My Lord,—While congratulating your lordship on the well-deserved honour which the King has paid you, I feel it my duty to let your lordship know that the events which took place between August 2 and August 10 of the year before last are completely in the possession of the undersigned, and are supported by documentary evidence of such sort that nobody who saw it could ever doubt its authenticity. I am prepared to give up to you all such papers as are in my possession for the sum of £2,000.I am a poor man, and a desperate one, but am strictly honourable in all business matters such as this, and on receipt of that sumin goldI will strictly carry out my obligations. Should your lordship take no notice of this communication or refuseto comply with my request, the whole affair will be made public.I am well aware that I put myself within reach of the law in thus addressing you, but I would ask your lordship carefully to consider the results to yourself if you prosecute me. The circumstances of which I am possessed will then all come out, and while it matters very little to me whether I pass the next few years in prison or not, I think that the consequences to you will not be so lightly regarded by self and family. You have a great deal to lose; I have nothing.Kindly communicate with me at Martin’s Library, Wardour Street, by to-day week at latest. Having no club or settled address at present, I call there daily for letters and occasional parcels.—Faithfully yours,George Loring.
My Lord,—While congratulating your lordship on the well-deserved honour which the King has paid you, I feel it my duty to let your lordship know that the events which took place between August 2 and August 10 of the year before last are completely in the possession of the undersigned, and are supported by documentary evidence of such sort that nobody who saw it could ever doubt its authenticity. I am prepared to give up to you all such papers as are in my possession for the sum of £2,000.
I am a poor man, and a desperate one, but am strictly honourable in all business matters such as this, and on receipt of that sumin goldI will strictly carry out my obligations. Should your lordship take no notice of this communication or refuseto comply with my request, the whole affair will be made public.
I am well aware that I put myself within reach of the law in thus addressing you, but I would ask your lordship carefully to consider the results to yourself if you prosecute me. The circumstances of which I am possessed will then all come out, and while it matters very little to me whether I pass the next few years in prison or not, I think that the consequences to you will not be so lightly regarded by self and family. You have a great deal to lose; I have nothing.
Kindly communicate with me at Martin’s Library, Wardour Street, by to-day week at latest. Having no club or settled address at present, I call there daily for letters and occasional parcels.—Faithfully yours,
George Loring.
In obedience to the business-like qualities which had raised him to the position of multi-millionaire his mind instantly went into committee over details. It was but very rarely that he employed his own hand in writing, for his correspondence was entirely dealt with by secretaries and typewriters, but it would be well to disguise his ordinary caligraphy. Or, stop—there was a safer way, and the next minute the Remington typewriter which stood in the corner of the room was opened and gleamed with bared keys. He was no adept at this clattering finger-exercise,but after a few abortive trials he made a clumsy transcript of the letter, and directed an envelope by the same mechanical device.
Already the cautious instincts of the habitual criminal had awoke in him, and after replacing the cover on the typewriter he carefully burned both his manuscript draft and the insane gibberish of his first typed attempts, and opening his window let the blackened ashes float down into the straw-covered roadway. It would never do, again, to let the incriminating document lie among the other letters for post, and he hid it below the shirts in a wardrobe drawer in his bedroom in order to post it himself at some central letter-box next morning after verifying the existence of Martin’s Library. Then, since it was already very late, he went to bed with eager anticipation for the morrow and many morrows.
The next week was full of delightful interests; it passed in a spasm of absorbing moments, and he was astonished and disgusted at himself for not having entered sooner on a course of blackmail. True artist that he was, he did not pay constant visits to Martin’s Library, as soon as it was possible that there might be an answer to his letter, and ask if there was anything for George Loring, but with a higher æstheticism, preferred to taste the delights of suspense, and determined not to make any inquiries till the notified week had elapsed. But he could not avoid haunting Wardour Street, picturing to himselfwith artistic gusto his official visit to the library. Once only was the flesh too strong, and, though the week of grace had not yet expired, he could not resist the temptation of entering the library.
The shop was empty, and, somewhat to his disappointment, showed no lines of filled and fitted shelves, as he had hoped. He had imagined the smell of leather bindings, bookcases full of venerable volumes of the fathers, a dignified and courtly librarian. Instead, he found a small deal counter, on which were displayed the more odious of penny publications, and a stout old woman of comfortable appearance looked up from her knitting as he entered. But behind her—and his heart beat quicker at the sight—were rows of capacious pigeon-holes, each initialled with a letter of the alphabet. But, even as she asked him in a hoarse, fruity voice what she could do for him, he called on his finer instincts again, and instead of asking if there happened to be anything for George Loring, contented himself with buying “Society Pars” and “Frivol and Fashion.” With these prints in his hand, he left the shop without even looking at letter L.
But after all, perhaps, the commonplace sordidness of the establishment was of greater artistic value than his preconceived idea of it; it was a grimmer affair like this; it was more piquant, more trenchant that white-faced men, trembling and unmanned by the possibility of dreadful disclosures coming to light,should bring their forfeits to this ordinary little establishment, that their unseen and terrible persecutor should ask for letters from a comfortable old lady over a dingy deal counter.
Hardly had he emerged when there drove by a motor in which, of all people, Lord Peebles was sitting, who waved an absent welcome to him. He saw at once how dangerous had been his visit. Supposing he had asked for letters for George Loring and had staggered out of the shop with a scarcely manageable parcel of gold, to encounter such a meeting, it was distinctly within the bounds of possibility that that nobleman would connect him with George Loring. His blood ran cold at the thought, and yet it was a pleasing shiver which at once suggested a further precaution, delightful in the devising. A disguise was imperatively necessary.
He hailed a taxicab and spent an enraptured afternoon. George Loring had probably done this sort of thing before, and it might be supposed that though poor and desperate, he retained from the fruits of his last crime clothes of a flashy and ill-fitting description. Such as he would certainly wear a gaudy check suit and cheap patent leather boots. His tie, of the Brussels carpet type, would assuredly be pinned with something too magnificent to be possibly valuable; detachable cuffs and dicky, a hat with a furrow in it would complete his detestable array.Arthur Whately himself was clean shaven and solidly English in face; a moustache and imperial, therefore, suggesting a Polish conjurer were indicated. These must be of convincing make, incapable of detection; and a visit to an expensive perruquier’s, with a brilliant tale of a fancy-dress ball, made the last visit of a thrilling afternoon. And that night, when the great house in Park Lane was silent, and the electrical apparatus in the fan-room adjusted, a figure, appalling to contemplate, strutted and pirouetted before the big looking-glass in his locked bedroom.
All this, so exquisite to his pleasure-jaded palate, was but the material aspect of his adventure. Far sweeter and more recondite was the psychical honey of it. For, two days after George Loring had sent his letter, Lord Peebles telephoned to know whether Arthur Whately would play golf with him, and though he detested and despised the game, he gave an enthusiastic affirmative, and drove down with him to the Mid-Surrey links at Richmond. Certainly Lord Peebles looked worried and anxious, and the grey streak above his ears seemed to the vigilant eye of his friend to have assumed greater prominence.
