"Soapy never loaned me any five smackers."
"I've got your note in my bag."
"I paid it him. Sure, that's right. I remember now. It all comes back to me."
"And now it's coming back to Soapy."
Mr. Twist seemed cast down for an instant, but only for an instant. He was a resilient man.
"Well, we'll get round to that later," he said. "What do you want advice about?"
The rather predatory gleam which had been lighting up his visitor's lustrous eyes died away, and she heaved a sigh, like one about to reveal a secret sorrow. She dabbed at her nose with a delicate cambric handkerchief, one of a set of twelve for which a prominent West End haberdasher had been looking everywhere since he had last enjoyed her patronage.
" I'm kind of worried, Chimp."
"What about?"
"Soapy."
"I thought you would be one of these days. You were a sap to marry him," said Mr. Twist. His association with the absent Mr. Molloy had been a long rather than an affectionate one. He could never forget the numerous occasions on which he, Mr. Molloy, had double-crossed him, Mr. Twist, just when he, Mr. Twist, was preparing to double-cross him, Mr. Molloy. "What's the trouble? Has he started playing the old Army game?"
"It sort of looks like it."
"The big chunk of boloney."
"I'd be glad," said Dolly, with womanly dignity, "if you wouldn't call my husband chunks of boloney."
"What else is there to call him?" asked Chimp. "Slice him where you like, that's what he still is."
Mrs. Molloy bit a brightly coloured lip, but she refrained from the belligerent retort which had trembled on it. Chimp Twist, whatever his defects, and no one was more alive to these than she, was a man of recognized judgment and acumen, and she was a stranger in a strange land and had nobody else to whom to take a young wife's problems. In her native Chicago, there were a dozen knowledgeable Solons in whom she could have confided the anxieties which were gnawing her bosom, with a reasonable certainty of getting aid and comfort. She could even have consulted Dorothy Dix. But this was England, and her advisory committee far away, probably behind bars. Except Miss Dix, of course.
Chimp returned to the matter in hand. His was a nasty little mind, that took pleasure in other people's recitals of their troubles. He anticipated particular enjoyment from a parade of the Molloy family skeletons.
"What's he been doing?"
"Well, it's this dame. I don't like the way he's acting. I think there's compus-boompus going on."
"What dame?"
"This dame he keeps sauntering in the rose garden with at this Shipley Hall place down in Kent, where we're visiting. They go off into this rose garden together, and she pins fragrant blooms in his buttonhole."
Mr. Twist seemed incredulous.
"She pins fragrant blooms in Soapy's buttonhole?"
"That's right."
"In Soapy's buttonhole?"
"That's what she does."
"She must be nuts."
Again, Mrs. Molloy was forced to bite her lip, and again she reminded herself how sorely she needed this man's advice.
"Twice I've caught her at it. I didn't like the look on his face, neither. Sort of soppy. Her name's Cork," said Dolly, in an aggrieved voice, as if this somehow made it worse. "Mrs. Wellesley Cork. Soapy met her somewheres, and she told him about this joint she was running at this place she's rented from some lord or other, and Soapy would have it that we go visit there. It's a sort of crazy joint. You eat vegetables and breathe deep and dance around in circles. It's supposed to be swell for the soul."
The description of the Clarissa Cork colony for the promotion of plain living and high thinking was not a very lucid one, but Chimp nodded understandingly.
"I know the sort of thing you mean. Yogi stuff."
"Please yourself. Your guess is as good as mine. The place seems to me like a booby-hatch. I wouldn't mind breathing deep, if I was allowed to stoke up first, but all these vegetables are getting me down. When I reach for the knife and fork, I like to feel there's something in the old nosebag I can dig my teeth into. A little more of it, and I'll be cutting out paper dolls and sticking straws in my hair. The butler's gone bugs already."
"I've sometimes thought of starting a racket like that myself," said Mr. Twist reflectively. "There's money in it. But tell me more. Does Soapy dance around in circles?"
"Sure."
"The big stiff. I hope he strains a muscle. What's that you were saying about the butler? Gone bugs, has he?"
