CHAPTER XIII. RALLYING ROUND PERCY
It amazed Archie through the whole of a long afternoon to reflect howswiftly and unexpectedly the blue and brilliant sky of life can cloudover and with what abruptness a man who fancies that his feet are onsolid ground can find himself immersed in Fate's gumbo. He recalled,with the bitterness with which one does recall such things, that thatmorning he had risen from his bed without a care in the world, hishappiness unruffled even by the thought that Lucille would be leavinghim for a short space. He had sung in his bath. Yes, he had chirrupedlike a bally linnet. And now--
Some men would have dismissed the unfortunate affairs of Mr. GeorgeBenham from their mind as having nothing to do with themselves, butArchie had never been made of this stern stuff. The fact that Mr.Benham, apart from being an agreeable companion with whom he had lunchedoccasionally in New York, had no claims upon him affected him little. Hehated to see his fellowman in trouble. On the other hand, what couldhe do? To seek Miss Silverton out and plead with her--even if he didit without cooing--would undoubtedly establish an intimacy between themwhich, instinct told him, might tinge her manner after Lucille's returnwith just that suggestion of Auld Lang Syne which makes things soawkward.
His whole being shrank from extending to Miss Silverton that inch whichthe female artistic temperament is so apt to turn into an ell; and when,just as he was about to go in to dinner, he met her in the lobby and shesmiled brightly at him and informed him that her eye was now completelyrecovered, he shied away like a startled mustang of the prairie, and,abandoning his intention of worrying the table d'hote in the same roomwith the amiable creature, tottered off to the smoking-room, where hedid the best he could with sandwiches and coffee.
Having got through the time as best he could till eleven o'clock, hewent up to bed.
The room to which he and Lucille had been assigned by the management wason the second floor, pleasantly sunny by day and at night filled withcool and heartening fragrance of the pines. Hitherto Archie had alwaysenjoyed taking a final smoke on the balcony overlooking the woods,but, to-night such was his mental stress that he prepared to go to beddirectly he had closed the door. He turned to the cupboard to get hispyjamas.
His first thought, when even after a second scrutiny no pyjamas werevisible, was that this was merely another of those things which happenon days when life goes wrong. He raked the cupboard for a third timewith an annoyed eye. From every hook hung various garments of Lucille's,but no pyjamas. He was breathing a soft malediction preparatory toembarking on a point-to-point hunt for his missing property, whensomething in the cupboard caught his eye and held him for a momentpuzzled.
He could have sworn that Lucille did not possess a mauve neglige. Why,she had told him a dozen times that mauve was a colour which she didnot like. He frowned perplexedly; and as he did so, from near the windowcame a soft cough.
Archie spun round and subjected the room to as close a scrutiny as thatwhich he had bestowed upon the cupboard. Nothing was visible. The windowopening on to the balcony gaped wide. The balcony was manifestly empty.
"URRF!"
This time there was no possibility of error. The cough had come from theimmediate neighbourhood of the window.
Archie was conscious of a pringly sensation about the roots of hisclosely-cropped back-hair, as he moved cautiously across the room. Theaffair was becoming uncanny; and, as he tip-toed towards the window, oldghost stories, read in lighter moments before cheerful fires withplenty of light in the room, flitted through his mind. He had thefeeling--precisely as every chappie in those stories had had--that hewas not alone.
Nor was he. In a basket behind an arm-chair, curled up, with his massivechin resting on the edge of the wicker-work, lay a fine bulldog.
"Urrf!" said the bulldog.
"Good God!" said Archie.
There was a lengthy pause in which the bulldog looked earnestly atArchie and Archie looked earnestly at the bulldog.
Normally, Archie was a dog-lover. His hurry was never so great as toprevent him stopping, when in the street, and introducing himself to anydog he met. In a strange house, his first act was to assemble the caninepopulation, roll it on its back or backs, and punch it in the ribs. As aboy, his earliest ambition had been to become a veterinary surgeon; and,though the years had cheated him of his career, he knew all about dogs,their points, their manners, their customs, and their treatment insickness and in health. In short, he loved dogs, and, had they met underhappier conditions, he would undoubtedly have been on excellent termswith this one within the space of a minute. But, as things were, heabstained from fraternising and continued to goggle dumbly.
And then his eye, wandering aside, collided with the following objects:a fluffy pink dressing-gown, hung over the back of a chair, an entirelystrange suit-case, and, on the bureau, a photograph in a silver frame ofa stout gentleman in evening-dress whom he had never seen before in hislife.
Much has been written of the emotions of the wanderer who, returning tohis childhood home, finds it altered out of all recognition; but poetshave neglected the theme--far more poignant--of the man who goes up tohis room in an hotel and finds it full of somebody else's dressing-gownsand bulldogs.
