Chapter III.Mr. Priestley Is AdventurousTo say that Mr. Priestley had been seriously perturbed by the vegetable accusations that had been hurled against him, would be to overstate the case; to say that he dismissed them immediately with complacent assurance from his mind, would be to trifle with the truth. During the few days that followed the young man’s visit Mr. Priestley was at some pains to prove to himself over and over again that he could not, by any stretch of imagination, be truthfully termed a turnip. The outburst he explained with complete satisfaction as the spasmodic attempt of a nervous mentality, disordered by love, to convert the whole world to its own way of thinking and being; and he put the whole thing out of his mind as unworthy of serious consideration, exactly forty-eight separate times.Yet these baseless insinuations of our friends, dismiss, explain or shelve them as we will, have a habit of rankling. Weknowthat they are baseless, because of course they are; but they rankle—perhaps out of their own sheer baselessness. It is extraordinarily annoying of them.Without his quite realising the fact, a spirit of restlessness began to pervade the ordered round of Mr. Priestley’s daily life. He did things he had never done before. He snapped at his perfectly good man; he sniffed the spring air, while vague and foolish aspirations filled his bosom; several times he looked almost with distaste at the unoccupied chair on the other side of his hearth, instead of congratulating himself as usual on its emptiness; he conceived something approaching dislike for the pleasantly impossible idealism of Theocritus, and substituted the cynical Theophrastes as his bedside book.On Saturday evening things reached a climax. Shattering into small fragments the record of years, Mr. Priestley shook the dust of his flat off his feet (or performed the motions of shaking dust off feet, in the total absence of the commodity itself) and went out to dine at a restaurant! No snail, Mr. Priestley felt sure, ever forsakes its house to dine at a restaurant. His vindication was surely complete.The restaurant Mr. Priestley chose as the scene of this epoch-making meal was in Jermyn Street, a quiet, pretentious place, where the high-priestlike demeanour of the head-waiter amply justified the length of the bill. High-priestlike head-waiters are worth their weight in extras. Mr. Priestley, with a wisdom beyond his experience, allowed the high-priest to choose his dinner for him and his half-bottle of burgundy.Now, Mr. Priestley did know something about burgundy, and his knowledge told him that this was very excellent burgundy indeed. So impressed was Mr. Priestley with the excellence of this admirable burgundy that he readily agreed to the high-priest’s suggestion that one paltry half-bottle was not enough for a man of palate. He had another half-bottle.The high-priest was delighted with Mr. Priestley’s palate. He mentioned at the end of dinner, in the tones of one chanting a solemn anthem, that there was some Very Special Brandy in the cellars which even such a palate as Mr. Priestley’s would receive with awe and wonder. It was a Chance, the high-priest intimated, which would Not Occur Again. Mr. Priestley, now as mellow and glowing as an October sunset, fell in with the idea at once. He gave his palate its chance. The high-priest then chose Mr. Priestley a cigar, superintended the seven underlings who helped him into his overcoat, pocketed his remuneration with the air of one accepting alms for the deserving rich, and turned Mr. Priestley out into the night.His very expensive cigar between his teeth, Mr. Priestley ambled down Jermyn Street, at peace with the world. His case was proved for the forty-ninth time, and now without a shadow of doubt; he wasnota vegetable-marrow. Do vegetable-marrows dine alone in expensive restaurants, knowingly discuss palates with high-priests, and smoke the best cigars procurable? They do not.“And neither, confound it!” observed Mr. Priestley aloud with sudden vehemence, “do snails!” And he winked surprisingly at a passing respectable matron. He was shocked at his action the next moment, but he was also guiltily pleased with it. Even Pat would admit that a hermit practically never winks at respectable ladies, even of safely mature years.Mr. Priestley ambled on, feeling something like a cross between the devil and the deep blue sea.The entrance to the tube station attracted his attention and he turned into it. It would be pleasant, he thought, to stroll through and have a look at the lights of Piccadilly Circus. For some reason obscure to him Mr. Priestley felt that he wanted lights, and plenty of them. He might even linger for a few minutes in Piccadilly Circus. It was a mildly devilish thing to do, he knew.He took up his stand at the Circus entrance of the station and gazed benevolently out upon the scene, crowded with hurrying late-comers to the neighbouring theatres.A lady with a very white nose and very red lips looked at him and diagnosed the two half-bottles under his waistcoat.“Hullo, dear!” said the lady, with a winning smile.Mr. Priestley started violently and plunged back into the station behind him like a rabbit into its burrow. The lady, diagnosing this time that she had failed to please, passed on. Mr. Priestley emerged again, properly ashamed of himself.“That,” observed Mr. Priestley to himself, with considerable severity, “was the action of a snail. I ought to have returned that woman’s greeting and taken her off to some place of refreshment. A glass of port would probably have purchased her story, and I should have undergone an interesting and unprecedented experience. I should, in fact, as Pat counselled me, have had an Adventure. Never mind, the opportunity will probably occur again.” Which, as Mr. Priestley was communing with himself in the Piccadilly entrance of the Underground Railway, was no less than the truth.As even Mr. Priestley had surmised, he had not long to wait. Almost the next moment a voice spoke at his elbow—a pleasantly modulated feminine voice this time, though not altogether free from irritation.“Well, here you are atlast!” said the voice. “I was beginning to think you never were coming. I’ve been waiting round about here for nearly twenty minutes.”This time Mr. Priestley had better command of himself. He did not start violently, he did not bolt for the lift like a mole for its hill, he did not even pause to reflect upon what he was doing. He just turned round and gazed with interest at the pretty, flower-like face that was upturned to his and the innocent blue eyes, just clouded with what must have been pardonable exasperation. Then he smiled benignly.Some sage has already put it upon record that circumstances alter cases. He did not add that some circumstances can take a case, jump on it, turn it inside out, roll it out flat and then build it up backwards; yet this is what his own circumstances were doing for Mr. Priestley’s case. A week ago Mr. Priestley would have raised his hat, turned a bright brick-red and stammered out to the owner of the trusting, flower-like face the error of her ways. As it was he descended blithely to such depths of duplicity as at that remote time he would have deemed incredible. This was his chance! This was to the life-stories of improper ladies over glasses of port as that burgundy had been to red ink! This was an ADVENTURE not merely with a capital “A” but in block letters a mile high! This was Heaven-sent Opportunity!Wherein Mr. Priestley erred. It was not Heaven who had sent him the opportunity, but a much more unscrupulous agency.“I’m exceedingly sorry I’m so late,” replied the adventurous Mr. Priestley, and continued to beam. Limpet indeed!If this answer brought a tinge of astonishment into the girl’s eyes, if she lifted one cheek out of the fur in which it nestled as if incredulous that she had heard aright and wanted the remark repeated, if she then involuntarily stepped back half a pace and scrutinised Mr. Priestley’s face with something not unlike acute misgiving, if her delicately slender form finally quivered slightly and she bit her lip as one making violent and drastic efforts to control the muscles of her face—if these things happened, I say, then Mr. Priestley was far too occupied in admiring his own devilishness to notice them. He was the sort of person to shut both eyes and wrap his head up in a rug if he saw an adventure approaching him, was he? Huh!By an impartial observer the girl might have been thought to pull herself together with an effort. “Well, now you are here,” she said, and her voice expressed nothing but asperity, “where can we talk?”Mr. Priestley looked at the face of his unexpected companion and found that it was good. He looked round at the lights of Piccadilly and found that they were good. He bestowed a casual glance on the world in general, and found that it was good, too. “Talk?” he said. “I should think we might talk anywhere.” He looked round Piccadilly Circus again and his surmise was confirmed; it was simply full of places where this charming person and he might talk.