He sat sipping it after Joss had left him, and his dubiousness increased. Too late he remembered that his medical adviser had warned him against spirits. By the time Joss was nearing the Hall ( walking pensively, for Mr Duff's words had given him food for thought ) he had come definitely to the conclusion that he had better go to his room and lie down awhile.
And he had just pushed open the main door of the Rose and Crown with that end in view when there came to his ears, speaking from within, a feminine voice. It was fifteen years since he had heard it, but he had not forgotten those rich contralto notes.
"Well, when he comes back," it was saying, "tell him that Mrs Chavender called and wants to see him right away."
For one agelong instant Mr Duff stood frozen in his tracks. Then life returned to the rigid limbs, and he darted back into the High Street, looking about him in a panic for a place of refuge.
It was only too evident that this old love of his would be out in next to no time, and whatever haven he might select must be selected immediately. His eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, was caught by the window of the Gardenia Tea Shoppe across the way. And so keen was the sense of peril that gripped him that it now seemed to have a kindly and a welcoming look.
There is this to be said for tea shoppes, no matter how revolting to a dyspeptic man the wares in which they deal, that in extending their hospitality they do not keep their eye on the clock.
At a bespoke tailor's to take an instance at random, the cry is all for rapid action. You dash in, bespeak your bit of tailoring and dash out again. You can't make it too quick for the tailor. If you take a seat and show signs of settling down for the evening he raises his eyebrows. But in a tea shoppe you can linger. And Mr Duff's primary requisite was a place where he could linger till the All Clear had been blown. He was across the street and through the door and panting in a wickerwork chair almost before he knew he had started.
The ladylike waitress greeted him with surprise.
"Hello! Forgotten something?"
"Gimme some tea."
'"Tea?''
"And buns?"
"Yes sir," said the waitress with a new respect and approval in her voice. There had been a time when she had looked a little askance at Mr Duff, not liking his offhand manner towards that fancy cake, but now all was forgiven. A man of the right sort, obviously. She could recall no previous case of a client liking his meal so much that he immediately returned for another. A notable compliment for the Gardenia's catering.
She went off to give the order in a modest flutter of excitement, and Mr Duff, with a sigh of relief, leaned back in his chair.
But even now his troubled spirit was not to be at rest. There spoke from behind him a feminine voice, 'and he swung round, blinking. It seemed to him that life this afternoon had been just one damned feminine voice after another.
"Why, how do you do?" said the voice, and he perceived, sitting at the next table, Vera Pym, the Rose and Crown's efficient barmaid.
Vera Pym had come to the Gardenia Tea Shoppe to brood and ponder. Pique at his aggravating behaviour had, of course, been partly responsible for her calling Chibnall up on the telephone that morning and regretting her inability to take tea with him in his pantry owing to an unfortunate previous engagement, but in any case she would have preferred to be alone. She wanted to give her whole mind to the problem of Mr Duff's moustache. There must, she felt, if she thought long enough, be some way of discovering once and for all if it was false or genuine.
His abrupt incursion had for an instant alarmed her. Then she had fought down her momentary panic with a barmaid's splendid resolution. There is good stuff in Britain's barmaids, and the Motherland points at them · with justifiable pride. This, she told herself, was just what a conscientious investigator would have wished to happen. To fraternize as much as possible with suspects, thus lulling them to a false security and learning their secrets, is the aim of every detective whose heart is really in his work.
So he said, "Why, how do you do?" and tried not to shudder.
The moustache, seen close to, looked more villainous than ever; and in addition to this the man's features were working violently, as if in almost ungovernable rage. As always when in the presence of the other sex, Mr Duff had started making faces.
"Well, you're just in time to give me tea," she said with the brightness which her professional training enabled her to put on at will like a garment. "I'll come over to your table, shall I?"
In normal circumstances Mr Duff would have answered this question with an unhesitating negative. But now he found himself at a loss. Short of rising and leaving the tea shoppe, it seemed to him that he was helpless against this woman's advances. And a glance out of the window showed him how Utopian any dream of rising and leaving would be. Mrs Chavender had just come out of the Rose and Crown and was standing on the pavement waiting for her Pekinese to finish sniffing at a banana skin.
"They're getting me some tea and buns," said Miss Pym.
"They're getting me some tea and buns," said Mr Duff.
"Well, that's splendid, isn't it?" said Miss Pym.
"Great," said Mr Duff and sat back, feeling like somebody in one of his companion's favourite works of fiction who has been trapped by one-eyed Chinamen in a ruined mill Conversation flagged for a while. It is never easy to know just what to say to the criminal classes, and Miss Pym found herself short of small talk. But presently the return of the waitress, preceded by a revolting smell of hot buns, emboldened her to continue. She poured out tea for herself and host and moved her own cup as far away from him as was possible. She had known too many men who dropped mysterious white pellets in teacups to take any chances.
