from this morning.”
Sam hurried out. Hash, pausing to write down the address, became aware that he was being spoken to.
“Say, pardon me,” said the fine-looking man who was clutching at his sleeve. “Might I have a word with you, brother?”
“Well?” said Hash suspiciously. The last time anAmerican had addressed him as brother it had cost him eleven dollars and seventy-five cents.
“Did I understand your pal who’s gone out to say that he had rented a house named Mon Repos down in Valley Fields?”
“Yes, you did. What of it?”
The man did not reply. Consternation was writ upon his face, and he passed a hand feebly across his broad forehead. The silence was broken by the cold voice of the barmaid.
“That’ll be threepence I’ll kindly ask you for, for that glass,” said the barmaid. “And if,” she added with asperity, “you ’ad to pay for the shock you give me, it ’ud cost you a tenner.”
“Girlie,” replied the man sadly, watching Hash as he shambled through the doorway, “you aren’t the only one that’s had a shock.”
While Sam was walking down Fleet Street on his way to Tilbury House, thrilled with the joy of existence and swishing the air jovially with his newly purchased wanghee, in Tilbury House itself the proprietor of the Mammoth Publishing Company was pacing the floor of his private office, his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, his eyes staring bleakly before him.
Lord Tilbury was a short, stout, commanding-looking man, and practically everything he did had in it something of the Napoleonic quality. His demeanour now suggested Napoleon in captivity, striding the deck of theBellerophonwith vultures gnawing at his breast.
So striking was his attitude that his sister, Mrs. Frances Hammond, who had called to see him, as was her habit when business took her into the neighbourhood of Tilbury House, paused aghast in the doorway, while the obsequious boy in buttons who was ushering her in frankly lost his nerve and bolted.
“Good gracious, Georgie!” she cried. “What’s the matter?”
His Lordship came to a standstill and something faintly resembling relief appeared in his square-cut face. Ever since the days when he had been plain George Pyke, starting in business with a small capital and a large ambition, his sister Frances had always been a rock of support. It might be that her advice would help him to cope with the problem which was vexing him now.
“Sit down, Francie,” he said. “Thank goodness you’ve come. Just the person I want to talk to.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m telling you. You remember that when I was in America I met a man named Pynsent?”
“Yes.”
“This man Pynsent was the owner of an island off the coast of Maine.”
“Yes, I know. And you——”
“An island,” continued Lord Tilbury, “densely covered with trees. He used it merely as a place of retirement, for the purpose of shooting and fishing; but when he invited me there for a week-end I saw its commercial possibilities in an instant.”
“Yes, you told me. You——”
“I said to myself,” proceeded Lord Tilbury, one ofwhose less engaging peculiarities it was that he never permitted the fact that his audience was familiar with a story to keep him from telling it again, “I said to myself, ‘This island, properly developed, could supply all the paper the Mammoth needs and save me thousands a year!’ It was my intention to buy the place and start paper mills.”
“Yes, and——”
“Paper mills,” said Lord Tilbury firmly. “I made an offer to Pynsent. He shilly-shallied. I increased my offer. Still he would give me no definite answer. Sometimes he seemed willing to sell, and then he would change his mind. And then, when I was compelled to leave and return to England, an idea struck me. He had been talking about his nephew and how he was anxious for him to settle down and do something——”
“So you offered to take him over here and employ him in the Mammoth,” said Mrs. Hammond with a touch of impatience. She loved and revered her brother, but she could not conceal it from herself that he sometimes tended to be prolix. “You thought it would put him under an obligation.”
“Exactly. I imagined I was being shrewd. I supposed that I was introducing into the affair just that little human touch which sometimes makes all the difference. Well, it will be a bitter warning to me never again to be too clever. Half the business deals in this world are ruined by one side or the other trying to be too clever.”
“But, George, what has happened? What is wrong?”
Lord Tilbury resumed his patrol of the carpet.
“I’m telling you. It was all arranged that he should sail back with me on theMauretania, but when the vessel left he was nowhere to be found. And then, about the second day out, I received a wireless message saying, ‘Sorry not to be with you. ComingAraminta. Love to all.’ I could not make head or tail of it.”