“We don’t want to be overheard, you know,” the charming person reminded him, with a touch of austerity.Mr. Priestley was in entire agreement. “Oh, no. Of course not. Good gracious, no!” While he was still speaking he knew vaguely there was something he wanted to ask; the next moment he realised what it was. Why, after all, did they not want to be overheard?“What about the lounge of the Piccadilly Palace?” suggested the girl, before he could frame the question.“Admirable!” said Mr. Priestley with enthusiasm, his question completely forgotten before his interest in the particularly delightful way in which his companion’s brows just did not meet as she frowned her perplexity over this serious matter. The thought occurred to him that for all he knew the world might have been full of feminine brows that delightfully just did not meet when their owners were charmingly perplexed, and he had never noticed this remarkable phenomenon. The next moment he knew for a certainty that there was only one possible pair of brows that could behave like that and his life hitherto had not been really wasted after all.The next coherent thing that Mr. Priestley knew was that he was sitting before a small table in the Piccadilly Palace lounge and ordering coffee. To the waiter’s bland assumption that liqueurs would be required as well the girl shook her head in a decided negative; and Mr. Priestley, who detested platitudes almost as much as false quantities, reminded himself that enough was as good as a feast, and shook his head in a decided negative too.The breathing space before the coffee arrived gave Mr. Priestley time to collect his hitherto somewhat scattered wits and conquer the dream-like state of his mind. This was not an illusion, he pointed out to himself half-incredulously during his companion’s fortuitous silence; he really was sitting in the lounge of the Piccadilly Palace with a particularly charming young woman who was labouring under the impression that he was some one else. Whom she had mistaken him for, or what she wanted to talk to him about, he could neither imagine nor very much cared; for once in his life he was living only in the present. The explanations which must inevitably come later, would be awkward no doubt, but they could take care of themselves; in the meantime he was going to take unscrupulous advantage of the situation for just as long as he possibly could. Did somebody once mention the word “limpet”?The coffee, which arrived with singular promptitude, helped Mr. Priestley to dispel the slight mistiness from his brain. Glancing covertly at his companion, he now consciously perceived what had before been an unconscious impression, that her prettiness had a quality of wistful charm which was particularly appealing. One saw at once that her dainty fragility was not fitted to cope with the harsh realities of this world. She needed looking after. Somebody, Mr. Priestley decided with mild indignation,oughtto be looking after her; it was extremely remiss of somebody not to be looking after her. A feeling that was not exactly paternal, not at all brotherly, and perhaps not so entirely disinterested as its owner imagined, took possession of him: he would look after this eminently protectable small person. The feeling was, in fact, that of the prowling knight-errant who comes across the prepossessing maiden who has been stripped and tied to the tree by robbers; he rescues her with eager zest, but he does not look upon her like a father.At present the distressed maiden’s childlike features wore an expression of stern resolve which sat upon them, Mr. Priestley thought, with pathetic incongruity. She was quietly, but even to his uninitiated eyes, expensively dressed, in pleasant contrast with his late encounter, whose clothes had cleverly combined the maximum of loudness with the minimum of cost. Hitherto, except for a few murmured commonplaces regarding sugar and milk and such trifles, she had not spoken since they entered the place. Mr. Priestley awaited her next words with ill-suppressed eagerness.She sipped at her coffee, set down the cup and turned to look at him fairly and squarely. “You know,” she said with a certain charming diffidence, “you’re not quite the sort of person I expected.”“No?” beamed Mr. Priestley warily, drawing rapid deductions.“In fact, if it hadn’t been for the carnation, I should certainly never have recognised you.”Mr. Priestley threw a surprised glance towards his buttonhole. Certainly there was a carnation in it, of a rather uncommon mauve hue; equally certainly there had been none when he left his own carnationless abode. Evidently the high-priest must have set it there, as a floral tribute of respect to such an uncommon palate. Mr. Priestley’s heart warmed still more towards that dignitary.“What sort of person did you expect, then?” he ventured, greatly daring.The girl laughed a little awkwardly. “Oh, well, you understand, surely. I mean, we needn’t really have met there after all. I wouldn’t mind being seen with you anywhere.”“Thank you,” murmured the mystified Mr. Priestley. The tone was that of a compliment, but it seemed to him that the words might have been better chosen.“You see you’re not—well, not very like the description you gave me in your letter, are you?”Mr. Priestley affected to consider the point. “Well, notverymuch, no,” he admitted.“Ishouldn’t call you sturdy and powerful-looking, six-foot high and forty round the chest,” pursued the girl with innocent candour.“Did I say that?” murmured Mr. Priestley, aghast.“You know you did,” said his companion with gentle severity. “Why?”Mr. Priestley hesitated. This was becoming very difficult; very difficult indeed. “Well,” he floundered, “because I thought—because it seemed more likely that—because I hoped——” He drew his handkerchief from his sleeve and mopped his brow.“You mean, because you thought I should be more likely to give you a favourable reply in those circumstances?”“Exactly!” Mr. Priestley said with relief. “Yes, that was it. Exactly.”“It wasn’t very straight of you,” the girl commented in severe tones, but there was just a suspicion of a smile at the corners of her mouth.Mr. Priestley caught sight of the smile and took heart. “No,” he agreed contritely, drawing more deductions, “I—I’m afraid it wasn’t. I see that now.” Had the unhappy girl been answering an advertisement in a matrimonial paper, or what? Most decidedly she wanted all the looking after she could get. What were her brothers doing? Perhaps she hadn’t got any. Then what had her parents been doing not to give her some? Most certainly somebody was very much to blame.“But after all, I suppose one could hardly expect straightness fromyou, could one?” surprisingly remarked the object of his solicitude.Mr. Priestley started slightly. “No, no,” he assented, playing for safety. “No, of course not. Naturally. I quite understand that.”There was a short pause while the girl sipped her coffee with a thoughtful air and Mr. Priestley tried hard to imagine who he was supposed to be, what the favourable reply had been about, and why one could hardly expect straightness from him. He did not succeed.“Well, I suppose you’ll do,” remarked the girl at last. She spoke without any degree of enthusiasm. It appeared that she had been debating the point.“Er—good,” said Mr. Priestley, also with a marked lessening of enthusiasm. It may have been that the effects of that second half-bottle were beginning to wear off, it may have been due to the unexpected complication in what had promised to be a straightforward little episode, but the truth was that the Adventure was rapidly losing its light-hearted aspect. For some reason Mr. Priestley felt sure that quite serious developments were in the wind, and he was wondering uneasily just how he was going to cope with them.The girl turned to him with a quick movement. “Did you bring your tools with you?”