"Lovely day," she said.
"Ur," said Mr Duff.
"I expect you were surprised to find me in here, weren't you?"
"Ur," said Mr Duff.
"It's my afternoon off," explained Miss Pym.
"Ur," said Mr Duff.
"It's nice to get away from that old bar once and again," proceeded Miss Pym, beginning to hit her stride. "Apart from the hard work of it all there's the society. It gets very mixed, specially in the evenings, when the proletariat come in and play darts. I've often thought I'd sooner be a waitress in a place like this. More refinement. They give you a good tea here. Nice, these buns, aren't they?"
"Sure," said Mr Duff, who had absent-mindedly swallowed one and could feel it fighting with the fancy cake and the double brandies preparatory to turning to lead inside him.
The monosyllable gave Miss Pym a cue. Your good detective is always on the alert to seize these opportunities of keeping the conversation going.
"You're an American gentleman, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"I thought so. The way you said 'Sure.' I can always tell Americans. But," said Miss Pym, who had had a good grounding in vaudeville comedy, "I can't tell them much. Ha, ha."
"Ha, ha," echoed Mr Duff despondently. He looked out of the window again. Mrs Chavender was still there. The Pekinese was now sniffing at a piece of paper.
"Mr Chibnall sometimes talks of going to America. He says the salaries butlers get over there are literally fantastic.''
"Mr Chibnall?"
"My fiancé."
Mr Duff perked up amazingly. In another distrait moment, not realizing what he was doing, he had swallowed a second bun, and it had teamed up with its predecessor, forming a solid anschluss, but the relief of discovering that this young woman was not, as he had supposed, an unattached siren, ready for any excesses, overcame his physical discomfort.
"Going to be married, are you?"
"When we've saved enough to buy a pub.''
"They're expensive, I guess."
"They run into money. But Sidney's a saving man, and I've put by a bit. Some of these commercials that come into my bar sometimes give you a good tip for the races. I had Westinghouse for the Ascot Gold Cup. A hundred to eight. That was ten pounds right away."
"Well, well, well. You'll be a
Hetty Green before you know where you are.''
As is so often the way with a shy man, once the ice has been broken, Mr Duff was beginning quite to enjoy this little adventure.
Mrs Chavender and Pekinese had now disappeared, but he felt no inclination to leave. He even ate another bun with something of a devil-may-care flourish.
"Who's she?"
"She was one of the richest women in America."
"I suppose everybody makes tons of money there.''
"Yes, and when they've made it what happens? Does Mister Whiskers let 'em keep it? Not a hope. Listen," said Mr Duff, beginning to swell, "lemme—"
He paused. He had been about to speak freely and forcefully of some of the defects of the existing administration in his native country, but he felt that a tete-a-tete with a charming woman was not the occasion for it. Better to wait till he was back with the boys at the Union League Club.
"Plenty taxes in America these days," he said, condensing the gist of it into a sentence. He became aware that his guest was eyeing him intently. "S'matter?" he asked, puzzled.
"Pardon?"
"You seem to be looking at me pretty hard."
Miss Pym simpered coyly.
"You'll think I'm awful, but I was admiring your moustache."
"Oh."
"You don't often see American gentlemen with moustaches. Not big ones. Must have taken a lot of growing, if you don't mind me being personal."
"Oh well," said Mr Duff with something of the air of a modest hero protesting that any man could have done what he had done.
"Mind if I look at it?"
"Go right ahead," said Mr Duff, now not so much the modest hero as the big shot presenting some favoured visitor with the freedom of the city.
Miss Pym leaned forward. Her heart was thumping. She passed a shapely hand over the growth. And Chibnall, who had just arrived outside the window, halted abruptly and stood staring, a dark flush spreading slowly over his face.
That telephone call, with its airy allusions to previous engagements, had left Chibnall in a frenzy of doubt and suspicion. A bystander who had heard his careless "Oh? Right ho. Well, see you some time" would not have divined it, but his soul had seethed like a cistern struck by a thunderbolt. Something, he felt, was up.
And it was in order to ascertain, if possible, what this something was that he had hastened to Loose Chippings.
Hoping against hope that the woman he loved was merely taking tea with the wife of the Rose and Crown's landlord, as she did from time to time, he had first gone there to enquire and had been informed that Miss Pym had been seen stepping across the way to the Gardenia. And here in the Gardenia she was, carousing with the moustached visitor at the inn whom she had so cunningly affected to distrust and dislike-and not only carousing, but actually patting his face.
It was, in short, the black business of the commercial traveller over again, only worse, far worse. There could be no question here of professional gestures designed to stimulate trade. And it was a long step from straightening ties to patting faces. This, felt Chibnall, was a straight orgy, and something like it, he told himself, was precisely what he had been expecting.
