In an obscure but not unclean street towards the northern fringe of Soho there is to be found by the seeker after experience a restaurant, where gentlemen in Mr. Wagstaffe’s predicament may dine very passably; and, on having inscribed the bill with their temporarily worthless signatures, pay on some happier day. Very seldom, indeed, had the cavalier of the streets actually fallen to this pass; these were his most unfortunate days; and not even a bottle of the Rhine wine for which M. Stutz was famous—for such was the name of the polite and amiablepatronof the Mont Agel Restaurant—was, on this evening, able to support him in the sardonic optimism with which he had always parried the most cruel thrusts of a vagabond destiny.
Than the year 1922 there has never been a more dolorous year for gentlemen of enterprise, as instance the luckless experiences of Mr. Gerald Lee Bevan and Mr. Bottomley; and though the cavalier of the streets was not only a gentleman of enterprise but also of imagination, even he could not imagine money where money was not. Whereat he was depressed.
But money, though naturally of the first importance in an adventurous life, was not the immediate cause of Mr. Wagstaffe’s depression as he dallied with a morsel of caviare and a piece of toastMelba. A face haunted his memory. A lovely face it was, mature and gracious and remote—ah, fromhim how remote! This face (and with it grey eyes, witty and understanding eyes) had happened to him in the course of a most unfortunate episode some months ago. He would never see her again—or, rather, she would never see him. She would look through him, the cavalier of the streets who had blackmailed her and then repented of his sin because of the beauty of her face and the bravery of her voice. But he would certainly see her, as an outcast in a wilderness may, through the leaves and tree-trunks of his prison, just glimpse a brilliant figure in a noble pageant; for the face that haunted him was of the world, and, in these days of many illustrated journals, had acquired an international reputation as one of the five leading faces of Europe. Thus, it had come to pass that the cavalier of the streets, meshed in a hopeless admiration, nowadays found little pleasure in his way of life; nor did the pursuit and beguiling of Mugs, which had been his source of income and entertainment ever since he had acquired a taste for it at the University of Oxford, any longer divert him. The face of his lady love, ever haunting his memory, deprived him of his wonted pleasure in living dangerously. Whereat he was depressed.
“I must leave England,” he thought. “Imust go to some foreign city and lead a quite different life. But to leave England requires money; and to lead a quite different life also requires money.” He came to a sudden decision; made the gesture of payment upon the bill, and, thanking the courtly M. Stutz, left the restaurant, and walked swiftly westwards through the twilight of the streets.
Indifferent to all about him, the young man strode on his way through the festive crowds that only the most inclement weather can prevent from promenading Oxford Street on a night in June. He saw nothing, he heard nothing; he was in a great hurry; and it was only as his determined steps were brought almost to a standstill by the great concourse of people about Oxford Circus that his eyes found leisure to examine the placards of the evening journals which were exhibited at the mouth of the Tube Station. “Countess Divorces Husband.” Well, thought he, she couldn’t very well divorce her brother, could she? “Famous Diamond Stolen.” Ah! “Garden Party Thief.” “£2000 Ring Stolen at Society Function.” “Society Hostess Robbed.” It’s almostworth it for her, he thought cattishly, to be called a Society Hostess. And he grinned, and, assuming a fierce expression, which it was not difficult for him to do under the angle of his dilapidated felt hat, he parted the crowds about him and went his way. Maybe it was that the placards had had a stimulating effect on him, or maybe it was that he needed violent exercise, but now he walked even more swiftly than before, oblivious of the remarks which his arrogant passage aroused from the leisurely promenaders.
Soon he turned into a quiet street, and from that into another; and came at last to a large building which, despite the name of Lyonesse Mansions, was a block of flats of the meaner sort. He entered and strode up and up, until the genteel strip of carpet on the stairway gave up all pretence of being a genteel strip of carpet and frankly became a drugget of the consistency of a Gruyère cheese.
To the very top of Lyonesse Mansions strode the cavalier of the streets, and when further progress was barred by a mean-looking door he banged upon that door without restraint, once, twice, thrice; and was then opposed by a feminine person who had all the attributes and mannerisms of aSlut, but was in reality a respectable woman with a vote, the wife of a chauffeur who lived in a neighbouring Mews and whose comforts she increased by doing a bit of charing here and there. She was doing a bit of it here at the moment, and seemed inclined to resent any interruption on behalf of both herself and her employer, for before he had said a word she had snapped “Out,” and only the dexterous shoe of the cavalier of the streets prevented the door from being slammed in his face.
“You’ll get a sore throat if you snarl like that,” he advised her kindly, and pushed past her into the narrow little hall. Thoughtfully, he looked at the three closed doors with which the narrow little hall was decorated; and, by the abstracted expression of his face, seemed to be in a place far removed from the comments on his manners, appearance, and antecedents, if any, which the char-lady, having left the open doorway, poured into his ear.
Then, having thought out his thought, he strode to the middle door and flung it open. The room was dimly lit, which was just as well, for there was in it but one ornament which might have repaid a more exact scrutiny; and that was a girl, who, dressed for solitude in a faded bluepeignoir, her fairhair loose about her shoulders, a copy of theSketchin her hands, lay negligently on a wretched sofa. She was a pretty girl; that has been remarked before; but then she had been dressed like a flower, a flower from a garden sweeter than the spacious garden of Mrs. Felix Waite, and now she was dressed like nothing at all; and the faded blue of her covering was stained by a flat yellow packet of cigarettes. She was obviously no lady, and had given up pretending she was.
“You dirty beast! How dare you come here!” cried the pretty girl, amazement turning to disgust, disgust to anger. But the cavalier of the streets, still framed in the doorway, his head uncovered, only smiled at her. And in his smile there was no hint of apology for the intrusion which his hostess seemed to resent so deeply.
“Good-evening, Betty,” said he, in a friendly way. “Just thought I’d come and look at you, you know. Pretty Betty! You last remarkably well, I must say. How are you, child?” And he advanced into the room, threw his hat on a chair, dug his hands into his pockets, and grinned at her again; while her eyes, pretty blue eyes hardened by despair, stared up at him in helpless anger.
“Michael,” she said bitterly, “you are the world’s worst man. Why can’t you leaveme alone?—my Gawd, why can’t you leave me alone?” And as her voice rose, her eyes swept him in utter contempt.
“You poor kid, Ihaveleft you alone,” he told her gently, wearily. The fact that the cavalier of the streets had at one time been a gentleman was apparent in the way he took abuse. Abuse made him tired. “I haven’t been near you for years, Betty, so it’s no good your handing me any rough stuff aboutthat....”