“It’s so good of you to ask me to play,” said Whately as they started. “I am a wretched performer, and I know your prowess.”
“Oh, I expect we shall have a very even match, a very even match,” said the other. “And I needed a day off, though it is not Saturday. But there hasbeen some worrying business lately, and I wanted to get into the country and forget all about it. Very worrying business.”
Whately’s eye gleamed secretly; these worries fed his soul.
“Indeed, I am sorry to hear that,” he said.
“Thank you, thank you. A purely private affair. Don’t let us talk of it. Pretty the country looks. What’s that river we are crossing?”
“The River Thames,” said Whately almost tremulously.
“Perhaps,” said Lord Peebles.
He cleared his throat. “The Thames,” he began, and then changed the subject to something amazingly foreign to that topic.
“It is strange how one’s memory plays tricks with one,” he said. “A couple of days ago I was trying—quite idly—to recollect where I spent the early days of August the summer before last, and was totally unable to recall what I had been doing. My wife remembers that we went to Scotland on the 11th, but she, too, has quite forgotten what we did just before. She inclines to think that I was paying some visits without her. Curious!”
Arthur Whately laughed in a sprightly, rallying manner.
“Ah, ah,” he said, “she is probably right, eh? Trust a wife’s memory, my dear fellow, on that sort of point.”
“No doubt she is right,” returned the other, “but it is strange that we can neither of us recollect where I went.”
“Perhaps you never told her,” said Whately gaily. “But come, dismiss those evasive topics. Let the past bury its dead. It is only the present that is truly ours.”
They had arrived at the club-house, and Whately stepped out, followed by the heavier-footed peer. It was almost too good to be true, that by sheer accident he had lighted on days that seemed hard to account for, and, treading on air, he hurried into the dressing-room, where, in momentary privacy, he was forced to indulge in a few toe-pointing capers of delight. And, after all, though the emotions with which he had supplied his friend were of anxious and ominous description, still, emotions after all, of whatever sort, are the salt of life, and here was a new one for him, something with a strong flavour about it. But he could afford to be generous, since he himself was being so richly entertained, and he did not grudge him one pang of the worry and anxiety inseparable from his position.
Arthur Whately’s golf was generally of the most wayward description; he cut balls savagely to point and topped themventre à terreinto cavernous bunkers, while Lord Peebles played a dreadfully steady game, that, as a rule, walked arm-in-arm with bogey round the links. But to-day a strange upsetof form took place, for while Lord Peebles seemed unable to hit any ball in the requisite direction or with the requisite force, Arthur Whately, by virtue of the inscrutable laws that govern golf, performed with incredible excellence, and not unnaturally concluded that blackmailing is very good for the eye. Not for years had he felt so keenly the zest and ecstasy of living, and while watching his unfortunate opponent digging his ball out of tussocks of rank grass and eviscerating bunkers, he planned many similar adventures for the future. He felt as if he had awoke at last to his true nature; by accident he was a millionaire and the architect of his own colossal fortune, but by instinct and birth he seemed to be an æsthetic criminal. And the discovery had come upon him, though late, yet not too late. There might be many ecstatic years in store for him yet.
The days of that enchanted week passed slowly, and each moment that brought him nearer Friday morning, when he would don his atrocious disguise and visit Martin’s Library, brought him no nearer any firm conjectures as to what he should find there. It so happened that he met his victim several times in the course of the week, and if, as on the occasion of their golf match, his mental and physical aspect seemed to indicate that he would assuredly lack the courage of the archdeacon and obediently pay his fine, on other occasions he showed a calmness and control that was consistent with more aggressiveproceedings. To Whately’s knowledge he transacted during that week a very difficult and intricate financial undertaking that caused certain bankers in Berlin to curse his acumen, and later he won the Mid-Surrey monthly medal, which looked as if his aberration had been only temporary. And the uncertainty and suspense thrilled and fascinated his persecutor.
It was about twelve o’clock on the Friday morning that a dejected four-wheeler stopped opposite Martin’s Library, and the ambulatory population of Wardour Street, accustomed to all manner of eccentricities, looked with wonder at the garish figure that emerged. Two hours before, Arthur Whately had set off from Park Lane with a small portmanteau and had driven to the Charing Cross Hotel, having adjusted moustache and imperial with the aid of a small looking-glass in the cab, and had taken a room for a widower of the name of George Loring, paying for one night’s habitation. There he had effected his change of clothes and left the valise containing the outer garments of Arthur Whately, at present in a state of suspended existence.
He entered the library with a strutting martial air, and, as once before, the comfortable old lady looked up from her knitting and asked how she could serve him.
“I have called for letters and parcels for Mr. George Loring,” said Whately in a falsetto voice,which was the result of diligent practice. But a glance at pigeon-hole L showed him that it was empty....
“Yes, parcel and letter for Mr. George Loring,” said the old dame, “but the parcel was too big to put in the pigeon-hole, let alone lifting it. So I put them together somewhere. Deary me, now, where was it?”
“This is a strange way to conduct a public library,” said Whately, forgetting all about the assumed falsetto, “that the librarian should not know where she has deposited the property of her subscribers. Mr. Martin would be far from pleased. I am pressed for time, madam. Business in the city——”
The old lady turned slowly round and beamed on him.
“And if I wasn’t sitting on it all the time,” she said, “just for safety, as you may say. There, young man, you’ll find it heavy, and there’s sixpence to pay.”
“A most reasonable charge, madam,” said Whately. “And—and can you tell me who left the parcel—what he looked like?”
She nodded at him.
“Such a fur coat I never see,” she said, “and his motor fair stopped the traffic. I didn’t take much account of his face, though I would swear to a beard.”
“A shrewd observer!” said Whately in his most genial tones, and staggering out of the shop with his parcel, deposited it on his own toe as he steppedinto the cab. The pain was severe, and for the moment damped his ecstasy and caused him a loss of self-control.
“Charing Cross Hotel, you old idiot!” was his unjustifiable direction to his cabman.
As he drove there he tore open the note. It ran as follows:
“Dear Sir,—You have me completely in your power, and I send the money you demand. Kindly forward me at once the documentary evidence you speak of.Faithfully yours,Peebles.”
“Dear Sir,—You have me completely in your power, and I send the money you demand. Kindly forward me at once the documentary evidence you speak of.
Faithfully yours,Peebles.”
Again he felt vaguely disappointed. The fish had given him less play than he hoped; he had but towed its sulking carcass to land. But, then, he did not know that there followed him, threading the intricacies of traffic close behind him, a taxicab in which was sitting a quiet-looking gentleman with pince-nez. Its destination also appeared to be Charing Cross Hotel.
The hall porter opened the door of his cab, and Whately indicated his parcel.
“Move that into the bureau, if you will be so kind,” he said. “It contains a—a model, a metal model, and is heavy. I am going upstairs to change my clothes, and will be down again in ten minutes.”
