The Girl on the Boat

by P. G. Wodehouse

§ 4

Even into the blackest days there generally creeps an occasional ray of sunshine, and there are few crises of human gloom which are not lightened by a bit of luck. It was so with Mr. Bennett in his hour of travail. There were lobsters for lunch, and his passion for lobsters had made him the talk of three New York clubs. He was feeling a little happier when Billie came in to see how he was getting on.

“Hullo, father. Had a nice lunch?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Bennett, cheering up a little at the recollection. “There was nothing wrong with the lunch.”

How little we fallible mortals know! Even as he spoke, a tiny fragment of lobster shell, which had been working its way silently into the tip of his tongue, was settling down under the skin and getting ready to cause him the most acute mental distress which he had ever known.

“The lunch,” said Mr. Bennett, “was excellent. Lobsters!” He licked his lips appreciatively.

“And, talking of lobsters,” he went on, “I suppose that boy Bream has told you that I have broken off your engagement?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t seem very upset,” said Mr. Bennett, who was in the mood for a dramatic scene and felt a little disappointed.

“Oh, I’ve become a fatalist on the subject of my engagements.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Well, I mean, they never seem to come to anything.” Billie gazed wistfully at the counterpane. “Do you know, father, I’m beginning to think that I’m rather impulsive. I wish I didn’t do silly things in such a hurry.”

“I don’t see where the hurry comes in as regards that Mortimer boy. You took ten years to make up your mind.”

“I was not thinking of Bream. Another man.”

“Great Heavens! Are you still imagining yourself in love with young Hignett?”

“Oh, no! I can see now that I was never in love with poor Eustace. I was thinking of a man I got engaged to on the boat!”

Mr. Bennett sat bolt upright in bed, and stared incredulously at his surprising daughter. His head was beginning to swim.

“Of course I’ve misunderstood you,” he said. “There’s a catch somewhere and I haven’t seen it. But for a moment you gave me the impression that you had promised to marry some man on the boat!”

“I did!”

“But...!” Mr. Bennett was doing sums on his fingers. “Do you mean to tell me,” he demanded, having brought out the answer to his satisfaction, “do you mean to tell me that you have been engaged to three men in three weeks?”

“Yes,” said Billie in a small voice.

“Great Godfrey! Er——?”

“No, only three.”

Mr. Bennett sank back on to his pillow with a snort.

“The trouble is,” continued Billie, “one does things and doesn’t know how one is going to feel about it afterwards. You can do an awful lot of thinking afterwards, father.”

“I’m doing a lot of thinking now,” said Mr. Bennett with austerity. “You oughtn’t to be allowed to go around loose!”

“Well, it doesn’t matter. I shall never get engaged again. I shall never love anyone again.”

“Don’t tell me you are still in love with this boat man?”

Billie nodded miserably. “I didn’t realise it till we came down here. But, as I sat and watched the rain, it suddenly came over me that I had thrown away my life’s happiness. It was as if I had been offered a wonderful jewel and had refused it. I seemed to hear a voice reproaching me and saying, ‘You have had your chance. It will never come again!’”

“Don’t talk nonsense!” said Mr. Bennett.

Billie stiffened. She had thought she had been talking rather well.

Mr. Bennett was silent for a moment. Then he started up with an exclamation. The mention of Eustace Hignett had stirred his memory. “What’s young Hignett got wrong with him?” he asked.

“Mumps.”

“Mumps! Good God! Not mumps!” Mr. Bennett quailed. “I’ve never had mumps! One of the most infectious ... this is awful!... Oh, heavens! Why did I ever come to this lazar-house!” cried Mr. Bennett, shaken to his depths.

“There isn’t the slightest danger, father, dear. Don’t be silly. If I were you, I should try to get a good sleep. You must be tired after this morning.”

“Sleep! If I only could!” said Mr. Bennett, and did so five minutes after the door had closed.

He awoke half an hour later with a confused sense that something was wrong. He had been dreaming that he was walking down Fifth Avenue at the head of a military brass band, clad only in a bathing suit. As he sat up in bed, blinking in the dazed fashion of the half-awakened, the band seemed to be playing still. There was undeniably music in the air. The room was full of it. It seemed to be coming up through the floor and rolling about in chunks all round his bed.

Mr. Bennett blinked the last fragments of sleep out of his system, and became filled with a restless irritability. There was only one instrument in the house which could create this infernal din—the orchestrion in the drawing-room, immediately above which, he recalled, his room was situated.

He rang the bell for Webster.

“Is Mr. Mortimer playing that—that damned gas-engine in the drawing-room?”

“Yes, sir. Tosti’s ‘Good-bye.’ A charming air, sir.”

“Go and tell him to stop it!”

“Very good, sir.”

Mr. Bennett lay in bed and fumed. Presently the valet returned. The music still continued to roll about the room.

“I am sorry to have to inform you, sir,” said Webster, “that Mr. Mortimer declines to accede to your request.”

“Oh, he said that, did he?”

“That is the gist of his remarks, sir.”

“Very good! Then give me my dressing-gown!”

Webster swathed his employer in the garment indicated, and returned to the kitchen, where he informed the cook that, in his opinion, the guv’nor was not a force, and that, if he were a betting man, he would put his money in the forthcoming struggle on Consul, the Almost-Human—by which affectionate nickname Mr. Mortimer senior was generally alluded to in the servants’ hall.

Mr. Bennett, meanwhile, had reached the drawing-room, and found his former friend lying at full length on a sofa, smoking a cigar, a full dozen feet away from the orchestrion, which continued to thunder out its dirge on the passing of Summer.

“Will you turn that infernal thing off!” said Mr. Bennett.

“No!” said Mr. Mortimer.

“Now, now, now!” said a voice.

Jane Hubbard was standing in the doorway with a look of calm reproof on her face.

“We can’t have this, you know!” said Jane Hubbard. “You’re disturbing my patient.”

She strode without hesitation to the instrument, explored its ribs with a firm finger, pushed something, and the orchestrion broke off in the middle of a bar. Then, walking serenely to the door, she passed out and closed it behind her.

The baser side of his nature urged Mr. Bennett to triumph over the vanquished.

“Now, what about it!” he said, ungenerously.

“Interfering girl!” mumbled Mr. Mortimer, chafing beneath defeat. “I’ve a good mind to start it again.”

“I dare you!” whooped Mr. Bennett, reverting to the phraseology of his vanished childhood. “Go on! I dare you!”

“I’ve a perfect legal right.... Oh well,” he said, “there are lots of other things I can do!”

“What do you mean?” exclaimed Mr. Bennett, alarmed.

“Never mind!” said Mr. Mortimer, taking up a book.

Mr. Bennett went back to bed in an uneasy frame of mind.

He brooded for half an hour, and, at the expiration of that period, rang for Webster and requested that Billie should be sent to him.

“I want you to go to London,” he said, when she appeared. “I must have legal advice. I want you to go and see Sir Mallaby Marlowe. Tell him that Henry Mortimer is annoying me in every possible way and sheltering himself behind his knowledge of the law, so that I can’t get at him. Ask Sir Mallaby to come down here. And, if he can’t come himself, tell him to send someone who can advise me. His son would do, if he knows anything about the business.”

“Oh, I’m sure he does!”

“Eh? How do you know?”

“Well, I mean, he looks as if he does!” said Billie hastily. “He looks so clever!”

“I didn’t notice it myself. Well, he’ll do, if Sir Mallaby’s too busy to come himself. I want you to go up to-night, so that you can see him first thing to-morrow morning. You can stop the night at the Savoy. I’ve sent Webster to look out a train.”

“There’s a splendid train in about an hour. I’ll take that.”

“It’s giving you a lot of trouble,” said Mr. Bennett, with belated consideration.

“Oh, no!” said Billie. “I’m only too glad to be able to do this for you, father dear!”

CHAPTER XI.
MR. BENNETT HAS A BAD NIGHT

The fragment of a lobster-shell which had entered Mr. Bennett’s tongue at twenty minutes to two in the afternoon was still in occupation at half-past eleven that night, when that persecuted gentleman blew out his candle and endeavoured to compose himself for a night’s slumber. Its unconscious host had not yet been made aware of its presence. He had a vague feeling that the tip of his tongue felt a little sore, but his mind was too engrossed with the task of keeping a look-out for the preliminary symptoms of mumps to have leisure to bestow much attention on this phenomenon. The discomfort it caused was not sufficient to keep him awake, and presently he turned on his side and began to fill the room with a rhythmical snoring.

How pleasant if one could leave him so—the good man taking his rest. Facts, however, are facts; and, having crept softly from Mr. Bennett’s side with the feeling that at last everything is all right with him, we are compelled to return three hours later to discover that everything is all wrong. It is so dark in the room that our eyes can at first discern nothing; then, as we grow accustomed to the blackness, we perceive him sitting bolt upright in bed, staring glassily before him, while with the first finger of his right hand he touches apprehensively the tip of his protruding tongue.

At this point Mr. Bennett lights his candle—one of the charms of Windles was the old-world simplicity of its lighting system—and we are enabled to get a better view of him.

Mr. Bennett sat in the candlelight with his tongue out and the first beads of a chilly perspiration bedewing his forehead. It was impossible for a man of his complexion to turn pale, but he had turned as pale as he could. Panic gripped him. A man whose favourite reading was medical encyclopædias, he needed no doctor to tell him that this was the end. Fate had dealt him a knockout blow; his number was up; and in a very short while now people would be speaking of him in the past tense and saying what a pity it all was.

A man in Mr. Bennett’s position experiences strange emotions, and many of them. In fact, there are scores of writers, who, reckless of the cost of white paper, would devote two chapters at this point to an analysis of the unfortunate man’s reflections and be glad of the chance. It is sufficient, however, merely to set on record that there was no stint. Whatever are the emotions of a man in such a position, Mr. Bennett had them. He had them all, one after another, some of them twice. He went right through the list from soup to nuts, until finally he reached remorse. And, having reached remorse, he allowed that to monopolise him.

In his early days, when he was building up his fortune, Mr. Bennett had frequently done things to his competitors in Wall Street which would not have been tolerated in the purer atmosphere of a lumber-camp, and, if he was going to be remorseful about anything, he might well have started by being remorseful about that. But it was on his most immediate past that his wistful mind lingered. He had quarrelled with his lifelong friend, Henry Mortimer. He had broken off his daughter’s engagement with a deserving young man. He had spoken harsh words to his faithful valet. The more Mr. Bennett examined his conduct, the deeper the iron entered into his soul.

Fortunately, none of his acts were irreparable. He could undo them. He could make amends. The small hours of the morning are not perhaps the most suitable time for making amends, but Mr. Bennett was too remorseful to think of that. Do It Now had ever been his motto, so he started by ringing the bell for Webster.

The same writers who would have screamed with joy at the chance of dilating on Mr. Bennett’s emotions would find a congenial task in describing the valet’s thought-processes when the bell roused him from a refreshing sleep at a few minutes after three a.m. However, by the time he entered his employer’s room he was his own calm self again.

“Good morning, sir,” he remarked equably. “I fear that it will be the matter of a few minutes to prepare your shaving water. I was not aware,” said Webster in manly apology for having been found wanting, “that you intended rising so early.”

“Webster,” said Mr. Bennett, “I’m a dying man!”

“Indeed, sir?”

“A dying man!” repeated Mr. Bennett.