His gentleness provoked her. The pretty girl sat up in her disorder, and the expression on her face was not pretty. He smiled curiously, thinking of a very young man up at Magdalen College and of a very pretty girl at a flower-shop near the station, and how the young man had loved the pretty girl from a distance, until one day he had realised that the pretty girl was very willing to be loved by him; whereupon she had got the sack from the flower-shop, and had come up to London for to be a chorus-girl, and in due course the young man had forgotten her....
“Anyway,” he added, “I didn’t leave you so stranded as that Thomas Felix Waite fellow.”
Shame that the blue of the pretty girl’s eyes was so hard, so wretched and so hard.“Oh, yes,” she sneered; “there ain’t much to choose between you two rotten gentlemen!” And she laughed; and then, because she was a girl, she sobbed. “Oh, Christ, why’ve I always been so wretched!”
He was silent for what seemed a long time. Her sobs spent themselves quietly in the depths of her self-pity, and at last he said softly: “Anyway, Betty, you’ve got your own back on the Felix Waite family now. You’ll be able to go back to the country, as you’ve always wanted to, and live comfortably for a time. Or perhaps you’ll be able to start a little shop of some kind.”
She stared at him in immense amazement, but he was looking out of the little window....
“Michael Wagstaffe,” she breathed, “what the blazes are you talking about?”
“A diamond ring worth £2000,” said Michael Wagstaffe to the window.
“Balmy!” she jeered at him.
“Hand it over, Betty,” said the cavalier of the streets sharply. He stared down her frightened incredulous look. “It’s no good your saying you haven’t got it, because I guessed you had when I saw you leaving the Felix Waite house this evening, and Iknowyou have now I’ve seen your face....” She began shrilly, but he snapped her up. “Now don’t be silly, child. It’s no good your being selfish with it because you’ll never be able to get rid of it on your own, and you’ll only get copped if you try. I know about these things. So hand it over and try not to look as though I was boring you with a tale about potatoes sprouting from the Albert Memorial. We’ll go halves on it, I’m telling you. But you’ll have to trust me.”
She leapt up, faced him, a figure of tense fury. “I trustyou! You poor silly cad, I trustyou! Get away from my sight before——” And she suddenly realised that she had not denied having the diamond-ring, that he had provoked her outburst, that he was laughing at her. She threw herself down on the sofa again and fumbled in the yellow packet for a cigarette.
“Clever, aren’t you!” she sneered.
“Only by contrast,” smiled the cavalier of the streets. “I shall have to find it myself, then?”
She made a move as though to spring from the sofa, but it was only a little move, for she knew her man, and he was standing just beside her. “You’re just a blamed fool,” was all she said.
“Don’t move, Betty,” he begged her gently. “Please don’t move. Because I don’t want to have to tie you up. All I want to do is to find that diamond-ring. It’s silly of you to put me to the trouble of having to look for it, but even so I shall give you half of whatever I get for it, for which you must thank my late mother for the way she brought me up.” He seemed to have fallen into a conversational vein; he heeded not the contemptuous sounds with which the pretty girl—now, alas! not so pretty as she had been—sought to disturb the even tenor of his conversation; and all the while his eyes were busy about the room, a largish and dingy bed-sitting-room, the bed being inadequately hidden in an alcove behind a frayed green curtain.
“You see, Betty dear,” he went on, “I have come to a point in my life when I must have money or bust. I am telling you this that you may know I shall not spend half your ill-gotten gains in riotous living. I am tired of riotous living, Betty. I am tired of my life, I am tired of England. And so I am going abroad, far abroad, and there I shall make a new start”—she tried frantically to jump up, but he caught her wrist and held it—“make a new start, as I was saying. You will not see me again for a long time, Betty, and when you do, you willsee a rich and generous man, for I shall never forget that I owe you a good turn for the wrong I did you. But to go abroad and to begin an entirely new life I need money. And so,” and his eyes still wandered thoughtfully about the room, “I must find your diamond-ring, sell it for you, and keep half the proceeds as commission....”
“Even if it was here,” jeered the pretty girl, “you’d never find it. You think you’re the only clever one in the world, don’t you?” But there was not much conviction in her voice.
“No, I’ve always said you had brains, Betty. You are no fool; and I shall conduct my investigations on those premises. But don’t move—” and his hand fell sharply on her wrist again, while his eyes still thoughtfully embraced every corner of the room. “Now, if you were a fool, where would you hide a stolen diamond-ring so that your maid would not find it? You would hide it in a far corner of a drawer, or under a pile of linen, or you would sew it into the lining of a dress, or bury it in a hole in the floor—in fact, Betty dear, if you were a fool you would hide that diamond-ring in some secret place which any char-woman or detective searching this room would find at once. But you are not a fool.Now, if you are a student of Edgar Allan Poe, which I doubt, you will remember his tale about a young Frenchman called Duval, or Dupin, I forget which, who found a purloined letter, after the Paris police had searched in vain for it for weeks, in the most obvious place in the robber’s house: which was, of course, the letter-rack. Now what, I ask myself, is the most obvious place in this room in which to hide a stolen diamond-ring? The answer at once leaps to my mind, my eyes wander to a dilapidated-looking arm-chair a few yards away and fix on a hand-bag which is lying in the seat thereof. It is a pretty hand-bag, unpretentious but decorative; and a diamond-ring in your hand-bag would be quite safe from the prying fingers of your maid or char-woman for the simple reason that she has long ago given up hoping that she will find any money in it. But I am neither your maid nor your char-woman, and—oh!” She had bitten the hand that held her wrist, and only by a very quick effort did he restrain her from reaching the arm-chair on which lay the hand-bag. “Allow me,” he said politely, nursing his hand. “I will get it for you.” Swiftly he got it—and the diamond-ring lay in his open palm.
All fight had left the pretty girl; she satlistlessly on the sofa and gave way to her misery.
“Oh, you beast, you beast!” she kept whispering between dry sobs.
The cavalier of the streets stared at the stone in his hand. It winked and glittered, a bright white light on a dingy palm in a dingy room, arrogantly daring the eye with its innumerable carats. He whistled softly, in wonder. “And they say,” he murmured, “that diamonds aren’t fashionable nowadays!”
From the diamond in his palm he looked at the bowed head of the girl. He said harshly:
“Haven’t I told you I’m going to give you half of what I get?”
