And another thing which must have impressed E. J. Murgatroyd very deeply, had he been apprised of it, was that from start to finish there had not been a sign of the face. For the first time in his association with it, it had been subjected to the test and had failed to deliver.
To what conclusion, then, was one forced? One was forced to the conclusion that he had turned the corner. The pure air of Shropshire had done its work, and he was now cured and in a position to go ahead and drink to his happiness as it should be drunk to.
And he was proceeding to do so when he saw something out of the corner of his eye and, turning, realized that he had underestimated the face's tenacity and will to win. What had kept it away earlier this afternoon he could not say – some appointment elsewhere, perhaps; but in light-heartedly assuming that it had retired from business he had been sadly mistaken.
There it was, pressed against the windowpane, that same fixed, intent expression in its eyes. It seemed to be trying to say something to him.
IV
The reason Bill's eyes were fixed and intent was that the sight of Tipton through the window had come to him like that of a sail on the horizon to a shipwrecked mariner. And what he was trying to say to him was that he would be glad if Tipton would at his earliest convenience open the window and let him in.
There is this about climbing along ledges towards water pipes, that by the time you have reached your water pipe and have come to the point where you are going to slide down it the whole idea of sliding down water pipes is apt to have lost any charm which it may have possessed at the outset of your journey. Bill, facing the last leg of his trip, was feeling the same lack of faith in the trustworthiness of the water pipe as he had formerly felt in that of the ivy.
Arriving at the window, therefore, and seeing Tipton, he decided abruptly to alter his whole scheme of campaign. He had recognized the other immediately as the tall, thin chap who had showed himself so aloof on the occasion of their encounter in the rhododendrons, but he was hoping that in the special circumstances he might be induced to unbend a bit. In Tipton he saw one of those men who dislike talking to strangers and raise their eyebrows and pass on if accosted by them; but, after all, when it is a question of saving a human life, the aloofest of tall, thin chaps may reasonably be expected to stretch a point.
What he wanted Tipton to do was to let him in and allow him to remain in modest seclusion under the bed or somewhere until the fever of the chase had spent itself in the bosoms of Charles, whoever he was, of Thomas, whoever he was, of the unidentified person with the service revolver, and of Lady Hermione. He did not want to talk to Tipton or bore him in any way, and he was prepared to give him a guarantee that he would not dream of presuming on this enforced acquaintance. He was perfectly willing that Tipton, if he desired to do so, should cut him next time they met, provided that he would extend the hand of assistance now.
It was a difficult idea to put through a closed window, but by way of starting the negotiations he placed his lips to the pane and said:
'Hi!'
He could have made no more unfortunate move. Recalling as it did so strongly to Tipton the circumstances of their last meeting, the monosyllable set the seal on the latter's gloom and depression. Bill did not, of course, know it, but it was that 'Hi!' of his at their previous encounter which had affected the man behind the flask even more powerfully than the mere sight of his face. Broadly, what Tipton felt about phantom faces was that a man capable of taking the rough with the smooth could put up with them provided they kept silent. Wired for sound, they went too far.
He gave Bill one long, reproachful look such as St Sebastian might have given his persecutors, and left the room in a marked manner.
To Bill it was as if he had been one of a beleaguered garrison and the United States Marines, having arrived, had simply turned on their heels and gone off again. For some moments he continued standing where he was, his nose pressed against the pane; then reluctantly he grasped the water pipe and started to lower himself. He was oppressed by a bitter feeling that this was the last time he would put his faith in tall, thin chaps. 'Let me have men about me that are fat,' thought Bill, as he worked his way cautiously downwards.
The water pipe was magnificent. It could easily, if it had had the distorted sense of humour of some water pipes, have come apart from the wall and let him shoot down like a falling star, but it stood as firm as a rock. It did not even wobble. And Bill's heart, which had been in his mouth, gradually returned to its base. Something resembling elation crept into his mood. He might have missed seeing Prudence, but he had outsmarted Lady Hermione Wedge, the man with the service revolver, the unseen Thomas, and the mysterious Charles. They had pitted their wits against his, and he must have made them feel uncommonly foolish.