“Very good, sir. Which of your suits would you wish me to lay out?”

Mr. Bennett had the feeling that something was going wrong with the scene.

“Webster,” he said, “this morning we had an unfortunate misunderstanding. I’m sorry.”

“Pray don’t mention it, sir.”

“I was to blame. Webster, you have been a faithful servant! You have stuck to me, Webster, through thick and thin!” said Mr. Bennett, who had half persuaded himself by this time that the other had been in the family for years instead of having been engaged at a registry-office a little less than a month ago. “Through thick and thin!” repeated Mr. Bennett.

“I have endeavoured to give satisfaction, sir.”

“I want to reward you, Webster.”

“Thank you very much, sir.”

“Take my trousers!”

Webster raised a deprecating hand.

“No, no, sir, thanking you exceedingly, I couldn’t really! You will need them, sir, and I assure you I have an ample supply.”

“Take my trousers,” repeated Mr. Bennett, “and feel in the right-hand pocket. There is some money there.”

“I’m sure I’m very much obliged, sir,” said Webster, beginning for the first time to feel that there was a bright side. He embarked upon the treasure-hunt. “The sum is sixteen pounds eleven shillings and threepence, sir.”

“Keep it!”

“Thank you very much, sir. Would there be anything further, sir?”

“Why, no,” said Mr. Bennett, feeling dissatisfied nevertheless. There had been a lack of the deepest kind of emotion in the interview, and his yearning soul resented it. “Why, no.”

“Good-night, sir.”

“Stop a moment. Which is Mr. Mortimer’s room?”

“Mr. Mortimer, senior, sir? It is at the further end of this passage, on the left facing the main staircase. Good-night, sir. I am extremely obliged. I will bring you your shaving-water when you ring.”

Mr. Bennett, left alone, mused for awhile, then, rising from his bed, put on his dressing-gown, took his candle, and went down the passage.

In a less softened mood, the first thing Mr. Bennett would have done on crossing the threshold of the door facing the staircase would have been to notice resentfully that Mr. Mortimer, with his usual astuteness, had collared the best bedroom in the house. The soft carpet gave out no sound as Mr. Bennett approached the wide and luxurious bed. The light of the candle fell on the back of a semi-bald head. Mr. Mortimer was sleeping with his face buried in the pillow. It cannot have been good for him, but that was what he was doing. From the portion of the pillow in which his face was buried strange gurgles proceeded, like the distant rumble of an approaching train on the Underground.

“Mortimer,” said Mr. Bennett.

The train stopped at a station to pick up passengers, and rumbled on again.

“Henry!” said Mr. Bennett, and nudged his sleeping friend in the small of the back.

“Leave it on the mat,” mumbled Mr. Mortimer, stirring slightly and uncovering one corner of his mouth.

Mr. Bennett began to forget his remorse in a sense of injury. He felt like a man with a good story to tell who can get nobody to listen to him. He nudged the other again, more vehemently this time. Mr. Mortimer made a noise like a gramophone when the needle slips, moved restlessly for a moment, then sat up, staring at the candle.

“Rabbits! Rabbits! Rabbits!” said Mr. Mortimer, and sank back again. He had begun to rumble before he touched the pillow.

“What do you mean, rabbits?” said Mr. Bennett sharply.

The not unreasonable query fell on deaf ears. Mr. Mortimer was already entering a tunnel.

“Much too pink!” he murmured as the pillow engulfed him.

What steps Mr. Bennett would have taken at this juncture, one cannot say. Probably he would have given the thing up in despair and retired, for it is weary work forgiving a sleeping man. But, as he bent above his slumbering friend, a drop of warm grease detached itself from the candle and fell into Mr. Mortimer’s exposed ear. The sleeper wakened.

“What? What? What?” he exclaimed, bounding up. “Who’s that?”

“It’s me—Rufus,” said Mr. Bennett. “Henry, I’m dying!”

“Drying?”

“Dying!”

Mr. Mortimer yawned cavernously. The mists of sleep were engulfing him again.

“Eight rabbits sitting on the lawn,” he muttered. “But too pink! Much too pink!”

And, as if considering he had borne his full share in the conversation and that no more could be expected of him, he snuggled down into the pillow again.

Mr. Bennett’s sense of injury became more acute. For a moment he was strongly tempted to try the restorative effects of candle-grease once more, but, just as he was on the point of succumbing, a shooting pain, as if somebody had run a red-hot needle into his tongue, reminded him of his situation. A dying man cannot pass his last hours dropping candle-grease into people’s ears. After all, it was perhaps a little late, and there would be plenty of time to become reconciled to Mr. Mortimer to-morrow. His task now was to seek out Bream and bring him the glad news of his renewed engagement.

He closed the door quietly, and proceeded upstairs. Bream’s bedroom, he knew, was the one just off the next landing. He turned the handle quietly, and went in. Having done this, he coughed.

“Drop that pistol!” said the voice of Jane Hubbard immediately, with quiet severity. “I’ve got you covered!”

Mr. Bennett had no pistol, but he dropped the candle. It would have been a nice point to say whether he was more perturbed by the discovery that he had got into the wrong room, and that room a lady’s, or by the fact that the lady whose wrong room it was had pointed what appeared to be a small cannon at him over the foot of the bed. It was not, as a matter of fact, a cannon but the elephant gun, which Miss Hubbard carried with her everywhere—a girl’s best friend.

“My dear young lady!” he gasped.

On the five occasions during recent years on which men had entered her tent with the object of murdering her, Jane Hubbard had shot without making inquiries. What strange feminine weakness it was that had caused her to utter a challenge on this occasion, she could not have said. Probably it was due to the enervating effects of civilisation. She was glad now that she had done so, for, being awake and in full possession of her faculties, she perceived that the intruder, whoever he was, had no evil intentions.

“Who is it?” she asked.

“I don’t know how to apologise!”

“That’s all right! Let’s have a light.” A match flared in the darkness. Miss Hubbard lit her candle, and gazed at Mr. Bennett with quiet curiosity. “Walking in your sleep?” she inquired.

“No, no!”

“Not so loud! You’ll wake Mr. Hignett. He’s next door. That’s why I took this room, in case he was restless in the night.”

“I want to see Bream Mortimer,” said Mr. Bennett.

“He’s in my old room, two doors along the passage. What do you want to see him about?”

“I wish to inform him that he may still consider himself engaged to my daughter.”

“Oh, well, I don’t suppose he’ll mind being woken up to hear that. But what’s the idea?”

“It’s a long story.”

“That’s all right. Let’s make a night of it.”

“I am a dying man. I awoke an hour ago with a feeling of acute pain....”

Miss Hubbard listened to the story of his symptoms with interest but without excitement.

“What nonsense!” she said at the conclusion.

“I assure you....”

“I’d like to bet it’s nothing serious at all.”

“My dear young lady,” said Mr. Bennett, piqued. “I have devoted a considerable part of my life to medical study....”

“I know. That’s the trouble. People oughtn’t to be allowed to read medical books.”

“Well, we need not discuss it,” said Mr. Bennett stiffly. He resented being dragged out of the valley of the shadow of death by the scruff of his neck like this. A dying man has his dignity to think of. “I will leave you now, and go and see young Mortimer.” He clung to a hope that Bream Mortimer at least would receive him fittingly. “Good-night!”

“But wait a moment!”

Mr. Bennett left the room, unheeding. He was glad to go. Jane Hubbard irritated him.

His expectation of getting more satisfactory results from Bream was fulfilled. It took some time to rouse that young man from a slumber almost as deep as his father’s; but, once roused, he showed a gratifying appreciation of the gravity of affairs. Joy at one half of his visitor’s news competed with consternation and sympathy at the other half. He thanked Mr. Bennett profusely, showed a fitting concern on learning of his terrible situation, and evinced a practical desire to help by offering him a bottle of liniment which he had found useful for gnat-stings. Declining this, though not ungratefully, Mr. Bennett withdrew and made his way down the passage again with something approaching a glow in his heart. The glow lasted till he had almost reached the landing, when it was dissipated by a soft but compelling voice from the doorway of Miss Hubbard’s room.

“Come here!” said Miss Hubbard. She had put on a blue bath-robe, and looked like a pugilist about to enter the ring.

“Well?” said Mr. Bennett coldly, coming nevertheless.

“I’m going to have a look at that tongue of yours,” said Jane firmly. “It’s my opinion that you’re making a lot of fuss over nothing.”

Mr. Bennett drew himself up as haughtily as a fat man in a dressing-gown can, but the effect was wasted on his companion, who had turned and gone into her room.

“Come in here,” she said.

Tougher men than Mr. Bennett had found it impossible to resist the note of calm command in that voice, but for all that he reproached himself for his weakness in obeying.

“Sit down!” said Jane Hubbard.

She indicated a low stool beside the dressing-table.

“Put your tongue out!” she said, as Mr. Bennett, still under her strange influence, lowered himself on to the stool. “Further out! That’s right. Keep it like that!”

“Ouch!” exclaimed Mr. Bennett, bounding up.

“Don’t make such a noise! You’ll wake Mr. Hignett. Sit down again!”

“I....”

“Sit down!”

Mr. Bennett sat down. Miss Hubbard extended once more the hand holding the needle which had caused his outcry. He winced away from it desperately.

“Baby!” said Miss Hubbard reprovingly. “Why, I once sewed eighteen stitches in a native bearer’s head, and he didn’t make half the fuss you’re making. Now, keep quite still.”

Mr. Bennett did—for perhaps the space of two seconds. Then he leaped from his seat once more. It was a tribute to the forceful personality of the fair surgeon, if one were needed, that the squeal he uttered was a subdued one. He was just about to speak—he had framed the opening words of a strong protest—when suddenly he became aware of something in his mouth, something small and hard. He removed it and examined it as it lay on his finger. It was a minute fragment of lobster-shell. And at the same time he became conscious of a marked improvement in the state of his tongue. The swelling had gone.

“I told you so!” said Jane Hubbard placidly. “What is it?”

“It—it appears to be a piece of....”

“Lobster-shell. And we had lobster for lunch. Good-night.”

Half-way down the stairs, it suddenly occurred to Mr. Bennett that he wanted to sing. He wanted to sing very loud, and for quite some time. He restrained the impulse, and returned to bed. But relief such as his was too strong to keep bottled up. He wanted to tell someone all about it. He needed a confidant.

Webster, the valet, awakened once again by the ringing of his bell, sighed resignedly and made his way downstairs.

“Did you ring, sir?”

“Webster,” cried Mr. Bennett, “it’s all right! I’m not dying after all! I’m not dying after all, Webster!”

“Very good, sir,” said Webster. “Will there be anything further?”

CHAPTER XII.
THE LURID PAST OF JNO. PETERS

“That’s right!” said Sir Mallaby Marlowe. “Work while you’re young, Sam, work while you’re young.” He regarded his son’s bent head with affectionate approval. “What’s the book to-day?”

“Widgery on Nisi Prius Evidence,” said Sam, without looking up.

“Capital!” said Sir Mallaby. “Highly improving and as interesting as a novel—some novels. There’s a splendid bit on, I think, page two hundred and fifty-four where the hero finds out all about Copyhold and Customary Estates. It’s a wonderfully powerful situation. It appears—but I won’t spoil it for you. Mind you don’t skip to see how it all comes out in the end!” Sir Mallaby suspended conversation while he addressed an imaginary ball with the mashie which he had taken out of his golf-bag. For this was the day when he went down to Walton Heath for his weekly foursome with three old friends. His tubby form was clad in tweed of a violent nature, with knickerbockers and stockings. “Sam!”

