I

THERE is a tale that is told in London, and maybe it is told also in the salons of New York and upon the Boulevards of Paris, how one night a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square and how that song was of a doubtful character calculated to provoke disorder in households brought up in the fear of God. Needless to say, there are not wanting those who will have it that no nightingale could have done such a thing; nor has the meanness of envy ever been so clearly shown as by those who have suborned certain bird-fanciers into declaring that the nightingale is a bird notably averse from singing in squares and that the legend should therefore be deleted from the folk-tales of Mayfair. But, however that may be, the song of the nightingale is far from being the burden of this tale, which has to do in a general way with a plague of owls, in a particular way with one owl, and in a most particular way with the revolting doom of a gentleman who would not dance with his wife. Many will hold, in extenuation of his disagreeable attitude, that he could not dance. But could he not have taken a lesson or two?

Now of the many and divers people who saw the owls in flight we need mention only policemen, statesmen, ’bus-drivers, noblemen, Colonials and hawkers, to be convinced of the truth of what they one and all say, how in the gloom of a certain summer’s twilight not long ago there flew a plague of owls across Trafalgar Square towards the polite heights of Hampstead Heath. Maybe no one would have remarked them, for the strange cries and hootings with which they adorned their flight were not discordant with the noises of the town, had not the pigeons that play about Lord Nelson’s monument fled before them with affrighted coos; and in such an extremity of terror were the timid creatures that very few were ever seen in those parts again, which is a sad thing to relate.

Nor can any man speak with any certainty as to the exact number of the owls, for the twilight was deep and the phenomenon sudden; but one and all need no encouragement to vouch for their prodigious multitude: while the fact that they appeared to be flying from the direction of Whitehall at the impulse of a peculiar indignation has given rise among the lower people to a superstition of the sort that is perhaps pardonable in those who have not had the benefits of a public-school education. These simples declare that the owls, for long peacefully asleep within the gloomy recesses unrecognisable to the feathered intelligence as the austere House of Lords, had been startled from their rest by the activities of the new Labour Government as revealed in that patrician place by the agile incendiarism of my Lords Haldane and Parmoor, and had in one body fled forth to seek a land wherein a Conservative Government would afford them the lulling qualities necessary for their rest.

The serious historian, however, is concerned only with facts. The plague of owls fled no one knows whither, although superstition points to Italy. But this much is known, that whilst crossing the brilliant centre of Piccadilly Circus one among them swooped down from the twilight and perched on the left wing of the figure of Eros:[A] which, presented to the nation by one of the Earls of Shaftesbury, adorns the head of the charming fountain where old women will sell pretty flowers to anyone who will buy, roses in summer and roses in winter, roses by day and roses by night, or maybe a bunch of violets for a young lady, a gardenia for a gentleman of the mode.

[A] Almost immediately after the publication of this tale in a magazine, the figure of Eros was removed from Piccadilly Circus. It has been generally supposed that, to effect this removal, pressure was brought to bear on the London County Council by gentlemen-who-will-not-dance-with-their-wives, whose name, alas, is legion.

Now why that one owl separated itself from its fellows for no other apparent reason than to perch on the left wing of Lord Shaftesbury’s Eros has hitherto been a mystery to the man in the street, who was at the time present in considerable numbers reading The Evening News and discussing the probable circulation the next morning of The Daily Mail. The owl rested on its perch most silently: nor did it once give the least sign of any perturbation at the din of the marching hosts of Piccadilly Circus, and this for the space of one hour and eighteen minutes: when it hooted thrice with marvellous dolour and fled, to be lost almost on the instant among the lofty shadows of the Regent’s Palace Hotel.

It has to be told that the cry of the owl on the fountain served three purposes, which the historian can best arrange in ascending degrees of abomination with the help of the letters a, b and c: (a) it struck such terror into the vitals of an inoffensive young gentleman of the name of Dunn that he has never been the same man since; (b) it was the death-knell of a gentle and beautiful lady; and (c) the herald of approaching doom to a lord. May they rest in peace, for we are all of us miserable sinners and only very few of us are allowed to get away with it.

II

In the dining-room of a great house in Carlton House Terrace three persons sat at meat. They made, against the spacious simplicities of great wealth and good taste, an austere picture in black and white. Reading from left to right they were my lord the Marquess of Vest, his delightful lady, and Mr. Dunn, private secretary to my lord.