Bulldogs! Archie's heart jumped sideways and upwards with a wigglingmovement, turning two somersaults, and stopped beating. The hideoustruth, working its way slowly through the concrete, had at lastpenetrated to his brain. He was not only in somebody else's room, and awoman's at that. He was in the room belonging to Miss Vera Silverton.
He could not understand it. He would have been prepared to stake thelast cent he could borrow from his father-in-law on the fact that he hadmade no error in the number over the door. Yet, nevertheless, such wasthe case, and, below par though his faculties were at the moment, he wassufficiently alert to perceive that it behoved him to withdraw.
He leaped to the door, and, as he did so, the handle began to turn.
The cloud which had settled on Archie's mind lifted abruptly. For aninstant he was enabled to think about a hundred times more quickly thanwas his leisurely wont. Good fortune had brought him to within easyreach of the electric-light switch. He snapped it back, and was indarkness. Then, diving silently and swiftly to the floor, he wriggledunder the bed. The thud of his head against what appeared to be somesort of joist or support, unless it had been placed there by the makeras a practical joke, on the chance of this kind of thing happening someday, coincided with the creak of the opening door. Then the lightwas switched on again, and the bulldog in the corner gave a welcomingwoofle.
"And how is mamma's precious angel?"
Rightly concluding that the remark had not been addressed to himselfand that no social obligation demanded that he reply, Archie pressedhis cheek against the boards and said nothing. The question was notrepeated, but from the other side of the room came the sound of a patteddog.
"Did he think his muzzer had fallen down dead and was never coming up?"
The beautiful picture which these words conjured up filled Archie withthat yearning for the might-have-been which is always so painful. He wasfinding his position physically as well as mentally distressing. It wascramped under the bed, and the boards were harder than anything he hadever encountered. Also, it appeared to be the practice of the housemaidsat the Hotel Hermitage to use the space below the beds as a depositoryfor all the dust which they swept off the carpet, and much of this wasinsinuating itself into his nose and mouth. The two things which Archiewould have liked most to do at that moment were first to kill MissSilverton--if possible, painfully--and then to spend the remainder ofhis life sneezing.
After a prolonged period he heard a drawer open, and noted the fact aspromising. As the old married man, he presumed that it signified theputting away of hair-pins. About now the dashed woman would be lookingat herself in the glass with her hair down. Then she would brush it.Then she would twiddle it up into thingummies. Say, ten minutes forthis. And after that she would go to bed and turn out the light, and hewould be able,
after giving her a bit of time to go to sleep, to creepout and leg it. Allowing at a conservative estimate three-quarters of--
"Come out!"
Archie stiffened. For an instant a feeble hope came to him that thisremark, like the others, might be addressed to the dog.
"Come out from under that bed!" said a stern voice. "And mind how youcome! I've got a pistol!"
"Well, I mean to say, you know," said Archie, in a propitiatory voice,emerging from his lair like a tortoise and smiling as winningly as a mancan who has just bumped his head against the leg of a bed, "I supposeall this seems fairly rummy, but--"
"For the love of Mike!" said Miss Silverton.
The point seemed to Archie well taken and the comment on the situationneatly expressed.
"What are you doing in my room?"
"Well, if it comes to that, you know--shouldn't have mentioned it if youhadn't brought the subject up in the course of general chit-chat--whatare you doing in mine?"
"Yours?"
"Well, apparently there's been a bloomer of some species somewhere, butthis was the room I had last night," said Archie.
"But the desk-clerk said that he had asked you if it would be quitesatisfactory to you giving it up to me, and you said yes. I come hereevery summer, when I'm not working, and I always have this room."
"By Jove! I remember now. The chappie did say something to me about theroom, but I was thinking of something else and it rather went over thetop. So that's what he was talking about, was it?"
Miss Silverton was frowning. A moving-picture director, scanning herface, would have perceived that she was registering disappointment.
"Nothing breaks right for me in this darned world," she said,regretfully. "When I caught sight of your leg sticking out from underthe bed, I did think that everything was all lined up for a real findand, at last, I could close my eyes and see the thing in the papers.On the front page, with photographs: 'Plucky Actress Captures Burglar.'Darn it!"
"Fearfully sorry, you know!"
"I just needed something like that. I've got a Press-agent, and Iwill say for him that he eats well and sleeps well and has just enoughintelligence to cash his monthly cheque without forgetting what he wentinto the bank for, but outside of that you can take it from me he's notone of the world's workers! He's about as much solid use to a girl withaspirations as a pain in the lower ribs. It's three weeks since he gotme into print at all, and then the brightest thing he could think up wasthat my favourite breakfast-fruit was an apple. Well, I ask you!"
"Rotten!" said Archie.
