XXIX
I believe that, in the dark ages, I was rather a good little boy. I used often to tell the truth, and the whole truth, even when most inconvenient to my pastors and masters. I gave pennies to the poor, unless I very much wanted them myself; I said "Now—I—Lay—Me," every night, and also in the morning till advised that it was inappropriate; and I sang in a boy's choir, so beautifully and with such a soulful expression in my eyes, that people used to pat my curls, and fear that I was destined to die young.
In those days, or even until a few weeks ago no one who looked at me would have believed me capable of plotting against young and innocent girls, annexing aunts on the hire system, or deluding uncles-in-law with misleading statements. Yet these things I have done, and worse; for I have kept my word to Phyllis Rivers.
If I must commit a crime, my artistic sense bids me do it well; and then, of course, when one has started in a certain direction, one is often carried along a little farther than one intended to go at first.
That was what happened to me, in the affair of Robert van Buren and his fiancée.
I was pledged to Phyllis and myself to free the Viking somehow—anyhow. It was rash of me to give this pledge, also it was quixotic; and many hours did not pass after making it, before I was seized with regret, and convictions that I had been an ass.
Exactly how I was going to do the deed did not occur to me at the time, but I had an idea which fitted in with my other villainies so well, that it seemed really a pity not to add it to the richly colored pattern.
It was for this reason that I dreaded returning to the Hotel du Pays Bas from a walk about Utrecht, knowing as I did that the van Buren party would have arrived.