“Well?”

“Sam, a man at the club showed me a new grip the other day. Instead of overlapping the little finger of the right hand.... Oh, by the way, Sam.”

“Yes?”

“I should lock up the office to-day if I were you, or anxious clients will be coming in and asking for advice, and you’ll find yourself in difficulties. I shall be gone, and Peters is away on his holiday. You’d better lock the outer door.”

“All right,” said Sam absently. He was finding Widgery stiff reading. He had just got to the bit about Raptu Haeredis, which—as of course you know, is a writ for taking away an heir holding in socage.

Sir Mallaby looked at his watch.

“Well, I’ll have to be going. See you later, Sam.”

“Good-bye.”

Sir Mallaby went out, and Sam, placing both elbows on the desk and twining his fingers in his hair, returned with a frown of consternation to his grappling with Widgery. For perhaps ten minutes the struggle was an even one, then gradually Widgery got the upper hand. Sam’s mind, numbed by constant batterings against the stony ramparts of legal phraseology, weakened, faltered, and dropped away; and a moment later his thoughts, as so often happened when he was alone, darted off and began to circle round the image of Billie Bennett.

Since they had last met, at Sir Mallaby’s dinner-table, Sam had told himself perhaps a hundred times that he cared nothing about Billie, that she had gone out of his life and was dead to him; but unfortunately he did not believe it. A man takes a deal of convincing on a point like this, and Sam had never succeeded in convincing himself for more than two minutes at a time. It was useless to pretend that he did not still love Billie more than ever, because he knew he did; and now, as the truth swept over him for the hundred and first time, he groaned hollowly and gave himself up to the grey despair which is the almost inseparable companion of young men in his position.

So engrossed was he in his meditation that he did not hear the light footstep in the outer office, and it was only when it was followed by a tap on the door of the inner office that he awoke with a start to the fact that clients were in his midst. He wished that he had taken his father’s advice and locked up the office. Probably this was some frightful bore who wanted to make his infernal will or something, and Sam had neither the ability nor the inclination to assist him.

Was it too late to escape? Perhaps if he did not answer the knock, the blighter might think there was nobody at home. But suppose he opened the door and peeped in? A spasm of Napoleonic strategy seized Sam. He dropped silently to the floor and concealed himself under the desk. Napoleon was always doing that sort of thing.

There was another tap. Then, as he had anticipated, the door opened. Sam, crouched like a hare in its form, held his breath. It seemed to him that he was going to bring this delicate operation off with success. He felt he had acted just as Napoleon would have done in a similar crisis. And so, no doubt, he had to a certain extent; only Napoleon would have seen to it that his boots and about eighteen inches of trousered legs were not sticking out, plainly visible to all who entered.

“Good morning,” said a voice.

Sam thrilled from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. It was the voice which had been ringing in his ears through all his waking hours.

“Are you busy, Mr. Marlowe?” asked Billie, addressing the boots.

Sam wriggled out from under the desk like a disconcerted tortoise.

“Dropped my pen,” he mumbled, as he rose to the surface.

He pulled himself together with an effort that was like a physical exercise. He stared at Billie dumbly. Then, recovering speech, he invited her to sit down, and seated himself at the desk.

“Dropped my pen!” he gurgled again.

“Yes?” said Billie.

“Fountain-pen,” babbled Sam, “with a broad nib.”

“Yes?”

“A broad gold nib,” went on Sam, with the painful exactitude which comes only from embarrassment or the early stages of intoxication.

“Really?” said Billie, and Sam blinked and told himself resolutely that this would not do. He was not appearing to advantage. It suddenly occurred to him that his hair was standing on end as the result of his struggle with Widgery. He smoothed it down hastily, and felt a trifle more composed. The old fighting spirit of the Marlowes now began to assert itself to some extent. He must make an effort to appear as little of a fool as possible in this girl’s eyes. And what eyes they were! Golly! Like stars! Like two bright planets in....

However, that was neither here nor there. He pulled down his waistcoat and became cold and business-like,—the dry young lawyer.

“Er—how do you do, Miss Bennett?” he said with a question in his voice, raising his eyebrows in a professional way. He modelled this performance on that of lawyers he had seen on the stage, and wished he had some snuff to take or something to tap against his front teeth. “Miss Bennett, I believe?”

The effect of the question upon Billie was disastrous. She had come to this office with beating heart, prepared to end all misunderstandings, to sob on her soul-mate’s shoulder and generally make everything up; but at this inane exhibition the fighting spirit of the Bennetts—which was fully as militant as that of the Marlowes—became roused. She told herself that she had been mistaken in supposing that she still loved this man. She was a proud girl and refused to admit herself capable of loving any man who looked at her as if she was something that the cat had brought in. She drew herself up stiffly.

“Yes,” she replied. “How clever of you to remember me.”

“I have a good memory.”

“How nice! So have I!”

There was a pause, during which Billie allowed her gaze to travel casually about the room. Sam occupied the intermission by staring furtively at her profile. He was by now in a thoroughly overwrought condition, and the thumping of his heart sounded to him as if workmen were mending the street outside. How beautiful she looked, with that red hair peeping out beneath her hat and.... However!

“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked in the sort of voice Widgery might have used. Sam always pictured Widgery as a small man with bushy eyebrows, a thin face, and a voice like a rusty file.

“Well, I really wanted to see Sir Mallaby.”

“My father has been called away on important business to Walton Heath. Cannot I act as his substitute?”

“Do you know anything about the law?”

“Do I know anything about the law!” echoed Sam, amazed. “Do I know——! Why, I was reading my Widgery on Nisi Prius Evidence when you came in.”

“Oh, were you?” said Billie, interested. “Do you always read on the floor?”

“I told you I dropped my pen,” said Sam coldly.

“And of course you couldn’t read without that! Well, as a matter of fact, this has nothing to do with Nisi—what you said.”

“I have not specialised exclusively on Nisi Prius Evidence. I know the law in all its branches.”

“Then what would you do if a man insisted on playing the orchestrion when you wanted to get to sleep?”

“The orchestrion?”

“Yes.”

“The orchestrion, eh? Ah! H’m!” said Sam.

“You still haven’t made it quite clear,” said Billie.

“I was thinking.”

“Oh, if you want to think!”

“Tell me the facts,” said Sam.

“Well, Mr. Mortimer and my father have taken a house together in the country....”

“I knew that.”

“What a memory you have!” said Billie kindly. “Well, for some reason or other they have quarrelled, and now Mr. Mortimer is doing everything he can to make father uncomfortable. Yesterday afternoon father wanted to sleep, and Mr. Mortimer started this orchestrion just to annoy him.”

“I think—I’m not quite sure—I think that’s a tort,” said Sam.

“A what?”

“Either a tort or a malfeasance.”

“Why, you do know something about it after all!” cried Billie, startled into a sort of friendliness in spite of herself. And at the words and the sight of her quick smile Sam’s professional composure reeled on its foundations. He had half risen, with the purpose of springing up and babbling of the passion that consumed him, when the chill reflection came to him that this girl had once said that she considered him ridiculous. If he let himself go, would she not continue to think him ridiculous? He sagged back into his seat; and at that moment there came another tap on the door which, opening, revealed the sinister face of the holiday-making Peters.

“Good morning, Mr. Samuel,” said Jno. Peters. “Good morning, Miss Milliken. Oh!”

He vanished as abruptly as he had appeared. He perceived that what he had taken at first glance for the stenographer was a client, and that the junior partner was engaged on a business conference. He left behind him a momentary silence.

“What a horrible-looking man!” said Billie, breaking it with a little gasp. Jno. Peters often affected the opposite sex like that at first sight.

“I beg your pardon?” said Sam absently.

“What a dreadful-looking man! He quite frightened me!”

For some moments Sam sat without speaking. If this had not been one of his Napoleonic mornings, no doubt the sudden arrival of his old friend, Mr. Peters, whom he had imagined at his home in Putney packing for his trip to America, would have suggested nothing to him. As it was, it suggested a great deal. He had had a brain-wave, and for fully a minute he sat tingling under its impact. He was not a young man who often had brain-waves, and, when they came, they made him rather dizzy.

“Who is he?” asked Billie. “He seemed to know you? And who,” she demanded after a slight pause, “is Miss Milliken?”

Sam drew a deep breath.

“It’s rather a sad story,” he said. “His name is John Peters. He used to be clerk here.”

“But he isn’t any longer?”

“No.” Sam shook his head. “We had to get rid of him.”

“I don’t wonder. A man looking like that....”

“It wasn’t that so much,” said Sam. “The thing that annoyed father was that he tried to shoot Miss Milliken.”

Billie uttered a cry of horror.

“He tried to shoot Miss Milliken!”

“He did shoot her—the third time,” said Sam, warming to his work. “Only in the arm, fortunately,” he added. “But my father is rather a stern disciplinarian and he had to go. I mean, we couldn’t keep him after that.”

“Good gracious!”

“She used to be my father’s stenographer, and she was thrown a good deal with Peters. It was quite natural that he should fall in love with her. She was a beautiful girl, with rather your own shade of hair. Peters is a man of volcanic passions, and, when, after she had given him to understand that his love was returned, she informed him one day that she was engaged to a fellow at Ealing West, he went right off his onion—I mean, he became completely distraught. I must say that he concealed it very effectively at first. We had no inkling of his condition till he came in with the pistol. And, after that ... well, as I say, we had to dismiss him. A great pity, for he was a good clerk. Still, it wouldn’t do. It wasn’t only that he tried to shoot Miss Milliken. The thing became an obsession with him, and we found that he had a fixed idea that every red-haired woman who came into the office was the girl who had deceived him. You can see how awkward that made it. Red hair is so fashionable now-a-days.”

“My hair is red!” whispered Billie pallidly.

“Yes, I noticed it myself. I told you it was much the same shade as Miss Milliken’s. It’s rather fortunate that I happened to be here with you when he came.”

“But he may be lurking out there still!”

“I expect he is,” said Sam carelessly. “Yes, I suppose he is. Would you like me to go and send him away? All right.”

“But—but is it safe?”

Sam uttered a light laugh.

“I don’t mind taking a risk or two for your sake,” he said, and sauntered from the room, closing the door behind him. Billie followed him with worshipping eyes.

Jno. Peters rose politely from the chair in which he had seated himself for the more comfortable perusal of the copy of Home Whispers which he had brought with him to refresh his mind in the event of the firm being too busy to see him immediately. He was particularly interested in the series of chats with Young Mothers.

“Hullo, Peters,” said Sam. “Want anything?”

“Very sorry to have disturbed you, Mr. Samuel. I just looked in to say good-bye. I sail on Saturday, and my time will be pretty fully taken up all the week. I have to go down to the country to get some final instructions from the client whose important papers I am taking over. I’m sorry to have missed your father, Mr. Samuel.”

“Yes, this is his golf day. I’ll tell him you looked in.”

“Is there anything I can do before I go?”

“Do?”

“Well—”—Jno. Peters coughed tactfully—“I see that you are engaged with a client, Mr. Samuel, and I was wondering if any little point of law had arisen with which you did not feel yourself quite capable of coping, in which case I might perhaps be of assistance.”