Less time than that was sufficient for him to resume the habiliments of Arthur Whately, and stow the apparel of the vanished George Loring in his bag. His imperial and moustache he still wore, for it was his intention to use depilatory measures in the cab which took him back to Park Lane lest the complete transformation might prove too staggering for the hall porter. This time he himself took the parcel, a wooden box, clearly, wrapped up in brown paper, to his cab, put it, not on his own foot, but on the seat opposite, and genially told the driver to take him to Park Lane. Close behind him followed the taxicab containing the gentleman with pince-nez, modest, secluded, and unobserved. And from a few doors off he saw Mr. Arthur Whately, burdened with the parcel he had brought from Wardour Street, stagger into his own house. His business seemed to be not yet finished, for having seen him home he drove back to an office in the City, and was at once taken in to see the head of the firm. His interview lasted about half an hour, and he left behind him when he went a very much astonished gentleman, over whose mobile face a succession of queer secret smiles chased one another like gleams of sunshine on a cloudy day. Excellent business man though he was, he gave for the rest of the day but a tepid attention to his work.
Arthur Whately meantime was closeted with his gold. With the aid of a pair of nail-scissors (forprudence counselled secrecy) he succeeded in raising the lid of the box, and found it packed inside with smooth, discreet little sausages of white paper. A couple of these he unfolded, and from each flowed out a stream of clinking sovereigns. In each were a round hundred, and the little sausages were twenty in number. He put a liberal handful of gold in his pocket; he locked the rest into the safe that stood in the bedroom. And those two thousand pounds were somehow sweeter to him than his whole unnumbered fortune: they seemed to him the reward of a cleverness that was more peculiarly his own than that which had amassed so huge a harvest in South African mines and American options. They were doubly sweet, for they were both the fruit of secret criminal processes and had been wrung by terror out of his friend.
He lunched out that day. His soul basked in the heaven of high animal spirits which had so long been lost to him, and in the stimulus which the last week had brought to him he felt like a peri who had regained Paradise. Perhaps reaction would come, but for the present it held aloof, and in case it did he could always, as he phrased it to himself as he walked lightly down Bond Street, apply the squeezers again to poor Peebles. The vocabulary as well as the spirits of a schoolboy had come back to him; long-forgotten slang tripped off his tongue, and he examined shop-windows with eager enthusiasm. There was a beautiful Charles II. rat-tail spoon in a shop of old silver, and he entered and bought it, paying for it on the spot with fifteen of his newly acquired sovereigns. The purchase gave him more pleasure than any he had made for years: it was the fruit of his splendid stroke of blackmail.
At another shop he bought for five pounds a charming figure of a seagull in Copenhagen china. Lord Peebles had a collection of this pale fabric, and his friend felt it would be a privilege to add to it. That also was paid for in gold, and after he had left each shop a quiet man entered and conferred privately with the proprietor, leaving a companion outside, who strolled after the millionaire.
Returning home, he sent out a number of invitations for a dinner party in ten days’ time. A royal princess had intimated that she would like to dine with him that night, and he included in his invitations Lord and Lady Peebles, both of whom were snobs of “purest ray serene.” Later on he would ask them again to some similar function, for he felt that two such invitations would make full compensation for the anxiety he had caused. He did not regard the bagatelle of gold; that meant nothing to either of them. Then after an hour with his beautiful collection of Greek coins he dressed and went out to dinner.
Lord Peebles was of the party, and the two cutinto a table of bridge afterwards, and played for a couple of hours, with luck distinctly against the newly created peer. Generally his losses caused him exquisite agony: being very rich, he could not bear to be ever so little poorer. But to-night he laid down a couple of ten-pound notes with a smile.
“I pay you, my dear Whately,” he said, “fourteen pounds, is it not? I wonder if you can give me six.”
Whately could and did.
“You have had the worst of luck,” he observed genially, “but it’s only a game. By the way, I hope I shall see you and your wife to dinner on the 23rd. I sent you an invitation this evening.”
Lord Peebles took up his change and looked rather carefully at each sovereign in turn, as if to question its genuineness.
“Curious thing,” he said, “each of these sovereigns is marked. There is a small capital ‘P’ scratched on the field in front of St. George.”
He passed one over to Whately, who felt as if some warning whistle had sounded remotely in his ears. But he contrived to speak in his natural voice, and got up.
“I see,” he said; “I wonder what that means. Bates gave me them just before I came out.”
“Indeed,” said Lord Peebles negligently. “Yes, the 23rd would be delightful. Are you going?”
“Yes, I think I shall be off,” said Whately.
He drove back to Park Lane, and without settingthe pleasant peal of electric bells in the fan-room, went straight to his bedchamber and got out the box which had thrilled him with such exquisite pangs of pleasure that morning. He stripped the paper off sausage after sausage of gold, until his bed was piled with the precious metal. And on each shining disc the same ominous discovery met his eye: just in front of St. George’s head on every one that he took up was scratched a small capital “P.”
He slept far from well that night, for his mind, spinning madly like a whirling top, came into collision with a series of hard angles of uncomfortable circumstances. He told himself that it was inconceivable that his friend should have suspected him of the odious crime of blackmailing, but his friend evidently when paying the ransom had taken steps to trace its destination, with a view to the apprehension of the criminal. By a most strange coincidence it was he, Arthur Whately, who had supplied him with a clue, though he had had the presence of mind to say that Bates had given him these six pieces of evidence.... Then with a pang of alarm that made him sit bolt upright in bed, he remembered that there were four more of them in the shop where they sold china cats and seagulls, fifteen more in the silversmith’s, where he had bought the Charles II. spoon, and two others in the hair-cutting establishment in St. James’s Street, where he had so lightlypurchased a safety-razor and a small indiarubber sponge. At all costs he must repossess himself of these, and how was that to be done? In this short summer night there was scarcely time, even if he had had the tools, to make a series of single-handed burglaries, yet if he did not get those accursed sovereigns back, he was letting the tap of evidence drip and drip and drip. What, again, was the use of those nineteen hundred and odd sovereigns on his bed if he could not put them in circulation without multiplying the evidence already in existence? The suspense of the last week, it is true, had been thrilling and delicious, but it appeared now that there were at least two sorts of suspense, and the other, though quite as thrilling, was not so pleasant. Sinking into an uneasy slumber, he dreamed of skilly.
Haggard and unshaven (in spite of the new safety-razor), he was in Bond Street next morning early, with cheque-book and bank-notes in his pocket. The shop that dealt in old silver was only just open, and he went hurriedly in.
“I am Mr. Whately,” he said, “Mr. Whately, of Park Lane. Dear me, that is a very pretty tankard. A hundred pounds only! Please send it round to me to No. 93. The fact is, a rather curious thing has happened. I bought a Charles II. spoon here yesterday afternoon and paid for it in sovereigns. For certain curious, I may say family, reasons, I very much want those sovereigns back again. There aresentimental associations with them, you understand. Could you kindly let me have them back and take my cheque or bank-notes in exchange?”
The shopman laughed.
“Well, sir, a very curious thing happened here too,” he said brightly. “You had hardly left the shop when a gentleman came in and asked if I could let him have any change for some bank-notes. There were your sovereigns lying in the till, and I gave him them all. I offered him five more as well, but after examining those he said he did not want more than fifteen.”
Arthur Whately couldn’t suppress a slight groan.
