There was a rustle of dresses. The professor started. It was impossible to get up the distant stairs, with their delightful view of the hall—his own plan. Noiselessly he darted into the dining-room, leaving a tiny pool of water behind him. Mrs. Jarvis, Mrs. Heath, and the formidable Mrs. Bannerman came out into the hall, and discussed varnish, paint, and allied subjects for some minutes.
In the meantime Professor Jarvis considered methods of escape. The dining-room was a large affair. There were windows on one of the sides opposite him, but under them was a sheer drop of twelve feet to a graveled avenue. The sideboard offered no hiding-place. The center-table was not large enough for a professor of diplomacy to curl up under in any fitting way. The “mission” chimney was no place for a man in a bathing-suit. Only one avenue of escape was available, and that was an open door that led invitingly into the pantry or china-closet. Behind this door the professor stationed himself, and prayed that the ladies might depart.
For a moment he had his hopes. There was some mention of good-bys. Somebody went to get her things. The professor drew a long breath. He was very, very chilly, and another little pool was rapidly forming about his white and tender feet.
“Why should I be afraid to face these ladies?” he asked himself. “What have I to be ashamed of? Is there anything wrong in going about my own house in my own bathing-suit? I will go out and say, ‘Oh, I was looking for a towel in the china-closet. I have had such a wonderful swim.’”
Nevertheless, the professor did not move. Nor time nor place did then adhere, while his bathing-suit did. He heard the voice of the terrible Mrs. Bannerman, and remained behind the china-closet door, listening. Suddenly fear smote into his heart.
“Mr. Jarvis planned this house himself,” he heard his wife say proudly. “We had several ideas which we insisted on. For instance, the dining-room here is an arrangement of our own.”
The professor moved on, into a recess of the china-closet. The voices came nearer and uprose in voluble appreciation of the dining-room. Mrs. Jarvis was holding forth with a proud delight on the architectural disposition of doors, windows, etc. What was coming next the professor guessed only too well. He looked about wildly. Cupboards, all too small. Shelves, impossible. They all had glass fronts. He could hardly expose himself under glass, like an exhibit in a museum. There was, to be sure, a dumb-waiter that descended to the kitchen below.
It was a new and wonderful dumb-waiter. Wonderfully balanced, weighted, and contrived. Professor Jarvis headed for it, and, as he heard the voices relentlessly approaching the china-closet, climbed nimbly in and, marveling at the beautiful balance of the thing, cautiously let himself down a few yards into the black abyss that yawned between him and the kitchen.
In absolute and overwhelming darkness he gathered himself about the rope that controlled his wooden cage, and held his breath. Thank heavens, it was a roomy dumb-waiter! As it was, he had to curl up like a kitten or a dog, and a very damp one at that. “I should never have supposed,” he said to himself, “that one could get into a dumb-waiter.” And he pondered on the uses of adversity, and remembered the bird in the gilded cage. Above, the voices were faintly audible; they echoed as if through caverns.
“The dumb-waiter,” his wife explained, “is here.”