"He could step straight into Bloomingdale, and no questions asked. He wanders around the place like a lost spirit, with a strange, fixed look on his pan, like he was seeing visions or sump'n. And guess what. I found him in my room yesterday, burrowing under the dressing-table. Yessir, sticking up from under the dressing-table like Pike's Peak, and had the nerve to say he was looking for a funny smell. Funny smell, my foot. There wasn't a sign of any funny smell."
Mr. Twist agreed that this sounded, at the most charitable estimate, borderline stuff. He said with some interest that he had never seen a loony butler—adding, in this connection, that he would rather see than be one.
"Yay," said Doily. "It's certainly the by-Goddest joint I was ever in. But I didn't come here to talk about that. What do you make of this thing of Soapy and this dame? Talk quick. I've got to get a train in a minute."
Mr. Twist gave his verdict without hesitation. He had little faith in his fellow men and none in Soapy Molloy.
"The sooner you form a flying wedge and break up the play, the better off you'll be," he replied, with all the emphasis at his disposal. "He is your man, and he's doing you wrong."
Dolly nodded sombrely. He had but confirmed her own view.
"That's the way I feel. This Cork dame is rich. Got it in gobs. And what I've been asking myself is, what's to prevent Soapy ditching me and making a pass at her? She. would be a pushover for him. He's full of sex appeal, the sweet old pieface," said Dolly, with a sort of mournful wifely pride. "And he's just at what you might call the dangerous age. Young enough to have preserved that schoolgirl complexion, and old enough to have gotten tired of work and be looking around for a rich wife to take him away from it all."
"You watch him like a hawk, and if you get the goods on him, jump on his neck."
"You don't think it's just that he's sort of being civil, what with her being his hostess and all like that, what I mean?"
"No, I don't."
"Nor me," said Dolly regretfully. "Well, I must be getting along, or I'll miss that train. Been nice, seeing you."
"Drop in any time you're passing. That'll be five smackers."
"What'll be five smackers?"
"My professional advice. Slip me that note of mine, and we'll call it square."
Dolly Molloy quivered like a wounded deer.
"Five smackers for a measly coupla words which I'd practically made up my mind already to do like what you said? You've got a nerve."
"We Mayfair consultants come high," said Mr. Twist complacently. "Matter of fact, you're sitting pretty. Sherlock Holmes used to get jewelled snuff-boxes."
Only a womanly fear of missing a train could have kept his client from lingering to express her opinion of him in blistering Chicagoese. But time was flying. She opened her bag, and placed a piece of paper on the desk. Too late, she was reminding herself that Alexander Twist had never been the man easily to be got the better of in a business transaction. It was precisely this keen commercial sense of his which had rendered spacious cupboards, into which to withdraw from exasperated callers, so necessary to his well-being.
Her heart was heavy, as she sped in the express towards the picturesque Kentish village of Shipley. A now solidified suspicion of a loved husband, coupled with the thought that there would be only spinach and potatoes for dinner, had robbed her entirely of her usual effervescence. Moodily she alighted at her destination, and with drawn brows started on the short walk up the hill to Shipley Hall.
>
Shipley Hall, ancestral seat of George, sixth Viscount Uffenham, and rented furnished from him by Mrs. Cork, stood on a wide plateau, backed by rolling woodland, a white Georgian house set about with gay flower-beds and spreading lawns, commanding a comprehensive view of the surrounding countryside. Its grounds were looking their best in the June sunshine, and Soapy Molloy, pacing the terrace, was looking his best in a suit the colour of autumn leaves, a Panama hat, a red and yellow tie and a pair of those buckskin shoes with tan toecaps which add so much diablerie to a man's appearance.
Neither of these lovely sights, however, had the effect of lightening Dolly's despondency. The beauty of the grounds left her cold, and any uplift which she might have derived from the spectacle of her prismatic mate was neutralised by the fact that he was in the company of Mrs. Cork. And, as if this were not enough, he selected the exact moment when he swam into Dolly's ken for taking his fair companion's hand and giving it a courtly pat. The couple then passed from view into the rhododendron walk.