“That was very precipitate of you,” he said. “What was the gentleman like? Was it—a stout, dark-faced gentleman with yellowish hair and—and probably a fur coat?”
“No, sir, a clean-shaven gentleman with a sharp sort of face.”
“Not Peebles,” said Whately to himself, as he skimmed out of the shop. “It may still only be a coincidence.”
The shop of Danish china was open, and again he told his lame and unconvincing tale. Here again the fever for gold had run riot yesterday afternoon, and a gentleman with a big moustache had taken five sovereigns and left a bank-note. And his scuttling footsteps took him to the aseptic hairdresser’s.
“I am fighting single-handed against a positive gang of these wretches,” was his bitter comment.
But the aseptic hairdresser’s was still shut, and after ringing several wrong bells belonging to different floors, he gave up in despair and went home to the mocking splendour of No. 93. A fresh-faced stable-boy was just laying down the straw in the street, whistling as he plied his nimble pitchfork. Whately wondered whether he would ever whistle again.
For an hour he sat there lost in a scorching desert of barren thought. Visions of oakum and broad arrows flitted through his disordered mind, and every now and then he came to himself as some fresh circumstance of dawning significance rapped on his brain.
Once he hurried upstairs, remembering that the awful attire of George Loring still lurked in a locked cupboard of his bedroom, and he took the criminal’s coat and stuffed it in the fire in his sitting-room, with the intention of burning all that costume which had seemed so exquisitely humorous. But the coat seemed impervious to flames, and it was not till a quarter of an hour later that he came downstairs again with roasted face. Even then there were trousers and shirt and patent leather boots to get rid of, and trouser buttons and the base metal of his gorgeous tie-pin would be found amid the ashes. And even when it was all done, he would only havedestroyed one thread of evidence, leaving a network of imperishable circumstance unimpaired.
Truly there was a dark side to the game on which he had so lightly embarked, which the callous world could not ever so faintly appreciate, or would probably but imperfectly sympathize with even if it did.
But for the sake of saving his sanity he had to occupy himself with something, and after vainly attempting to follow the meaning of a leader in theTimes, he began reading, purely as a “sad narcotic exercise,” the Agony column. And then he fairly bounded from his seat, as the following met his eye:
“To George Loring. A packet of marked sovereigns, twenty-eight in number, will be forwarded to the above-named at any address or given to a messenger who hands to Mr. Arthur Armstrong (resident for this day only at the Charing Cross Hotel) the sum of £4,000 (four thousand) in bank-notes or bullion.”
He groaned aloud.
“It spells beggary,” he said to himself, “but I must have those sovereigns. But let me see first whether twenty-eight is the full tale of them,” and he snatched up a piece of paper and wrote:
and at that, in spite of the ruinous expense, his heart bounded high within him. It was wiser not to appear himself (he had, so it struck him, appeared rather too frequently already), and sending for his secretary he scrawled a cheque for £4,000, and bade him have it changed into bank-notes and take it at once to the Charing Cross Hotel. There he would ask for a certain Mr. Arthur Armstrong, who would give him a packet containing twenty-eight marked sovereigns.
“It concerns a widowed aunt of mine,” he added, “and I cannot tell you more. Speed and secrecy are essential to save her from ruin.”
The zealous secretary was back within an hour, and with a sob of relief Whately, when he was alone, opened the packet he brought. Next moment with a hollow groan he spilled the contents all over the table. The sovereigns were marked indeed, but each of them had neatly incised on it, not a “P” but an interrogation mark. Back went the zealous secretary again to explain that these were not the right ones, and, if necessary, to implore Mr. Arthur Armstrong, for the sake of his mother, to give up the others. He was soon home again with the news that Mr. Arthur Armstrong had already quitted the hotel, leaving no address.
Later on that abject day there arrived a note from Lord Peebles, saying that it was doubtful whether hecould come to dinner on the 23rd. Events, at present private, might render it impossible. But he would like a game of golf at Richmond next day if Whately was at liberty.
Again this proposal of a recreation detestable in itself and intolerable to one with shaking hand and trembling knees! Yet if Peebles had proposed a game of leap-frog Whately could not be so imprudent as to refuse, for at all costs he must keep up friendly relations. He had half a mind (but not the other half) to tell his friend that it was indeed he who had attempted to blackmail him, for a joke, and that the retaliation was getting beyond one. But it was not certain as yet that a confession was necessary; there was nothing to show that Lord Peebles had identified him with George Loring. It looked like it; it looked uncommonly like it, but what proof had he? Whately, it is true, had given him half a dozen of his own marked sovereigns, and no doubt Peebles knew that he had expended others on Copenhagen china, Charles II. silver and American articles of toilet, but that was all. It certainly was a good deal——
There is no need to dwell on his further anguish. The game of golf was a cruel parody of sport, and Peebles was in his most pompous mood, speaking of the House of Lords as “we.” At other times he spoke with strange persistence of the horrors of English prisons, and mentioned that he had been appointedvisitor to Wormwood Scrubs. Whately did not know with any accuracy where that was, but Peebles described exactly how you could get to it. Long-sentence men stayed there.
Another day he would see or think he saw a stranger watching his house. Sometimes a second would join him, and if one was clean-shaven and the other had a moustache, Whately’s heart would leap to his throat and creakingly pulsate there. His appetite failed him; his brushes were full of shed hair; dew suddenly broke out on his forehead. And seven dreadful days passed.
Then the end came.
Lord Peebles telephoned to him asking if he could see him on important business, and of course a welcoming affirmative was given.
“You appear far from well, my dear Whately,” he said, looking anxiously at him, “far from well. A little dieting, do you think, a little regular work, a little abstention from alcohol?”
Whately gave a haggard glance out of the window. It was a foggy morning, and in the roadway he could but faintly distinguish a large black van which had approached noiselessly over the straw and now stood there. At that sight there was no longer any doubt in his mind that Peebles had adopted the ruthless archidiaconal attitude towards blackmailers, and was going to have him arrested. But harassed and unnerved as he was by a succession of sleepless nightsand nightmare days, he still despised and refused to parley with the conventional narrowness of his accuser. Yet Lord Peebles still wore his pleased and secret smile, and it was not good manners to look like that in the act of committing a friend to a convict prison. Whately drew himself up and spoke with wonderful steadiness and dignity.
“I see it’s all up!” he said, “and that I shall soon get all the things you so feelingly recommend. But after all I had a perfectly amazing week when I waited for your answer. I don’t deny that you have given me an awful week, too, or that there are many rather cheerless weeks in front of me. It’s no use my attempting to explain; you would never understand. Your soul doesn’t rise above sovereigns.”
Lord Peebles came a step nearer him, looking vexed.
“For those remarks,” he said, “you deserve to be treated as—as you deserve. You don’t seem to realize that I have had a week of the most thrilling enjoyment. You think that nobody has a sense of humour except yourself. That attitude of yours has often annoyed me, for I have a remarkably keen one, and for pure æsthetic pleasure I have just had the week of my life. The fact that it was sugared with revenge hardly enhanced it at all, nor did the fact that whereas you got two thousand pounds out of me, I got four thousand out of you. You have been likea monkey dancing on a hot plate. I have been the hot plate.”
