Hot Water

  'So I should imagine. Let's hope Mrs Gedge's safe is not that kind.'

  'Couldn't be. Not in a house. You find those in banks and that. The kind of pete a dame would have in her house would be one of the ones you borrow a hairpin to open. Or, if nobody's got a hairpin, just eat some garlic and breathe on the lock. Or, if you don't want to do that, find the combination. Where is this pete?'

  'In the Venetian Suite on the floor below.'

  'Anybody there?'

  'Not at the moment.'

  'Then let's go down take a look at it,' said Mr Slattery. 'Now's a good time to find out if it's one of those easy ones. Sure to be, though. You don't get keesters in a joint like this. Ask me, it'll be one of those four-letter combinations, and opening those is like shelling peas.'

  2

  There is something about Milady's bedroom, even when unoccupied, which tends to cast a certain awe upon the intruder. So Packy, at least, found. The Venetian Room was a large, ornate apartment on the first floor of the Château, with french windows which opened on a balcony looking down upon the drive. Packy, as he accompanied Mr Slattery across the threshold, was strongly conscious of a desire to be elsewhere. He had never met Mrs Gedge, but the picture he had formed of her in his mind was that of a tough baby. And, unreasoning though he knew it to be, he could not altogether repress a fear lest at any moment this formidable woman might suddenly bound out at them from behind the heavy curtains that draped the windows.

  Fortunately, for such an occurrence could not have failed to prove a source of embarrassment, his apprehensions were not fulfilled. Great woman though she was, Mrs Gedge could not be simultaneously at the Carlton Hotel in London and in the Venetian Suite of the Château Blissac. No sudden roar, as of a tigress defending her cubs, came to break the stillness. Mr Slattery was enabled to conduct his investigations undisturbed.

  The result of these evidently gratified him. He inspected the safe and smiled amiably. It was, it appeared, as he had foreseen, one of the easier, more likeable types of safe. He also spoke with cordial approval of the french windows and the balcony, which, he pointed out in the devout voice in which men call attention to the benevolent acts of Providence, might have been placed there expressly to afford the cracksman a nice, smooth getaway.

  And it was at this point, just when everything was going so capitally and the whole atmosphere was so redolent of quiet contentment, that the jarring note intruded itself. For some moments, Mr Slattery had been glancing idly about the room, and now, abruptly, something in its aspect seemed to wipe the genial satisfaction from his face. He stiffened, and his eyes grew wider. It was as if he had seen a serpent in the way.

  'But this is a woman's room!'

  He spoke in a hoarse, agitated whisper, lowering his powerful voice to such an extent that it sounded like gas escaping from a leaky pipe. But neither this peculiar mode of address nor his care-stricken aspect for the moment conveyed to Packy a sense of anything untoward. He replied calmly, paying no attention to these portents.

  'That's right. Mrs Gedge's.'

  Mr Slattery shivered.

  'Brother,' he said, much moved, 'I hate to break it to you, but if that's so the proposition's cold.'

  Packy stared.

  'Cold?'

  'It's off. You'll have to let me out. I can't do it.'

  'What!'

  'No, sir,' said Mr Slattery, apologetically but with the utmost firmness, 'I just can't do it. You don't get me busting no woman's room.'

  Packy gasped, aghast at this unforeseen exhibition of temperament in one on whom he had looked till now as the most level-headed of his sex.

  'Why not?'

  'Because,' said Mr Slattery, 'you bust a woman's room and what happens? She wakes up and gets set to scream. And what happens then? You either have to do a dive out of the window and prob'ly break your dam' neck, or else you've got to go and choke her. I never choked no woman yet, boy, and I don't aim to begin.'

  The sentiment was one which would have caused Sir Galahad or the Chevalier Bayard to shake hands warmly with Mr Slattery, so instinct was it with the best spirit of chivalry. One dislikes to have to state, therefore, that it awoke in Packy only a disgusted exasperation.

  'But, good Lord, you must have had to burgle a woman's room occasionally in the course of your distinguished career. How long have you been cracking safes?'

  'Years and years.'

  'Well, then.'