“No,” said Mrs. Hammond thoughtfully; “it is very puzzling. I think it may possibly have meant——”
“I know what it meant—now. The solution,” said Lord Tilbury bitterly, “was vouchsafed to me only an hour ago by the boy himself.”
“Has he arrived then?”
“Yes, he has arrived. And he travelled on a tramp steamer.”
“A tramp steamer! But why?”
“Why? Why? How should I know why? Last night, he informed me, he slept in his clothes.”
“Slept in his clothes? Why?”
“How should I know why? Who am I to analyse the motives of a boy who appears to be a perfect imbecile?”
“But have you seen him?”
“No. He rang up on the telephone from the office of a house agent in Valley Fields. He has taken a house there and wished to give my name as a reference.”
“Valley Fields? Why Valley Fields?”
“Don’t keep on saying why,” cried Lord Tilbury tempestuously. “Haven’t I told you a dozen times that I don’t know why—that I haven’t the least idea why?”
“He does seem an eccentric boy.”
“Eccentric? I feel as if I had allowed myself tobe saddled with the guardianship of a dancing dervish. And when I think that if this young idiot gets into any sort of trouble while he is under my charge, Pynsent is sure to hold me responsible. I could kick myself for ever having been fool enough to bring him over here.”
“You mustn’t blame yourself, Georgie.”
“It isn’t a question of blaming myself. It’s a question of Pynsent blaming me and getting annoyed and breaking off the deal about the island.”
And Lord Tilbury, having removed his thumbs from the armholes of his waistcoat in order the more freely to fling them heavenwards, uttered a complicated sound which might be rendered phonetically by the word “Cor!” tenser and more dignified than the “Coo!” of the lower-class Londoner, but expressing much the same meaning.
In the hushed silence which followed, the buzzer on the desk sounded.
“Yes? Eh? Oh, send him up.” Lord Tilbury laid down the instrument and turned to his sister grimly. “Shotter is downstairs,” he said. “Now you will be able to see him for yourself.”
Mrs. Hammond’s first impression when she saw Sam for herself was that she had been abruptly confronted with something in between a cyclone and a large Newfoundland puppy dressed in bright tweeds. Sam’s mood of elation had grown steadily all the way down Fleet Street, and he burst into the presence of his future employer as if he had just been let off a chain.
“Well, how are you?” he cried, seizing Lord Tilbury’s hand in a grip that drew from him a sharp yelp of protest.
Then, perceiving for the first time the presence of a fair stranger, he moderated his exuberance somewhat and stared politely.
“My sister, Mrs. Hammond,” said Lord Tilbury, straightening his fingers.
Sam bowed. Mrs. Hammond bowed.
“Perhaps I had better leave you,” said Mrs. Hammond. “You will want to talk.”
“Oh, don’t go,” said Sam hospitably.
“I have business in Lombard Street,” said Mrs. Hammond, discouraging with a cold look what seemed to her, rightly or wrongly, a disposition on the part of this young man to do the honours and behave generally as if he were trying to suggest that Tilbury House was his personal property but that any relative of Lord Tilbury was welcome there. “I have to visit my bank.”
“I shall have to visit mine pretty soon,” said Sam, “or the wolf will be scratching at the door.”
“If you are short of funds——” began Lord Tilbury.
“Oh, I’m all right for the present, thanks. I pinched close on fifty pounds from a man this morning.”
“You did what?” said Lord Tilbury blankly.
“Pinched fifty pounds. Surprising he should have had so much on him. But lucky—for me.”
“Did he make any objection to your remarkable behaviour?”
“He was asleep at the time, and I didn’t wake him. I just left a poached egg on his pillow and came away.”
Lord Tilbury swallowed convulsively and his eye sought that of Mrs. Hammond in a tortured glare.
“A poached egg?” he whispered.
“So that he would find it there when he woke,” explained Sam.
Mrs. Hammond had abandoned her intention of withdrawing and leaving the two men together for a cosy chat. Georgie, it seemed to her from his expression, needed a woman’s loving support. Sam appeared to have affected him like some unpleasant drug, causing starting of the eyes and twitching of the muscles.