This elation reached its peak as he felt the solid earth beneath his feet. But it did not maintain its new high for long. Almost immediately there was a sharp drop, and his heart, rocketing up once more, returned to his mouth. A rich smell of pig assailed his nostrils, and a thin, piping voice spoke behind him.
'Wah yah dah?' said the voice.
V
The speaker was a very small man in corduroy trousers, niffy to a degree and well stricken in years. He might have been either a smelly centenarian or an octogenarian who had been prematurely aged by trouble. A stranger to Bill, he would have been recognized immediately by Lady Hermione Wedge, to whom both his appearance and aroma were familiar. He was Lord Emsworth's pig man, Edwin Pott, and the reason he said 'Wah yah dah?' when he meant 'What are you doing?' was that he had no roof to his mouth. One does not blame him for this. As Gally had said to Lady Hermione, we can't all have roofs to our mouths. One simply mentions it.
The point is perhaps a moot one, but it is probably better, when you are caught sliding down water pipes outside other people's houses, if your captor is a man with a roof to his mouth and not one lacking this useful property. In the former case, some sort of exchange of ideas is possible, in the latter not. When Edwin Pott said 'Wah yah dah?' Bill could not follow him.
He made, accordingly, no reply, and the other, seeming to feel that the burden of the conversation was up to him, said: 'Car yar, har?' To this question, too, Bill made no response. He would have been, in any event, disinclined for talk. What he wanted to do was to remove himself as speedily as possible, and with this end in view he began to move round his companion like a large steamer circling a small buoy.
His progress was arrested. When Edwin Pott had said, 'Car yar, har?' he had meant 'Cotched you, have I?' and he now proceeded to suit action to words by clutching at Bill's coat and seizing it in a senile grasp. Bill endeavoured to release himself, but the hand held firm.
It was a situation with which Bill frankly did not know how to cope. We have spoken of him as a young man whose name would have come high up on the list of anyone looking for a deputy to tackle a mad bull for him, and with a mad bull he would have known where he was. Nor would he have been at a loss if Edwin Pott had been some powerful thug. With such antagonists he could have expressed himself.
But this was different. Here he was confronted by a poor human wreck with one foot in the grave and the other sliding towards it, a frail wisp of a creature whose white hairs, such of them as still lingered on his egg-shaped head, claimed chivalry and respect. He could have recommended Edwin Pott a good lung tonic. He could not haul off and sock him on the jaw.
Once more he tried chivalrously and respectfully to loosen the clutching hand. It was in vain. 'Come one, come all, this rock shall fly from its firm base as soon as I,' Edwin Pott seemed to be saying. The situation had arrived at what is commonly known as a deadlock. Bill wanted to get away but was unable to do so. Edwin Pott wanted to shout for assistance but could produce only a thin, shrill sound like the whistling of gas in a pipe. (His vocal cords had never been the same since the evening during the last General Election when he had strained them while addressing the crowd at the public bar of the Emsworth Arms in the
Conservative interest.)
It was on this picture in still life that Colonel Wedge now intruded with his service revolver.
In supposing that by climbing down the water pipe he had outsmarted Colonel Wedge Bill had been laughably in error. You might outsmart captains by such tactics, and perhaps majors, but not colonels. The possibility of the existence of such a pipe had flashed upon Egbert Wedge at the moment when Charles, enjoying himself for the first time, for every footman likes smashing his employer's property, had started to break down Prudence's door, and it had sent him racing for the stairs. You do not have to tell a military man anything about the importance of cutting off the enemy's retreat.
His first emotion on beholding the group before him was a stern joy mingled with cordial appreciation of his cleverness and foresight; his second a strong feeling of relief that he had got his service revolver with him. Seen at close range, this marauding blighter looked an unpleasantly tough marauding blighter, the very type of marauding blighter for whose undoing you need all the service revolvers you can get. He found himself marvelling that Edwin Pott had had the intrepidity to engage in hand-to-hand combat so extraordinarily well-nourished a specimen of the criminal classes, and immediately decided that he personally was not going to do anything so damn silly.