“Oh, that lady,” said Sam. “That was Miss Milliken’s sister.”

“Indeed? I didn’t know Miss Milliken had a sister.”

“No?” said Sam.

“She is not very like her in appearance.”

“No. This one is the beauty of the family, I believe. A very bright, intelligent girl. I was telling her about your revolver just before you came in, and she was most interested. It’s a pity you haven’t got it with you now, to show to her.”

“Oh, but I have it! I have, Mr. Samuel!” said Peters, opening a small handbag and taking out a hymn-book, half a pound of mixed chocolates, a tongue sandwich, and the pistol, in the order named. “I was on my way to the Rupert Street range for a little practice. I should be glad to show it to her.”

“Well, wait here a minute or two,” said Sam. “I’ll have finished talking business in a moment.”

He returned to the inner office.

“Well?” cried Billie.

“Eh? Oh, he’s gone,” said Sam. “I persuaded him to go away. He was a little excited, poor fellow. And now let us return to what we were talking about. You say....” He broke off with an exclamation, and glanced at his watch. “Good Heavens! I had no idea of the time. I promised to run up and see a man in one of the offices in the next court. He wants to consult me on some difficulty which has arisen with one of his clients. Rightly or wrongly he values my advice. Can you spare me for a short while? I shan’t be more than ten minutes.”

“Certainly.”

“Here is something you may care to look at while I’m gone. I don’t know if you have read it? Widgery on Nisi Prius Evidence. Most interesting.”

He went out. Jno. Peters looked up from his Home Whispers.

“You can go in now,” said Sam.

“Certainly, Mr. Samuel, certainly.”

Sam took up the copy of Home Whispers and sat down with his feet on the desk. He turned to the serial story and began to read the synopsis.

In the inner room Billie, who had rejected the mental refreshment offered by Widgery and was engaged on making a tour of the office, looking at the portraits of whiskered men whom she took correctly to be the Thorpes, Prescotts, Winslows, and Applebys mentioned on the contents-bill outside, was surprised to hear the door open at her back. She had not expected Sam to return so instantaneously.

Nor had he done so. It was not Sam who entered. It was a man of repellent aspect whom she recognised instantly, for Jno. Peters was one of those men who, once seen, are not easily forgotten. He was smiling a cruel, cunning smile—at least, she thought he was; Mr. Peters himself was under the impression that his face was wreathed in a benevolent simper; and in his hand he bore the largest pistol ever seen outside a motion-picture studio.

“How do you do, Miss Milliken?” he said.

CHAPTER XIII.
SHOCKS ALL ROUND

Billie had been standing near the wall, inspecting a portrait of the late Mr. Josiah Appleby, of which the kindest thing one can say is that one hopes it did not do him justice. She now shrank back against this wall, as if she were trying to get through it. The edge of the portrait’s frame tilted her hat out of the straight, but in this supreme moment she did not even notice it.

“Er—how do you do?” she said.

If she had not been an exceedingly pretty girl, one would have said that she spoke squeakily. The fighting spirit of the Bennetts, though it was considerable fighting spirit, had not risen to this emergency. It had ebbed out of her, leaving in its place a cold panic. She had seen this sort of thing in the movies—there was one series of pictures, “The Dangers of Diana,” where something of the kind had happened to the heroine in every reel—but she had not anticipated that it would ever happen to her; and consequently she had not thought out any plan for coping with such a situation. A grave error. In this world one should be prepared for everything, or where is one?

“I’ve brought the revolver,” said Mr. Peters.

“So—so I see!” said Billie.

Mr. Peters nursed the weapon affectionately in his hand. He was rather a shy man with women as a rule, but what Sam had told him about her being interested in his revolver had made his heart warm to this girl.

“I was just on my way to have a little practice at the range,” he said. “Then I thought I might as well look in here.”

“I suppose—I suppose you’re a good shot?” quavered Billie.

“I seldom miss,” said Jno. Peters.

Billie shuddered. Then, reflecting that the longer she engaged this maniac in conversation, the more hope there was of Sam coming back in time to save her, she essayed further small-talk.

“It’s—it’s very ugly!”

“Oh, no!” said Mr. Peters, hurt.

Billie perceived that she had said the wrong thing.

“Very deadly-looking, I meant,” she corrected herself hastily.

“It may have deadly work to do, Miss Milliken,” said Mr. Peters.

Conversation languished again. Billie had no further remarks to make of immediate interest, and Mr. Peters was struggling with a return of the deplorable shyness which so handicapped him in his dealings with the other sex. After a few moments, he pulled himself together again, and, as his first act was to replace the pistol in the pocket of his coat, Billie became conscious of a faint stirring of relief.

“The great thing,” said Jno. Peters, “is to learn to draw quickly. Like this!” he added producing the revolver with something of the smoothness and rapidity with which Billie, in happier moments, had seen Bream Mortimer take a bowl of gold fish out of a tall hat. “Everything depends on getting the first shot! The first shot, Miss Milliken, is vital.”

Suddenly Billie had an inspiration. It was hopeless, she knew, to try to convince this poor demented creature, obsessed with his idée fixe, that she was not Miss Milliken. Denial would be a waste of time, and might even infuriate him into precipitating the tragedy. It was imperative that she should humour him. And, while she was humouring him, it suddenly occurred to her, why not do it thoroughly?

“Mr. Peters,” she cried, “you are quite mistaken!”

“I beg your pardon,” said Jno. Peters, with not a little asperity. “Nothing of the kind!”

“You are!”

“I assure you I am not. Quickness in the draw is essential....”

“You have been misinformed.”

“Well, I had it direct from the man at the Rupert Street range,” said Mr. Peters stiffly. “And if you have ever seen a picture called ‘Two-Gun Thomas’....”

“Mr. Peters,” cried Billie desperately. He was making her head swim with his meaningless ravings. “Mr. Peters, hear me! I am not married to a man at Ealing West!”

Mr. Peters betrayed no excitement at the information. This girl seemed for some reason to consider her situation an extraordinary one, but many women, he was aware, were in a similar position. In fact, he could not at the moment think of any of his feminine acquaintances who were married to men at Ealing West.

“Indeed?” he said politely.

“Won’t you believe me?” exclaimed Billie wildly.

“Why, certainly, certainly,” said Jno. Peters.

“Thank God!” said Billie. “I’m not even engaged! It’s all been a terrible mistake!”

When two people in a small room are speaking on two distinct and different subjects and neither knows what on earth the other is driving at, there is bound to be a certain amount of mental confusion; but at this point Jno. Peters, though still not wholly equal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation, began to see a faint shimmer of light behind the clouds. In a nebulous kind of way he began to understand that the girl had come to consult the firm about a breach-of-promise action. Some unknown man at Ealing West had been trifling with her heart—hardened lawyer’s clerk as he was, that poignant cry “I’m not even engaged!” had touched Mr. Peters—and she wished to start proceedings. Mr. Peters felt almost in his depth again. He put the revolver in his pocket, and drew out a note-book.

“I should be glad to hear the facts,” he said with professional courtesy. “In the absence of the guv’nor....”

“I have told you the facts!”

“This man at Ealing West,” said Mr. Peters, moistening the point of his pencil, “he wrote you letters proposing marriage?”

“No, no, no!”

“At any rate,” said Mr. Peters, disappointed but hopeful, “he made love to you before witnesses?”

“Never! Never! There is no man at Ealing West! There never was a man at Ealing West!”

It was at this point that Jno. Peters began for the first time to entertain serious doubts of the girl’s mental balance. The most elementary acquaintance with the latest census told him that there were any number of men at Ealing West. The place was full of them. Would a sane woman have made an assertion to the contrary? He thought not, and he was glad that he had the revolver with him. She had done nothing as yet actively violent, but it was nice to feel prepared. He took it out and laid it nonchalantly in his lap.

The sight of the weapon acted on Billie electrically. She flung out her hands, in a gesture of passionate appeal, and played her last card.

“I love you!” she cried. She wished she could have remembered his first name. It would have rounded off the sentence neatly. In such a moment she could hardly call him “Mr. Peters.” “You are the only man I love.”

“My gracious goodness!” ejaculated Mr. Peters, and nearly fell over backwards. To a naturally shy man this sudden and wholly unexpected declaration was disconcerting; and the clerk was, moreover, engaged. He blushed violently. And yet, even in that moment of consternation, he could not check a certain thrill. No man thinks he is as plain as he really is, but Jno. Peters had always come fairly near to a correct estimate of his charms, and it had always seemed to him, that, in inducing his fiancée to accept him, he had gone some. He now began to wonder if he were not really rather a devil of a chap after all. There must be precious few men going about capable of inspiring devotion like this on the strength of about six and a half minutes casual conversation.

Calmer thoughts succeeded this little flicker of complacency. The girl was mad. That was the fact of the matter. He got up and began to edge towards the door. Mr. Samuel would be returning shortly, and he ought to be warned.

“So that’s all right, isn’t it!” said Billie.

“Oh, quite, quite!” said Mr. Peters. “Er—Thank you very much!”

“I thought you would be pleased,” said Billie, relieved but puzzled. For a man of volcanic passions, as Sam Marlowe had described him, he seemed to be taking the thing very calmly. She had anticipated a strenuous scene.

“Oh, it’s a great compliment!” Mr. Peters assured her.

At this point Sam came in, interrupting the conversation at a moment when it had reached a somewhat difficult stage. He had finished the instalment of the serial story in Home Whispers, and, looking at his watch, he fancied that he had allowed sufficient time to elapse for events to have matured along the lines which his imagination had indicated.

The atmosphere of the room seemed to him, as he entered, a little strained. Billie looked pale and agitated. Mr. Peters looked rather agitated, too. Sam caught Billie’s eye. It had an unspoken appeal in it. He gave an imperceptible nod, a reassuring nod, the nod of a man who understood all and was prepared to handle the situation.

“Come, Peters,” he said in a deep, firm, quiet voice, laying a hand on the clerk’s arm. “It’s time that you went.”

“Yes, indeed, Mr. Samuel! Yes, yes, indeed!”

“I’ll see you out,” said Sam soothingly, and led him through the outer office and on to the landing outside. “Well, good luck, Peters,” he said, as they stood at the head of the stairs. “I hope you have a pleasant trip. Why, what’s the matter? You seem upset.”

“That girl, Mr. Samuel! I really think—really, she cannot be quite right in her head.”

“Nonsense, nonsense!” said Sam firmly. “She’s all right! Well, good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Mr. Samuel.”

“When did you say you were sailing?”

“Next Saturday, Mr. Samuel. But I fear I shall have no opportunity of seeing you again before then. I have packing to do and I have to see this gentleman down in the country....”

“All right. Then we’ll say good-bye now. Good-bye, Peters. Mind you have a good time in America. I’ll tell my father you called.”

Sam watched him out of sight down the stairs, then turned and made his way back to the inner office. Billie was sitting limply on the chair which Jno. Peters had occupied. She sprang to her feet.

“Has he really gone?”

“Yes. He’s gone this time.”

“Was he—was he violent?”

“A little,” said Sam. “A little. But I calmed him down.” He looked at her gravely. “Thank God I was in time!”

“Oh, you are the bravest man in the world!” cried Billie, and, burying her face in her hands, burst into tears.

“There, there!” said Sam. “There, there! Come, come! It’s all right now! There, there, there!”

He knelt down beside her. He slipped one arm round her waist. He patted her hands.