“I don’t want to sell it,” sobbed the girl. “I got reasons. You wouldn’t understand—youwouldn’t understand anything to do with sentiment. You was born without a heart, Michael Wagstaffe. When young Thomas Felix Waite loved me he promised me that he’d get that diamond-ring from his mother and give it to me. I didn’t want it then, nor believe him, but he went on so about it that I came to fix my mind on it. And then one day he left me—just like that, without a word. He was a weak idiot, but I loved him—youwouldn’t understand.And when he left me my mind somehow ran on that diamond-ring he’d promised me—I wanted it, d’you see, as I might want some money that’s owing to me. God’s treated me pretty rough, I thought, and so He owes me that diamond-ring just so as I can look at it now and then. And I been thinking about it months and months, not thinking to steal it, you know, but just wanting it.Youwouldn’t understand how soft a girl gets when she’s eaten up with loneliness in a big place like London. Why didn’t you let me be at Oxford, Michael, living with my father? And so when I saw this garden-party billed in the Society columns this morning, I just thought I’d try to get in and have a look at the diamond on her hand. I never thought she’d be fool enough to take it off in that catch-as-catch-can crowd to show to a friend, and then lay it on the edge of the fight-for-a-cup-of-tea-table to grab a cake which she could have done well without, she being already so fat with over-feeding....” And for the first time she looked up at the young man, who stood above her absently playing with the glittering toy in his hand. She stared at him with babyish, unbelieving eyes. “Gawd, you’re a bad kind of man, Michael Wagstaffe. You’re very bad.”
“You don’t want to sell it, then?” he asked sardonically.
“I want the diamond—my diamond!” she whispered. “Give me back my diamond-ring, Michael Wagstaffe. It’ll do for the sun you’ve took from me since we met at Oxford....”
He smiled at her suddenly. “Here you are, pretty Betty,” he said, and held out the diamond.
But Betty was afraid; she didn’t believe thebeau geste. Fewbeaux gesteshad come pretty Betty’s way. “Don’t play with me,” she whispered.
“Go on, take the damn thing. I’ll swim the Channel.” There was no doubt about it now. She stretched out her hand to his, to the glittering thing in his palm; but her hand never reached the glittering thing. He followed her staring, terrified eyes to the door behind him.
“Evening,Mr.Wagstaffe,” said the plain-clothes man with a grin; and he fixed a delighted eye on the glittering thing in the palm of Mr. Wagstaffe’s hand. “How’s business with diamonds to-night?”
“Rotten,” said Mr. Wagstaffe slowly. “Girl’s afraid even to touch it.”
The plain-clothes man was delighted with himself; he didn’t hurry; he turned to thetwo constables who filled the doorway behind him. “See, boys! There’s not a thief in the world who won’t take a stolen jool to show off to his best girl. That’s why I’ve kept you chasing this smart young man all evening—I knew he had it, but I wanted to catch him inflagrante delicto, which is Latin for making a fool of himself.” He possessed himself of the ring from the young man’s hand. “Sorry to have disturbed you, miss. I didn’t like doing it, but he was such a long time in here, and he’s given us the go-by so often, that I thought I’d come up and fetch him, as he and I are going the same way home to-night. Come on,Mr.Wagstaffe.”
The pretty girl, who had sat like a numbed thing, stirred violently; she opened her mouth: “But——”
“I’m glad,” said the cavalier sharply, “to see that you took my advice about bringing a posse with you. I’m coming.”
“But I——” began Betty, incredulously, desperately.
“That’s all right, miss,” the detective soothed her. “He won’t be any more trouble to you for sixteen months or so.”
“Look here, I took——” began Betty furiously, as they moved to the door.
“Good-night, pretty Betty,” called thecavalier of the streets. “I’m sorry about the wrong I did you at Oxford. But I’ll do you a good turn one day....”
Betty rushed frantically towards them, but the detective slammed the door in her face; and through the flimsy panels she heard the gay voice of the cavalier of the streets:
“Come, gentlemen, remove the body.”
THIS is quite a simple story, but it is about a lord. The lord in question was John Tiberius Vincent de Guy, second Viscount Paramour, and he was wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. He was, in fact, so wealthy that Mr. Otto Kahn stood at attention when speaking to him and Mr. John D. Rockefeller burnt his tongue with his hot milk at the mere mention of his name. Of course, young Lord Paramour had not made the money himself; he merely decorated it. His father, the late Watt A. Guy, will be remembered as the inventor and promoter of the Paramour Safety Hairpin: which, it has been said, has made a deeper impress on contemporary life than any other invention except Beecham’s Pills. It was thought pretty decent of the old man that, when one day as he lay on his death-bed thePrime Minister dropped in to hand him a Viscounty, he instantly took as his title the name which had made his millions, and died Lord Paramour; in which choice some people of the meaner sort have professed to find a particular aptness, for had not (they asked) the most famous advertisement of the Hairpins, that one which has for more than a decade been emblazoned in coloured lights across the eastern end of Piccadilly Circus and has raised advertisement to the majesty of an institution—had not those letters of fire beseeched: “Buy Paramour, Lord of Hairpins. No Woman Should be Without”? Whereupon, to be sure, no woman was.
Of young Lord Paramour it must be said that he was a gentleman of spirit; the war found him no laggard; but he was not ambitious in the arts of peace. It pained some of his most worthy friends to see with what indomitable energy he pursued the professions of leisure and luxury; that he used his immense fortune and unusual parts—which it has always been the pleasure of worthy persons to discern in the immensely rich—to no other advantage than the decorations of his various palaces and castles, the lavish entertainment of his friends therein, and only the most unthinking exercise of charity;but those nearest to him were most of all displeased at his evasion of his duty to his line and to society, for young Lord Paramour showed a strong disinclination to marry. A pageant of young ladies of quality was passed before him in review, but he either heeded them not or remarked, in a most amiable manner, on the imperfections of line, carriage, and cosmetics which, he said, were apparent in the most recent generation of young ladies. There were not, of course, wanting a few ladies of determination to make a formidable attack on his celibacy on behalf of their daughters; but young Lord Paramour withstood them with what can only be called a humiliating ease.
The Albert Hall Ball, in aid of the hospitals of London, will be remembered by many people as one of the most brilliant entertainments of the brilliant season of 1922. But it will be remembered by Mrs. Lyon-West—she was a New York Lyon before she married a Hampshire West—for a remarkable conversation with young Lord Paramour, who, after dancing with her beautiful daughter, had drifted into her box. The word “drifted” is here used in itsstrictly nautical sense, for Lord Paramour had not the faintest idea into whose box he was entering. He had, after having danced with Miss Lyon-West (whose name he did not know, which is a grave reflection on the present state of society) discovered a distaste for the company of his guests in his own box, and had wandered to the first door he saw and shoved it open. Lord Paramour was an abstemious young man, but that night he had indulged in a glass or so of wine, wittily remarking to a friend that “a chap can’t dance in cold blood.”
“Why, good-evening, Lord Paramour!” cried Mrs. Lyon-West brightly.
“Ah,” said Lord Paramour. “’Evening. Sorry, I’m sure.” And he proceeded to drift out of the box again.
“But please don’t go so soon, Lord Paramour! I amdelightedto see you. Only a moment ago I was remarking howbeautifullyyou and my daughter were dancing together!”
“Your daughter? Ah!” And Lord Paramour, who couldn’t for the life of him remember the lady’s name, nor where he had met her, sat down and regarded her benevolently. “Better call her madam,” he thought to himself.
