16
In the interesting land of India, where snakes abound andscorpions are common objects of the wayside, a native who has hadthe misfortune to be bitten by one of the latter pursues anadmirably common-sense plan. He does not stop to lament, nor doeshe hang about analysing his emotions. He runs and runs and runs,and keeps on running until he has worked the poison out of hissystem. Not until then does he attempt introspection.
Lord Dawlish, though ignorant of this fact, pursued almostidentically the same policy. He did not run on leaving LadyWetherby's house, but he took a very long and very rapid walk,than which in times of stress there are few things of greatermedicinal value to the human mind. To increase the similarity, hewas conscious of a curious sense of being poisoned. He feltstifled--in want of air.
Bill was a simple young man, and he had a simple code of ethics.Above all things he prized and admired and demanded from hisfriends the quality of straightness. It was his one demand. He hadnever actually had a criminal friend, but he was quite capable ofintimacy with even a criminal, provided only that there wassomething spacious about his brand of crime and that it did notinvolve anything mean or underhand. It was the fact that MrBreitstein whom Claire had wished him to insinuate into his club,though acquitted of actual crime, had been proved guilty ofmeanness and treachery, that had so prejudiced Bill against him.The worst accusation that he could bring against a man was that hewas not square, that he had not played the game.
Claire had not been square. It was that, more than the shock ofsurprise of Lady Wetherby's news, that had sent him striding alongthe State Road at the rate of five miles an hour, staring beforehim with unseeing eyes. A sudden recollection of their lastinterview brought a dull flush to Bill's face and accelerated hisspeed. He felt physically ill.
It was not immediately that he had arrived at even this sketchyoutline of his feelings. For perhaps a mile he walked as thescorpion-stung natives run--blindly, wildly, with nothing in hismind but a desire to walk faster and faster, to walk as no man hadever walked before. And then--one does not wish to be undulyrealistic, but the fact is too important to be ignored--he beganto perspire. And hard upon that unrefined but wonder-working flowcame a certain healing of spirit. Dimly at first but every momentmore clearly, he found it possible to think.
In a man of Bill's temperament there are so many qualities woundedby a blow such as he had received, that it is hardly surprisingthat his emotions, when he began to examine them, were mixed. Nowone, now another, of his wounds presented itself to his notice.And then individual wounds would become difficult to distinguishin the mass of injuries. Spiritually, he was in the position of aman who has been hit simultaneously in a number of sensitive spotsby a variety of hard and hurtful things. He was as little able,during the early stages of his meditations, to say where he washurt most as a man who had been stabbed in the back, bitten in theankle, hit in the eye, smitten with a blackjack, and kicked on theshin in the same moment of time. All that such a man would be ableto say with certainty would be that unpleasant things had happenedto him; and that was all that Bill was able to say.
Little by little, walking swiftly the while, he began to make arough inventory. He sorted out his injuries, catalogued them. Itwas perhaps his self-esteem that had suffered least of all, for hewas by nature modest. He had a savage humility, valuable in acrisis of this sort.
But he looked up to Claire. He had thought her straight. And allthe time that she had been saying those things to him that nightof their last meeting she had been engaged to another man, a fat,bald, doddering, senile fool, whose only merit was his money.Scarcely a fair description of Mr Pickering, but in a man inBill's position a little bias is excusable.
Bill walked on. He felt as if he could walk for ever. Automobileswhirred past, hooting peevishly, but he heeded them not. Dogstrotted out to exchange civilities, but he ignored them. Thepoison in his blood drove him on.
And then quite suddenly and unexpectedly the fever passed. Almostin mid-stride he became another man, a healed, sane man, keenlyaware of a very vivid thirst and a desire to sit down and restbefore attempting the ten miles of cement road that lay betweenhim and home. Half an hour at a wayside inn completed the cure. Itwas a weary but clear-headed Bill who trudged back through thegathering dusk.
He found himself thinking of Claire as of someone he had knownlong ago, someone who had never touched his life. She seemed sofar away that he wondered how she could ever have affected him forpain or pleasure. He looked at her across a chasm. This is thereal difference between love and infatuation, that infatuationcan be slain cleanly with a single blow. In the hour of clearvision which had come to him, Bill saw that he had never lovedClaire. It was her beauty that had held him, that and the appealwhich her circumstances had made to his pity. Their minds had notrun smoothly together. Always there had been something thatjarred, a subtle antagonism. And she was crooked.
Almost unconsciously his mind began to build up an image of theideal girl, the girl he would have liked Claire to be, the girlwho would conform to all that he demanded of woman. She would bebrave. He realized now that, even though it had moved his pity,Claire's querulousness had offended something in him.
He had made allowances for her, but the ideal girl would have hadno need of allowances. The ideal girl would be plucky, cheerfullyvaliant, a fighter. She would not admit the existence of hardluck.