“There, there, there!” he said.

I have tried to draw Samuel Marlowe so that he will live on the printed page. I have endeavoured to delineate his character so that it will be as an open book. And, if I have succeeded in my task, the reader will by now have become aware that he was a young man with the gall of an Army mule. His conscience, if he had ever had one, had become atrophied through long disuse. He had given this sensitive girl the worst fright she had had since a mouse had got into her bedroom at school. He had caused Jno. Peters to totter off to the Rupert Street range making low, bleating noises. And did he care? No! All he cared about was the fact that he had erased for ever from Billie’s mind that undignified picture of himself as he had appeared on the boat, and substituted another which showed him brave, resourceful, gallant. All he cared about was the fact that Billie, so cold ten minutes before, had just allowed him to kiss her for the forty-second time. If you had asked him, he would have said that he had acted for the best, and that out of evil cometh good, or some sickening thing like that. That was the sort of man Samuel Marlowe was.

His face was very close to Billie’s, who had cheered up wonderfully by this time, and he was whispering his degraded words of endearment into her ear, when there was a sort of explosion in the doorway.

“Great Godfrey!” exclaimed Mr. Rufus Bennett, gazing on the scene from this point of vantage and mopping with a large handkerchief a scarlet face, which, as the result of climbing three flights of stairs, had become slightly soluble. “Great Heavens above! Number four!”

CHAPTER XIV.
STRONG REMARKS BY A FATHER

Mr. Bennett advanced shakily into the room, and supported himself with one hand on the desk, while with the other he still plied the handkerchief on his over-heated face. Much had occurred to disturb him this morning. On top of a broken night he had had an affecting reconciliation scene with Mr. Mortimer, at the conclusion of which he had decided to take the first train to London in the hope of intercepting Billie before she reached Sir Mallaby’s office on her mission of war. The local train-service kept such indecently early hours that he had been compelled to bolt his breakfast, and, in the absence of Billie, the only member of the household who knew how to drive the car, to walk to the station, a distance of nearly two miles, the last hundred yards of which he had covered at a rapid gallop, under the erroneous impression that an express whose smoke he had seen in the distance was the train he had come to catch. Arrived on the platform, he had had a trying wait, followed by a slow journey to Waterloo. The cab which he had taken at Waterloo had kept him in a lively state of apprehension all the way to the Savoy, owing to an apparent desire to climb over motor-omnibuses when it could not get round them. At the Savoy he found that Billie had already left, which had involved another voyage through the London traffic under the auspices of a driver who appeared to be either blind or desirous of committing suicide. He had three flights of stairs to negotiate. And, finally, arriving at the office, he had found his daughter in the circumstances already described.

“Why, father!” said Billie. “I didn’t expect you.”

As an explanation of her behaviour this might, no doubt, have been considered sufficient, but as an excuse for it Mr. Bennett thought it inadequate and would have said so, had he had enough breath. This physical limitation caused him to remain speechless and to do the best he could in the way of stern fatherly reproof by puffing like a seal after a long dive in search of fish.

Having done this, he became aware that Sam Marlowe was moving towards him with outstretched hand. It took a lot to disconcert Sam, and he was the calmest person present. He gave evidence of this in a neat speech. He did not in so many words congratulate Mr. Bennett on the piece of luck which had befallen him, but he tried to make him understand by his manner that he was distinctly to be envied as the prospective father-in-law of such a one as himself.

“I am delighted to see you, Mr. Bennett,” said Sam. “You could not have come at a more fortunate moment. You see for yourself how things are. There is no need for a long explanation. You came to find a daughter, Mr. Bennett, and you have found a son!”

And he would like to see the man, thought Sam, who could have put it more cleverly and pleasantly and tactfully than that.

“What are you talking about?” said Mr. Bennett, recovering breath. “I haven’t got a son.”

“I will be a son to you! I will be the prop of your declining years....”

“What the devil do you mean, my declining years?” demanded Mr. Bennett with asperity.

“He means when they do decline, father dear,” said Billie.

“Of course, of course,” said Sam. “When they do decline. Not till then, of course. I wouldn’t dream of it. But, once they do decline, count on me! And I should like to say for my part,” he went on handsomely, “what an honour I think it, to become the son-in-law of a man like Mr. Bennett. Bennett of New York!” he added spaciously, not so much because he knew what he meant, for he would have been the first to admit that he did not, but because it sounded well.

“Oh!” said Mr. Bennett. “You do, do you?”

Mr. Bennett sat down. He put away his handkerchief, which had certainly earned a rest. Then he fastened a baleful stare upon his newly-discovered son. It was not the sort of look a proud and happy father-in-law-to-be ought to have directed at a prospective relative. It was not, as a matter of fact, the sort of look which anyone ought to have directed at anybody, except possibly an exceptionally prudish judge at a criminal in the dock, convicted of a more than usually atrocious murder. Billie, not being in the actual line of fire, only caught the tail end of it, but it was enough to create a misgiving.

“Oh, father! You aren’t angry!”

“Angry!”

“You can’t be angry!”

“Why can’t I be angry?” declared Mr. Bennett, with that sense of injury which comes to self-willed men when their whims are thwarted. “Why the devil shouldn’t I be angry? I am angry! I come here and find you like—like this, and you seem to expect me to throw my hat in the air and give three rousing cheers! Of course I’m angry! You are engaged to be married to an excellent young man of the highest character, one of the finest young men I have ever known....”

“Oh, well!” said Sam, straightening his tie modestly. “It’s awfully good of you....”

“But that’s all over, father.”

“What’s all over?”

“You told me yourself that you had broken off my engagement to Bream.”

“Well—er—yes, I did,” said Mr. Bennett, a little taken aback. “That is—to a certain extent—so. But,” he added, with restored firmness, “it’s on again!”

“But I don’t want to marry Bream!”

“Naturally!” said Sam. “Naturally! Quite out of the question. In a few days we’ll all be roaring with laughter at the very idea.”

“It doesn’t matter what you want! A girl who gets engaged to a dozen men in three weeks....”

“It wasn’t a dozen!”

“Well, four—five—six—you can’t expect me not to lose count.... I say a girl who does that does not know what she wants, and older and more prudent heads must decide for her. You are going to marry Bream Mortimer!”

“All wrong! All wrong!” said Sam, with a reproving shake of the head. “All wrong! She’s going to marry me.”

Mr. Bennett scorched him with a look compared with which his earlier effort had been a loving glance.

“Wilhelmina,” he said, “go into the outer office.”

“But, father, Sam saved my life!”

“Go into the outer office and wait for me there.”

“There was a lunatic in here....”

“There will be another if you don’t go.”

“He had a pistol.”

“Go into the outer office!”

“I shall always love you, Sam!” said Billie, pausing mutinously at the door.

“I shall always love you!” said Sam cordially.

“Nobody can keep us apart!”

“They’re wasting their time, trying.”

“You’re the most wonderful man in the world!”

“There never was another girl like you!”

“Get out!” bellowed Mr. Bennett, on whose equanimity this love-scene, which I think beautiful, was jarring profoundly. “Now, sir!” he said to Sam, as the door closed.

“Yes, let’s talk it over calmly,” said Sam.

“I will not talk it over calmly!”

“Oh, come! You can do it if you try. In the first place, whatever put this silly idea into your head about that sweet girl marrying Bream Mortimer?”

“Bream Mortimer is the son of Henry Mortimer.”

“I know,” said Sam. “And, while it is no doubt unfair to hold that against him, it’s a point you can’t afford to ignore. Henry Mortimer! You and I have Henry Mortimer’s number. We know what Henry Mortimer is like! A man who spends his time thinking up ways of annoying you. You can’t seriously want to have the Mortimer family linked to you by marriage.”

“Henry Mortimer is my oldest friend.”

“That makes it all the worse. Fancy a man who calls himself your friend treating you like that!”

“The misunderstanding to which you allude has been completely smoothed over. My relations with Mr. Mortimer are thoroughly cordial.”

“Well, have it your own way. Personally, I wouldn’t trust a man like that. And, as for letting my daughter marry his son...!”

“I have decided once and for all....”

“If you’ll take my advice, you will break the thing off.”

“I will not take your advice.”

“I wouldn’t expect to charge you for it,” explained Sam reassuringly. “I give it you as a friend, not as a lawyer. Six-and-eightpence to others, free to you.”

“Will you understand that my daughter is going to marry Bream Mortimer? What are you giggling about?”

“It sounds so silly. The idea of anyone marrying Bream Mortimer, I mean.”

“Let me tell you he is a thoroughly estimable young man.”

“And there you put the whole thing in a nutshell. Your daughter is a girl of spirit. She would hate to be tied for life to an estimable young man.”

“She will do as I tell her.”

Sam regarded him sternly.

“Have you no regard for her happiness?”

“I am the best judge of what is best for her.”

“If you ask me,” said Sam candidly, “I think you’re a rotten judge.”

“I did not come here to be insulted!”

“I like that! You have been insulting me ever since you arrived. What right have you to say that I’m not fit to marry your daughter?”

“I did not say that.”

“You’ve implied it. And you’ve been looking at me as if I were a leper or something the Pure Food Committee had condemned. Why? That’s what I ask you,” said Sam, warming up. This he fancied, was the way Widgery would have tackled a troublesome client. “Why? Answer me that!”

“I....”

Sam rapped sharply on the desk.

“Be careful, sir. Be very careful!” He knew that this was what lawyers always said. Of course, there is a difference in position between a miscreant whom you suspect of an attempt at perjury and the father of the girl you love, whose consent to the match you wish to obtain, but Sam was in no mood for these nice distinctions. He only knew that lawyers told people to be very careful, so he told Mr. Bennett to be very careful.

“What do you mean, be very careful?” said Mr. Bennett.

“I’m dashed if I know,” said Sam frankly. The question struck him as a mean attack. He wondered how Widgery would have met it. Probably by smiling quietly and polishing his spectacles. Sam had no spectacles. He endeavoured, however, to smile quietly.

“Don’t laugh at me!” roared Mr. Bennett.

“I’m not laughing at you.”

“You are!”

“I’m not! I’m smiling quietly.”

“Well, don’t then!” said Mr. Bennett. He glowered at his young companion. “I don’t know why I’m wasting my time, talking to you. The position is clear to the meanest intelligence. I have no objection to you personally....”

“Come, this is better!” said Sam.

“I don’t know you well enough to have any objection to you or any opinion of you at all. This is only the second time I have ever met you in my life.”

“Mark you,” said Sam, “I think I am one of those fellows who grow on people....”

“As far as I am concerned, you simply do not exist. You may be the noblest character in London or you may be wanted by the police. I don’t know. And I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me. You mean nothing in my life. I don’t know you.”

“You must persevere,” said Sam. “You must buckle to and get to know me. Don’t give the thing up in this half-hearted way. Everything has to have a beginning. Stick to it, and in a week or two you will find yourself knowing me quite well.”

“I don’t want to know you!”

“You say that now, but wait!”

“And thank goodness I have not got to!” exploded Mr. Bennett, ceasing to be calm and reasonable with a suddenness which affected Sam much as though half a pound of gunpowder had been touched off under his chair. “For the little I have seen of you has been quite enough! Kindly understand that my daughter is engaged to be married to another man, and that I do not wish to see or hear anything of you again! I shall try to forget your very existence, and I shall see to it that Wilhelmina does the same! You’re an impudent scoundrel, sir! An impudent scoundrel! I don’t like you! I don’t wish to see you again! If you were the last man in the world I wouldn’t allow my daughter to marry you! If that is quite clear, I will wish you good morning!”