“It is a pity you missed theMauretania, Mr. Shotter,” she said. “My brother had hoped that you would travel with him so that you could have a good talk about what you were to do when you joined his staff.”
“Great pity,” said Sam, omitting to point out that it was for that very reason that he had allowed theMauretaniato depart without him. “However, it’s all right. I have found my niche.”
“You have done what?”
“I have selected my life work.” He pulled out of his pocket a crumpled paper. “I would like to attach myself to Pyke’sHome Companion. I bought a copy on my way here, and it is the goods. You aren’t reading the serial by any chance, are you—Hearts Aflame, by Cordelia Blair? A winner. I only had time to glance at the current instalment, but it was enough to make me decide to dig up the back numbers at the earliest possible moment. In case you haven’t read it, it is Leslie Mordyke’s wedding day, and a veiled woman with a foreign accent has just risen in the body of the church and forbidden the banns. And,” saidSam warmly, “I don’t blame her. It appears that years ago——”
Lord Tilbury was making motions of distress, and Mrs. Hammond bent solicitously, like one at a sick bed, to catch his fevered whisper.
“My brother,” she announced, “wishes——”
“——was hoping,” corrected Lord Tilbury.
“——was hoping,” said Mrs. Hammond, accepting the emendation, “that you would join the staff of theDaily Recordso that you might be under his personal eye.”
Sam caught Lord Tilbury’s personal eye, decided that he had no wish to be under it and shook his head.
“TheHome Companion,” said Lord Tilbury, coming to life, “is a very minor unit of my group of papers.”
“Though it has a large circulation,” said Mrs. Hammond loyally.
“A very large circulation, of course,” said Lord Tilbury; “but it offers little scope for a young man in your position, anxious to start on a journalistic career. It is not—how shall I put it?—it is not a vital paper, not a paper that really matters.”
“In comparison with my brother’s other papers,” said Mrs. Hammond.
“In comparison with my other papers, of course.”
“I think you are wrong,” said Sam. “I cannot imagine a nobler life work for any man than to help produce Pyke’sHome Companion. Talk about spreading sweetness and light, why, Pyke’sHome Companionis the paper that wrote the words and music. Listen to this; ‘A. M. B. (Brixton). You ask me for a simple and inexpensive method of curing corns. Get an ordinary swede, or turnip, cut and dig out a hole in the top, fill the hole with common salt and allow to stand till dissolved. Soften the corn morning and night with this liquid.’”
“Starting on the reportorial staff of theDaily Record,” said Lord Tilbury, “you would be in a position——”
“Just try to realise what that means,” proceeded Sam. “What it amounts to is that the writer of that paragraph has with a stroke of the pen made the world a better place. He has brightened a home. Possibly he has averted serious trouble between man and wife. A. M. B. gets the ordinary swede, digs out the top, pushes in the salt, and a week later she has ceased to bully her husband and beat the baby and is a ray of sunshine about the house—and all through Pyke’sHome Companion.”
“What my brother means——” said Mrs. Hammond.
“Similarly,” said Sam, “with G. D. H. (Tulse Hill), who wants to know how to improve the flavour of prunes. You or I would say that the flavour of prunes was past praying for, that the only thing to do when cornered by a prune was to set your teeth and get it over with. Not so Pyke’s——”
“He means——”
“——Home Companion.‘A little vinegar added to stewed prunes,’ says the writer, ‘greatly improves the flavour. And although it may seem strange, it causes less sugar to be used.’ What happens? What is the result? G. D. H.’s husband comes back tired and hungry after a day’s work. ‘Prunes for dinner again,I suppose?’ he says moodily. ‘Yes, dear,’ replies G. D. H., ‘but of a greatly improved flavour.’ Well, he doesn’t believe her, of course. He sits down sullenly. Then, as he deposits the first stone on his plate, a delighted smile comes into his face. ‘By Jove!’ he cries. ‘The flavour is greatly improved. They still taste like brown paper soaked in machine oil, but a much superior grade of brown paper. How did you manage it?’ ‘It was not I, dearest,’ says G. D. H., ‘but Pyke’sHome Companion. Acting on their advice, I added a little vinegar, with the result that not only is the flavour greatly improved but, strange though it may seem, I used less sugar.’ ‘Heaven bless Pyke’sHome Companion!’ cries the husband. With your permission then,” said Sam, “I will go straight to Mr. Wrenn and inform him that I have come to fight the good fight under his banner. ‘Mr. Wrenn,’ I shall say——”
Lord Tilbury was perplexed.