"I did think that for once my guardian angel had gone back to workand was doing something for me. 'Stage Star and Midnight Marauder,'"murmured Miss Silverton, wistfully. "'Footlight Favourite Foils Felon.'"
"Bit thick!" agreed Archie, sympathetically. "Well, you'll probablybe wanting to get to bed and all that sort of rot, so I may as well bepopping, what! Cheerio!"
A sudden gleam came into Miss Silverton's compelling eyes.
"Wait!"
"Eh?"
"Wait! I've got an idea!" The wistful sadness had gone from her manner.She was bright and alert. "Sit down!"
"Sit down?"
"Sure. Sit down and take the chill off the arm-chair. I've thought ofsomething."
Archie sat down as directed. At his elbow the bulldog eyed him gravelyfrom the basket.
"Do they know you in this hotel?"
"Know me? Well, I've been here about a week."
"I mean, do they know who you are? Do they know you're a good citizen?"
"Well, if it comes to that, I suppose they don't. But--"
"Fine!" said Miss Silverton, appreciatively. "Then it's all right. Wecan carry on!"
"Carry on!"
"Why, sure! All I want is to get the thing into the papers. It doesn'tmatter to me if it turns out later that there was a mistake and that youweren't a burglar trying for my jewels after all. It makes just as gooda story either way. I can't think why that never struck me before. Herehave I been kicking because you weren't a real burglar, when it doesn'tamount to a hill of beans whether you are or not. All I've got to dois to rush out and yell and rouse the hotel, and they come in and pinchyou, and I give the story to the papers, and everything's fine!"
Archie leaped from his chair.
"I say! What!"
"What's on your mind?" enquired Miss Silverton, considerately. "Don'tyou think it's a nifty scheme?"
"Nifty! My dear old soul! It's frightful!"
"Can't see what's wrong with it," grumbled Miss Silverton. "After I'vehad someone get New York on the long-distance 'phone and give thestory to the papers you can explain, and they'll let you out. Surely togoodness you don't object, as a personal favour to me, to spending anhour or two in a cell? Why, probably they haven't got a prison at allout in these parts, and you'll simply be locked in a room. A child often could do it on his head," said Miss Silverton. "A child of six," sheemended.
"But, dash it--I mean--what I mean to say--I'm married!"
"Yes?" said Miss Silverton, with the politeness of faint interest. "I'vebeen married myself. I wouldn't say it's altogether a bad thing, mindyou, for those that like it, but a little of it goes a long way. Myfirst husband," she proceeded, reminiscently, "was a travelling man. Igave him a two-weeks' try-out, and then I told him to go on travelling.My second husband--now, HE wasn't a gentleman in any sense of the word.I remember once--"
"You don't grasp the point. The jolly old point! You fail to grasp it.If this bally thing comes out, my wife will be most frightfully sick!"
Miss Silverton regarded him with pained surprise.
"Do you mean to say you would let a little thing like that stand in theway of my getting on the front page of all the papers--WITH photographs?Where's your chivalry?"
"Never mind my dashed chivalry!"
"Besides, what does it matter if she does get a little sore? She'll soonget over it. You can put that right. Buy her a box of candy. Not thatI'm strong for candy myself. What I always say is, it may taste good,but look what it does to your hips! I give you my honest word that, whenI gave up eating candy, I lost eleven ounces the first week. My secondhusband--no, I'm a liar, it was my third--my third husband said--Say,what's the big idea? Where are you going?"
"Out!" said Archie, firmly. "Bally out!"
A dangerous light flickered in Miss Silverton's eyes.
"That'll be all of that!" she said, raising the pistol. "You stay rightwhere you are, or I'll fire!"
"Right-o!"
"I mean it!"
"My dear old soul," said Archie, "in the recent unpleasantness in FranceI had chappies popping off things like that at me all day and every dayfor close on five years, and here I am, what! I mean to say, if I'vegot to choose between staying here and being pinched in your room by thelocal constabulary and having the dashed thing get into the papers andall sorts of trouble happening, and my wife getting the wind up and--Isay, if I've got to choose--"
"Suck a lozenge and start again!" said Miss Silverton.
"Well, what I mean to say is, I'd much rather take a chance of getting abullet in the old bean than that. So loose it off and the best o' luck!"
Miss Silverton lowered the pistol, sank into a chair, and burst intotears.
"I think you're the meanest man I ever met!" she sobbed. "You knowperfectly well the bang would send me into a fit!"
"In that case," said Archie, relieved, "cheerio, good luck, pip-pip,toodle-oo, and good-bye-ee! I'll be shifting!"
"Yes, you will!" cried Miss Silverton, energetically, recovering withamazing swiftness from her collapse. "Yes, you will, I by no meanssuppose! You think, just because I'm no champion with a pistol, I'mhelpless. You wait! Percy!"