“Enchanting girl, madam. Enchantingdancer. Enchanting lines. Enchanting everything. In fact, madam, a very adequate girl, your daughter.”
“I amsoglad you like her,” said Mrs. Lyon-West brightly. Mrs. Lyon-West had a reputation to keep up as to brightness.
“Like her, madam!” cried Lord Paramour. “I like her enormously. Most girls, I find, are rather tiresome—but your daughter, madam, is most unusual. And she is witty, which is remarkable in a girl. Please don’t deny it—I distinctly heard her say something witty while we were dancing. She said, if I remember aright: ‘The art of dancing is not to dance but to avoid other dancers.’ Now that, madam, is amot, in fact it is abon mot. I am very partial to a bon mot, madam. And considering that I had just bumped the back of her head into some ass’s elbow I think it was very apt of her. I was much impressed by your daughter, madam.”
“Of course,” said Mrs. Lyon-West, “looks aren’t everything. A woman should be clever as well as beautiful——”
“Exactly,” said Lord Paramour. “Exactly. Or quite.”
“She reads such a lot!” sighed Mrs. Lyon-West.
“Well, well, there’s nothing like reading,” said Lord Paramour. “Personally, I cannever find anything to read these days. Lot of septic trash.”
“But you are so fastidious, Lord Paramour!”
“Oh, not at the moment, madam!”
“Well, then, why are you so long getting married?” asked Mrs. Lyon-West with a bright smile.
“Lot of trash,” again sighed Lord Paramour. “Young women very inferior these days, madam. Always, of course, excepting your daughter.”
“Don’t except her. Marry her,” said Mrs. Lyon-West wittily.
“Not bad, that!” chuckled Lord Paramour. “But not good, either. Would she, d’you think, consider my advances favourably?”
Mrs. Lyon-West thought she would, and Lord Paramour sighed.
“Shall I tell you,” he put to her, “something that I have never told any one else? Shall I tell you why I have never married and why I cannot marry your daughter, enchanting though she is? Are you sure you will not be offended?”
“Tell me,” said Mrs. Lyon-West. “Oh, please tell me!” She had not dreamed of getting so far.
“Well, it’s like this,” began Lord Paramour sadly. “But I must put it delicately.If you have read or seenTrilby, you will remember that the three artist fellows were terribly upset on hearing that Trilby had sat to another artist fellow for the ‘altogether.’ You get my meaning, madam? You are not offended?”
Mrs. Lyon-West said she did and she wasn’t.
“Well, then, it’s like this. I am, madam, incapable, constitutionally, physically, and mentally incapable of marrying any one whom I have not seen in the ‘altogether’——”
“Sir,” said Mrs. Lyon-West, “how dare you?”
“That’s just the point,” sighed Lord Paramour. “I daren’t. And that’s why I can’t marry any one.” He rose, saying sadly: “I knew you would be offended. Women are odd. Good-night, madam. Sorry, I’m sure. Enchanting girl, your daughter. She has promised me this dance. Good-night, madam.”
“Sir,” said Mrs. Lyon-West, “good-night.”
Now a digression here on the attitude of worldly mothers to their daughters might beof interest, but would not further this story. Let it suffice, in the chronicle of the shameless behaviour of young Lord Paramour, to say that Mrs. Lyon-West was a mother after the Roman model, and exacted from her offspring no less than abject obedience in all matters which might obtain to her welfare; in which she was helped by the fact that her beautiful daughter, in the days following the Albert Hall Ball, showed a pleasing inclination for the company of the witty and elegant Lord Paramour. Whereupon Mrs. Lyon-West asked him down to the Lyon-West place for the week-end.
The omission of Mr. Lyon-West from this story may seem marked; and if we are going down there with Lord Paramour politeness demands a glance at him. Meet Mr. Lyon-West. He is a little gentleman with an amiable eye and a hard and soft tennis court on his head. He does not matter very much.
Among the other guests at the house-party, as they revealed themselves after dinner on Saturday night, were Lord Pro and Lady Con—who, as of course you know, is a Beaver in her own right. That amiable baronet, Sir Courtenay Langouste, sat in a secluded corner reading the 68th edition ofIf Winter Comes, while his lady near by cutthe pages of the 69th edition. Major General Sir Auction Bridges was with Mr. Soda, hotly contesting Mr. Soda’s theory that hiccups was an infectious disease and could be prevented by inoculation. Lady Savoury, our first female M.P. and a great Improver, went about from group to group, indignantly remarking that it served Oscar Wilde right if only for saying that work is the curse of our drinking classes. Mrs. Custard, on the other hand, retired early, complaining that she was very short of long gloves.
During a break in the conversation, which was witty and sustained, Lord Paramour was understood to say that he would not be going to divine service the next day; and his hostess was obliging enough to say that, in that case, she too would not go to the morning service, but would walk Lord Paramour round the grounds; which would, she said, repay an early morning visit. Miss Lyon-West was understood to say that she came to the country for rest.
As, next morning, the countryside sweetly echoed with the songs of birds and church-bells, Lord Paramour and his hostess stepped out of the house upon the velvet sward. The broad sweep of park and woodland lay before them, soft and mellow in the haze ofthe morning sun, and Lord Paramour suggested a brisk walk, but Mrs. Lyon-West begged to be excused, saying she was enamoured of her rose garden; in which direction, skirting the spacious house, they leisurely betook themselves, talking of this and that in an elegant way.
“Penelope—” said Mrs. Lyon-West, for such was her daughter’s name—“Penelope loves gardens. Especially rose gardens.”
“Indeed,” said Lord. Paramour. “Well, there’s nothing like a rose garden.”
“HowI agree with you!” said Mrs. Lyon-West brightly. “Penelope, however, carries it almost to an infatuation.”
“’Pon my word!” said Lord Paramour.
“Yes, Lord Paramour. During the rose season, for instance, sheinsistson occupying a suite on the ground floor, from which she can at any moment step out and bathe herself in the beauty of the flowers....”
“You turn a phrase very prettily, madam.”
“Oh,thankyou, Lord Paramour,” breathed Mrs. Lyon-West. “But, as you will understand, her occupying a bedroom and a bathroom justtheremakes things just a leetle awkward. For sheinsistson having her blinds drawn open, that she may enjoy the roses over her toilet, and soof coursethe gardeners cannot enter the rose garden during the morning, as it distracts them from their work.”
“Lazy dogs!” cried Lord Paramour.
“Ah, here it is!” cried his hostess as, rounding an angle of the house, they came upon the rose garden. “It is supposed to be the best rose garden in the country.”
“Enchanting,” said Lord Paramour. “Enchanting, considering the gardeners do no work in it in the mornings.”