“Do you know Wrenn? How do you know Wrenn?”
“I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting him, but we are next-door neighbours. I have taken the house adjoining his. Mon Repos, Burberry Road, is the address. You can see for yourself how convenient this will be. Not only shall we toil all day in the office to make Pyke’sHome Companionmore and more of a force among theintelligentsiaof Great Britain but in the evenings, as we till our radishes, I shall look over the fence and say, ‘Wrenn,’ and Wrenn will say, ‘Yes, Shotter?’ And I shall say, ‘Wrenn, how would it be to run a series on the eradication of pimples in canaries?’ ‘Shotter,’ he will reply, dropping his spade in his enthusiasm, ‘this is genius. ’Twas a lucky day, boy, for the oldHome Companionwhen you came to us.’ But I am wasting time. I should be about my business. Good-bye, Mrs. Hammond. Good-bye, Lord Tilbury. Don’t trouble to come with me. I will find my way.”
He left the room with the purposeful step of the man of affairs, and Lord Tilbury uttered a sound which was almost a groan.
“Insane!” he ejaculated. “Perfectly insane!”
Mrs. Hammond, womanlike, was not satisfied with simple explanation.
“There is something behind this, George!”
“And I can’t do a thing,” moaned His Lordship, chafing, as your strong man will, against the bonds of fate. “I simply must humour this boy, or the first thing I know he will be running off on some idiotic prank and Pynsent will be sending me cables asking why he has left me.”
“There is something behind this,” repeated Mrs. Hammond weightily. “It stands to reason. Even a boy like this young Shotter would not take a house next door to Mr. Wrenn the moment he landed unless he had some motive. George, there is a girl at the bottom of this.”
Lord Tilbury underwent a sort of minor convulsion. His eyes bulged and he grasped the arms of his chair.
“Good God, Francie! Don’t say that! Pynsent took me aside before I left and warned me most emphatically to be careful how I allowed this boy to come in contact with—er—members of the opposite sex.”
“Girls,” said Mrs. Hammond.
“Yes, girls,” said Lord Tilbury, as if pleasantly surprised at this neat way of putting it. “He said he had had trouble a year or so ago——”
“Mr. Wrenn must have a daughter,” said Mrs. Hammond, pursuing her train of thought. “Has Mr. Wrenn a daughter?”
“How the devil should I know?” demanded His Lordship, not unnaturally irritated. “I don’t keep in touch with the home life of every man in this building.”
“Ring him up and ask him.”
“I won’t. I don’t want my staff to think I’ve gone off my head. Besides, you may be quite wrong.”
“I shall be extremely surprised if I am,” said Mrs. Hammond.
Lord Tilbury sat gazing at her pallidly. He knew that Francie had a sixth sense in these matters.
At about the moment when Sam entered the luxuriously furnished office of the Mammoth Publishing Company’s proprietor and chief, in a smaller and less ornate room in the same building Mr. Matthew Wrenn, all unconscious of the good fortune about to descend upon him in the shape of the addition to his staff of a live and go-ahead young assistant, was seated at his desk, busily engaged in promoting the best interests of that widely read weekly, Pyke’sHome Companion. He was, in fact, correcting the proofs of an article—ably written, but too long to quote here—entitled What a Young Girl Can Do in Her Spare Time; Number 3, Bee Keeping.
He was interrupted in this task by the opening of the door, and looking up, was surprised to see his niece, Kay Derrick.
“Why, Kay!” said Mr. Wrenn. She had never visited him at his office so early as this, for Mrs. Winnington-Bates expected her serfs to remain on duty till at least four o’clock. In her blue eyes, moreover, there was a strange glitter that made him subtly uneasy. “Why, Kay, what are you doing here?”
Kay sat down on the desk. Having ruffled his grizzled hair with an affectionate hand, she remained for a while in silent meditation.
“I hate young men!” she observed at length. “Why isn’t everyone nice and old—I mean elderly, but frightfully well preserved, like you, darling?”