Whately was scarcely listening; with chattering teeth he looked at the huge ominous van in the street, and Lord Peebles followed his gaze.
“You deserve that that van should be Black Maria,” he went on in injured tones, “to take you to Wormwood Scrubs, where I am visitor.”
“Is—isn’t it?” asked Whately.
Lord Peebles peered into the fog.
“The harmless, necessary pantechnicon,” he said.
Then he subsided into a chair and his great bulk began to shake with spasms of ungovernable laughter. And gradually the colour came back to Whately’s face, and shortly after an uncertain smile hovered on his mouth.
“And is it all over?” he asked.
Lord Peebles took a small sausage of sovereigns out of his pocket.
“I brought these along with me,” he said, “please count them; they are all marked, and there are twenty-eight of them. I will exchange them with those you possess marked with an interrogation point.”
“You shall!” said Whately. “God bless you!”
“I was not certain, when I came here,” continued Lord Peebles, disregarding this interruption, “whether I should put you out of your suspense or not, but your haggard and emaciated appearance, my dear fellow, decided me. Besides, I am two thousandpounds to the good, or nearly so, for I owe some small sum to detectives. If I did not have mercy on you, you would probably be too unwell to give your party for the princess on the 23rd, and I should be sorry to miss that. Otherwise I might have let you have a week or so more of excitement. I had several other little notions, little tunes for you to dance to.”
“You shall sit next her,” said Whately with quivering lips.
ThisMidsummer day, the early hours of which were bathed in so serene a sunshine, has ended in storm and hurly-burly. Only this morning the general outlook was as unclouded as is now the velvet blue of the star-scattered Italian sky, but this evening our very souls are driven like dead leaves before a shrivelling blast. Nature, unsympathetic, indifferent, still holds on her great unruffled courses; the stars wheel, the north wind blows lightly from across the gulf; the little ripples shed themselves in lines of phosphorescent flame; Naples lies a necklace of light on the edge of the sea, the loveliness of the Southern night is undiminished. But Mrs. Mackellar has danced on the beefsteak, and she has dismissed Seraphina.
To the dweller in cities or other light-minded and populous places this may appear but the most farcical of tragedies, worthy of no more than the scoffing laugh of a passer-by. But such do not know Mrs. Mackellar, nor Seraphina, nor life in Alatri. For in Alatri as a rule nothing happens—certainly nothing unpleasant—our lives are as smooth as the halcyon summer seas, and it will, I am afraid, be impossible to give to any but the most imaginative reader anadequate idea of the devastating nature of the catastrophe.... It will be necessary in any case to recount in brief the events of the last twenty-four hours.
Yesterday afternoon we were allen fête; Mrs. Mackellar gave a party for two reasons, either of which was amply justifiable. The first was that the engagement of Seraphina her cook to Antonio her man-servant was definitely sanctioned by her, and so made food for public rejoicing; the second that Seraphina had been with her as cook for an entire year. Now in Alatri servants do not, as a rule, stop with Mrs. Mackellar more than a few weeks. Then they leave. There is no dissatisfaction expressed and no public quarrel. They just lose their nerve and go away. But the days had added themselves into weeks, and the weeks into months, and before any of us knew where we were, Seraphina had been a year with Mrs. Mackellar. Hence the party.
There were in fact two parties, for Seraphina and Antonio entertained their friends in the kitchen, while Mrs. Mackellar received on the house-roof. She is an immense Scotchwoman, broad in bosom and in accent, and feels the heat acutely. Consequently when I received an invitation for four o’clock on an afternoon in the middle of June, it was clear that she must have a real desire to celebrate the event.
The Duchess of Alatri—to her more intimate friends, Bianca—came with me by special invitation.Her Grace is a huge white Campagna sheep-dog, so tall that she can, when sitting down, put her chin on an ordinary dining-room table and eat your bread when you are not looking. At rest she resembles a large rug (and as such is not infrequently trodden on), and when in motion she resembles nothing that I have ever seen. Her sole method of progression is a trot; she never walks, and she cannot gallop, but the trot varies from a pace so surprisingly slow that she appears only to be marking time, to that of the passage of an express train. The other day she was investigating interesting smells in the piazza, when out for a walk with me, and so got left behind. I did not miss her till I was some half-mile away, and looking round saw a distant white speck where the road leaves the town. I whistled shrilly on my fingers, and without appreciable interval she was with me. She belongs not, alas, to me, but to an American, who has left the enchanted island for the summer (unless perhaps it is more just to say that he belongs to her), and committed Her Grace to my care. Her passions are being combed, cheese and dancing.
This latter I discovered by a happy accident. For the first afternoon that she was with me she was very sorrowful, and though I ran up the Stars and Stripes on the flagstaff, instead of the Union Jack, wondering if this would give her the thrill of home, she remained dispirited. But shortly before going to bed, hoping in some vague way to cheer her, and being myselffutile, I danced round her, snapping my fingers. The effect was magical. The rug shuffled swiftly to its feet, and began gambolling. She jumped in the air, she turned briskly round and round, she took little leaps with her head down like a bucking pony, she upset a small table on which was standing an open tin of biscuits, and scarcely pausing to sweep up the greater part with her tongue she lurched heavily into an oleander-tub on the veranda, snapping the shrub off short. And when, about ten minutes later, I sank into a chair breathless and exhausted, the Duchess was herself again. Only once when passing her old home did she show any desire to remain there, and even then I had but to execute two fantastic steps down the path, when she gave a sort of choking cry, her apology for a bark, and came after me behaving like a rocking-horse.
So Bianca and I went up the steep path to Mrs. Mackellar’s shortly after four yesterday afternoon. She lives in a stucco castle with battlements. There was already a tarantella going on in the kitchen—Seraphina is a notable dancer—and Bianca brightened up. She said, “This is the place for me,” and brushing rudely by me trotted down the back-stairs and I saw her no more. So I went alone to the house-roof.
“All Alatri” was there, perspiring under an Oriental awning, which Mrs. Mackellar had put up for the shelter of her guests. It seemed calculated toconcentrate the heat of the sun, and to exclude all air. The German doctor, who has not left the island, even to go to Naples, for nine years, was talking the native dialect to a Swedish painter; the mysterious Russian widow who plays picquet every evening with her man cook was chattering voluble French to a circle of mixed nationality; and Mrs. Mackellar, resplendent in tartan, was treating bewildered listeners to the Peebles speech. The ices had transformed themselves into a delicious fruit-cream, and the sugar was melting like tallow off the cakes. We indulged in the usual topics, the impossibility of leaving Alatri that summer, the promise of a fine vintage, the apocryphal shark three metres long, whose dorsal fin had appeared only a few yards from the shore of the Bagno, the iniquity of servants in general, and the conspicuous virtue of Seraphina.
Mrs. Mackellar, in the democratic spirit that helps to make Alatri so wildly interesting, had added that when the feasting in the kitchen was over, and when no one wanted to eat more ice-cream on the house-top, the party from below should join the party up above, so that we all should be one on this happy occasion.