Mr. Bennett thundered out of the room, and Sam, temporarily stunned by the outburst, remained where he was, gaping. A few minutes later life began to return to his palsied limbs. It occurred to him that Mr. Bennett had forgotten to kiss him good-bye, and he went into the outer office to tell him so. But the outer office was empty. Sam stood for a moment in thought, then he returned to the inner office, and, picking up a time-table, began to look out trains to the village of Windlehurst in Hampshire, the nearest station to his aunt Adeline’s charming old-world house, Windles.

CHAPTER XV.
DRAMA AT A COUNTRY HOUSE

As I read over the last few chapters of this narrative, I see that I have been giving the reader rather too jumpy a time. To almost a painful degree I have excited his pity and terror; and, though that is what Aristotle says one ought to do, I feel that a little respite would not be out of order. The reader can stand having his emotions tortured up to a certain point; after that he wants to take it easy for a bit. It is with pleasure, therefore, that I turn now to depict a quiet, peaceful scene in domestic life. It won’t last long—three minutes, perhaps, by a good stop-watch—but that is not my fault. My task is to record facts as they happened.

The morning sunlight fell pleasantly on the garden of Windles, turning it into the green and amber Paradise which Nature had intended it to be. A number of the local birds sang melodiously in the undergrowth at the end of the lawn, while others, more energetic, hopped about the grass in quest of worms. Bees, mercifully ignorant that, after they had worked themselves to the bone gathering honey, the proceeds of their labour would be collared and consumed by idle humans, buzzed industriously to and fro and dived head foremost into flowers. Winged insects danced sarabands in the sunshine. In a deck-chair under the cedar-tree Billie Bennett, with a sketching-block on her knee, was engaged in drawing a picture of the ruined castle. Beside her, curled up in a ball, lay her Pekinese dog, Pinky-Boodles. Beside Pinky-Boodles slept Smith, the bulldog. In the distant stable-yard, unseen but audible, a boy in shirt-sleeves was washing the car and singing as much as a treacherous memory would permit of a popular sentimental ballad.

You may think that was all. You may suppose that nothing could be added to deepen the atmosphere of peace and content. Not so. At this moment, Mr. Bennett emerged from the French windows of the drawing-room, clad in white flannels and buckskin shoes, supplying just the finishing touch that was needed.

Mr. Bennett crossed the lawn, and sat down beside his daughter. Smith, the bulldog, raising a sleepy head, breathed heavily; but Mr. Bennett did not quail. Since their last unfortunate meeting, relations of distant, but solid, friendship had come to exist between pursuer and pursued. Sceptical at first, Mr. Bennett had at length allowed himself to be persuaded of the mildness of the animal’s nature and the essential purity of his motives; and now it was only when they encountered each other unexpectedly round sharp corners that he ever betrayed the slightest alarm. So now, while Smith slept on the grass, Mr. Bennett reclined in the chair. It was the nearest thing modern civilisation has seen to the lion lying down with the lamb.

“Sketching?” said Mr. Bennett.

“Yes,” said Billie, for there were no secrets between this girl and her father. At least, not many. She occasionally omitted to tell him some such trifle as that she had met Samuel Marlowe on the previous morning in a leafy lane, and intended to meet him again this afternoon, but apart from that her mind was an open book.

“It’s a great morning,” said Mr. Bennett.

“So peaceful,” said Billie.

“The eggs you get in the country in England,” said Mr. Bennett, suddenly striking a lyrical note, “are extraordinary. I had three for breakfast this morning which defied competition, simply defied competition. They were large and brown, and as fresh as new-mown hay!”

He mused for a while in a sort of ecstasy.

“And the hams!” he went on. “The ham I had for breakfast was what I call ham! I don’t know when I’ve had ham like that. I suppose it’s something they feed the pigs on!” he concluded, in soft meditation. And he gave a little sigh. Life was very beautiful.

Silence fell, broken only by the snoring of Smith. Billie was thinking of Sam, and of what Sam had said to her in the lane yesterday; of his clean-cut face, and the look in his eyes—so vastly superior to any look that ever came into the eyes of Bream Mortimer. She was telling herself that her relations with Sam were an idyll; for, being young and romantic, she enjoyed this freshet of surreptitious meetings which had come to enliven the stream of her life. It was pleasant to go warily into deep lanes where forbidden love lurked. She cast a swift side-glance at her father—the unconscious ogre in her fairy-story. What would he say if he knew? But Mr. Bennett did not know, and consequently continued to meditate peacefully on ham.

They had sat like this for perhaps a minute—two happy mortals lulled by the gentle beauty of the day—when from the window of the drawing-room there stepped out a white-capped maid. And one may just as well say at once—and have done with it—that this is the point where the quiet, peaceful scene in domestic life terminates with a jerk, and pity and terror resume work at the old stand.

The maid—her name, not that it matters, was Susan, and she was engaged to be married, though the point is of no importance, to the second assistant at Green’s Grocery Stores in Windlehurst—approached Mr. Bennett.

“Please, sir, a gentleman to see you.”

“Eh?” said Mr. Bennett, torn from a dream of large pink slices edged with bread-crumbed fat.

“A gentleman to see you, sir. In the drawing-room. He says you are expecting him.”

“Of course, yes. To be sure.”

Mr. Bennett heaved himself out of the deck-chair. Beyond the French windows he could see an indistinct form in a grey suit, and remembered that this was the morning on which Sir Mallaby Marlowe’s clerk—who was taking those Schultz and Bowen papers for him to America—had written that he would call. To-day was Friday; no doubt the man was sailing from Southampton to-morrow.

He crossed the lawn, entered the drawing-room, and found Mr. Jno. Peters with an expression on his ill-favoured face, which looked like one of consternation, of uneasiness, even of alarm.

“Morning, Mr. Peters,” said Mr. Bennett. “Very good of you to run down. Take a seat, and I’ll just go through the few notes I have made about the matter.”

“Mr. Bennett,” exclaimed Jno. Peters. “May—may I speak?”

“What do you mean? Eh? What? Something to say? What is it?”

Mr. Peters cleared his throat awkwardly. He was feeling embarrassed at the unpleasantness of the duty which he had to perform, but it was a duty, and he did not intend to shrink from performing it. Ever since, gazing appreciatively through the drawing-room windows at the charming scene outside, he had caught sight of the unforgettable form of Billie, seated in her chair with the sketching-block on her knee, he had realised that he could not go away in silence, leaving Mr. Bennett ignorant of what he was up against.

One almost inclines to fancy that there must have been a curse of some kind on this house of Windles. Certainly everybody who entered it seemed to leave his peace of mind behind him. Jno. Peters had been feeling notably happy during his journey in the train from London, and the subsequent walk from the station. The splendour of the morning had soothed his nerves, and the faint wind that blew inshore from the sea spoke to him hearteningly of adventure and romance. There was a jar of pot-pourri on the drawing-room table, and he had derived considerable pleasure from sniffing at it. In short, Jno. Peters was in the pink, without a care in the world, until he had looked out of the window and seen Billie.

“Mr. Bennett,” he said, “I don’t want to do anybody any harm, and, if you know all about it, and she suits you, well and good; but I think it is my duty to inform you that your stenographer is not quite right in her head. I don’t say she’s dangerous, but she isn’t compos. She decidedly is not compos, Mr. Bennett!”

Mr. Bennett stared at his well-wisher dumbly for a moment. The thought crossed his mind that, if ever there was a case of the pot calling the kettle black, this was it. His opinion of Jno. Peters’ sanity went down to zero.

“What are you talking about? My stenographer? What stenographer?”

It occurred to Mr. Peters that a man of the other’s wealth and business connections might well have a troupe of these useful females. He particularised.

“I mean the young lady out in the garden there, to whom you were dictating just now. The young lady with the writing-pad on her knee.”

“What! What!” Mr. Bennett spluttered. “Do you know who that is?” he exclaimed.

“Oh, yes, indeed!” said Jno. Peters. “I have only met her once, when she came into our office to see Mr. Samuel, but her personality and appearance stamped themselves so forcibly on my mind, that I know I am not mistaken. I am sure it is my duty to tell you exactly what happened when I was left alone with her in the office. We had hardly exchanged a dozen words, Mr. Bennett, when—”—here Jno. Peters, modest to the core, turned vividly pink—“when she told me—she told me that I was the only man she loved!”

Mr. Bennett uttered a loud cry.

“Sweet spirits of nitre! What!”

“Those were her exact words.”

“Five!” ejaculated Mr. Bennett, in a strangled voice. “By the great horn spoon, number five!”

Mr. Peters could make nothing of this exclamation, and he was deterred from seeking light by the sudden action of his host, who, bounding from his seat with a vivacity of which one would not have believed him capable, charged to the French window and emitted a bellow.

“Wilhelmina!”

Billie looked up from her sketching-block with a start. It seemed to her that there was a note of anguish, of panic, in that voice. What her father could have found in the drawing-room to be frightened at, she did not know; but she dropped her block and hurried to his assistance.

“What is it, father?”

Mr. Bennett had retired within the room when she arrived; and, going in after him, she perceived at once what had caused his alarm. There before her, looking more sinister than ever, stood the lunatic Peters; and there was an ominous bulge in his right coat-pocket which to her excited senses betrayed the presence of the revolver. What Jno. Peters was, as a matter of fact, carrying in his right coat-pocket was a bag of mixed chocolates which he had purchased in Windlehurst. But Billie’s eyes, though bright, had no X-ray quality. Her simple creed was that, if Jno. Peters bulged at any point, that bulge must be caused by a pistol. She screamed, and backed against the wall. Her whole acquaintance with Jno Peters had been one constant backing against walls.

“Don’t shoot!” she cried, as Mr. Peters absent-mindedly dipped his hand into the pocket of his coat. “Oh, please don’t shoot!”

“What the deuce do you mean?” said Mr. Bennett irritably. “Wilhelmina, this man says that you told him you loved him.”

“Yes, I did, and I do. Really, really, Mr. Peters, I do!”

“Suffering cats!”

Mr. Bennett clutched at the back of his chair.

“But you’ve only met him once,” he added almost pleadingly.

“You don’t understand, father dear,” said Billie desperately. “I’ll explain the whole thing later, when....”

“Father!” ejaculated Jno. Peters feebly. “Did you say ‘father?’”

“Of course I said ‘father!’”

“This is my daughter, Mr. Peters.”

“My daughter! I mean, your daughter! Are—are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Do you think I don’t know my own daughter?”

“But she called me Mr. Peters!”

“Well, it’s your name, isn’t it?”

“But, if she—if this young lady is your daughter, how did she know my name?”

The point seemed to strike Mr. Bennett. He turned to Billie.

“That’s true. Tell me, Wilhelmina, when did you and Mr. Peters meet?”

“Why, in—in Sir Mallaby Marlowe’s office, the morning you came there and found me when I was talking to Sam.”

Mr. Peters uttered a subdued gargling sound. He was finding this scene oppressive to a not very robust intellect.

“He—Mr. Samuel—told me your name was Miss Milliken,” he said dully.

Billie stared at him.

“Mr. Marlowe told you my name was Miss Milliken!” she repeated.