“My—mytools?” echoed Mr. Priestley in bewilderment. Surely he had not been mistaken for a plumber?“Yes, I should love to see them. But I suppose you don’t carry them with you usually, do you?”“Oh, very seldom,” said Mr. Priestley firmly. “Very seldom, indeed.” A dim recollection came to him. “My—er—mate, you know,” he murmured.“What a pity! Still, it doesn’t really matter, because you won’t be wanting them to-night, as I told you. I can show you a very easy way into the house.”Mr. Priestley’s blood, already somewhat chilled, dropped several further degrees. For a moment he stared dumbly at his pretty companion. Then he took his bull by its horns.“Perhaps you had better tell me the—the whole story,” he said a little huskily.The girl’s eyes widened in innocent surprise. “But I told you everything, in my letter!”“Yes. Oh, yes,” mumbled Mr. Priestley. “Quite. But I—I think you had better tell meagain, you see. Letters are never very satisfactory, are they? I mean, perhaps I should understand it all rather more clearly if you—if you told me again, you know!”“I thought I’d made it clear enough,” said the girl in puzzled tones. “We were to meet here to discuss anything necessary, and then go down in my car to break into the house while they’re away for the week-end. What else is there you want me to tell you?”Mr. Priestley’s blood retired a little farther into cold storage. His mild blue eyes remained fixed on his companion’s face in a horrified stare. “To—to break into the house?” he repeated faintly.“Of course! I explained it all in my letter. Why, you’re looking quite startled.”Mr. Priestley strove to pull himself together. “Well, it—it is a little bit startling, isn’t it?” he said with a ghastly attempt at a smile. “Just a little bit. To—to break into the house, so to speak.”The girl’s lips twitched and she turned her head hastily away, apparently to contemplate with every sign of interest an under-developed palm-tree in an opposite corner of the lounge. When she turned back to Mr. Priestley again a moment later her face once more wore an expression of guileless bewilderment.“But what else should I want to hire a burglar for?” she asked, reasonably enough.Mr. Priestley swallowed. “Of course, there—there is something in that,” he conceded, endeavouring to assume the air of one debating an interesting point. “Oh, yes, I quite see that.”He cast a hunted glance round. The Adventure was beginning to assume the aspect less of an adventure than a nightmare. Protection! There was certainly one person at their table who required all the protection that could be got, but it was not the one at his side; appearances, Mr. Priestley reflected wildly,aredeceptive. The sooner, in fact, that he got away from this promising young criminal, the better. Should he make a plain bolt for it at once, or——“Well, is there anything else you want to ask me?” the girl’s voice broke into his agonised thoughts. “Because, if not, hadn’t we better be making a move? We don’t want to betoolate getting back to London, do we? I’ll pay the waiter, of course, if you will call him.” And she began to refasten the fur at her throat and collect her various impedimenta by way of a hint that was anything but mistakable.“After all, I can tell you the details just as well in the car going down, can’t I?” she added.Mr. Priestley moistened his dry lips. The second half-bottle was very little in evidence by this time. “Er—Miss—er—Miss—er——”“Spettigue, I think you mean,” the girl rescued him gently. “Didn’t you get that letter I wrote you at all, Mr. Mullins?”“Oh, yes,” Mr. Priestley-Mullins replied hastily. “Yes, of course, Miss—er—Spettigue. But I don’t—that is——”The girl came as near to showing impatience as a creature so demurely angelic could. “It’s half-past nine already,” she said plaintively. “We really must not waste any more time, Mr. Mullins. Isn’t that our waiter over there? Do please call him.” And she fixed Mr. Priestley with a look that should have caused even milder men than he to write fiercely toThe Timesabout the dragon-shortage in these degenerate days, and can’t something be done about it? She also rose to her feet with a decision that left no room for further delay.Reluctantly, very reluctantly, Mr. Priestley followed suit. Somebody (he never knew who) paid the waiter, and they made their way out into the open air again.“The car’s in a garage up in Maida Vale,” remarked the girl. “We’d better take the Underground.”“I think, perhaps a taxi——?” suggested Mr. Priestley, in whose harassed brain a plan was now beginning to form.The girl looked at him with appealing helplessness. “I do somuchprefer the Underground,” she said wistfully. “It’s so much safer.”They took the Underground.Now Mr. Priestley was a chivalrous man. Even as his Adventure had turned out, he could not bring himself to slip out of it, as he easily could have done already, without a word of explanation. He had been responsible for this tangled skein; it was equally his responsibility to leave it in a properly tidied condition. Without going so far as to make a clean breast of his own baseness, he yet felt it necessary to explain that this evening at any rate was a close season for burglars. For the rest, any faint feelings of curiosity which he might have entertained regarding the ultimate intentions of this charming but nefarious maiden had now been quite swamped in the urgency of his anxiety not to be mixed up in them. Even to himself Mr. Priestley could not but admit that he would make a remarkably poor burglar.A taxi would have suited his purpose much better, but he had to do the best he could with the Underground. Fortunately, there were only one or two people in the carriage, and Mr. Priestley was able to deliver himself with no fear of being overheard. “Miss Spettigue,” he began, in the low, firm voice of the Man who will Stand No Nonsense. “Miss Spettigue, I fear I have some unpleasant news for you.”The lady curved a small hand round an invisible ear. “Did you say anything?” she inquired at the top of her voice.Mr. Priestley abandoned the low, firm voice and substituted a louder edition. “I fear I have some unpleasant news for you,” he roared above the din of the train. Chatty conversation on the Underground is best carried on between a retired fog-horn and a bull from Bashan.“If it’s your tools,” the girl howled cheerfully, “I——”“It isn’t my tools,” bellowed Mr. Priestley with a testiness which quite surprised him. “It’s this. I regret that I shall be unable to—er—to break into this house for you.”“Unable to——?” The girl looked at him with astonishment. “What do you mean?” she shrieked.At that moment the train considerately slowed down to approach a station, and the interchange of ideas became easier.“What do you mean?” repeated the girl, in more normal tones.Mr. Priestley wriggled uneasily. “I—I’ve reformed, you see,” he mumbled.“You’vewhat?”“Reformed. I—I’m not going to burgle any more.”“Why ever not?”Mr. Priestley fixed a hot gaze on an advertisement containing some pithy advice to mothers. “I—well, I don’t think it’s right,” he said uncomfortably.There was a short but tense silence. The train shrieked to a standstill.“I think I’d better get out here,” murmured Mr. Priestley unhappily, still learning what to do if he ever became a mother.“Here’s your ticket,” muttered Mr. Priestley, now blushing miserably all over.The silence full of unutterable things into which his companion had retired, her face turned away from him, was broken by a curious sound. It was not exactly a sniff, nor was it a gulp, and it certainly was not a choke; but in some curious way it combined the essential elements of all three. Mr. Priestley, taken by surprise, turned and looked at her. As he did so he gave a violent start and quite forgot that the train was on the point of moving on from the station where he had planned a graceful exit. Her shoulders were heaving, and she was fumbling blindly in her ridiculous little bag. The next moment she drew out a still more ridiculous handkerchief and applied it to her eyes.“God bless my soul!” Mr. Priestley petitioned.“Good gracious me!” observed Mr. Priestley.“Well, I never!” Mr. Priestley remarked.“Here, I say, you mustn’t do that!” ordered Mr. Priestley, aghast.