'Hands up, you feller!' he cried, opening the proceedings at a comfortable distance. He had intended to say 'scoundrel', but the word had escaped him in the heat of the moment.
'Ar car har,' said Edwin Pott rather smugly, and Colonel Wedge, who was something of a linguist, correctly understanding him to have explained that it was he who had cotched the miscreant, gave credit where credit was due.
'Smart work, Pott,' he said. 'Right ho, Pott, stand aside. I'm going to march him up to the house.'
Although he had anticipated some such development, Bill could not restrain a cry.
'Silence!' barked Colonel Wedge in his parade voice. 'Right-about turn, quick march, and don't try any of your larks. This revolver's loaded.'
With an imperious gesture he motioned Bill to precede him, and Bill, feeling that any show of disinclination on his part would be classed by this severe critic under the head of trying larks, did so. Colonel Wedge followed, his weapon at the ready, and Edwin Pott, in his capacity of principal witness for the prosecution, brought up the rear. The procession moved round the corner of the house and approached the terrace.
The Hon. Galahad was standing on the terrace, apparently in a reverie. He looked up as they drew near, having become aware of Edwin Pott, from whose direction a light breeze was blowing. At the sight of Bill, the revolver, the colonel, and the pig man, a surprised expression came into his face. He had been wondering what had become of his young friend, but he had never expected that anything like this had happened to him.
'Good Lord, Bill,' he ejaculated, screwing his monocle more tightly into his eye. 'What's all this?'
Colonel Wedge was surprised in his turn. He had not known that burglars moved in such influential circles.
'Bill? Do you know this frightful chap?'
'Know him? Many a time I've dandled him on my knee.'
'You couldn't have done,' said Colonel Wedge, running his eye over Bill's substantial frame. 'There wouldn't have been room.'
'When he was a baby,' explained Gally.
'Oh, when he was a baby? You mean you knew him as a baby?'
'Intimately'
'What sort of baby was he?'
'Delightful.'
'Well, he's changed a lot since then,' said Colonel Wedge, breaking the bad news regretfully. 'He's become the most ghastly outsider. Burgles houses at six o'clock in the evening.'
'Ar car har,' said Edwin Pott.
'Pott cotched him,' translated the colonel. 'The chap was sliding down a water pipe.'
Bill felt it time to put in a word.
'I wanted to find Prue, Gally. I saw her standing on a balcony, and I went and fetched a ladder.'
'Quite right,' said Gally approvingly. 'Did you have a nice talk?'
'She wasn't there. But she had left a letter for me. It's all right, Gally. She still loves me.'
'So she gave me to understand when I was chatting with her. Well, that's fine.'
Enlightenment had come upon Colonel Wedge. 'Good God! Is this the chap Hermione was telling me about?'
'Yes, this is Prue's demon lover.'
'Well, I'm dashed. I took him for a burglar. I'm sorry.'
'Not at all,' said Bill.
'Afraid you must have thought me a bit abrupt just now.'
'No, no,' said Bill. 'Quite all right.'
Colonel Wedge found himself in something of a quandary. A romantic at heart, his wife's revelations of the tangled love affair of his niece Prudence had left him sensible of a sneaking sympathy for the young man of her choice. Unpleasant it must have been for the chap, he felt, to have his bride whisked away on the wedding morning and kept in storage under lock and key. Not the sort of thing he would have liked himself. He was also an admirer of spirit in the young of the male sex, and Bill's thrustful policy in the matter of ladders and water pipes appealed to him.
On the other hand, he was a loyal husband and he knew that his wife felt very strongly on the subject of the fellow. Not once but many times she had spoken of him in terms which left no room for misunderstanding.
'Do you know, Gally,' he said, 'I think I'll be popping off. I don't want to be mixed up with this. See what I mean?'
The Hon. Galahad saw what he meant and thought his policy prudent.