“He told me that you were the sister of the Miss Milliken who acts as stenographer for the guv’—for Sir Mallaby, and sent me in to show you my revolver, because he said you were interested and wanted to see it.”

Billie uttered an exclamation. So did Mr. Bennett, who hated mysteries.

“What revolver? Which revolver? What’s all this about a revolver? Have you a revolver?”

“Why, yes, Mr. Bennett. It is packed now in my trunk, but usually I carry it about with me everywhere in order to take a little practice at the Rupert Street range. I bought it when Sir Mallaby told me he was sending me to America, because I thought I ought to be prepared—because of the Underworld, you know.”

A cold gleam had come into Billie’s eyes. Her face was pale and hard. If Sam Marlowe—at that moment carolling blithely in his bedroom at the Blue Boar in Windlehurst, washing his hands preparatory to descending to the coffee-room for a bit of cold lunch—could have seen her, the song would have frozen on his lips. Which, one might mention, as showing that there is always a bright side, would have been much appreciated by the travelling gentleman in the adjoining room, who had had a wild night with some other travelling gentlemen, and was then nursing a rather severe headache, separated from Sam’s penetrating baritone only by the thickness of a wooden wall.

Billie knew all. And, terrible though the fact is as an indictment of the male sex, when a woman knows all, there is invariably trouble ahead for some man. There was trouble ahead for Samuel Marlowe. Billie, now in possession of the facts, had examined them and come to the conclusion that Sam had played a practical joke on her, and she was a girl who strongly disapproved of practical humour at her expense.

“That morning I met you at Sir Mallaby’s office, Mr. Peters,” she said in a frosty voice, “Mr. Marlowe had just finished telling me a long and convincing story to the effect that you were madly in love with a Miss Milliken, who had jilted you, and that this had driven you off your head, and that you spent your time going about with a pistol, trying to shoot every red-haired woman you saw, because you thought they were Miss Milliken. Naturally, when you came in and called me Miss Milliken, and brandished a revolver, I was very frightened. I thought it would be useless to tell you that I wasn’t Miss Milliken, so I tried to persuade you that I was and hadn’t jilted you after all.”

“Good gracious!” said Mr. Peters, vastly relieved; and yet—for always there is bitter mixed with the sweet—a shade disappointed. “Then—er—you don’t love me after all?”

“No!” said Billie. “I am engaged to Bream Mortimer, and I love him and nobody else in the world!”

The last portion of her observation was intended for the consumption of Mr. Bennett, rather than that of Mr. Peters, and he consumed it joyfully. He folded Billie in his ample embrace.

“I always thought you had a grain of sense hidden away somewhere,” he said, paying her a striking tribute. “I hope now that we’ve heard the last of all this foolishness about that young hound Marlowe.”

“You certainly have! I don’t want ever to see him again! I hate him!”

“You couldn’t do better, my dear,” said Mr. Bennett, approvingly. “And now run away. Mr. Peters and I have some business to discuss.”

A quarter of an hour later, Webster, the valet, sunning himself in the stable-yard, was aware of the daughter of his employer approaching him.

“Webster,” said Billie. She was still pale. Her face was still hard, and her eyes still gleamed coldly.

“Miss?” said Webster politely, throwing away the cigarette with which he had been refreshing himself.

“Will you do something for me?”

“I should be more than delighted, miss.”

Billie whisked into view an envelope which had been concealed in the recesses of her dress.

“Do you know the country about here well, Webster?”

“Within a certain radius, not unintimately, miss. I have been for several enjoyable rambles since the fine weather set in.”

“Do you know the place where there is a road leading to Havant, and another to Cosham? It’s about a mile down....”

“I know the spot well, miss.”

“Well, straight in front of you when you get to the sign-post there is a little lane....”

“I know it, miss,” said Webster, with a faint smile. Twice had he escorted Miss Trimblett, Billie’s maid, thither. “A delightfully romantic spot. What with the overhanging trees, the wealth of blackberry bushes, the varied wild-flowers....”

“Yes, never mind about the wild-flowers now. I want you after lunch, to take this note to a gentleman you will find sitting on the gate at the bottom of the lane....”

“Sitting on the gate, miss. Yes, miss.”

“Or leaning against it. You can’t mistake him. He is rather tall and ... oh, well, there isn’t likely to be anybody else there, so you can’t make a mistake. Give him this, will you?”

“Certainly, miss. Er—any message?”

“Any what?”

“Any verbal message, miss?”

“No, certainly not! You won’t forget, will you, Webster?”

“On no account whatever, miss. Shall I wait for an answer?”

“There won’t be any answer,” said Billie, setting her teeth for an instant. “Oh, Webster!”

“Miss?”

“I can rely on you to say nothing to anybody?”

“Most undoubtedly, miss. Most undoubtedly.”

“Does anybody know anything about a feller named S. Marlowe?” inquired Webster, entering the kitchen. “Don’t all speak at once! S. Marlowe. Ever heard of him?”

He paused for a reply, but nobody had any information to impart.

“Because there’s something jolly well up! Our Miss B. is sending me with notes for him to the bottom of lanes.”

“And her engaged to young Mr. Mortimer!” said the scullery-maid, shocked. “The way they go on. Chronic!” said the scullery-maid.

“Don’t you go getting alarmed! And don’t you,” added Webster, “go shoving your oar in when your social superiors are talking! I’ve had to speak to you about that before. My remarks were addressed to Mrs. Withers here.”

He indicated the cook with a respectful gesture.

“Yes, here’s the note, Mrs. Withers. Of course, if you had a steamy kettle handy, in about half a moment we could ... but no, perhaps it’s wiser not to risk it. And, come to that, I don’t need to unstick the envelope to know what’s inside here. It’s the raspberry, ma’am, or I’ve lost all my power to read the human female countenance. Very cold and proud-looking she was! I don’t know who this S. Marlowe is, but I do know one thing; in this hand I hold the instrument that’s going to give it him in the neck, proper! Right in the neck, or my name isn’t Montagu Webster!”

“Well!” said Mrs. Withers, comfortably, pausing for a moment from her labours. “Think of that!”

“The way I look at it,” said Webster, “is that there’s been some sort of understanding between our Miss B. and this S. Marlowe, and she’s thought better of it and decided to stick to the man of her parent’s choice. She’s chosen wealth and made up her mind to hand the humble suitor the mitten. There was a rather similar situation in ‘Cupid or Mammon,’ that Nosegay Novelette I was reading in the train coming down here, only that ended different. For my part I’d be better pleased if our Miss B. would let the cash go, and obey the dictates of her own heart; but these modern girls are all alike! All out for the stuff, they are! Oh, well, it’s none of my affair,” said Webster, stifling a not unmanly sigh. For beneath that immaculate shirt-front there beat a warm heart. Montagu Webster was a sentimentalist.

CHAPTER XVI.
WEBSTER, FRIEND IN NEED

At half-past two that afternoon, full of optimism and cold beef, gaily unconscious that Webster with measured strides was approaching ever nearer with the note that was to give it him in the neck, proper, Samuel Marlowe dangled his feet from the top bar of the gate at the end of the lane, and smoked contentedly as he waited for Billie to make her appearance. He had had an excellent lunch; his pipe was drawing well, and all Nature smiled. The breeze from the sea across the meadows tickled pleasantly the back of his head, and sang a soothing song in the long grass and ragged-robins at his feet. He was looking forward with a roseate glow of anticipation to the moment when the white flutter of Billie’s dress would break the green of the foreground. How eagerly he would jump from the gate! How lovingly he would....

The elegant figure of Webster interrupted his reverie. Sam had never seen Webster before, and it was with no pleasure that he saw him now. He had come to regard this lane as his own private property, and he resented trespassers. He tucked his legs under him, and scowled at Webster under the brim of his hat.

The valet advanced towards him with the air of an affable executioner stepping daintily to the block.

“Mr. Marlowe, sir?” he inquired politely.

Sam was startled. He could making nothing of this.

“Eh? What?”

“Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. S. Marlowe?”

“Yes, that’s my name.”

“Mine is Webster, sir. I am Mr. Bennett’s personal gentleman’s gentleman. Miss Bennett entrusted me with this note to deliver to you, sir.”

Sam began to grasp the position. For some reason or other, the dear girl had been prevented from coming this afternoon, and she had written to explain and relieve his anxiety. It was like her. It was just the sweet, thoughtful thing he would have expected her to do. His contentment with the existing scheme of things returned. The sun shone out again, and he found himself amiably disposed towards the messenger.

“Fine day,” he said, as he took the note.

“Extremely, sir,” said Webster, outwardly unemotional, inwardly full of a grave pity.

It was plain to him that there had been no previous little rift to prepare the young man for the cervical operation which awaited him, and he edged a little nearer, in order to be handy to catch Sam if the shock knocked him off the gate.

As it happened, it did not. Having read the opening words of the note, Sam rocked violently; but his feet were twined about the lower bars and this saved him from overbalancing. Webster stepped back, relieved.

The note fluttered to the ground. Webster, picking it up and handing it back, was enabled to get a glimpse of the first two sentences. They confirmed his suspicions. The note was hot stuff. Assuming that it continued as it began, it was about the warmest thing of its kind that pen had ever written. Webster had received one or two heated epistles from the sex in his time—your man of gallantry can hardly hope to escape these unpleasantnesses—but none had got off the mark quite so swiftly, and with quite so much frigid violence as this.

“Thanks,” said Sam mechanically.

“Not at all, sir. You are very welcome.”

Sam resumed his reading. A cold perspiration broke out on his forehead. His toes curled, and something seemed to be crawling down the small of his back. His heart had moved from its proper place and was now beating in his throat. He swallowed once or twice to remove the obstruction, but without success. A kind of pall had descended on the landscape, blotting out the sun.

Of all the rotten sensations in this world, the worst is the realisation that a thousand-to-one chance has come off, and caused our wrong-doing to be detected. There had seemed no possibility of that little ruse of his being discovered, and yet here was Billie in full possession of the facts. It almost made the thing worse that she did not say how she had come into possession of them. This gave Sam that feeling of self-pity, that sense of having been ill-used by Fate, which makes the bringing home of crime so particularly poignant.

“Fine day!” he muttered. He had a sort of subconscious feeling that it was imperative to keep engaging Webster in light conversation.

“Yes, sir. Weather still keeps up,” agreed the valet suavely.

Sam frowned over the note. He felt injured. Sending a fellow notes didn’t give him a chance. If she had come in person and denounced him it would not have been an agreeable experience, but at least it would have been possible then to have pleaded and cajoled and—and all that sort of thing. But what could he do now? It seemed to him that his only possible course was to write a note in reply, begging her to see him. He explored his pockets and found a pencil and a scrap of paper. For some moments he scribbled desperately. Then he folded the note.

“Will you take this to Miss Bennett?” he said, holding it out.

Webster took the missive, because he wanted to read it later at his leisure; but he shook his head.

“Useless, I fear, sir,” he said gravely.

“What do you mean?”

“I am afraid it would effect little or nothing, sir, sending our Miss B. notes. She is not in the proper frame of mind to appreciate them. I saw her face when she handed me the letter you have just read, and I assure you, sir, she is not in a malleable mood.”

“You seem to know a lot about it!”

“I have studied the sex, sir,” said Webster modestly.

“I mean, about my business, confound it! You seem to know all about it!”

“Why, yes, sir, I think I may say that I have grasped the position of affairs. And, if you will permit me to say so, sir, you have my respectful sympathy.”