Dolly sank on to a handy tree stump, and there remained for some little time, a prey to bitter thoughts. Presently, she rose and made her way with leaden feet to her room. She was feeling that what she was suffering represented the limit which any young wife could be called upon to endure.
Opening the door, however, she found that she had been mistaken. Her view had been too optimistic. There was some more coming to her, and she paused on the threshold, tottering beneath the application of the last straw.
From under the dressing-table, rising like some mesa in a Western desert, there protruded a vast trouser seat. It quivered gently, like the butt end of a terrier at a rat hole.
On top of all her other troubles, Cakebread, the butler, was in again.
CHAPTER III
Despite the fascination of Mr. Molloy's society, Mrs. Cork had not lingered long in the rhododendron walk. She had a task to perform which required her presence indoors. Some ten minutes after Dolly had seen her on the terrace, she was in her study, speaking into the desk telephone.
"Miss Benedick."
"Yes, Mrs. Cork?" replied a charming voice, like spring winds sighing through pine trees.
"I want to see Mr. Trumper immediately."
"Yes, Mrs. Cork," said the charming voice.
Mrs. Cork gave her powerful shoulders a hitch, and took up her stand with her back to the empty fireplace, looking exactly like the frontispiece of her recently published volume of travel, A Woman in the Wilds, where the camera had caught her, gun in hand, with one foot on the neck of a dead giraffe.
Nobody who is interested in dead giraffes will require an introduction to Mrs. Wellesley Cork. But in the wide public for which the chronicler hopes that he is writing it is possible that there may be here and there a scattered few in whom these indiarubber-necked animals do not touch a chord. For the benefit of this handful, it must be mentioned that she was a very eminent explorer and big-game huntress.
It was the decease of Mr. Wellesley Cork some twelve years previously, leaving her at something of a loose end, that had caused her to turn her great natural energies, until then expended in keeping a husband in order, in the direction of roaming, rifle at the ready, the wilder portions of Africa. And she had done it with outstanding success. You could say what you liked about Clarissa Cork, and a thousand native bearers in their various dialects had said plenty, but you could not deny that she was far-flung and held dominion over palm and pine.
When this dynamic woman wanted to see people immediately, she saw them immediately. She had trained her little flock to come at her call as if they had been seasoned relay racers toeing the mark with, batons in their hands. The hour produced the man. Only a few minutes had elapsed before a shrimplike little figure came darting into the room. Mr. Trumper, and no other.
Mrs. Cork pierced him, as he entered, with a keen eye, as if he had been a gnu appearing through a thicket, and came to the point without delay. She was a woman who never wasted time in lengthy preambles.
"Well, Eustace, you know why I have sent for you."
A gulp escaped the unfortunate man. The look on her face was a look of doom, bidding him abandon hope. He had worshipped Mrs. Cork in a silent, shrimplike way, as men of his kind are so apt to worship her type of woman, for many years, and he had felt until this moment that the thought of this devotion might lead her to temper justice with mercy.
"You know the rule. Instant expulsion, if found eating meat. We must have discipline."
One is not ashamed to say that the heart bleeds for Eustace Trumper. His great love had caused him to enrol himself among the foundation members of the little colony at Shipley Hall, but the Trumpers, father and son back through the ages, had always been valiant trenchermen, and Eustace in particular was noted in his circle for his prowess with knife and fork. At school, he had been known as Thomas the Tapeworm, and, grown to riper years, his abilities were so familiar at his club that when he appeared in the doorway of the luncheon-room, the carver flexed his muscles and behaved like a war horse at the sound of the bugle. If such a man. after nobly confining himself to vegetables for weeks and weeks, slips one day and is found in the potting shed with a cold steak-and-kidney pie on his very lips, who shall blame him?
Well, unfortunately, Mrs. Cork, for one.
" Discipline," she repeated. "You'll have to go, Eustace."
There was a pause. Mr. Trumper raised pleading eyes, like a netted shrimp.