'Yes, no need for you to stick around, Egbert. Buzz off. And,' he added, indicating Edwin Pott, who had withdrawn respectfully into the background until his offices as a witness should be required, 'take that odoriferous gargoyle with you. I've something to say to Bill in private.'
Colonel Wedge strode off, followed by Edwin Pott, and a grave look came into Gally's face.
'Bill,' he began, 'I'm sorry to tell you that a rather unfortunate thing has happened. Oh, blast it,' he broke off, for he saw that they were about to be interrupted.
Tipton Plimsoll had appeared on the terrace.
'There's someone coming,' he said, jerking an explanatory thumb.
Bill looked round. And as he saw the tall, thin chap who had so signally fallen short at their last meeting in hospitality and indeed in the first principles of humanity, his face darkened. His was as a rule a mild and equable nature, but Tipton's behaviour on that occasion had aroused his indignation. He wanted a word with him.
'Hi!' he said, advancing.
There had crept into Tipton Plimsoll's face a sudden expression of grim determination. It was the sort of look you might have seen on the faces of the Light Brigade when the order came to charge. He had not thought of it before, but it came to him now that there was a special technique which knowledgeable people employed with phantoms. They walked through them. He had read stories where fellows had done this, and always with the happiest results. The phantoms, realizing that they had run up against something hot, faltered, lost their nerve, and withdrew from the unequal contest.
If there had been any other avenue to a peaceful settlement, he would have taken it, for it was a thing he was not at all anxious to do. But there seemed no alternative. You have got to be firm with phantoms.
Commending his soul to God, he lowered his head and drove forward at Bill's midriff.
'Oof!' said Bill.
'Cheese!' said Tipton.
It would not be easy to say which of the two was the more astonished, or which the more filled with honest indignation. But Bill being occupied with the task of recovering his breath, Tipton was the first to give expression to his feelings.
'Well, how was I to know he was real?' he demanded, turning to Gally as a fair-minded non-partisan who would be able to view the situation objectively. 'This guy's been following me around for days, dodging in and out of registry offices, popping around corners, leering at me out of shrubberies. And it isn't more than about half a minut
e ago that he was snooping in at my window. If he thinks I'm going to stand for that sort of thing, he's darned well mistaken. There's a limit,' said Tipton, summing up.
Once more the congenial task of pouring oil on troubled waters had fallen to the Hon. Galahad. Tipton's revelations in his bedroom on the previous day had placed him in the position of being able to understand that which he might otherwise have found a perplexing state of affairs.
'You don't mean to tell me it's Bill you've been seeing all this time? How very remarkable. This is my godson, Bill Lister. Tipton Plimsoll, Bill, nephew of my old friend Chet Tipton. When did you two first meet? At Barribault's Hotel, was it not?'
'He came rubbering through the glass door when I was in the bar.'
'Well, I wanted a drink,' said Bill defensively. 'I was being married that morning.'
'Married?' Tipton was beginning to understand all and to be in a position to forgive all. 'Was that why you were at that registry office?'
'Yes.'
'Well, I'm darned.'
'The whole matter,' said Gally, 'is susceptible of a ready explanation. His bride, my niece Prudence, was arrested by the authorities before she could get to the registry office and sent down here. Bill followed. That was how you happened to meet.'
Tipton's whole manner had softened. He had even begun to smile. But now the recollection of a particular grievance hardened him again.
'There was no need for him to wear that gosh-awful beard,' he said.
'There was every need,' said Gally. 'He had to avoid recognition. And when he made faces outside your window, I imagine he was just coming from my niece's room, which adjoins yours. Am I right, Bill?'
'Yes. I was walking along a sort of ledge and I saw him in his room and I wanted him to let me in. But he just stared at me and went out.'
'And now, of course, you appreciate his motives in doing so. I remember a dear old friend of mine, Boko Bagshott – dead now, I'm sorry to say. Cirrhosis of the liver – who frequently saw faces at windows, and he was always off like a scalded cat the moment they appeared. In fairness I don't think we can blame Plimsoll.'