Clenching his fists till the knuckles stood out white under the strain, Sidney Chibnall drew back into the doorway of a ham-and-beef shop to think it over.
Inside the Gardenia Miss Pym had concluded her investigations.
It was just as she had suspected. Her fingers, roaming lightly through the jungle, had touched a hard substance which could be nothing but glue or spirit gum or whatever it was that the underworld employed when disguising its upper lip with hair.
She rose. It was imperative that she telephone Chibnall about this immediately. All that a woman could do she had done, and it was now time for the tougher male to take over.
"Yes, it's beautiful," she said, panting a little like a girl who has discovered a dismembered corpse in the attic. "Lovely. Well, I must be shoving along. Ta for the tea."
She hurried out, it seemed to Mr Duff a trifle abruptly and, after pausing to pay the bill, he also left. And he had scarcely set foot on the pavement when he had the identical experience which had happened to him on the previous morning. There fell suddenly upon his shoulder a heavy hand.
The only detail which differentiated the two episodes was the·
circumstance that this second heavy-hander was a good deal better looking than his predecessor had been. Yesterday Mr Duff had found himself staring at a squashed nose and aeroplane ears. Today it was on a handsome, clean-cut face that his attention was riveted.
But this was not really so much of an improvement as it sounds, for the face was suffused with violent emotion and only the dullest observer could have failed to note that the glitter in the eyes was homicidal.
It would have shocked Mrs Steptoe profoundly could she have known that her butler was capable of looking like that. She would also have disapproved of the way he spoke.
"Oi!" he said.
"Ouch!" said Mr Duff.
"Just a minute," said Chibnall.
"What the devil are you doing?" said Mr Duff.
''I'll tell you what I'm going to do," said Chibnall, swift with the effective repartee. 'Tm going to knock your ugly fat head off and dance on it."
"Why?" asked Mr Duff, not unreasonably.
"You don't know, do you?" said Chibnall and brought his teeth together with an unpleasant click. "Hal He doesn't know!"
There had been a time, in the hammer-throwing days of his youth, when J. B. Duff would have had a short way with this sort of thing. But the years, bringing with them surplus material about the waistline, had brought also pusillanimity and the instinct for self-preservation. He found himself with little appetite for a vulgar brawl. This apparent lunatic had a hard, athletic look, and he himself had not only allowed his muscles to grow flaccid but was at the moment full to the brim with tea and buns.
The ladylike waitress was beginning to get used to Mr Duff. She showed scarcely any surprise as he now re-entered the Gardenia Tea Shoppe, moving extraordinarily well for a man of his years.
He had become an old customer, a sort of foundation member, and she beamed on him as such.
"More tea?" she said brightly.
Mr Duff sank into a chair with a corroborative nod.
"And buns?"
"Yup."
The waitress was looking like a preacher at a revival meeting who watches the sinners' bench filling up. If there were more men in it like Mr Duff, her eye seemed to say, the world would be a better place.
"Very good, sir. Is this gentleman with you?" she asked, looking past him. "Why, it's Mr Chibnall. Good evening, Mr Chibnall."
"Good evening "
"Lovely weather."
"Beautiful," said the butler absently. He had halted at Mr Duff's table and was glowering down at him in a hostile and intimidating manner. It was with considerable relief that Mr Duff realized that for the moment he proposed to go no further than glowering. He applauded the decent respect for the amenities which restrained the other from defiling these refined premises with anything in the nature of a roughhouse.
The waitress continued chatty.
"You young lady's only just left, Mr Chibnall."
"I saw her."
"She was having tea with this gentleman."
,.1 saw her."
His unresponsiveness had its effect.
"Well, I'll go and get your tea and buns," said the waitress and went off to do so.
Chibnall leaned on the table. His aspect, in addition to being homicidal, now betrayed baffled fury. He was blaming himself for having relaxed his grip on Mr Duff's shoulder, thus enabling the latter to get away and seek sanctuary. What he had popped in for now was to point out that this sanctuary must not be regarded as permanent.
"I'll be waiting for you outside," he said to make this clear.
Mr Duff did not speak. His intelligent mind, assisted by the waitress's recent remarks, had gathered now the reason for this
man's at first inexplicable behaviour, and his heart sank as he realized how impossible it would be to explain. Nothing could alter the fact that he had been entertaining the other's fiancée to a dish of tea, and in this world one is judged by one's actions, not my one's purity of heart.
"Understand?"
"There," said the waitress in a motherly way, returning with a laden tray. "There you are."
"You won't see me," said Chibnall, "but I'll be there."
He strode from the shop. The waitress's eyes followed him admiringly.