“Please don’t cry!” Mr. Priestley implored, and incontinently abandoned all lingering thoughts about exits.The girl turned a woebegone face towards him, her lower lip trembling pathetically. Anything more utterly helpless and appealing could hardly be imagined. “Then you’re—you’re going to leave me in the lurch, Mr. Mullins?” she asked, in a funny, shaky little voice.Mr. Priestley squirmed. It appeared to him with sudden and unexpected force how remiss it was of him not to be a burglar. It was not playing the game. Here was this charming girl expecting to meet her burglar, never dreaming that she was doing anything else but meet her burglar; and there was Mr. Priestley going about the place not being a burglar at all. His conduct had been despicable, that was the only word for it—despicable!Still, the fact remained that however contemptible it might be of him, he certainly was not a burglar. “I’m afraid I must,” he replied uneasily.The girl had recourse to her handkerchief. “I think it’s most c-cruel of you,” she quavered. “After all, you can’t c-count my letters as b-burgling! I think you’re horrid. And after you p-promised, and I sent half your f-fee in advance.”“My f-fee?” repeated the bewildered Mr. Priestley. “Your l-letters?”“Yes. Oh, how can you be so unk-kind?”That is just what Mr. Priestley was wondering. But he was wondering a large number of other things as well. In any case, he really had to find out more about this mysterious business first. “Look here,” he said desperately, while the train gathered speed, “will you tell me the whole thing from beginning to end as if I didn’t know anything about it at all? I—I’m afraid I must have been mixing you up with—with somebody else. I have—er—so many clients, you see.”Bright hope was dawning in the face which the girl turned eagerly towards him. “And you’ll get my letters for me, after all?”“I can’t make any promises,” returned Mr. Priestley cautiously, “but let me have the—er—the facts of the case first.”With renewed animation the girl proceeded to give them to him, telling her story as much as possible between stations but not sparing her larynx even in the tunnels.Mr. Priestley listened to her with mingled feelings of relief and uneasiness. The relief was due to the fact that she was not, after all, the promising young criminal for which he had taken her, the uneasiness to the realisation that the matter was very much more complicated than he had ever imagined; she was planning to commit burglary, true, but it was, so to speak, a white burglary.Briefly, the story which Mr. Priestley learnt with gradually increasing indignation was to the effect that Miss Spettigue had, when a younger and exceedingly foolish virgin, written certain letters to a man who had turned out subsequently to be, if not a wolf, at any rate a fox in sheep’s clothing.“Nothing actually wrong in them, Mr. Mullins,” she explained with touching earnestness. “Just—well, justsilly.”“Oh, quite,” murmured the temporary Mr. Mullins uncomfortably. “Precisely.”The disguised fox had since married; but, on being approached with a view to surrendering his trophies of Miss Spettigue’s girlish affections, had refused point-blank to do anything of the sort. Matters had begun to look serious, for the Fox, this time approaching Miss Spettigue himself, had hinted very plainly that, if she wished to regain possession of her compromising effusions, she must be prepared to pay for the privilege, and very handsomely too.Miss Spettigue here paused to dab her eyes again and gulp.“The scoundrel!” exclaimed the horrified Mr. Priestley.The lady flashed him a look of gratitude and continued her tale.A sum had actually been named, far in excess of her possibilities, and there the matter had rested—with the unpleasant threat in the background that if the money were not paid by a certain date “steps would be taken.” As the money could not be paid, it was obviously a matter of some urgency to obtain possession of the letters by other means.“You’re engaged to be married, no doubt?” observed Mr. Priestley half-abstractedly, when the recital was finished. His thoughtful gaze was fixed on the opposite side of the carriage and he seemed to be debating his immediate future. “Of course, you could hardly tell your fiancé. I quite see that.”His companion bestowed on him a sidelong and somewhat anxious look. Mr. Priestley was far too preoccupied to notice it, but a shrewd observer might have summed it up as the calculating look of one hastily reckoning up comparative values.If this were so, she made her decision with commendable promptitude. “I am not engaged to be married, Mr. Mullins,” she said, “Iammarried.”“God bless my soul!” exclaimed Mr. Priestley, looking at her with new eyes. Somehow he could not associate this flower-like innocence (as it was after all now plainly proved to be) with the coarsities of married life. She might be of marriageable years, no doubt she was; but in essence she was still a child—and children are forbidden to marry. So should grown-up children be too, thought Mr. Priestley, reluctantly abandoning in favour of its legal owner the rôle of protector which he had been beginning again to contemplate. The next instant he hastily picked it up again. Of course she needed protection, now more than ever —from this coarse, obtuse, gross-bodied husband of hers! Mr. Priestley had no doubt at all that this must be a correct description of the absent Mr. Spettigue. “God bless my soul!” he repeated.With intuitive genius the girl must have been following the line of his thoughts. A frightened look appeared in her lustrous eyes as she gazed at him in mute entreaty.“That’s the awful part, you see,” she faltered. “If I were single it—it wouldn’t matter so much, but my husband——!” She choked. “He’d never forgive me!” she concluded mournfully—but not so mournfully that she was precluded from watching Mr. Priestley’s reactions to this interesting piece of news very closely indeed. It was the crux of the situation, and if Mr. Priestley did not recognise the fact, his companion certainly did.A genuine tear glistened in her eye. “My life would be ruined!” she quavered. “Absolutely ruined!”Mr. Priestley drew a deep breath. “Don’t distress yourself, my dear young lady, please,” he implored. “We—we must see what can be done. Tell me the rest of the story.”The girl drew a deep breath also. In an artistically shaky voice she proceeded to tell the rest of her story.It had been impossible to confide in her husband. “He —he wouldn’t quiteunderstand,” she explained with pathetic dignity, and Mr. Priestley nodded violent agreement. So, she had decided that the best thing to do was to get some one to burgle the Fox’s lair for her, and had therefore inserted the newspaper advertisement which Mr. Mullins had answered. Their subsequent correspondence was, of course, fresh in his memory. In the meantime she herself had not been idle. She had found out where the letters were kept and, by an intelligent system connected with a certain inmate of the household itself, was able to keep herself informed of its master’s doings. Through this medium news had reached her of the projected week-end visit and the consequent closing of the house, and she had arranged the raid accordingly.“I see,” observed Mr. Priestley very thoughtfully. “Yes, all this certainly must make things very much clearer.”The recently married Mrs. Spettigue leaned towards him and impulsively laid a small, gloved hand upon his. “Nowdosay you’ll get my letters for me, Mr. Mullins!” she beseeched, her pretty eyes fixed on his in a look of infinite entreaty. “You can’t possibly pretend it’s real burgling, can you?Please!”The good red blood leapt in Mr. Priestley’s veins as it had not done for fifteen years. After all, what did it matter? The cause was just enough in all conscience, and even if things did go wrong, his own name would not be brought into it. But, bother all that—what did anything matter beside the good name of this poor, charming creature, whose little hand still lay so trustfully upon his?“I—I’ll do my best,” he promised huskily. “My dear young lady, I’ll certainly do my best.”His companion’s relief was undisguised. “Oh, youdear!” Her little hand gently squeezed Mr. Priestley’s in touching gratitude. She smiled at him through her tears. “Iknewyou wouldn’t let me down when it really came to the point.”Many heroes have had less reward.For the rest of the journey, and during the long ride through the darkness in the powerful two-seater, Mr. Priestley remained strangely silent. As a matter of fact he was trying hard to remember anything he had ever read which might prove helpful to one about to commit a felony. Wasn’t there somebody once called Charlie Peace? Or was it Charlie Raffles?