“Oh, there’s Niblick, the agent!” cried Mrs. Lyon-West. “Imustspeak to him for a moment. Do excuse me a moment, Lord Paramour. I will be back inonemoment.”
Lord Paramour, of course, excused her; and very pleasantly whiled away twenty minutes with a cigarette in the rose garden. He paced about.... He saw the roses.... He saw a rose in particular, a white one....
The day passed in elegant conversation, as is the way with the landed gentry all the world over. Lord Paramour and Miss Lyon-West, beautiful in vermilionorgandie, went for a walk in the afternoon; but on their return Mrs. Lyon-West observed on her daughter’s cheeks none of those signs ofpretty confusion which denote a happy consummation; they were still the pale cheeks of a young lady of fashion; they were unmantled.
Now it has frequently been said of Mrs. Lyon-West that she is indiscreet; but never that she is not brave.
That night, when the gentlemen had joined the ladies, and Mrs. Custard had retired, saying she had to go to Paris early in the morning as she was very short of long gloves, Mrs. Lyon-West addressed herself to Lord Paramour brightly:
“I hope,” she said, “that you enjoyed your walk in the rose garden?”
“Enchanting!” said Lord Paramour. “Enchanting.”
“I’msoglad you liked it,” breathed Mrs. Lyon-West; and she looked at him steadfastly, the brave woman. “Well, Lord Paramour?”
“Ah,” said Lord Paramour thoughtfully.
She created a diversion by requiring a light for her cigarette, which Mr. Soda, with his well-knowngalanterie, instantly supplied.
“The only thing I’m not sure about,” whispered Lord Paramour, “is whether I like her nose. Sorry, I’m sure.”
THIS is a story about my friend George Tarlyon, who is a brave man and no bigger liar than most. Of course, George Tarlyon ought to know better than to be afraid of walking through Lansdowne Passage at night. But you can tell him that until you are blue in the face and he will smile at you and agree with you, but still he will not walk through Lansdowne Passage at night, saying that he is afraid. And when you ask him of what he is afraid, he will smile a shameless smile and reply that he gives Lansdowne Passage a miss because he is afraid of meeting a woman in it. At that you will at once express impatience, disbelief, and disgust, for on no female occasion whatsoever will you have noticed upon George Tarlyon’s brow that cold sweat which denotes a decent bashfulness in a man. And then, maybe, you will jeer at George Tarlyon, forgetting for a moment that he is a head taller than any quick-tempered man should be, and thinking to goad him into revelation of the reason orreasons why he, a noted warrior on many fields from Ranelagh to Vimy Ridge, should be afraid of meeting a woman in Lansdowne Passage. And maybe George Tarlyon will tell you, and maybe he will not.
In these days of easy travelling and tourist facilities it need scarcely be explained that Lansdowne Passage is a narrow path between two high walls; and that this path is carved between the princely domains of Devonshire House and Lansdowne House. Men speak of a time when, midway through the passage, they had every now and then to pass under a light wooden bridge which had overnight been thrown from the top of one high wall to the other, and how it seemed to them pleasant to think that perhaps the Marquess of Lansdowne was going to step across to visit the Duke of Devonshire that day. But nothing like that happens nowadays, for Devonshire House emptily awaits its destiny and Lansdowne House is held in fief by a distinguished stranger. But there is still something feudal about Lansdowne Passage, for it is a private right-of-way, and on one day every year Lord Lansdowne sends his men to lock and bolt the doors at each end of the passage, as it is his right to do, for the only way a man has of showing that a passage is hispassage is by keeping every one else out of it for one day every year, the date to be left to his discretion. Through Lansdowne Passage, on 364 days of the year, the pedestrian (or two pedestrians abreast, but not more than two, for you can’t have everything) can walk direct from Curzon Street to Berkeley Street, and thus save himself an endless amount of walking round by Piccadilly or Berkeley Square. Mention must also be made of an old man who, on 364 days of the year, wanders about the passage with a broom, or sometimes leans the broom against the wall and sits down on the upturned end of a narrow wooden box, which he brings with him every morning for that purpose; but he doesn’t really have very much time for sitting on his box, for all autumn he sweeps away at the leaves, happily without effect, and for the rest of the year you cannot drop a piece of paper, orange-peel, or cigarette-end without having it swept away at once; and all the year round he gives you greeting as you pass, in a friendly way.
Now, one night in May, a year after the world was said to be at peace, George Tarlyon had reason to be walking in a westerly direction from Dover Street; down Hay Hill he went, and down the covered stairway from Berkeley Street into Lansdowne Passage. The hour was very late, the night pleasantly dark and cool, and the stillness of a sleeping city broken only by the cameo noises of the narrow hours. His steps rang gaily between the high walls of the passage, echoes carelessly tossing themselves from one wall to the other, round and about and every way, and he was almost half-way through before he realised that he was sharing the passage with another: a woman just ahead of him, walking slowly in his direction, but scarcely walking, loitering against the wall, a self-effacing woman of the night. George Tarlyon passed her, and about her face he was not at all curious. A word followed him, a shy word, but he strode on, two steps, three steps—and then another word followed him, louder, and he swung round, not very amiably.
Now the words which women of the night cast into the night as a lure for passing men are few, and their expression limited; and many had been cast to George Tarlyon in passing but never had he chosen one, for that kind of thing did not amuse him, and he was quite popular enough in his own circle. But “My dear!” this woman had cried at his back, softly, not at all insinuatingly: a ladylike voice, without glitter or suggestion,just appealing; and it somehow caught the drum of George Tarlyon’s ear, the gentle “my dear,” and he swung round to it.
“Well?” asked George Tarlyon, not very amiably. But he made a gesture towards his hat, which is more than most men do on the casual occasion.
She softly came towards him, and stood a long way below him, for she was a short, slight woman: of about middle years, and of the middle sort, plain featured and dressed unnoticeably: very quiet and ladylike she was. From one hand hung a bag, just a little larger than those called hand-bags, and full-looking, as might be that of a sempstress or governess who is absent from her home all day. The little lady smiled, without lure....
“Well?” asked George Tarlyon again, not very amiably.
“It’s only,” said the little lady, “that I am afraid to walk alone through this passage, and would be very grateful if you would allow me to walk with you as far as the Curzon Street end.” Very quiet and ladylike she was.
“Why, of course,” said George Tarlyon, politely enough, and more or less dismissed the thing with a swing round. But the littlelady walked as slowly with him as she had without him, and he had to accommodate his step to hers.
“But if you’re afraid,” George Tarlyon just thought to ask, “aren’t you even more afraid of addressing a stranger, who might do a little lady some harm in a lonely place like this?”
The little lady smiled gently.
“I saw your face as you passed,” she said. “You might be dangerous to a lady in a drawing-room but not in Lansdowne Passage. Unlike some men I know....”