“Is anything the matter?” asked Mr. Wrenn anxiously.
“Nothing much. I’ve left Mrs. Bates.”
“I’m very glad to hear it, my dear. There is no earthly reason why you should have to waste your time slaving——”
“You’re worse than Claire,” said Kay, her eyes ceasing to glitter. “You both conspire to coddle me. I’m young and strong, and I ought to be earning my living. But,” she went on, tapping his head with her finger to emphasise her words, “I will not continue in a job which involves being kissed by worms like Claude Bates. No, no, no, sir!”
Mr. Wrenn raised a shocked and wrathful face.
“He kissed you?”
“Yes. You had an article in theHome Companionlast week, uncle, saying what a holy and beautiful thingthe first kiss is. Well, Claude Bates’ wasn’t. He hadn’t shaved and he was wearing a dressing gown. Also, he was pallid and greenish, and looked as if he had been out all night. Anything less beautiful and holy I never saw.”
“He kissed you! What did you do?”
“I hit him very hard with a book which I was taking to read to Mrs. Bates. It was the Rev. Aubrey Jerningham’sIs There a Hell?and I’ll bet Claude thought there was. Until then I had always rather disliked Mrs. Bates’ taste in literature, which shows how foolish I was. If she had preferred magazines, where would I have been? There were about six hundred pages of Aubrey Jerningham, bound in stiff cloth, and he blacked Claude’s eye like a scholar and a gentleman. And at that moment in came Mrs. Bates.”
“Yes?” said Mr. Wrenn, enthralled.
“Well, a boy’s best friend is his mother. Have you ever seen one of those cowboy films where there is trouble in the bar-room? It was like that. Mrs. Bates started to dismiss me, but I got in first with my resignation, shooting from the hip, as it were. And then I came away, and here I am.”
“The fellow should be horsewhipped,” said Mr. Wrenn, breathing heavily.
“He isn’t worth bothering about,” said Kay.
The riot of emotion into which she had been plunged by the addresses of the unshaven Bates had puzzled her. But now she understood. It was galling to suppose so monstrous a thing, but the explanation was, she felt, that there had been condescension in his embrace. If she had been Miss Derrick of Midways, hewould not have summoned up the nerve to kiss her in a million years; but his mother’s secretary and companion had no terror for him. And at the thought a deep thrill of gratitude to the Rev. Aubrey Jerningham passed through Kay. How many a time, wearied by his duties about the parish, must that excellent clergyman have been tempted to scamp his work and shirk the labour of adding that extra couple of thousand words which just make all the difference to literature when considered in the light of a missile.
But he had been strong. He had completed his full six hundred pages and seen to it that his binding had been heavy and hard and sharp about the edges. For a moment, as she sat there, the Rev. Aubrey Jerningham seemed to Kay the one bright spot in a black world.
She was still meditating upon him when there was a hearty smack on the door and Sam came in.
“Good morning, good morning,” he said cheerily.
And then he saw Kay, and on the instant his eyes widened into a goggling stare, his mouth fell open, his fingers clutched wildly at nothing, and he stood there, gaping.
Kay met his stare with a defiant eye. In her present mood she disliked all young men, and there seemed nothing about this one to entitle him to exemption from her loathing. Rather, indeed, the reverse, for his appearance jarred upon her fastidious taste.
If the Cohen Bros., of Covent Garden, have a fault, it is that they sometimes allow their clients to select clothes that are a shade too prismatic for anyone who is not at the same time purchasing a banjo and a strawhat with a crimson ribbon. Fittings take place in a dimly lit interior, with the result that suits destined to make phlegmatic horses shy in the open street seem in the shop to possess merely a rather pleasing vivacity. One of these Sam had bought, and it had been a blunder on his part. If he had intended to sing comic songs from a punt at Henley Regatta, he would have been suitably, even admirably, attired. But as a private gentleman he was a little on the bright side. He looked, in fact, like a bookmaker who won billiard tournaments, and Kay gazed upon him with repulsion.