  'No,' said Mr Slattery. 'You see, brother, up till a few years back I've always worked with a partner. The best inside worker a safe-blower ever had. Julia, her name was, and she's quit me now, but in the old days we were a team.'

  'I don't see what Julia has to do with it.'

  'She used to get herself invited to these swell homes,' explained Mr Slattery. 'Having class. And if the pete was in a dame's room she'd slip in before I got there and put a sponge of chloroform under her nose, so that by the time I arrived everything was hotsy-totsy. Boy, you don't know how I've missed Julia since she walked out on me. I've felt like a little child without its mother.'

  He was plainly suffering from the wild regret, of which the poet speaks, for the days that are no more, but Packy was in no frame of mind to offer condolences. His mood was regrettably self-centred. He brooded morosely.

  'Then you won't get that letter for me?'

  'I can't. Say, whose letter is it, anyway?'

  'Senator Opal's.'

  'No.' Mr Slattery shook his head regretfully. 'If it had been yours, maybe I might have stretched a point. But I don't go busting no beazels' rooms for any Senator Opal.'

  'And those jewels? You're really going to pass them up?'

  'Don't talk of them,' begged Mr Slattery. 'Just to think of them gives me a pain. But there it is. I'm sorry.' His face lightened. 'But, say, listen. You fix it so's Gedge sleeps in here, and the deal's on again.'

  The implication that he was in a position to dictate their sleeping arrangements to his host and hostess increased Packy's annoyance.

  And how do you suggest that I do that?'

  'Well, hell,' said Mr Slattery, 'I don't see where it's so difficult. Here's this pete, full of ice. Just being there, it makes it dangerous for a dame to sleep in the room. You tell this Gedge dame she's apt to get her head pushed in one of these nights if she goes on laying with it up against a pete full of stuff, and she'll see it. If she's like most dames.'

  'From what I hear, she isn't.'

  'Well, I guess she's like enough to make her feel that if there's going to be a murder in the home she'd rather it was the old man than her. You put it to her, boy. You go to her and say, "Lookut, Mrs Gedge, it ain't safe for you, sleeping in that room with all that ice. First thing you know, some heist-guy'll be busting the joint and then where'll you be? Getting your head pushed in or lying there with your throat cut, that's where you'll be. You snap out of that room, Mrs Gedge," you say, "and let your old man sleep there, or before you know where you are X'll be marking the spot." That'll shift her.'

  Packy weighed the advice thoughtfully. There seemed a good deal in it. Such a speech might well have the desired effect. The trouble was that it would be rather difficult to lead up to in general conversation. It was not the sort of thing you could spring on a woman you had only just met, in the middle of a chat about beautiful Brittany or the weather.

  'Well, I'll think it over,' he said.

  'You do,' said Mr Slattery. 'You go back to bed and think it over. Me, I rather guess, now I'm in the joint, I'll take a look around. Folks sometimes leave gold clocks and that on the dressing-table. What I mean, you never know. And you don't want to miss a trick these days. Say, did you ever see the Stock Market in such a state? Everything down to nothing, you might say, and me with all my capital locked up. Got to make what you can when you can, what I mean.'

  It was not for Packy to stand in the way of a fellow-man pluckily trying to make good losses incurred through the fluctuations of the world's markets. It was plain to him, moreover, that no
arguments would move Mr Slattery from the position he had outlined. So long as this room continued to be that of a beazel, the man would remain adamant. He bade him good night and passed on his way upstairs.

  It seemed to him after he had been in bed some ten minutes that the silence of the Château was broken by a distant shout or cry, but he was too sleepy to give it his attention. He closed his eyes again and dropped off.

  3

  One of the things one always wants to know about a house party is what sort of a night everybody had. As regards the Château Blissac, the slumbers of the great majority of its inmates had been entirely satisfactory. Mr Gedge had slept well. Packy had slept well. Senator Opal had slept well. Jane had slept well. Miss Putnam had slept well. Medway had slept well. Blair Eggleston had slept well.

  Only Mr Gordon Carlisle had failed to rest adequately. Much thinking, rendering him feverish, had caused him to turn and toss till an advanced hour, and when he did succeed in achieving a doze he was jerked out of it by that same shout or cry which had momentarily disturbed Packy. Speculation on this had made him wakeful again. It was not till dawn that he finally fell asleep, and it was scarcely two hours later when sunlight, streaming in through the window across which he had forgotten to draw the curtain, brought him to life once more.