Accordingly, after a while she leaned over the battlements of her castle, gave a loud war-cry, and up came Seraphina’s party. She led the way with herpromesso, in a state of high hilarity, and all the servants of all Mrs. Mackellar’s guests brought upthe rear. There was no blushing possible, for everybody was scarlet with heat already, and we split off into domestic groups. Francesco sat by me, and began to tell me why nobody went to mass on this name day of St. John the Baptist. This was interesting, but on the other side of me was Seraphina discussingtrousseauwith her mistress, and the loud arresting Italian of Mrs. Mackellar only permitted me to give half an ear to the story of San Giovanni. However, Francesco could tell me about it again to-morrow, in less distracted conditions, and when the discussion about thetrousseauwas over (I had gathered several plums,un tartano di Edinborgobeing a fine one) I left.
Next morning I had a crisis of affairs. In Alatri, if one has anything whatever that must be done, it, like the grasshopper, becomes a burden. But I had several things that must be done, and I was nearly crushed by the prospect. In the first place breakfast was ready before I was out of bed and I therefore had to postpone shaving till afterwards. This alone would have made a troublesome morning, but this was far from all. On coming down I found two letters that had to be answered, one (and I was sorry for my sins) containing an uncorrected proof, and while I was still prostrate from the blow Francesco came in with household accounts. These, for the sake of morality, I make it a rule to check (Francesco’s addition is always right, mine always wrong), and thus it stood to reasonthat I should not be able to start down to the sea to bathe till nearly eleven. However, “no Briton’s to be baulked,” and I marched manfully across the thirsty desert of affairs.
An hour in the sea and the consciousness of duty done restored equanimity, and when after lunch Francesco brought me coffee on to the veranda and seemed disposed to linger, I remembered the half-heard story of San Giovanni.
“Tell it me again,” I said, and Francesco told it.
“The signor must know,” he said, “that in Italy there are many unbaptized children, and if San Giovanni came to earth like the other saints on his name-day, he would be furious at such neglect, and burn up the earth with fire. God knows this, and, being unwilling that we should all suffer, he sends San Giovanni to sleep the day before his name-day, so that he sleeps for eight days. Then when he wakes up he says to God, ‘Is not my name-day yet?’ And God replies, ‘O San Giovanni, you have been to sleep and your name-day is over while you slept. It will not come again for another year.’ Thus it is that we do not go to mass on the day of San Giovanni, for where is the use if he be asleep? But the priests say—Ah! has not the Signor heard the news?” he broke off suddenly and excitedly.
“News! I have heard no news.”
“How can I have forgotten? The Signora Mackellar has danced on her beefsteak, and Seraphina is dismissed. So when will she marry Antonio?”
Now the two things a Southern Italian loves best are telling a story and causing a sensation. And it was with the most exquisite enjoyment that Francesco continued, for both were here combined.
“The market boat came in from Naples this morning,” he said, “and on it was a fine beefsteak for the Signora. Salvatore, the carrier, took it up, and it so was that both the Signora and Seraphina were on the house-roof when he came, and the Signora was ordering dinner. And it seems she was angry, so said Salvatore, at the cost of the ice cream yesterday. So he was ordered to bring up the beefsteak, and the Signora smelt it, and said it was not food for dogs. And Salvatore—you know he is a sharp fellow—he replied ‘Indeed it is not food for dogs,’ meaning thereby——”
“Yes, I understand,” I interrupted.
Francesco was getting gesticulative, and he went on with the fire of a prophet.
“Then gave the Signora the beefsteak to Seraphina,” he cried, “and said ‘Smell it thou also.’ And Seraphina, having smelt it, said, ‘Signora, it seems to me very good.’ At that the Signora turned on her like one goaded and cried—‘Thou too art in the plot to cheat me! To-day thou art no more my cook’; and as for the beefsteak—ecco! And shethrew it down, and danced upon it with both feet together, so that the roof trembled. Also she said many strange words in her own tongue.”
And Francesco, like a true artist, did not linger after making his point, but turned on his heel, resisting even the temptation to talk it all over, and went into the house.
Here was a bolt from the blue! The summer had begun, there would be no fresh visitors to Alatri till the winter, and Seraphina would be out of place all these months. Antonio’s wages would not keep them both, if Seraphina was out of place, and had to pay for her board and lodging with some friend, and who knew whether Mrs. Mackellar’s wrath would not spread like a devouring flood, and overwhelm Antonio also? Nothing was more likely, for I remembered how on the dismissal of Mrs. Mackellar’s last cook, her washing had been withdrawn from its customary manipulator, simply because she was the cook’s cousin by marriage. How then should Seraphina’spromessoescape? Already the smell of the marriage bake-meats was in the air: they were like to eat them with a sauce of sorrow. To attempt to interfere or to reason with Mrs. Mackellar was out of the question. Her nose would go in the air, and she would say “Hoots!” Those who had heard Mrs. Mackellar say “Hoots” seriously, knew what fear was.
Two days have passed after that terrible dance ofdeath on the house-roof, two days of paralysed inaction. There was of course no other subject in the mouth of the folk, and grave groups formed and reformed in the piazza and at Morgano’s, and looked at the question this way and that like impotent conspirators wanting a plan of action. I happened to be sitting at that café before dinner on the second evening, and we were shaking our heads over it all when Mrs. Mackellar herself came snorting and stamping round the corner. Like children detected in some forbidden ecstasy, we all sank into silence. She did not even sit down to enjoy her vermouth, but sipped it standing, with loud, angry sucking noises, as if it was the life-blood of Seraphina.
We all froze under the contempt of her blue tremendous eye, and then, most unfairly, she singled me out, and pointing the finger of scorn, hissed at me:
“I ken fine what the hale clamjanfry of ye has been talkin’ about,” she said, or words to that effect, and, without deigning to translate, this tempestuous lady swept on her course. She stepped so high in her indignation that the Duchess of Alatri, lying for coolness’ sake on the pavement outside, thought that Mrs. Mackellar was dancing for her, and rising to her feet, Her Grace trod a circular Saracenic measure. Hardly pausing to swing a string-bag containing such comestibles as would be easily rendered palatable without the aid of a cook, Mrs. Mackellar turned tome again, and spoke in English in order that I might understand.
“If I were you,” she said, “I should be ashamed to keep a dog that eats as much as six Christians, I’ll be bound, be they Presbyterians or Roman Catholics.”... Even as she spoke, who should come by but Seraphina herself? Though she had been hounded out of the Casa Mackellar only yesterday, with every circumstance of ignominy and Highland expressions, Seraphina, sunny and incapable of rudeness, gave her late employer a little smile, and a little obeisance, and said, “Buona sera, Signora!” Without the smallest doubt, Mrs. Mackellar returned that smile.