To say that Mr. Priestley had been seriously perturbed by the vegetable accusations that had been hurled against him, would be to overstate the case; to say that he dismissed them immediately with complacent assurance from his mind, would be to trifle with the truth. During the few days that followed the young man’s visit Mr. Priestley was at some pains to prove to himself over and over again that he could not, by any stretch of imagination, be truthfully termed a turnip. The outburst he explained with complete satisfaction as the spasmodic attempt of a nervous mentality, disordered by love, to convert the whole world to its own way of thinking and being; and he put the whole thing out of his mind as unworthy of serious consideration, exactly forty-eight separate times.
Yet these baseless insinuations of our friends, dismiss, explain or shelve them as we will, have a habit of rankling. Weknowthat they are baseless, because of course they are; but they rankle—perhaps out of their own sheer baselessness. It is extraordinarily annoying of them.
Without his quite realising the fact, a spirit of restlessness began to pervade the ordered round of Mr. Priestley’s daily life. He did things he had never done before. He snapped at his perfectly good man; he sniffed the spring air, while vague and foolish aspirations filled his bosom; several times he looked almost with distaste at the unoccupied chair on the other side of his hearth, instead of congratulating himself as usual on its emptiness; he conceived something approaching dislike for the pleasantly impossible idealism of Theocritus, and substituted the cynical Theophrastes as his bedside book.
On Saturday evening things reached a climax. Shattering into small fragments the record of years, Mr. Priestley shook the dust of his flat off his feet (or performed the motions of shaking dust off feet, in the total absence of the commodity itself) and went out to dine at a restaurant! No snail, Mr. Priestley felt sure, ever forsakes its house to dine at a restaurant. His vindication was surely complete.
The restaurant Mr. Priestley chose as the scene of this epoch-making meal was in Jermyn Street, a quiet, pretentious place, where the high-priestlike demeanour of the head-waiter amply justified the length of the bill. High-priestlike head-waiters are worth their weight in extras. Mr. Priestley, with a wisdom beyond his experience, allowed the high-priest to choose his dinner for him and his half-bottle of burgundy.
Now, Mr. Priestley did know something about burgundy, and his knowledge told him that this was very excellent burgundy indeed. So impressed was Mr. Priestley with the excellence of this admirable burgundy that he readily agreed to the high-priest’s suggestion that one paltry half-bottle was not enough for a man of palate. He had another half-bottle.
The high-priest was delighted with Mr. Priestley’s palate. He mentioned at the end of dinner, in the tones of one chanting a solemn anthem, that there was some Very Special Brandy in the cellars which even such a palate as Mr. Priestley’s would receive with awe and wonder. It was a Chance, the high-priest intimated, which would Not Occur Again. Mr. Priestley, now as mellow and glowing as an October sunset, fell in with the idea at once. He gave his palate its chance. The high-priest then chose Mr. Priestley a cigar, superintended the seven underlings who helped him into his overcoat, pocketed his remuneration with the air of one accepting alms for the deserving rich, and turned Mr. Priestley out into the night.
His very expensive cigar between his teeth, Mr. Priestley ambled down Jermyn Street, at peace with the world. His case was proved for the forty-ninth time, and now without a shadow of doubt; he wasnota vegetable-marrow. Do vegetable-marrows dine alone in expensive restaurants, knowingly discuss palates with high-priests, and smoke the best cigars procurable? They do not.
“And neither, confound it!” observed Mr. Priestley aloud with sudden vehemence, “do snails!” And he winked surprisingly at a passing respectable matron. He was shocked at his action the next moment, but he was also guiltily pleased with it. Even Pat would admit that a hermit practically never winks at respectable ladies, even of safely mature years.
Mr. Priestley ambled on, feeling something like a cross between the devil and the deep blue sea.
The entrance to the tube station attracted his attention and he turned into it. It would be pleasant, he thought, to stroll through and have a look at the lights of Piccadilly Circus. For some reason obscure to him Mr. Priestley felt that he wanted lights, and plenty of them. He might even linger for a few minutes in Piccadilly Circus. It was a mildly devilish thing to do, he knew.
He took up his stand at the Circus entrance of the station and gazed benevolently out upon the scene, crowded with hurrying late-comers to the neighbouring theatres.
A lady with a very white nose and very red lips looked at him and diagnosed the two half-bottles under his waistcoat.
“Hullo, dear!” said the lady, with a winning smile.
Mr. Priestley started violently and plunged back into the station behind him like a rabbit into its burrow. The lady, diagnosing this time that she had failed to please, passed on. Mr. Priestley emerged again, properly ashamed of himself.
“That,” observed Mr. Priestley to himself, with considerable severity, “was the action of a snail. I ought to have returned that woman’s greeting and taken her off to some place of refreshment. A glass of port would probably have purchased her story, and I should have undergone an interesting and unprecedented experience. I should, in fact, as Pat counselled me, have had an Adventure. Never mind, the opportunity will probably occur again.” Which, as Mr. Priestley was communing with himself in the Piccadilly entrance of the Underground Railway, was no less than the truth.
As even Mr. Priestley had surmised, he had not long to wait. Almost the next moment a voice spoke at his elbow—a pleasantly modulated feminine voice this time, though not altogether free from irritation.
“Well, here you are atlast!” said the voice. “I was beginning to think you never were coming. I’ve been waiting round about here for nearly twenty minutes.”
This time Mr. Priestley had better command of himself. He did not start violently, he did not bolt for the lift like a mole for its hill, he did not even pause to reflect upon what he was doing. He just turned round and gazed with interest at the pretty, flower-like face that was upturned to his and the innocent blue eyes, just clouded with what must have been pardonable exasperation. Then he smiled benignly.
Some sage has already put it upon record that circumstances alter cases. He did not add that some circumstances can take a case, jump on it, turn it inside out, roll it out flat and then build it up backwards; yet this is what his own circumstances were doing for Mr. Priestley’s case. A week ago Mr. Priestley would have raised his hat, turned a bright brick-red and stammered out to the owner of the trusting, flower-like face the error of her ways. As it was he descended blithely to such depths of duplicity as at that remote time he would have deemed incredible. This was his chance! This was to the life-stories of improper ladies over glasses of port as that burgundy had been to red ink! This was an ADVENTURE not merely with a capital “A” but in block letters a mile high! This was Heaven-sent Opportunity!
Wherein Mr. Priestley erred. It was not Heaven who had sent him the opportunity, but a much more unscrupulous agency.
“I’m exceedingly sorry I’m so late,” replied the adventurous Mr. Priestley, and continued to beam. Limpet indeed!
If this answer brought a tinge of astonishment into the girl’s eyes, if she lifted one cheek out of the fur in which it nestled as if incredulous that she had heard aright and wanted the remark repeated, if she then involuntarily stepped back half a pace and scrutinised Mr. Priestley’s face with something not unlike acute misgiving, if her delicately slender form finally quivered slightly and she bit her lip as one making violent and drastic efforts to control the muscles of her face—if these things happened, I say, then Mr. Priestley was far too occupied in admiring his own devilishness to notice them. He was the sort of person to shut both eyes and wrap his head up in a rug if he saw an adventure approaching him, was he? Huh!
By an impartial observer the girl might have been thought to pull herself together with an effort. “Well, now you are here,” she said, and her voice expressed nothing but asperity, “where can we talk?”