They were walking very slowly, and still had almost half of the passage to go, but George Tarlyon did not say, “Hurry up, little lady,” thinking she was a pathetic little thing, more than usually pathetic of her kind. But he was not interested in her, and it was only out of politeness that he asked:
“Have you had trouble with one or two, then?”
“With one,” she told him softly. She was so small, and he so tall, that her voice seemed to float up to him from somewhere about his knees. He scarcely listened to it. To tell the truth, he was rather tired. “With one,” she repeated. “That is why I amafraid of walking through here by myself at night. It happened many years ago, but every detail is still very clear to me.”
“He must have frightened you a good deal,” said George Tarlyon. Not that he was interested.
“I wouldn’t say that,” said the little lady gently. “But it was certainly the most important thing that has ever happened in my life. You see, sir, I had to get three pounds that night. I had already made two pounds, for that is all I have ever dared to ask, though sometimes the kinder gentlemen have given me more, but that night I had to make three pounds more, for five pounds a week was the rent of my rooms and already overdue some time....” The gentle voice ran on, floating up to him from somewhere about his knee, and he scarcely listened. They were quite near the Curzon Street end now, and the words floated upwards quicker....
“Just about where you passed me, I spoke to him—in the passage here. He was a short man, and not a gentleman, but I needed three pounds badly and nowadays you never know who has money and who hasn’t, do you? But as soon as he answered and looked at me I knew I had made a mistake, but there’s no use being rude, and so I walked on with him. He said something about thecoolness of the weather, but although I kept my eyes in front of me, not liking the look of him, you see, I knew very well that he was taking me in sideways. There’s no use being silly, I told myself, but I did wish I hadn’t got my two pounds in my bag or that some one else would come into the passage, though there’s generally little chance of that at this hour of night, unless it’s a policeman to smoke a cigarette. And so I hurried on as quick as I could to get to Curzon Street, and we weren’t more than half-way through this passage then, but he got hold of my arm and stopped me quick enough. I didn’t look at his eyes, for I’d seen them once, you see, but I heard him asking for money, as I knew he would. And then he got hold of my bag by the strap, but I held on tight, saying there was naught in it but powder and a handkerchief, but still not looking at his eyes for I knew their kind well enough. But he held on, and said he would give me some cocaine, ‘snow’ he called it, if I let him have money, and with his other hand he fumbled in his pocket. ‘I’ll scream,’ I said, and at that he let go of my bag quick enough, so I could hurry on to Curzon Street. He dropped back then, but I was in such a state to get to Curzon Street that I couldn’t hear him behind me for the beating of my heart. Butbehind me he must have been, for I’d just got to within a yard—why, we’re at the spot now, Ihavebeen slow in telling!—when from behind his hand clapped me over the mouth, and I heard him breathing very hoarse at my neck, and then a sharp funny pain in the shoulder-blade took me. As sharp as a knife, they say, but this was a knife, and ever so sharp in the shoulder-blade it was—but it didn’t hurt so much as feel funny, if you understand, and everything was so mixed up—his breathing, and the funny feeling in the shoulder-blade, and somewhere a clock striking once, but I went off before it struck again, for it must have been on three o’clock. I never thought death would be like that.”
And George Tarlyon looked for the little lady and he saw only the wall, and George Tarlyon ran headlong out of Lansdowne Passage, and as he ran he heard a clock strike the last two notes of three o’clock.
ONE night we were at a party, George Tarlyon and I, and there were also present some other people. It was not, however, a good party, and we left it before eleven o’clock. I cannot remember now how it was that one had gone there so early, but anyway it is of no significance. As we passed out, a misguided fellow said it would get better later on, but I extracted him from Tarlyon’s teeth, and so out into the street. A long string of cars stretched from the door towards Park Lane, and here and there chauffeurs stood in sombre groups, and we wondered if they thought they were missing anything. The heat of the crowded rooms had put us in a fever, the night air penetrated our flimsy evening-coats, and we shivered and murmured. From the open windows of the house we had left there followed us down the length of Green Street that asinine blare which is the punishment of England for having lost America; and George Tarlyon muttered that there ought to be a law to prevent people from giving fat-headed parties full of crashing bores and plain women, the joints of whose knees cracked in trying any dance which their mothers had not danced before them. I tried to soothe him and myself by saying that parties were not what they were and there it was; but he would not be soothed, for he had been given a glass of cider-cup in mistake for champagne, and he who touches cider-cup in the watches of the night may neither forget nor forgive.
We walked up Park Lane aimlessly, for we knew not what to do nor whither to go. We were further elated by the fact that we could sum up only one cigarette between us.
I suggested that one might do worse than go to bed, but Tarlyon said it was too early for that. “It is never too early,” I said morosely, “to go to bed.”
“Pah!” said Tarlyon, and so we walked down Park Lane.
Now it is frequently said that Park Lane is full of Jews, but very few met our eyes, and they might quite well have been Gentiles. There are many illusions prevalent in the provinces about life in the great metropolis of London: such as (a) that it is gay: (b) that it is wicked: (c) that boys will be boys: (d) that there is plenty to do when itrains: (e) that you have only to go for a walk to see many “well-dressed women in costly furs”; but the one which has even less foundation in fact than any of these is that, life in a great city being what it is, there is never an hour of the twenty-four when the great streets are not, to a student of life, full of matter for observation. But, as George Tarlyon said, you might be a student of life until you burst and still find no matter for observation—though here we were in Park Lane and the hour not yet eleven!
“The whole thing is a ramp,” we said. “Now take this matter about the Jews. We have been distinctly given to understand that this Lane is full of Jews—but what do we see? Two ’buses and a policeman. But that leads us to an interesting speculation: can a policeman be a Jew? Has such a thing as a Jewish policeman ever been seen or heard of? And if not, what is it that prevents a policeman from being a Jew? Is the religious feeling among policemen stronger than that among Privy Councillors?”
“Let’s ask him,” I suggested. The policeman was decorating the corner of Upper Brook Street. Tarlyon asked him, and the policeman said that Vine Street was not so far off as all that, while as for Marlborough Street, it was even nearer. He wasn’t thereto be accosted, he wasn’t, said the policeman wickedly.
“Ho!” said Tarlyon. “And have you been arresting any more respectable old clergymen in Hyde Park for talking to women without an introduction from a bishop? Blast me but I wouldn’t dream of entering Hyde Park nowadays, not at night anyway, without a battalion of chaps fringed with torpedo-netting.”
“Good-night, constable,” I said hurriedly.
“Good-night, sir,” said he—a discreet man.
“Pah!” said Tarlyon.
We walked up Park Lane.
And suddenly Tarlyon gripped my arm, and waved his stick and whispered—
“Look at that! Ralph, just look at that!”