Now in Alatri, I must have you know, we are all great psychologists and students of character, and often talk about each other’s actions and the gloomy traits of character exhibited therein, so that if you didn’t know the seriousness of our aims, you might think we were gossips. But the true character of Mrs. Mackellar, who she is inside herself, had always puzzled everybody. No one could pull her together into any sort of personage who would pass muster in the wildest work of fiction as being conceivable. Why, for instance, did she who averted her chaste eye from the naked foot of a fisher-boy herself wear a tight silk bathing dress that reached not quite to her knees, and nowhere near her elbows? Was it, as Mrs. Leonards said, to display the atrocity of herown figure and thereby strengthen the rickety morality of the world in general? That could hardly be the case, since on other occasions she laced herself so tight, and wore such a killing hat, and so many Cairngorms and garnets, that she could not be found guiltless of making a public temptation of herself. Why, again, by what possible psychological consistency, did she revel in a game of poker and reserve the hostility of her finest colloquialisms for those who took tickets at a lottery? Why, again—but there is no use in multiplying her contradictions, for she entirely consists of them.
But the salient point on which every psychologist’s eye was pensive to-day was why she had dismissed Seraphina after a year’s harmonious co-operation for agreeing with Salvatore that a particular beefsteak did not stink. Never had she had such a servant as Seraphina, nor ever would, and well she knew it. Someone suggested that Mrs. Mackellar had determined to be an eater of uncooked foods, and others who remembered her welter of appreciation over an ordinary mutton cutlet, hardly troubled to reply to so inadmissible a conjecture. As we whittled away at her, the point of the discussion grew ever sharper, for why had she so clearly smiled in answer to Seraphina’s greeting just now? The idea that the smile was purely sardonic had most supporters: one or two who kindly upheld the view that she was meaning to make it up with Seraphina were hisseddown. The most obdurate alone stuck to it, and had the hardihood to bet five liras that this was the true explanation of the smile, and the readiness with which he found takers for that bet, caused him to experience an access of prudence, and to explain that he only meant to bet five liras all told, and not fifty. Alas!
No one was walking in my direction, and some half an hour later I went slowly home. Already I was beginning to regret that I had not taken more of those bets, for the shrewdest analyst of motive and psychology in Alatri had been bound to confess that Mrs. Mackellar’s motives, like the path of the comets that should, according to all calculations, periodically destroy the earth, were, when all was said and done, completely unconjecturable. No application of logic, or reason, of the movements of heavy bodies seemed to apply to them, and for that very reason I had rejected the sardonic nature of that smile for Seraphina, and in the spirit of “Credo, quia impossible” had taken it for a smile of reconciliation. But I stood to win five liras, and who would quarrel with so enviable a conclusion, especially since it implied the re-installation of Seraphina? That was not a wholly altruistic consideration, for Leonard had said in so many words that Mrs. Mackellar would probably attempt to seduce Francesco away from my service with the lure of higher wages. That was a horrible thought, and I quickened my steps as I came near to my villa.
I heard bounding footsteps coming down the outside stairs from the front door into the garden, which could only be Francesco’s, and I wondered whether he was prancing towards me in order to communicate his wonderful good luck in going as cook to Mrs. Mackellar, at twice the wages he at present received. I believed Mrs. Mackellar, like the prophet Habakkuk, to be “capable de tout,” but I didn’t really believe this infamy of Francesco. The garden door flew open, and he met me with a face of mourning.
“The Signora Mackellar,” he cried, “walked up with Seraphina to her house. Through your telescope, signor, I saw them kissing and kissing on the roof.Dio!Why does a woman want to kiss a woman? There are many strange things in the world, signor. St. Peter, he had a wife, and also his wife had a mother, and one day——”
“Tell me about it after dinner,” I said. “And bring up the bottle of English wine, the port wine, which I brought from Rome, I have won five liras, Francesco.”
“Sissignor,” said Francesco. “But the dinner is not yet quite ready, for I was watching with your telescope. Five liras!... There was once a man who backed five numbers at theLotto, and behold they all came out even as he had backed them. He won a hundred thousand liras, and an estate in Calabria, and——”
“Dinner,” said I, and Francesco ran to the kitchen.
I walked on air. Alone that evening I had had the courage of my opinion, and for once had divined Mrs. Mackellar’s mind to the extent of backing my divination for five liras. That is a lot of money here—for a stall at the cinema (front row) only costs one.
Inspite of the unaccountable absence of a Cabinet Minister who should have sat between our hostess, Mrs. Withers and Miss Agnes Lockett, I felt that this luncheon-party must be considered as perhaps the most epoch-making that had, up to the present date, been enticed beneath that insatiably hospitable roof. Never had the comet-like orbit of our entertainer ascended quite so high towards the zenith.
With the negligible exception of myself, for whose presence there I shall soon amply account, there was not one among us, man, woman or child (for that prodigy on the fiddle, Dickie Sebastian, in his tight colossal sailor-suit, was of the company) whose name was not thrillingly familiar to the great percentage of the readers of those columns in the daily Press which inform us who was in the park on Sunday chatting with friends, or at the first night of the new play looking lovely.
Briefly to tell the number and brightness of these stars, there was a much be-ribanded general from Salonica, a girl just engaged to the heir of one of our most respectable dukedoms, a repatriated prisoner from Ruhleben, a medium possessed of devastating insight, a prominent actress from a révue, a lionhunter (not our amiable hostess, but a swarthy taciturnity from East Africa), and the adorable Agnes Lockett, lately created a Dame in the Order of the British Empire in connexion with Secret Service. She had just been demobilized, and, as she freely admitted, four years of conundrums and traps had undermined the frankness of her disposition. Schemes, plans, intrigues had become—for the moment—a second nature to her, and she was not happy unless she was laying a trap for somebody else, or suspecting (quite erroneously) that somebody was laying a trap for her. She had also become a smooth conversational liar. These things had not, it may be mentioned, affected her charm and her beauty.
Finally, there was myself, who had no claim to distinction of any kind beyond such as is inherent in living next door to Mrs. Withers and being honoured with the friendship of Agnes Lockett.
I had been asked by telephone just at luncheon-time, as I was in the act of sitting down to a tough and mournful omelette alone, and I naturally felt quite certain that I had been bidden to take the place of some guest (not the Cabinet Minister whom she still expected) who had disappointed Mrs. Withers at the last moment. This was confirmed by the fact that she told me in her clearest telephone voice that I had promised to come to-day (which I knew was not the case) and that she was merely reminding me.
Obviously, then, she was in urgent need of somebody, for it was not her custom to “remind” all her expected guests at the very moment when they were due at her house, and my inclusion in this resplendent galaxy was certainly due to the convenient fact that, as I lived next door, I should not keep the rest of her party waiting.... It is, I hope, unnecessary to add that, with the unfortunate exception of myself, everyone present appeared in the informing pages of “Who’s Who,” so that his work and recreations were known to the reading public and would afford a good start to the medium in case we had aséanceafterwards.
As the currents of conversation set this way and that, I was occasionally marooned in a backwater, and could hear what Mrs. Withers was saying to Agnes Lockett. The latter had been to the new play last night, and an allusion to it produced from our hostess a flood of typical monologue delivered in the judicial voice for which she was famous. She was a big lean woman who radiated a stinging vitality that paralysed the timid, and as she spoke, her eyes patrolled the distinguished table with the utmost satisfaction and controlled the service.