Mr. Priestley looked at the face of his unexpected companion and found that it was good. He looked round at the lights of Piccadilly and found that they were good. He bestowed a casual glance on the world in general, and found that it was good, too. “Talk?” he said. “I should think we might talk anywhere.” He looked round Piccadilly Circus again and his surmise was confirmed; it was simply full of places where this charming person and he might talk.
“We don’t want to be overheard, you know,” the charming person reminded him, with a touch of austerity.
Mr. Priestley was in entire agreement. “Oh, no. Of course not. Good gracious, no!” While he was still speaking he knew vaguely there was something he wanted to ask; the next moment he realised what it was. Why, after all, did they not want to be overheard?
“What about the lounge of the Piccadilly Palace?” suggested the girl, before he could frame the question.
“Admirable!” said Mr. Priestley with enthusiasm, his question completely forgotten before his interest in the particularly delightful way in which his companion’s brows just did not meet as she frowned her perplexity over this serious matter. The thought occurred to him that for all he knew the world might have been full of feminine brows that delightfully just did not meet when their owners were charmingly perplexed, and he had never noticed this remarkable phenomenon. The next moment he knew for a certainty that there was only one possible pair of brows that could behave like that and his life hitherto had not been really wasted after all.
The next coherent thing that Mr. Priestley knew was that he was sitting before a small table in the Piccadilly Palace lounge and ordering coffee. To the waiter’s bland assumption that liqueurs would be required as well the girl shook her head in a decided negative; and Mr. Priestley, who detested platitudes almost as much as false quantities, reminded himself that enough was as good as a feast, and shook his head in a decided negative too.
The breathing space before the coffee arrived gave Mr. Priestley time to collect his hitherto somewhat scattered wits and conquer the dream-like state of his mind. This was not an illusion, he pointed out to himself half-incredulously during his companion’s fortuitous silence; he really was sitting in the lounge of the Piccadilly Palace with a particularly charming young woman who was labouring under the impression that he was some one else. Whom she had mistaken him for, or what she wanted to talk to him about, he could neither imagine nor very much cared; for once in his life he was living only in the present. The explanations which must inevitably come later, would be awkward no doubt, but they could take care of themselves; in the meantime he was going to take unscrupulous advantage of the situation for just as long as he possibly could. Did somebody once mention the word “limpet”?
The coffee, which arrived with singular promptitude, helped Mr. Priestley to dispel the slight mistiness from his brain. Glancing covertly at his companion, he now consciously perceived what had before been an unconscious impression, that her prettiness had a quality of wistful charm which was particularly appealing. One saw at once that her dainty fragility was not fitted to cope with the harsh realities of this world. She needed looking after. Somebody, Mr. Priestley decided with mild indignation,oughtto be looking after her; it was extremely remiss of somebody not to be looking after her. A feeling that was not exactly paternal, not at all brotherly, and perhaps not so entirely disinterested as its owner imagined, took possession of him: he would look after this eminently protectable small person. The feeling was, in fact, that of the prowling knight-errant who comes across the prepossessing maiden who has been stripped and tied to the tree by robbers; he rescues her with eager zest, but he does not look upon her like a father.
At present the distressed maiden’s childlike features wore an expression of stern resolve which sat upon them, Mr. Priestley thought, with pathetic incongruity. She was quietly, but even to his uninitiated eyes, expensively dressed, in pleasant contrast with his late encounter, whose clothes had cleverly combined the maximum of loudness with the minimum of cost. Hitherto, except for a few murmured commonplaces regarding sugar and milk and such trifles, she had not spoken since they entered the place. Mr. Priestley awaited her next words with ill-suppressed eagerness.
She sipped at her coffee, set down the cup and turned to look at him fairly and squarely. “You know,” she said with a certain charming diffidence, “you’re not quite the sort of person I expected.”
“No?” beamed Mr. Priestley warily, drawing rapid deductions.
“In fact, if it hadn’t been for the carnation, I should certainly never have recognised you.”
Mr. Priestley threw a surprised glance towards his buttonhole. Certainly there was a carnation in it, of a rather uncommon mauve hue; equally certainly there had been none when he left his own carnationless abode. Evidently the high-priest must have set it there, as a floral tribute of respect to such an uncommon palate. Mr. Priestley’s heart warmed still more towards that dignitary.
“What sort of person did you expect, then?” he ventured, greatly daring.
The girl laughed a little awkwardly. “Oh, well, you understand, surely. I mean, we needn’t really have met there after all. I wouldn’t mind being seen with you anywhere.”
“Thank you,” murmured the mystified Mr. Priestley. The tone was that of a compliment, but it seemed to him that the words might have been better chosen.
“You see you’re not—well, not very like the description you gave me in your letter, are you?”
Mr. Priestley affected to consider the point. “Well, notverymuch, no,” he admitted.
“Ishouldn’t call you sturdy and powerful-looking, six-foot high and forty round the chest,” pursued the girl with innocent candour.
“Did I say that?” murmured Mr. Priestley, aghast.
“You know you did,” said his companion with gentle severity. “Why?”
Mr. Priestley hesitated. This was becoming very difficult; very difficult indeed. “Well,” he floundered, “because I thought—because it seemed more likely that—because I hoped——” He drew his handkerchief from his sleeve and mopped his brow.
“You mean, because you thought I should be more likely to give you a favourable reply in those circumstances?”
“Exactly!” Mr. Priestley said with relief. “Yes, that was it. Exactly.”
“It wasn’t very straight of you,” the girl commented in severe tones, but there was just a suspicion of a smile at the corners of her mouth.
Mr. Priestley caught sight of the smile and took heart. “No,” he agreed contritely, drawing more deductions, “I—I’m afraid it wasn’t. I see that now.” Had the unhappy girl been answering an advertisement in a matrimonial paper, or what? Most decidedly she wanted all the looking after she could get. What were her brothers doing? Perhaps she hadn’t got any. Then what had her parents been doing not to give her some? Most certainly somebody was very much to blame.
“But after all, I suppose one could hardly expect straightness fromyou, could one?” surprisingly remarked the object of his solicitude.
Mr. Priestley started slightly. “No, no,” he assented, playing for safety. “No, of course not. Naturally. I quite understand that.”
There was a short pause while the girl sipped her coffee with a thoughtful air and Mr. Priestley tried hard to imagine who he was supposed to be, what the favourable reply had been about, and why one could hardly expect straightness from him. He did not succeed.
“Well, I suppose you’ll do,” remarked the girl at last. She spoke without any degree of enthusiasm. It appeared that she had been debating the point.
“Er—good,” said Mr. Priestley, also with a marked lessening of enthusiasm. It may have been that the effects of that second half-bottle were beginning to wear off, it may have been due to the unexpected complication in what had promised to be a straightforward little episode, but the truth was that the Adventure was rapidly losing its light-hearted aspect. For some reason Mr. Priestley felt sure that quite serious developments were in the wind, and he was wondering uneasily just how he was going to cope with them.
The girl turned to him with a quick movement. “Did you bring your tools with you?”
“My—mytools?” echoed Mr. Priestley in bewilderment. Surely he had not been mistaken for a plumber?
“Yes, I should love to see them. But I suppose you don’t carry them with you usually, do you?”
“Oh, very seldom,” said Mr. Priestley firmly. “Very seldom, indeed.” A dim recollection came to him. “My—er—mate, you know,” he murmured.
“What a pity! Still, it doesn’t really matter, because you won’t be wanting them to-night, as I told you. I can show you a very easy way into the house.”