"Give me another chance, Clarissa."
Mrs. Cork seemed moved, but she shook her head.
"Impossible, Eustace. Suppose it got about that I had overlooked this flagrant violation of the rules. What, for instance, would Mr. Molloy think? He has come here expressly to study our colony, with a view to starting something similar in America, if he finds it is a success. It would kill his enthusiasm."
One would scarcely have supposed that at such a moment as this Mr. Trumper would have had the spirit to frown. Nevertheless, he did, and darkly.
"I don't trust that man. I believe he's a crook."
"Nonsense."
"I'm sure he is. Nobody but a crook could be so smooth."
"Nonsense. Mr. Molloy is a charming, cultured American of the best type. A millionaire, too."
"How do you know he's a millionaire?"
"He told me so."
Mr. Trumper decided to abandon the topic. It had often given him cause for wonderment that this splendid woman, so shrewd and capable in her dealings with head-hunters and wounded pumas, should be so inadequate when confronted with the pitfalls of civilisation.
"Well, anyhow," he urged, "he'll never find out. Do let me stay, Clarissa. You know what it means to me to be near you. You are always such an inspiration to me."
Mrs. Cork wavered. She was a woman capable of checking a charging rhinoceros with a raised eyebrow and a well-bred stare, but she had her softer side. Except for her nephew, Lionel Green, there was no one of whom she was fonder than Eustace Trumper, nor had she failed, silent though it was, to note his devotion. She looked questioningly at a stuffed antelope's head which decorated the wall, as if seeking its advice. Then the struggle between principle and sentiment ended.
"All right. But don't let it happen again."
"I won't, I won't."
"Then we will say no more about it," said Mrs. Cork gruffly.
There was a silence, strained as silence always is after these poignant scenes. Eustace Trumper stood shuffling his feet softly. Mrs. Cork continued to stare at the antelope. Mr. Trumper was the first to speak, prefacing his words with a little cough, for the subject on which he was about to touch was a delicate one.
"Any news of Lionel, Clarissa?"
"I telephoned him this morning, directly after Miss Benedick had read me the report of the case in the paper."
"I hope he is coming here?"
"He will be down this evening."
"Capital. It will do him all the good in the world, being with you after such an ordeal. You are d
elighted, of course?"
Mrs. Cork relapsed into silence for a moment. When she spoke, her words came as a surprise to Mr. Trumper. "I'm not sure."
"Not sure?"
"I am rather wondering if Shipley Hall is quite the place for Lionel."
"I don't understand."
The french window of the study was open. Mrs. Cork strode to it, and raked the adjacent scenery with a quick glance. A couple of disciples were breathing deeply at the far end of the lawn, but they were out of earshot, and she returned, satisfied. She had that to say which she did not wish to be overheard.
"Eustace, have you ever suspected that there might be something between Lionel and Miss Benedick?"
"Why, no. What do you mean?"
"I believe she's setting her cap at him."
"Clarissa!"
"I may be mistaken, of course, but that is what I think. If she is, I'll soon put a stop to it. She may be Lord Uffenham's niece, but it's obvious that she can't have a penny, or what is she doing as my secretary-companion? That is why I am wondering if it is a good thing that Lionel is coming here. He is a sweet-natured, impulsive boy, just the sort to be an easy prey for a designing woman."
"But what makes you think so?"
"I thought I saw signs of some understanding between them, the last time he was down here. Little things, but I noticed them. And I didn't at all like the way she behaved this morning, when she was reading me the newspaper account of Lionel's examination by that man, J. G. Miller. Her voice shook so much that I looked up, and I saw that her eyes were blazing. And when I said that I wished I could strangle J. G. Miller with my bare hands, she gave a sort of wistful sigh. I thought it most extraordinary. What possible reason was there for her to be so concerned, unless what I suspect is true?"
"You don't think it was just natural good feeling?"
"No, I don't."
"It might very well have been. I can assure you that everybody here is most resentful about the whole affair. I was speaking to Cakebread after breakfast, and he told me that the cook had expressed herself very strongly."