She would be honest. Here, too, she would have no need of allowances.No temptation would be strong enough to make her do a mean act orthink a mean thought, for her courage would give her strength, andher strength would make her proof against temptation. She would bekind. That was because she would also be extremely intelligent,and, being extremely intelligent, would have need of kindness toenable her to bear with a not very intelligent man like himself.For the rest, she would be small and alert and pretty, and fairhaired--and brown-eyed--and she would keep a bee farm and her namewould be Elizabeth Boyd.
Having arrived with a sense of mild astonishment at thisconclusion, Bill found, also to his surprise, that he had walkedten miles without knowing it and that he was turning in at thefarm gate. Somebody came down the drive, and he saw that it wasElizabeth.
She hurried to meet him, small and shadowy in the uncertain light.James, the cat, stalked rheumatically at her side. She came up toBill, and he saw that her face wore an anxious look. He gazed ather with a curious feeling that it was a very long time since hehad seen her last.
'Where have you been?' she said, her voice troubled. 'I couldn'tthink what had become of you.'
'I went for a walk.'
'But you've been gone hours and hours.'
'I went to a place called Morrisville.'
'Morrisville!' Elizabeth's eyes opened wide. 'Have you walkedtwenty miles?'
'Why, I--I believe I have.'
It was the first time he had been really conscious of it.Elizabeth looked at him in consternation. Perhaps it was theassociation in her mind of unexpected walks with the newly-bornactivities of the repentant Nutty that gave her the feeling thatthere must be some mental upheaval on a large scale at the back ofthis sudden ebullition of long-distance pedestrianism. Sheremembered that the thought had come to her once or twice duringthe past week that all was not well with her visitor, and that hehad seemed downcast and out of spirits.
She hesitated.
'Is anything the matter, Mr Chalmers?'
'No,' said Bill, decidedly. He would have found a difficulty inmaking that answer with any ring of conviction earlier in the day,but now it was different. There was nothing whatever the matterwith him now. He had never felt happier.
'You're sure?'
'Absolutely. I feel fine.'
'I thought--I've been thinking for some days--that you might be introuble of some sort.'
Bill swiftly added another to that list of qualities which he hadbeen framing on his homeward journey. That girl of his would beangelically sympathetic.
'It's awfully good of you,' he said, 'but honestly I feel
like--Ifeel great.'
The little troubled look passed from Elizabeth's face. Her eyestwinkled.
'You're really feeling happy?'
'Tremendously.'
'Then let me damp you. We're in an awful fix!'
'What! In what way?'
'About the monkey.'
'Has he escaped?'
'That's the trouble--he hasn't.'
'I don't understand.'
'Come and sit down and I'll tell you. It's a shame to keep youstanding after your walk.'
They made their way to the massive stone seat which Mr Flack, thelandlord, had bought at a sale and dumped in a moment ofexuberance on the farm grounds.
'This is the most hideous thing on earth,' said Elizabethcasually, 'but it will do to sit on. Now tell me: why did you goto Lady Wetherby's this afternoon?'
It was all so remote, it seemed so long ago that he had wanted tofind an excuse for meeting Claire again, that for a moment Billhesitated in actual perplexity, and before he could speak Elizabethhad answered the question for him.
'I suppose you went out of kindness of heart to relieve the poorlady's mind,' she said. 'But you certainly did the wrong thing.You started something!'
'I didn't tell her the animal was here.'
'What did you tell her?'
'I said I had seen it, don't you know.'
'That was enough.'
'I'm awfully sorry.'
'Oh, we shall pull through all right, but we must act at once. Wemust be swift and resolute. We must saddle our chargers and up andaway, and all that sort of thing. Show a flash of speed,' sheexplained kindly, at the sight of Bill's bewildered face.
'But what has happened?'
'The press is on our trail. I've been interviewing reporters allthe afternoon.'
'Reporters!'
'Millions of them. The place is alive with them. Keen, hatchet-facedyoung men, and every one of them was the man who really unravelledsome murder mystery or other, though the police got the credit forit. They told me so.'
'But, I say, how on earth--'
'--did they get here? I suppose Lady Wetherby invited them.'
'But why?'
'She wants the advertisement, of course. I know it doesn't soundsensational--a lost monkey; but when it's a celebrity's lostmonkey it makes a difference. Suppose King George had lost amonkey; wouldn't your London newspapers give it a good deal ofspace? Especially if it had thrown eggs at one of the ladies andbitten the Duke of Norfolk in the leg? That's what our visitor hasbeen doing apparently. At least, he threw eggs at the scullery-maidand bit a millionaire. It's practically the same thing. At anyrate, there it is. The newspaper men are here, and they seemto regard this farm as their centre of operations. I had thegreatest difficulty in inducing them to go home to their well-earneddinners. They wanted to camp out on the place. As it is, there maystill be some of them round, hiding in the grass with notebooks,and telling one another in whispers that they were the men whoreally solved the murder mystery. What shall we do?'