Mr. Priestley’s blood, already somewhat chilled, dropped several further degrees. For a moment he stared dumbly at his pretty companion. Then he took his bull by its horns.
“Perhaps you had better tell me the—the whole story,” he said a little huskily.
The girl’s eyes widened in innocent surprise. “But I told you everything, in my letter!”
“Yes. Oh, yes,” mumbled Mr. Priestley. “Quite. But I—I think you had better tell meagain, you see. Letters are never very satisfactory, are they? I mean, perhaps I should understand it all rather more clearly if you—if you told me again, you know!”
“I thought I’d made it clear enough,” said the girl in puzzled tones. “We were to meet here to discuss anything necessary, and then go down in my car to break into the house while they’re away for the week-end. What else is there you want me to tell you?”
Mr. Priestley’s blood retired a little farther into cold storage. His mild blue eyes remained fixed on his companion’s face in a horrified stare. “To—to break into the house?” he repeated faintly.
“Of course! I explained it all in my letter. Why, you’re looking quite startled.”
Mr. Priestley strove to pull himself together. “Well, it—it is a little bit startling, isn’t it?” he said with a ghastly attempt at a smile. “Just a little bit. To—to break into the house, so to speak.”
The girl’s lips twitched and she turned her head hastily away, apparently to contemplate with every sign of interest an under-developed palm-tree in an opposite corner of the lounge. When she turned back to Mr. Priestley again a moment later her face once more wore an expression of guileless bewilderment.
“But what else should I want to hire a burglar for?” she asked, reasonably enough.
Mr. Priestley swallowed. “Of course, there—there is something in that,” he conceded, endeavouring to assume the air of one debating an interesting point. “Oh, yes, I quite see that.”
He cast a hunted glance round. The Adventure was beginning to assume the aspect less of an adventure than a nightmare. Protection! There was certainly one person at their table who required all the protection that could be got, but it was not the one at his side; appearances, Mr. Priestley reflected wildly,aredeceptive. The sooner, in fact, that he got away from this promising young criminal, the better. Should he make a plain bolt for it at once, or——
“Well, is there anything else you want to ask me?” the girl’s voice broke into his agonised thoughts. “Because, if not, hadn’t we better be making a move? We don’t want to betoolate getting back to London, do we? I’ll pay the waiter, of course, if you will call him.” And she began to refasten the fur at her throat and collect her various impedimenta by way of a hint that was anything but mistakable.
“After all, I can tell you the details just as well in the car going down, can’t I?” she added.
Mr. Priestley moistened his dry lips. The second half-bottle was very little in evidence by this time. “Er—Miss—er—Miss—er——”
“Spettigue, I think you mean,” the girl rescued him gently. “Didn’t you get that letter I wrote you at all, Mr. Mullins?”
“Oh, yes,” Mr. Priestley-Mullins replied hastily. “Yes, of course, Miss—er—Spettigue. But I don’t—that is——”
The girl came as near to showing impatience as a creature so demurely angelic could. “It’s half-past nine already,” she said plaintively. “We really must not waste any more time, Mr. Mullins. Isn’t that our waiter over there? Do please call him.” And she fixed Mr. Priestley with a look that should have caused even milder men than he to write fiercely toThe Timesabout the dragon-shortage in these degenerate days, and can’t something be done about it? She also rose to her feet with a decision that left no room for further delay.
Reluctantly, very reluctantly, Mr. Priestley followed suit. Somebody (he never knew who) paid the waiter, and they made their way out into the open air again.
“The car’s in a garage up in Maida Vale,” remarked the girl. “We’d better take the Underground.”
“I think, perhaps a taxi——?” suggested Mr. Priestley, in whose harassed brain a plan was now beginning to form.
The girl looked at him with appealing helplessness. “I do somuchprefer the Underground,” she said wistfully. “It’s so much safer.”
They took the Underground.
Now Mr. Priestley was a chivalrous man. Even as his Adventure had turned out, he could not bring himself to slip out of it, as he easily could have done already, without a word of explanation. He had been responsible for this tangled skein; it was equally his responsibility to leave it in a properly tidied condition. Without going so far as to make a clean breast of his own baseness, he yet felt it necessary to explain that this evening at any rate was a close season for burglars. For the rest, any faint feelings of curiosity which he might have entertained regarding the ultimate intentions of this charming but nefarious maiden had now been quite swamped in the urgency of his anxiety not to be mixed up in them. Even to himself Mr. Priestley could not but admit that he would make a remarkably poor burglar.
A taxi would have suited his purpose much better, but he had to do the best he could with the Underground. Fortunately, there were only one or two people in the carriage, and Mr. Priestley was able to deliver himself with no fear of being overheard. “Miss Spettigue,” he began, in the low, firm voice of the Man who will Stand No Nonsense. “Miss Spettigue, I fear I have some unpleasant news for you.”
The lady curved a small hand round an invisible ear. “Did you say anything?” she inquired at the top of her voice.
Mr. Priestley abandoned the low, firm voice and substituted a louder edition. “I fear I have some unpleasant news for you,” he roared above the din of the train. Chatty conversation on the Underground is best carried on between a retired fog-horn and a bull from Bashan.
“If it’s your tools,” the girl howled cheerfully, “I——”
“It isn’t my tools,” bellowed Mr. Priestley with a testiness which quite surprised him. “It’s this. I regret that I shall be unable to—er—to break into this house for you.”
“Unable to——?” The girl looked at him with astonishment. “What do you mean?” she shrieked.
At that moment the train considerately slowed down to approach a station, and the interchange of ideas became easier.
“What do you mean?” repeated the girl, in more normal tones.
Mr. Priestley wriggled uneasily. “I—I’ve reformed, you see,” he mumbled.
“You’vewhat?”
“Reformed. I—I’m not going to burgle any more.”
“Why ever not?”
Mr. Priestley fixed a hot gaze on an advertisement containing some pithy advice to mothers. “I—well, I don’t think it’s right,” he said uncomfortably.
There was a short but tense silence. The train shrieked to a standstill.
“I think I’d better get out here,” murmured Mr. Priestley unhappily, still learning what to do if he ever became a mother.
“Here’s your ticket,” muttered Mr. Priestley, now blushing miserably all over.
The silence full of unutterable things into which his companion had retired, her face turned away from him, was broken by a curious sound. It was not exactly a sniff, nor was it a gulp, and it certainly was not a choke; but in some curious way it combined the essential elements of all three. Mr. Priestley, taken by surprise, turned and looked at her. As he did so he gave a violent start and quite forgot that the train was on the point of moving on from the station where he had planned a graceful exit. Her shoulders were heaving, and she was fumbling blindly in her ridiculous little bag. The next moment she drew out a still more ridiculous handkerchief and applied it to her eyes.
“God bless my soul!” Mr. Priestley petitioned.
“Good gracious me!” observed Mr. Priestley.
“Well, I never!” Mr. Priestley remarked.
“Here, I say, you mustn’t do that!” ordered Mr. Priestley, aghast.
“Please don’t cry!” Mr. Priestley implored, and incontinently abandoned all lingering thoughts about exits.
The girl turned a woebegone face towards him, her lower lip trembling pathetically. Anything more utterly helpless and appealing could hardly be imagined. “Then you’re—you’re going to leave me in the lurch, Mr. Mullins?” she asked, in a funny, shaky little voice.