  His idea on getting out of bed had been to exclude this sunlight. But, finding himself at the open window, he leaned out, like everybody else who ever approached an open window in the early morning, to see what kind of a day it was.

  From where he stood, on the second floor of the house, the view was spreading and attractive. His window did not command that distant prospect of the harbour which was the Château's pride: but there were plenty of good things to make up for this deprivation. Gardens, gay with flowers, lay before Mr Carlisle, and beyond them woods and the Breton quaintness of the home farm: while above him, as he raised his eyes, there was a blue sky, flecked with little clouds; a few of the local birds going about their business; an insect or two; a couple of butterflies; and a pair of legs encased in grey trousers and terminating in two shoes of generous dimensions.

  It was these last that enchained his attention. The spectacle of legs where no legs should be is always an arresting one. Mr Carlisle, drinking them in, was frankly nonplussed. Rapidly running over in his mind the topography of the house, he discovered that their owner, if they had an owner and were not simply a stray pair of legs which had just been left about, must be sitting on the window-sill of the bedroom occupied by Senator Opal.

  There surged over Mr Carlisle an intense desire for further data. He was not accustomed to be up and about so early as this, but if ever a man had a good excuse for brushing with hasty steps the dew away to meet the sun upon the upland lawn, that man was he. Only by going out and looking up from a less acute angle could he hope to probe this mystery

  Taking a snap judgement on the evidence at present to hand, he presumed that the sitter must be the Senator himself. Only a man of established eccentricity would roost on window-sills first thing in the morning – or, indeed, at any hour of the day, and what he had seen of Senator Opal had been enough to convince him that the latter was eccentric enough for any form of self-expression.

  Only when he reached the garden did he discover that his reasoning had been faulty. Senator Opal might be temperamentally of window-sill-sitting timbre. Quite possibly the day would come when he would take to sitting on window-sills. But he had not done so yet. The man on whom Mr Carlisle's astonished gaze rested was his old friend, Soup Slattery. And as he espied Mr Slattery, simultaneously Mr Slattery espied him.

  There followed one of those awkward periods which occur when a man who is compelled to confine himself entirely to grimaces is endeavouring to convey his thoughts to a second party who is so overcome with amazement that he would scarcely be in a position to understand the plainest speech. Mr Slattery contorted his features. Mr Carlisle continued to gape. It was only at the end of about five minutes, just after Mr Slattery had nearly dislocated his lower jaw in a particularly eloquent passage, that the marvelling Confidence Trick artist realized that what his friend was silently appealing for was a ladder.

  Raising his hand in a sort of Fascist salute and nodding vigorously several times, he proceeded in quest of the desired object.

  A ladder is not one of those things you can just reach out and lay your hand on. Mr Carlisle had to search thoroughly and well. Eventually, he discovered one outside a distant shed, only to find that it was too heavy for him to carry. Returning with the distasteful task before him of explaining this misfortune in dumb show, he received another shock.

  The window-sill, which ten minutes before had featured Mr Slattery so prominently, was now empty.

  Gordon Carlisle paused on the brink of believing in miracles. The only theory that seemed to fit the facts was that his friend had suddenly soared through the air like a bird. He could not have fallen, for the only corpse on the ground below was that of a small snail.

  Then, just in time to save his reason from collapse, Mr Carlisle observed the stout water-pipe which ran down the wall near the window. And, putting two and two together, he deduced that in the interval of his absence Mr Slattery must have discovered this pipe. The fact that he had not done so earlier appeared to indicate that he had taken to the window-sill while the world was still in darkness. And that was perplexing, too, when you came to look into it. Mr Carlisle's reason, saved once from disintegration, began to wobble again.

  Fortunately for his professional future, for a Confidence Trick artist cannot hope to continue in a keenly competitive business if his brain has come unstuck, something now occurred which threw a light on the matter. The window opened, and Senator Opal appeared. He was wearing orange-coloured pyjamas and a revolver, and on his face was a look of wonder and bafflement.