“Yes, Roland Somerville is marvellous in the part,” she said, “and I told him he had never done a finer piece of work. But I thought Margaret had not quite grasped his conception of it. I went round, of course, to see her afterwards, and as she asked me what I thought I told her just that.”
At this moment the telephone bell rang in the room adjoining, and Mrs. Withers, though continuing to analyse the play with her accustomed acumen (it had produced precisely the same effect on her as on the author of the critique in theDaily Herald) was a littledistraitein manner till her parlour-maid communicated the message.
“Ah, that accounts for Hugh Chapel’s absence, who was to have sat between us,” she said to Agnes. “He was sent for to the Palace at a quarter-past one and is lunching there. And I ordered golden plovers especially for him. Hugh was at Priscilla’s last night, looking very tired, I thought. You know him, of course, Miss Lockett?”
Agnes was looking a little dazed.
“Not yet,” she said. “You asked me here to meet him.”
Mrs. Withers made a gesture of impatience at herself. As a matter of fact she had, in asking Agnes Lockett, told her that Mr. Chapel was coming, and in asking him, had told him that Miss Lockett was coming, thus hoping to kill two lions with one lunch.
“Of course! How stupid of me,” she said. “Let us instantly arrange another day when you can both be here. Ah! do come to a little party I have on Thursday night. You will find Lord Marrible here too; he only got back from America ten days ago. Poor Jack! he had a terrible voyage, and he is such a bad sailor.”
A look of slight astonishment came over Agnes’s face, and remembering that she and Lord Marrible were old and intimate friends, I wondered whether she was surprised at this odd allusion to “poor Jack,” for he was known to his intimate circle as John. Personally, I had had the felicity of making him and my hostess known to each other only a few days ago, and I too wondered a little at the speedy ripening of the acquaintanceship. I did not wonder much, for I knew Mrs. Withers’s friendly disposition, and her tendency to allude to everybody by his Christian name. But at the moment a too rash act of swallowing on the part of Dickie Sebastian, who sat next me, made it my duty towards my neighbour to thump him on his fat back for fear that we should never hear his violin again, and my attention was distracted. When the fish-bone in question had been safely deposited on the edge of his plate, the telephone had again been ringing, and Mrs. Withers was retailing the reason for the absence of somebody called Humphrey, whose place I conjectured that I was now occupying.
During the discussion of the golden plovers provided for the absent Mr. Chapel, I became aware that Agnes Lockett was being drenched and bewildered with the flood of celebrated names that was playing on her as if from some fire-hose. Actors, authors, politicians, social stars, soldiers and sailors were deluging her, and, without exception, they had allbeen here, by their Christian names, last week, or at any rate were coming next week. Without exception, too, each of them had told Mrs. Withers in confidence what she repeated now to Agnes, knowing that it would go no farther. George had assured her of this, Arthur had hinted that, Jenny had thought this probable, Maudie had scouted the idea altogether, but however much they had disagreed, it was certain that they would all be here on Thursday evening, and Agnes could talk to them herself.
As I listened and looked, I saw that a species of desperation was seizing Agnes; she was finding the recital absolutely intolerable. Then an idea seemed to strike her, and looking round to catch a friendly eye, she caught mine, and spoke to me across the table.
“Have you seen Robert Oriole lately?” she asked in her delicious husky voice, that was so unlike the canary-tone of Mrs. Withers. But as she asked me this, she gave me a peremptory affirmative nod of which I could not miss the significance. I had never heard of Robert Oriole before, but I was certain that Agnes for some reason of her own insisted that I did know him, and accordingly I answered in that sense.
“We went to a play together last night,” I said. At that precise moment, without a pang or a cry, Robert Oriole was born.
The new name, of course, instantly challengedMrs. Withers’s whole attention, as Agnes had designed that it should. Devoted as she was to old and celebrated names, new names that she had never heard of demanded the keenest of inquiries.
“Robert Oriole?” she said. “Who can it have been who was speaking of Robert Oriole the other day?”
Agnes’s brilliant smile shot out and sheathed itself again.
“Ah! who isn’t talking about Robert Oriole?” she said.
Much as Mrs. Withers liked appearing to know, she liked really knowing better, and surrendered.
“Was it Maudie?” she said. “I can’t remember.”
Once against a fresh current of conversation claimed my hearing, but rather uneasily, I could catch little enthusiastic phrases in what Agnes was saying to our hostess, and wondered if I should be called upon to invent anything more about this unknown personage. I could not, a moment ago, have done otherwise than I had done, for Agnes unmistakably commanded me to say that I either had or had not seen Robert Oriole lately. I was bound, at any rate, to convey in my answer that I knew him, and so it made no particular difference as to whether I had seen him lately or not, and I had said that we had been to the play together because I had to say something, and it was clearly much more suitable at Mrs. Withers’s table to have done that sort of thing.
For all that I knew for certain there might be such a person; but I strongly suspected that there was something “back of” Robert Oriole, as our American friends say. What that was I could not conjecture, but I felt that I was acting under Agnes’s direction in some Secret Service. My apprehensions increased as I heard his name figuring largely in her conversation, and were confirmed when, as she passed me on her way out, she said in a Secret Service undertone, not looking my way as she spoke:
“I shall come back with you almost immediately to your house, where we must have a serious conversation. For the present just keep your head, and remember that you know Robert intimately.”
Half an hour later, accordingly, we were seated together in my house. The wall between mine and Mrs. Withers’s drawing-room was not very thick, and the bountiful roulades of Dickie Sebastian’s violin were plainly audible. Agnes, with a flushed face, like a child who had been triumphiantly mischievous, was sipping barley-water, for she felt feverish with imagination.
“So that’s that,” she said decisively, after a lurid sketch of what had happened, “and it’s no use regretting it. We must save all our nervous force to go through with it.”
“But what made you invent Robert Oriole at all?” I asked. “And then why have brought me in?”
“I couldn’t help inventing him; it may have been demoniacal possession, or more likely it was a defensive measure against my going mad, which I undoubtedly should have done if Mrs. Withers had told me any more at all of what the great ones of the earth said to her in confidence. I should either have gone mad, or taken up a handful of those soft chocolates and rubbed her face with them. So I was obliged to know some glorious creature whom she didn’t know. Obliged! She knew all the real ones, so I had to invent one. And does she really call them by their Christian names?”
“At a distance,” said I.
“Then she ought to do it right. She called John Marrible, Jack, when nobody else had ever called him anything but John; and she spoke of you as Frank, whereas nobody had ever called you anything but Francis. In a week from now she will be calling my darling Robert Oriole, Bob. But he really is Robbie.”
She put down her empty glass.
“That has calmed me,” she said, “and so now we will get to business. I must repeat all that I told Mrs. Withers about Robbie. He is thirty-one, and is the most marvellous airman. He has yellow hair and blue eyes, and is like the Hermes at Olympia (she thought I meant Earl’s Court). It is perfectly clear to Mrs. Withers’s ferreting instincts that I am in love with him; about that you had better say, ifshe asks you, that we are merely great friends. He flew over to France about a week ago, piloting three Cabinet Ministers. They won’t fly with any other pilot——”