"My name is not Percy."
"I never said it was. Percy! Percy, come to muzzer!"
There was a creaking rustle from behind the arm-chair. A heavy bodyflopped on the carpet. Out into the room, heaving himself along asthough sleep had stiffened his joints, and breathing stert
orouslythrough his tilted nose, moved the fine bulldog. Seen in the open, helooked even more formidable than he had done in his basket.
"Guard him, Percy! Good dog, guard him! Oh, heavens! What's the matterwith him?"
And with these words the emotional woman, uttering a wail of anguish,flung herself on the floor beside the animal.
Percy was, indeed, in manifestly bad shape. He seemed quite unable todrag his limbs across the room. There was a curious arch in his back,and, as his mistress touched him, he cried out plaintively,
"Percy! Oh, what IS the matter with him? His nose is burning!"
Now was the time, with both sections of the enemy's forces occupied, forArchie to have departed softly from the room. But never, since theday when at the age of eleven he had carried a large, damp, and muddyterrier with a sore foot three miles and deposited him on the best sofain his mother's drawing-room, had he been able to ignore the spectacleof a dog in trouble.
"He does look bad, what!"
"He's dying! Oh, he's dying! Is it distemper? He's never had distemper."
Archie regarded the sufferer with the grave eye of the expert. He shookhis head.
"It's not that," he said. "Dogs with distemper make a sort of sniftingnoise."
"But he IS making a snifting noise!"
"No, he's making a snuffling noise. Great difference between snufflingand snifting. Not the same thing at all. I mean to say, when they sniftthey snift, and when they snuffle they--as it were--snuffle. That's howyou can tell. If you ask ME"--he passed his hand over the dog's back.Percy uttered another cry. "I know what's the matter with him."
"A brute of a man kicked him at rehearsal. Do you think he's injuredinternally?"
"It's rheumatism," said Archie. "Jolly old rheumatism. That's all that'sthe trouble."
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely!"
"But what can I do?"
"Give him a good hot bath, and mind and dry him well. He'll have a goodsleep then, and won't have any pain. Then, first thing to-morrow, youwant to give him salicylate of soda."
"I'll never remember that."-"I'll write it down for you. You ought togive him from ten to twenty grains three times a day in an ounce ofwater. And rub him with any good embrocation."
"And he won't die?"
"Die! He'll live to be as old as you are!-I mean to say--"
"I could kiss you!" said Miss Silverton, emotionally.
Archie backed hastily.
"No, no, absolutely not! Nothing like that required, really!"
"You're a darling!"
"Yes. I mean no. No, no, really!"
"I don't know what to say. What can I say?"
"Good night," said Archie.
"I wish there was something I could do! If you hadn't been here, Ishould have gone off my head!"
A great idea flashed across Archie's brain.
"Do you really want to do something?"
"Anything!"
"Then I do wish, like a dear sweet soul, you would pop straight back toNew York to-morrow and go on with those rehearsals."
Miss Silverton shook her head.
"I can't do that!"
"Oh, right-o! But it isn't much to ask, what!"
"Not much to ask! I'll never forgive that man for kicking Percy!"
"Now listen, dear old soul. You've got the story all wrong. As a matterof fact, jolly old Benham told me himself that he has the greatestesteem and respect for Percy, and wouldn't have kicked him for theworld. And, you know it was more a sort of push than a kick. You mightalmost call it a light shove. The fact is, it was beastly dark in thetheatre, and he was legging it sideways for some reason or other, nodoubt with the best motives, and unfortunately he happened to stub histoe on the poor old bean."
"Then why didn't he say so?"
"As far as I could make out, you didn't give him a chance."
Miss Silverton wavered.
"I always hate going back after I've walked out on a show," she said."It seems so weak!"
"Not a bit of it! They'll give three hearty cheers and think you atopper. Besides, you've got to go to New York in any case. To take Percyto a vet., you know, what!"
"Of course. How right you always are!" Miss Silverton hesitated again."Would you really be glad if I went back to the show?"
"I'd go singing about the hotel! Great pal of mine, Benham. A thoroughlycheery old bean, and very cut up about the whole affair. Besides, thinkof all the coves thrown out of work--the thingummabobs and the poorwhat-d'you-call-'ems!"
"Very well."
"You'll do it?"
"Yes."
"I say, you really are one of the best! Absolutely like mother made!That's fine! Well, I think I'll be saying good night."
"Good night. And thank you so much!"
"Oh, no, rather not!"
Archie moved to the door.
"Oh, by the way."
"Yes?"
"If I were you, I think I should catch the very first train you can getto New York. You see--er--you ought to take Percy to the vet. as soon asever you can."
"You really do think of everything," said Miss Silverton.
"Yes," said Archie, meditatively.