  Sighting Mr Carlisle below, he sought information in a voice of thunder.

  'Where's my burglar?'

  Mr Carlisle had nothing to reply to this. The Senator's tone grew more peevish.

  'You down below there.... You Duke.... Have you seen my burglar?'

  Mr Carlisle perceived that it behoved him to pull himself together.

  'Ah, non,' he replied, in that musical accent which went with his portrayal of the Duc de Pont-Andemer.

  'Ah, what?'

  'Ah, no.'

  'How long have you been down there?'

  'I have this moment only arrived.'

  'Did you see anyone sitting on my window-sill?'

  'No. No. On the window-sill, no-one.'

  'Hell!' cried the Senator.

  You cannot conduct a full-throated long-distance conversation in the early morning and finish up by ejaculating 'Hell!' in a voice like the bursting of an ammunition-dump without rousing such sleepers as may be in your vicinity. From a window to the left the head of Mr Gedge appeared.

  'What's the matter?'

  'I've lost a burglar.'

  'Where did you see him last?' asked Mr Gedge.

  Before the Senator could reply to this pertinent question, a window on the right revealed the wondering face of Jane. She looked charming in a blue negligee.

  'Whatever is the matter, Father?'

  'I left a burglar on the window-sill, and he's gone,' said the Senator, rather in the manner of a householder complaining of the loss of a bottle of milk.

  'How do you mean, you left a burglar on the window-sill?'

  'I mean precisely what I say I found the fellow in my room last night and I wasn't going to lose my sleep calling up the police, so I made him sit on the window-sill, intending to collect him in the morning.'

  'You must have been dreaming.'

  'I was not dreaming.'

  'Say, listen,' said Mr Gedge chattily. 'I had the strangest dream last night. I dreamed I was at the Biltmore, Los Angeles, and the waiter came up to take my order, and do you know what he was? A skeleton. Yessir, a skeleton in a pink middy-blouse.'

  The disposition to be impatient t
owards the recital of other people's dreams is almost universal. Senator Opal was not one of those exceptional men who made good listeners on such occasions.

  'Stop gabbling, you Gedge!'

  'Father!'

  And you stop saying "Father!" What's become of the fellow, that's what I want to know.'

  'I never heard of such a thing,' said Jane primly. 'Putting burglars on window-sills.'

  'Well, you've heard of it now.'

  'Why didn't you simply...?'

  'I've told you why I didn't simply. Do you think I was going to lose my night's rest just because a blasted burglar came into my room?'

  Mr Carlisle intruded on this family jar.

  'I think the man must have made his descent by the water-pipe.'

  'Water-pipe?' The Senator gaped, aghast. 'You don't mean there's a ... My God! There is. It was so dark I didn't see it.'

  'Serves you right,' observed Jane, who, womanlike, intended to have the last word if it took all summer, 'for being such a smarty.'

  'A what?' boomed the Senator, quivering at the offensive term.

  'A smarty,' repeated Jane firmly 'Putting burglars on window-sills. Much too clever to do anything like anybody else, aren't you? I'm very glad he has gone. It will be a lesson to you.'

  She gave him a severe look and withdrew, closing the window behind her. She was a kind-hearted girl, but, like every modern girl, she did not believe in being foolishly indulgent with parents. When they behaved like cuckoos, you had to tell them so – quite quietly – not angrily – just pointing it out to them and leaving their intelligence to do the rest.

  But even with her departure Senator Opal did not find himself free from criticism. Even as he puffed and exercised his eyebrows, it broke out unexpectedly in another quarter.

  'She's quite right,' said Mr Gedge, protruding from his window like a snail out of its shell. 'Yessir, the girl's absolutely right. Should have thought a man would have had more sense.'

  Mr Gedge, as has been indicated earlier in this narrative, was not without a certain native shrewdness, and it had just occurred to him that here, sent by Providence, was a most admirable opportunity for intensifying and consolidating the hostility which this snorting man already felt towards him. The madder, he argued, he made Senator Opal, the firmer would become the latter's already firm resolve to do all that lay in his power to see that he, J. Wellington Gedge, was not appointed to the post of Ambassador to France.