Ten yards or so ahead of us loomed the back of a giant. He was striding on with huge steps, a black cloak was flung about him, and he wore no hat. Maybe it was the cloak, swaying this way and that, and one end flapping over a shoulder, that made the man seem taller than he really was—but it was a colossal back.
“It’s reminiscent,” Tarlyon murmured. “I can’t help a feeling about that back—it’s reminiscent.”
“It’s reminiscent,” I whispered, “of a backI once lent money to. One hundred pounds it was....”
We quickened our pace. The huge figure passed under the light of a lamp, and the light fell on his bare head, and his hair flamed up like fire.
The huge figure, the arrogant walk, the flaming ginger hair....
“Red Antony!” I murmured.
“And we thought he was dead!” muttered Tarlyon—as though Red Antony could have died without the noise of his death-rattle confounding the thunder of the guns that killed many better men! Could a man who lived so noisily die as other men? And yet, because the lean years of peace had passed without sight or sign of him, we had believed the rumour that had had it that Sir Antony Poole had risen to be sergeant in a Canadian storm battalion and had then died; which had seemed natural in a kind of way, for the worst German shot couldn’t, one thought, have consistently missed six-foot-four under a crown of flaming hair.
If there was a man who did not know, or know of, Antony Poole in the careless years before the war, then there must have been something the matter with his eyes or ears. For Red Antony was a famous sight in every crowded place in London, and achieved considerable nonentity as the noisiest and worst-tempered rascal since Fighting Fitzgerald of the Regency. He crashed, did Antony, in furious idiocy from row to row and roguery to roguery, so that the day inevitably came when no decent man or woman would be seen speaking to the man. Oh, a calamitous pair, the brothers Poole! For one night his brother, the Great Sir Roger, brilliant and sardonic Roger, dark and successful Roger, good sportsman and lovable fellow—one night our Roger put a bullet through his head, and at the inquest the amazed world heard that he had done this unbelievable thing because the police were hammering at the door with a warrant for his arrest on a charge of fraud. This we, his friends, did not believe. The police may have been hammering at the door, we said, but the police are notoriously promiscuous about the doors they hammer at. “Fraud be damned in connection with Roger Poole!”—that is what we said. Why, he was fine, that Roger—fine! Thus we mourned him, once the wealthiest and wittiest of our company, and we defended his memory against the few who dared impugn it. But the disappearance of the red giant who was now Sir Antony Poole we did not mourn, for from the day of the inquest, at which he broke down and weptlike a stricken child, he had not been seen in London until this night in Park Lane.
“Go quietly,” Tarlyon restrained me. “We’ll teach Red Antony to walk up Park Lane without a hat.”
Gently we approached, one on each side of the colossal back.
“Oi!” we cried.
A wrench, and he faced us. We are tall, but we were as children beneath him.
“Oi to you!” snarled Antony. “Who the blazes are you, anyway?” And the great red expanse which was given to Antony for a face surveyed us intolerantly. Never what you might call an easy-tempered man, Red Antony.
“We be friends,” said Tarlyon sombrely.
“That’s uncommonly original of you,” drawled Antony. “I didn’t know I had any.” And he pretended not to recognise us—for Antony must always act, always play cussed.
“You haven’t,” Tarlyon grinned. “But mine was just a manner of speaking.” He knew his man; and there passed over Red Antony’s face that earthquake and tornado which was given him for a smile and a laugh.
“Hell! Always the same Tarlyon! How are you, George?”
“Monstrous,” says George.
“But there is no sensation in matter,” boomed Red Antony, crushing his hand.
“And this,” said Tarlyon, waving his other towards me, “and this, Sir Antony, is your old friend Ralph Wyndham Trevor, whom you may quite have forgotten, since you owe him a hundred pounds.”
Another earthquake across that vast red expanse, so that I feared for the sleep of those mythical Jews....
“Dear old Trevor—fancy having kept you waiting all this time! Here you are, man, here you are.” And from somewhere inside his cloak he jerked a pocket-book into my hand and crushed it against my palm. “You can keep the change, old boy, as you’re younger than I am and look as though you need it. Always take vegetables with your meat, Trevor.”
“I hate to take money from an impoverished baronet,” I got in, just to goad him.
“Impoverished nothing!” he boomed, and swung on Tarlyon, who backed a step. “D’you remember, George, that Roger always said I had aflairfor making money——”
“But he added,” Tarlyon said, “that youhadn’t got the brain of a louse to back thatflairup with.”
Boomed Antony: “I have studied the ways of lice for five years on end and must inform you, George, that my brain, though moth-eaten, is certainly superior. I have made mints of money. I am fat with money. I roll in money....” He was working himself up into that state of chronic excitement in which he might twist the lamp-post. Breakable or twistable things had always a fascination for Red Antony.
“There, there!” I soothed him. “And we thought the little man was dead!”
“There, there!” said George. “Did he make money, now! And we thought he was lying in some forgotten foreign field with a German bullet in his heart.”
Bother the man! He simply had to make a noise each time he opened his mouth. The policeman who had talked Vine Street to us approached.
“Dead! Me dead!” And the sweep of his arm flung wide his cloak, and indeed he looked a mighty man of wrath. “As though a Prooshian bullet could kill me!”
“You are no doubt reserved for a more terrible end,” said Tarlyon.
Blessed if the man didn’t wilt! That roaring red giant—he wilted.
“Don’t say that, George,” he begged hoarsely. “It’s a fool remark to make, that. You didn’t mean it, did you?” And he put the question seriously! We gaped at him.
“He was only being funny,” I explained. “He tries his best....”
“I wish you well, Antony,” said Tarlyon, out of his surprise.
“God, I need it!” Antony growled surprisingly.
And then I laughed—remembering Red Antony’s old way of acting cussed, just to surprise and annoy. He’d do anything to make a fool of some one, that man, even if he had to make a fool of himself in doing it. But as I laughed, Antony looked at me with furious, haggard eyes, and I stopped laughing.
I saw Tarlyon looking at him queerly. He knew Antony much better than I did, for many and many a year ago he was a junior subaltern in the mess when Antony threw a bottle at the head of an extremely superior officer. The bottle was full, the aim was true, and Antony was cashiered with all due pomp and dishonour. But, through all his subsequent follies, Tarlyon had liked him. One couldn’t, of course, defend Antony; but the very few who had once liked Red Antony always, somehow, went on liking him. There was something about the man, a sort of tremendous gallantry, an air of shameless bravado, a thunder of individuality, which might have made him a simple and lovable giant—but for a grain of rotten subtlety somewhere in him. Fine timber worm-eaten, Tarlyon said. Not, of course, said Tarlyon, that himself was anything to write home about.
“What’s the matter, old Antony?” Tarlyon asked kindly. “You’ve changed enormously....”