Dignity is a sensitive plant which nourishes only under the fairest conditions. Sam’s had perished in the bleak east wind of Billie’s note. In other circumstances he might have resented this intrusion of a stranger into his most intimate concerns. His only emotion now, was one of dull but distinct gratitude. The four winds of Heaven blew chilly upon his raw and unprotected soul, and he wanted to wrap it up in a mantle of sympathy, careless of the source from which he borrowed that mantle. If Webster felt disposed, as he seemed to indicate, to comfort him, let the thing go on. At that moment Sam would have accepted condolences from a coal-heaver.

“I was reading a story—one of the Nosegay Novelettes; I do not know if you are familiar with the series, sir?—in which much the same situation occurred. It was entitled ‘Cupid or Mammon.’ The heroine, Lady Blanche Trefusis, forced by her parents to wed a wealthy suitor, despatches a note to her humble lover, informing him it cannot be. I believe it often happens like that, sir.”

“You’re all wrong,” said Sam. “It’s not that at all.”

“Indeed, sir? I supposed it was.”

“Nothing like it! I—I——.”

Sam’s dignity, on its death-bed, made a last effort to assert itself.

“I don’t know what it’s got to do with you!”

“Precisely, sir!” said Webster, with dignity. “Just as you say! Good afternoon, sir!”

He swayed gracefully, conveying a suggestion of departure without moving his feet. The action was enough for Sam. Dignity gave an expiring gurgle, and passed away, regretted by all.

“Don’t go!” he cried.

The idea of being left alone in this infernal lane, without human support, overpowered him. Moreover, Webster had personality. He exuded it. Already Sam had begun to cling to him in spirit, and rely on his support.

“Don’t go!”

“Certainly not, if you do not wish it, sir.”

Webster coughed gently, to show his appreciation of the delicate nature of the conversation. He was consumed with curiosity, and his threatened departure had been but a pretence. A team of horses could not have moved Webster at that moment.

“Might I ask, then, what...?”

“There’s been a misunderstanding,” said Sam. “At least, there was, but now there isn’t, if you see what I mean.”

“I fear I have not quite grasped your meaning, sir.”

“Well, I—I—played a sort of—you might almost call it a sort of trick on Miss Bennett. With the best motives, of course!”

“Of course, sir!”

“And she’s found out! I don’t know how she’s found out, but she has! So there you are!”

“Of what nature would the trick be, sir? A species of ruse, sir,—some kind of innocent deception?”

“Well, it was like this.”

It was a complicated story to tell, and Sam, a prey to conflicting emotions, told it badly; but such was the almost superhuman intelligence of Webster, that he succeeded in grasping the salient points. Indeed, he said that it reminded him of something of much the same kind in the Nosegay Novelette, “All for Her,” where the hero, anxious to win the esteem of the lady of his heart, had bribed a tramp to simulate an attack upon her in a lonely road.

“The principle’s the same,” said Webster.

“Well, what did he do when she found out?”

“She did not find out, sir. All ended happily, and never had the wedding-bells in the old village church rung out a blither peal than they did at the subsequent union.”

Sam was thoughtful.

“Bribed a tramp to attack her, did he?”

“Yes, sir. She had never thought much of him till that moment, sir. Very cold and haughty she had been, his social status being considerably inferior to her own. But, when she cried for help, and he dashed out from behind a hedge, well, it made all the difference.”

“I wonder where I could get a good tramp,” said Sam, meditatively.

Webster shook his head.

“I really would hardly recommend such a procedure, sir.”

“No, it would be difficult to make a tramp understand what you wanted.”

Sam brightened.

“I’ve got it! You pretend to attack her, and I’ll....”

“I couldn’t, sir! I couldn’t, really! I should jeopardise my situation.”

“Oh, come. Be a man!”

“No, sir, I fear not. There’s a difference between handing in your resignation—I was compelled to do that only recently, owing to a few words I had with the guv’nor, though subsequently prevailed upon to withdraw it—I say there’s a difference between handing in your resignation and being given the sack, and that’s what would happen—without a character, what’s more, and lucky if it didn’t mean a prison cell! No, sir, I could not contemplate such a thing.”

“Then I don’t see that there’s anything to be done,” said Sam, morosely.

“Oh, I shouldn’t say that, sir,” said Webster encouragingly. “It’s simply a matter of finding the way. The problem confronting us—you, I should say....”

“Us,” said Sam. “Most decidedly us.”

“Thank you very much, sir. I would not have presumed, but if you say so.... The problem confronting us, as I envisage it, resolves itself into this. You have offended our Miss B. and she has expressed a disinclination ever to see you again. How, then, is it possible, in spite of her attitude, to recapture her esteem?”

“Exactly,” said Sam.

“There are several methods which occur to one....”

“They don’t occur to me!”

“Well, for example, you might rescue her from a burning building, as in ‘True As Steel’....”

“Set fire to the house, eh?” said Sam reflectively. “Yes, there might be something in that.”

“I would hardly advise such a thing,” said Webster, a little hastily—flattered at the readiness with which his disciple was taking his advice, yet acutely alive to the fact that he slept at the top of the house himself. “A little drastic, if I may say so. It might be better to save her from drowning, as in ‘The Earl’s Secret.’”

“Ah, but where could she drown?”

“Well, there is a lake in the grounds....”

“Excellent!” said Sam. “Terrific! I knew I could rely on you. Say no more! The whole thing’s settled. You take her out rowing on the lake, and upset the boat. I plunge in.... I suppose you can swim?”

“No, sir.”

“Oh? Well, never mind. You’ll manage somehow, I expect. Cling to the upturned boat or something, I shouldn’t wonder. There’s always a way. Yes, that’s the plan. When is the earliest you could arrange this?”

“I fear such a course must be considered out of the question, sir. It really wouldn’t do.”

“I can’t see a flaw in it.”

“Well, in the first place, it would certainly jeopardise my situation....”

“Oh, hang your situation! You talk as if you were Prime Minister or something. You can easily get another situation. A valuable man like you,” said Sam ingratiatingly.

“No, sir,” said Webster firmly. “From boyhood up I’ve always had a regular horror of the water. I can’t so much as go paddling without an uneasy feeling.”

The image of Webster paddling was arresting enough to occupy Sam’s thoughts for a moment. It was an inspiring picture, and for an instant uplifted his spirits. Then they fell again.

“Well, I don’t see what there is to be done,” he said, gloomily. “It’s no good my making suggestions, if you have some frivolous objection to all of them.”

“My idea,” said Webster, “would be something which did not involve my own personal and active co-operation, sir. If it is all the same to you, I should prefer to limit my assistance to advice and sympathy. I am anxious to help, but I am a man of regular habits, which I do not wish to disturb. Did you ever read ‘Footpaths of Fate,’ in the Nosegay series, sir? I’ve only just remembered it, and it contains the most helpful suggestion of the lot. There had been a misunderstanding between the heroine and the hero—their names have slipped my mind, though I fancy his was Cyril—and she had told him to hop it....”

“To what?”

“To leave her for ever, sir. And what do you think he did?”

“How the deuce do I know?”

“He kidnapped her little brother, sir, to whom she was devoted, kept him hidden for a bit, and then returned him, and in her gratitude all was forgotten and forgiven, and never....”

“I know. Never had the bells of the old village church....”

“Rung out a blither peal. Exactly, sir. Well, there, if you will allow me to say so, you are, sir! You need seek no further for a plan of action.”

“Miss Bennett hasn’t got a little brother.”

“No, sir. But she has a dog, and is greatly attached to it.”

Sam stared. From the expression on his face it was evident that Webster imagined himself to have made a suggestion of exceptional intelligence. It struck Sam as the silliest he had ever heard.

“You mean I ought to steal her dog?”

“Precisely, sir.”

“But, good heavens! Have you seen that dog?”

“The one to which I allude is a small brown animal with a fluffy tail.”

“Yes, and a bark like a steam-siren, and, in addition to that, about eighty-five teeth, all sharper than razors. I couldn’t get within ten feet of that dog without its lifting the roof off, and, if I did, it would chew me into small pieces.”

“I had anticipated that difficulty, sir. In ‘Footpaths of Fate’ there was a nurse who assisted the hero by drugging the child.”

“By Jove!” said Sam, impressed.

“He rewarded her,” said Webster, allowing his gaze to stray nonchalantly over the countryside, “liberally, very liberally.”

“If you mean that you expect me to reward you if you drug the dog,” said Sam, “don’t worry. Let me bring this thing off, and you can have all I’ve got, and my cuff-links as well. Come now, this is really beginning to look like something. Speak to me more of this matter. Where do we go from here?”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“I mean, what’s the next step in the scheme? Oh, Lord!” Sam’s face fell. The light of hope died out of his eyes. “It’s all off! It can’t be done! How could I possibly get into the house? I take it that the little brute sleeps in the house?”

“That need constitute no obstacle, sir, no obstacle at all. The animal sleeps in a basket in the hall.... Perhaps you are familiar with the interior of the house, sir?”

“I haven’t been inside it since I was at school. I’m Mr. Hignett’s cousin, you know.”

“Indeed, sir? I wasn’t aware. Mr. Hignett has the mumps, poor gentleman.”

“Has he?” said Sam, not particularly interested. “I used to stay with him,” he went on, “during the holidays sometimes, but I’ve practically forgotten what the place is like inside. I remember the hall vaguely. Fireplace at one side, one or two suits of armour standing about, a sort of window-ledge near the front door....”

“Precisely, sir. It is close beside that window-ledge that the animal’s basket is situated. If I administer a slight soporific....”

“Yes, but you haven’t explained yet how I am to get into the house in the first place.”

“Quite easily, sir. I can admit you through the drawing-room windows while dinner is in progress.”

“Fine!”

“You can then secrete yourself in the cupboard in the drawing-room. Perhaps you recollect the cupboard to which I refer, sir?”

“No, I don’t remember any cupboard. As a matter of fact, when I used to stay at the house the drawing-room was barred. Mrs. Hignett wouldn’t let us inside it for fear we should smash her china. Is there a cupboard?”

“Immediately behind the piano, sir. A nice, roomy cupboard. I was glancing into it myself in a spirit of idle curiosity only the other day. It contains nothing except a few knick-knacks on an upper shelf. You could lock yourself in from the interior, and be quite comfortably seated on the floor till the household retired to bed.”

“When would that be?”

“They retire quite early, sir, as a rule. By half-past ten the coast is generally clear. At that time I would suggest that I came down and knocked on the cupboard door to notify you that all was well.”

Sam was glowing with frank approval.

“You know, you’re a master-mind!” he said, enthusiastically.

“You’re very kind, sir!”

“One of the lads, by Jove!” said Sam. “And not the worst of them! I don’t want to flatter you, but there’s a future for you in crime, if you cared to go in for it.”

“I am glad that you appreciate my poor efforts, sir. Then we will regard the scheme as passed and approved?”

“I should say we would! It’s a bird!”

“Very good, sir.”

“I’ll be round at about a quarter to eight. Will that be right?”

“Admirable, sir.”

“And, I say, about that soporific.... Don’t overdo it. Don’t go killing the little beast.”

“Oh, no, sir.”

“Well,” said Sam, “you can’t say it’s not a temptation. And you know what you Napoleons of the Underworld are!”

CHAPTER XVII.
A CROWDED NIGHT