Bill had no suggestions.
'You realize our position? I wonder if we could be arrested forkidnapping. The monkey is far more human than most of themillionaire children who get kidnapped. It's an awful fix. Did youknow that Lady Wetherby is going to offer a reward for theanimal?'
'No, really?'
'Five hundred dollars!'
'Surely not!'
'She is. I suppose she feels she can charge it up to necessaryexpenses for publicity and still be ahead of the game, taking intoaccount the advertising she's going to get.'
'She said nothing about that when I saw her.'
'No, because it won't be offered until to-morrow or the day after.One of the newspaper men told me that. The idea is, of course, tomake the thing exciting just when it would otherwise be dying as anews item. Cumulative interest. It's a good scheme, too, but itmakes it very awkward for me. I don't want to be in the positionof keeping a monkey locked up with the idea of waiting untilsomebody starts a bull market in monkeys. I consider that thatsort of thing would stain the spotless escutcheon of the Boyds. Itwould be a low trick for that old-established family to play. Notbut what poor, dear Nutty would do it like a shot,' she concludedmeditatively.
Bill was impressed.
'It does make it awkward, what?'
'It makes it more than awkward, what! Take another aspect of thesituation. The night before last my precious Nutty, while ruininghis constitution with the demon rum, thought he saw a monkey thatwasn't there, and instantly resolved to lead a new and betterlife. He hates walking, but he has now begun to do his five milesa day. He loathes cold baths, but he now wallows in them. I don'tknow his views on Indian clubs, but I should think that he has astrong prejudice against them, too, but now you can't go near himwithout taking a chance of being brained. Are all these goodthings to stop as quickly as they began? If I know Nutty, he woulddrop them exactly one minute after he heard that it was a realmonkey he saw that night. And how are we to prevent his hearing?By a merciful miracle he was out taking his walk when thenewspaper men began to infest the place to-day, but that might nothappen another time. What conclusion does all this suggest to you,Mr Chalmers?'
'We ought to get rid of the animal.'
'This very minute. But don't you bother to come. You must be tiredout, poor thing.'
'I never felt less tired,' said Bill stoutly.
Elizabeth looked at him in silence for a moment.
'You're rather splendid, you know, Mr Chalmers. You make a greatpartner for an adventure of this kind. You're nice and solid.'
The outhouse lay in the neighbourhood of the hives, a gaunt,wooden structure surrounded by bushes. Elizabeth glanced over hershoulder as she drew the key from her pocket.
'You can't think how nervous I was this afternoon,' she said. 'Ithought every moment one of those newspaper men would look inhere. I--James! James! I thought I heard James in those bushes--Ikept heading them away. Once I thought it was all up.' Sheunlocked the door. 'One of them was about a yard from the window,just going to look in. Thank goodness, a bee stung him at thepsychological moment, and--Oh!'
'What's the matter?'
'Come and get a banana.'
They walked to the house. On the way Elizabeth stopped.
'Why, you haven't had any dinner either!' she said.
'Never mind me,' said Bill, 'I can wait. Let's get this thingfinished first.'
'You really are a sport, Mr Chalmers,' said Elizabeth gratefully.'It would kill me to wait a minute. I shan't feel happy until I'vegot it over. Will you stay here while I go up and see that Nutty'ssafe in his room?' she added as they entered the house.
She stopped abruptly. A feline howl had broken the stillness ofthe night, followed instantly by a sharp report.
'What was that?'
'It sounded like a car backfiring.'
'No, it was a shot. One of the neighbours, I expect. You can hearmiles away on a night like this. I suppose a cat was after hischickens. Thank goodness, James isn't a pirate cat. Wait while Igo up and see Nutty.'
She was gone only a moment.
'It's all right,' she said. 'I peeped in. He's doing deepbreathing exercises at his window which looks out the other way.Come along.'
When they reached the outhouse they found the door open.
'Did you do that?' said Elizabeth. 'Did you leave it open?'
'No.'
'I don't remember doing it myself. It must have swung open. Well,this saves us a walk. He'll have gone.'
'Better take a look round, what?'
'Yes, I suppose so; but he's sure not to be there. Have you amatch?'
Bill struck one and held it up.
'Good Lord!'
The match went out.
'What is it? What has happened?'
Bill was fumbling for another match.
'There's something on the floor. It looks like--I thought for aminute--' The small flame shot out of the gloom, flickered, thenburned with a steady glow. Bill stooped, bending
over something onthe ground. The match burned down.
Bill's voice came out of the darkness:
'I say, you were right about that noise. It was a shot. The poorlittle chap's down there on the floor with a hole in him the sizeof my fist.'