Mr. Priestley squirmed. It appeared to him with sudden and unexpected force how remiss it was of him not to be a burglar. It was not playing the game. Here was this charming girl expecting to meet her burglar, never dreaming that she was doing anything else but meet her burglar; and there was Mr. Priestley going about the place not being a burglar at all. His conduct had been despicable, that was the only word for it—despicable!
Still, the fact remained that however contemptible it might be of him, he certainly was not a burglar. “I’m afraid I must,” he replied uneasily.
The girl had recourse to her handkerchief. “I think it’s most c-cruel of you,” she quavered. “After all, you can’t c-count my letters as b-burgling! I think you’re horrid. And after you p-promised, and I sent half your f-fee in advance.”
“My f-fee?” repeated the bewildered Mr. Priestley. “Your l-letters?”
“Yes. Oh, how can you be so unk-kind?”
That is just what Mr. Priestley was wondering. But he was wondering a large number of other things as well. In any case, he really had to find out more about this mysterious business first. “Look here,” he said desperately, while the train gathered speed, “will you tell me the whole thing from beginning to end as if I didn’t know anything about it at all? I—I’m afraid I must have been mixing you up with—with somebody else. I have—er—so many clients, you see.”
Bright hope was dawning in the face which the girl turned eagerly towards him. “And you’ll get my letters for me, after all?”
“I can’t make any promises,” returned Mr. Priestley cautiously, “but let me have the—er—the facts of the case first.”
With renewed animation the girl proceeded to give them to him, telling her story as much as possible between stations but not sparing her larynx even in the tunnels.
Mr. Priestley listened to her with mingled feelings of relief and uneasiness. The relief was due to the fact that she was not, after all, the promising young criminal for which he had taken her, the uneasiness to the realisation that the matter was very much more complicated than he had ever imagined; she was planning to commit burglary, true, but it was, so to speak, a white burglary.
Briefly, the story which Mr. Priestley learnt with gradually increasing indignation was to the effect that Miss Spettigue had, when a younger and exceedingly foolish virgin, written certain letters to a man who had turned out subsequently to be, if not a wolf, at any rate a fox in sheep’s clothing.
“Nothing actually wrong in them, Mr. Mullins,” she explained with touching earnestness. “Just—well, justsilly.”
“Oh, quite,” murmured the temporary Mr. Mullins uncomfortably. “Precisely.”
The disguised fox had since married; but, on being approached with a view to surrendering his trophies of Miss Spettigue’s girlish affections, had refused point-blank to do anything of the sort. Matters had begun to look serious, for the Fox, this time approaching Miss Spettigue himself, had hinted very plainly that, if she wished to regain possession of her compromising effusions, she must be prepared to pay for the privilege, and very handsomely too.
Miss Spettigue here paused to dab her eyes again and gulp.
“The scoundrel!” exclaimed the horrified Mr. Priestley.
The lady flashed him a look of gratitude and continued her tale.
A sum had actually been named, far in excess of her possibilities, and there the matter had rested—with the unpleasant threat in the background that if the money were not paid by a certain date “steps would be taken.” As the money could not be paid, it was obviously a matter of some urgency to obtain possession of the letters by other means.
“You’re engaged to be married, no doubt?” observed Mr. Priestley half-abstractedly, when the recital was finished. His thoughtful gaze was fixed on the opposite side of the carriage and he seemed to be debating his immediate future. “Of course, you could hardly tell your fiancé. I quite see that.”
His companion bestowed on him a sidelong and somewhat anxious look. Mr. Priestley was far too preoccupied to notice it, but a shrewd observer might have summed it up as the calculating look of one hastily reckoning up comparative values.
If this were so, she made her decision with commendable promptitude. “I am not engaged to be married, Mr. Mullins,” she said, “Iammarried.”
“God bless my soul!” exclaimed Mr. Priestley, looking at her with new eyes. Somehow he could not associate this flower-like innocence (as it was after all now plainly proved to be) with the coarsities of married life. She might be of marriageable years, no doubt she was; but in essence she was still a child—and children are forbidden to marry. So should grown-up children be too, thought Mr. Priestley, reluctantly abandoning in favour of its legal owner the rôle of protector which he had been beginning again to contemplate. The next instant he hastily picked it up again. Of course she needed protection, now more than ever —from this coarse, obtuse, gross-bodied husband of hers! Mr. Priestley had no doubt at all that this must be a correct description of the absent Mr. Spettigue. “God bless my soul!” he repeated.
With intuitive genius the girl must have been following the line of his thoughts. A frightened look appeared in her lustrous eyes as she gazed at him in mute entreaty.
“That’s the awful part, you see,” she faltered. “If I were single it—it wouldn’t matter so much, but my husband——!” She choked. “He’d never forgive me!” she concluded mournfully—but not so mournfully that she was precluded from watching Mr. Priestley’s reactions to this interesting piece of news very closely indeed. It was the crux of the situation, and if Mr. Priestley did not recognise the fact, his companion certainly did.
A genuine tear glistened in her eye. “My life would be ruined!” she quavered. “Absolutely ruined!”
Mr. Priestley drew a deep breath. “Don’t distress yourself, my dear young lady, please,” he implored. “We—we must see what can be done. Tell me the rest of the story.”
The girl drew a deep breath also. In an artistically shaky voice she proceeded to tell the rest of her story.
It had been impossible to confide in her husband. “He —he wouldn’t quiteunderstand,” she explained with pathetic dignity, and Mr. Priestley nodded violent agreement. So, she had decided that the best thing to do was to get some one to burgle the Fox’s lair for her, and had therefore inserted the newspaper advertisement which Mr. Mullins had answered. Their subsequent correspondence was, of course, fresh in his memory. In the meantime she herself had not been idle. She had found out where the letters were kept and, by an intelligent system connected with a certain inmate of the household itself, was able to keep herself informed of its master’s doings. Through this medium news had reached her of the projected week-end visit and the consequent closing of the house, and she had arranged the raid accordingly.
“I see,” observed Mr. Priestley very thoughtfully. “Yes, all this certainly must make things very much clearer.”
The recently married Mrs. Spettigue leaned towards him and impulsively laid a small, gloved hand upon his. “Nowdosay you’ll get my letters for me, Mr. Mullins!” she beseeched, her pretty eyes fixed on his in a look of infinite entreaty. “You can’t possibly pretend it’s real burgling, can you?Please!”
The good red blood leapt in Mr. Priestley’s veins as it had not done for fifteen years. After all, what did it matter? The cause was just enough in all conscience, and even if things did go wrong, his own name would not be brought into it. But, bother all that—what did anything matter beside the good name of this poor, charming creature, whose little hand still lay so trustfully upon his?
“I—I’ll do my best,” he promised huskily. “My dear young lady, I’ll certainly do my best.”
His companion’s relief was undisguised. “Oh, youdear!” Her little hand gently squeezed Mr. Priestley’s in touching gratitude. She smiled at him through her tears. “Iknewyou wouldn’t let me down when it really came to the point.”
Many heroes have had less reward.
For the rest of the journey, and during the long ride through the darkness in the powerful two-seater, Mr. Priestley remained strangely silent. As a matter of fact he was trying hard to remember anything he had ever read which might prove helpful to one about to commit a felony. Wasn’t there somebody once called Charlie Peace? Or was it Charlie Raffles?