He, on the other hand, gazed at her with a stunned admiration. That photograph should have prepared him for something notable in the way of feminine beauty; but it seemed to him, as he raked her with eyes like small dinner plates, that it had been a libel, an outrage, a gross caricature. This girl before him was marvellous. Helen of Troy could have been nothing to her. He loved her shining eyes, unaware that they shone with loathing. He worshipped her rose-flushed cheeks, not knowing that they were flushed because he had been staring at her for thirty-three seconds without blinking and she was growing restive beneath his gaze.
Mr. Wrenn was the first to speak.
“Did you want anything?” he asked.
“What?” said Sam.
“Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Eh?”
Mr. Wrenn approached the matter from a fresh angle.
“This is the office of Pyke’sHome Companion. Iam Mr. Wrenn, the editor. Did you wish to see me?”
“Who?” said Sam.
At this point Kay turned to the window, and the withdrawal of her eyes had the effect of releasing Sam from his trance. He became aware that a grey-haired man, whom he dimly remembered having seen on his entry into the room some hours before, was addressing him.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You wished to see me?”
“Yes,” said Sam; “yes, yes.”
“What about?” asked Mr. Wrenn patiently.
The directness and simplicity of the question seemed to clear Sam’s head. He recalled now what it was that had brought him here.
“I’ve come over from America to join the staff of Pyke’sHome Companion.”
“What?”
“Lord Tilbury wants me to.”
“Lord Tilbury?”
“Yes; I’ve just been seeing him.”
“But he has said nothing to me about this, Mr.——”
“——Shotter. No, we only arranged it a moment ago.”
Mr. Wrenn was a courteous man, and though he was under the impression that his visitor was raving, he did not show it.
“Perhaps I had better see Lord Tilbury,” he suggested, rising. “By the way, my niece, Miss Derrick. Kay, my dear, Mr. Shotter.”
The departure of the third party and the sudden institution of the intimacies of atête-à-têtehad the usualeffect of producing a momentary silence. Then Kay moved away from the window and came to the desk.
“Did you say you had come from America?” she asked, fiddling with Mr. Wrenn’s editorial pencil. She had no desire to know, but she supposed she must engage this person in conversation.
“From America, yes. Yes, from America.”
“Is this your first visit to England?” asked Kay, stifling a yawn.
“Oh, no. I was at school in England.”
“Really? Where?”
“At Wrykyn.”
Kay’s attitude of stiff aloofness relaxed. She became interested.
“Good gracious! Of course!” She looked upon him quite benevolently. “A friend of yours was talking to me about you only yesterday—Willoughby Braddock.”
“Do you know the Bradder?” gulped Sam, astounded.
“I’ve known him all my life.”
A most extraordinary sensation flooded over Sam. It was hard to analyse, but its effects were thoroughly definite. At the discovery that this wonderful girl knew the old Bradder and that they could pave the way to a beautiful friendship by talking about the old Bradder, the office of Pyke’sHome Companionbecame all at once flooded with brilliant sunshine. Birds twittered from the ceiling, and blended with their notes was the soft music of violins and harps.
“You really know the Bradder?”
“We were children together.”
“What a splendid chap!”
“Yes, he’s a dear.”
“What a corker!”
“Yes!”
“What an egg!”
“Yes. Tell me, Mr. Shotter,” said Kay wearying of this eulogy, “do you remember a boy at your school named Bates?”
Sam’s face darkened. Time had softened the anguish of that moment outside the Angry Cheese, but the sting still remained.
“Yes, I do.”
“Willoughby Braddock told me that you once beat Bates with a walking stick.”
“Yes.”
“A large walking stick?”
“Yes.”
“Did you beat him hard?”
“Yes, as hard as ever I could lay it in.”
A little sigh of gratification escaped Kay.
“Ah!” she said.
In the course of the foregoing conversation the two had been diminishing inch by inch the gap which had separated them at its outset, so that they had come to be standing only a short distance apart; and now, as she heard those beautiful words, Kay looked up into Sam’s face with a cordial, congratulatory friendliness which caused him to quiver like a smitten blanc-mange. Then, while he was still reeling, she smiled. And it is at this point that the task of setting down the sequence of events becomes difficult for the historian.
For, briefly, what happened next was that Sam,groping forward in a bemused fashion and gathering her clumsily into his arms, kissed Kay.