Now I had noticed no particular change, except, perhaps, that handsome Antony looked his forty years and more; but Tarlyon knew him better.
“How have I changed?” snapped Antony. He hated kindness; he thought he was being pitied.
“You look a bit worn, old boy, that’s all,” said George lightly.
“If it comes to that, you aren’t the man you were, what with war, wine, and women!”
“Talking of wine,” I thought to say, “one always understood that you’d die of drink, Antony. That’s probably what George meant when he said you looked worn.”
I wished I had kept my mouth shut. His eyes blazed over me ... but he restrained himself; and Antony’s “restraint” was a portentous business—it made a noise like a fast car with the brakes jammed on.
“Drink!” he said sharply. “I drink nothing to speak of nowadays. There’s an end to all things....” Now the lion’s bedside manner is a significant thing, and even more significant is it when the lion in the fulness of his strength sways a little, just a little; and what would make Red Antony sway just a little would be enough to put another man under the table, and no dishonour to the strength of his head, either.
“I do not wish,” said Antony reasonably, “that you should think me irresponsible through excess of stimulant. The things that are happening to me are not happening through drink, and you must bear that in mind. I am saner than a sane man, though I can hear and see and smell things that a sane man would die of....”
Tarlyon looked at me meaningly. Antony seemed to have forgotten us. Tarlyon took his arm.
“We can’t stay here all night,” he said. “Let us now leave Park Lane in a body and go to my house....”
Antony woke up; he threw back his head and howled: “Taxi!”
“All right, sir, all right,” said the policeman gently. “You don’t need to shout like that.” That was a brave policeman.
“I insist on shouting,” boomed Antony. “Taxi!”
And, thankfully, a taxi appeared from Mount Street, for Red Antony and the police never did mix well. He once arrested two policemen for loitering and took them to Vine Street....
Antony flung open the door. A clock began the lengthy job of striking eleven o’clock.
“We will go tomyhouse,” said Antony. “I have a charming house, and an appointment to keep in it. Jump in.” We jumped in, and we heard him give the driver the address of a house in Regent’s Park. How often had we not directed taxis to that house! Tarlyon whistled.
“So you’ve got Roger’s old house!” he murmured.
Antony did not answer. The taxi staggered northwards as best it could.
“I don’t see,” snapped Antony at last, “why you should gape about it. Getting back to England four months ago, I found the house empty, and took it. It seems natural enough.”
“I never said it wasn’t,” Tarlyon murmured. But he thought it wasn’t, and so did I. A brother, on coming back to civilisationafter many years’ absence, does not immediately leap into the house in which his elder brother blew his brains out—anyway, I wouldn’t.
The taxi twisted through the gates, round the little drive, and to the great door. An odd feeling it was, to stand again in front of that door after nine years—but now we faced a house black and still where once had been a house of shining windows, gay with music and the laughter of the most brilliant company in London. Oh, the Georgians, the magnificent young Georgians—mostly dead!
We told the driver to wait, and followed Antony in. We stood still in the pitch-black hall until he should switch on the light, and in the blaze of light in which the cloaked figure faced us I instantly understood what Tarlyon had meant when he said that Antony had “changed.” I can only describe the change by saying that the structure of his face seemed to have fallen into disrepair; its brick-red complexion of old had dwindled to a faint pink, so that one had an idea that any ordinary face would have been a ghastly white; and he looked worn with more than the usual wear of passing years. But the wild eyes were still wild, and uncommonly fine he looked as he faced us in the sombre hall, the huge dandy in the black cloak withthe head of flaming hair brushed immaculately back.
He smiled at us with that sudden charm for which women had forgiven him much—too much; he flung out an arm in the grand manner.
“Welcome to the old house,” he said. “And for heaven’s sake try to look as though you didn’t miss Roger.”
But the magic of Roger Poole was not, I thought, in the place; the house was now but a shell for a noisy man.
“Champagne is indicated,” said Antony; and that indication led us to the dining-room—a long, oak-panelled room at the back of the house. The curtains were not drawn across the two French windows, which gave out to a lawn sloping carelessly down to the water of Regent’s Park; and in the second in which Antony fumbled for the electric switch the dark shapes of the trees looked like the van of an impenetrable forest. But dark shapes of trees always look more or less like that.
“Didn’t you say something about an appointment?” Tarlyon asked vaguely, as Antony ravished the wire off a bottle.
“Did I?” He looked up at us from his business, very thoughtfully. “Oh, did I?”
“Pop!” said the champagne cork.
We drank, and Antony looked at his wrist-watch.
“Damn!” he said. “It’s stopped.”
“The time being just 11.25,” I helped him.
“Thanks,” said Antony, very mild, very thoughtful. “Excuse me a moment, will you?” And he strode across the room to the folding doors which led to Roger’s old library and card-room. He closed the door behind him, but it did not catch, swung open a few inches. No light filled the dark vertical space.
“Never known him so polite before,” I muttered.
“He’s absent-minded,” said Tarlyon, looking thoughtfully at the dark space.
“What I want to know,” he whispered, “is what he’s doing in there in the dark?”
“Keeping his appointment,” I suggested facetiously.
Tarlyon looked from the door to me.
“Poor devil!” he said softly. I thought he was pitying me for my wit, of which I was never very proud.
He put down his empty glass, dug hishands into his pockets, and lounged to the folding-doors. I never knew a man who could walk so casually as Tarlyon; you never expected him to get anywhere, but he always got there before you expected him to.
He kicked the slightly open door a little wider with the tip of his shoe. I was just behind his shoulder.
“Antony!” he called softly.
From the light in which we stood the library was a pit of darkness. Nothing moved in the pit. There was no sound.
“He’s not there,” I whispered; and I wondered why I whispered.
“Can you smell anything?” a hoarse voice suddenly asked from the darkness.
Tarlyon lounged into the black room. But somehow, I did not feel called upon to follow. I leant against the door.
Deeply set in the darkness I could at last make out the faintly white patch which must be Antony’s shirt-front; and I wondered what tomfoolery he was up to now, asking stupid questions in a startling voice out of a poisonously dark room. I could smell nothing at all, and didn’t expect to.
“What kind of a smell?” Tarlyon asked—in a reasonable tone! He stood just within the door, his back to me.
“Can you smellnothingat all?” the hoarse, subdued voice asked again. “But, of course, it’s very faint now.”
Tarlyon put up his nose and sniffed. I sniffed. More than faint it was, I thought.
“Been smoking?” Tarlyon asked, and he sniffed again.
“No,” came a whisper.
“Oh,” said Tarlyon. This was lunatic talk, and I was just about to say so when Antony asked sharply:
“Why did you ask?”
“I thought I smelt smoke,” said Tarlyon. “Might be cigarette smoke.”
“It is,” I snapped, for I was smoking a Turkish cigarette just behind his ear.