"I do."
"Bless you. You're sure you wouldn't prefer to switch back to George now that he has the stuff?"
"No, thanks."
"My God!" said Joss, struck by an unnerving thought. "Do you realize that if I hadn't overslept myself that morning we should never have met?"
"Shouldn't we?"
"No. I was supposed to be at the office at ten. If I had got there on time I should have been gone long before you arrived. But owing to having stayed up late, shooting craps, I didn't clock in till eleven. What a lesson this should teach to all of us,"
"To shoot craps?"
"That, of course. But what I was really thinking of was how one ought never to be punctual. From now on I shall make a point of always being late at least an hour late for everything."
"Including the wedding?"
"The wedding. Ah! Now we're back to it. What do we do about that?"
"It's difficult, isn't it?"
"There must be some way. People are getting married every day. They can't all be millionaires. I'll tell you what. Give me the canvas, and I'll hide it in my room, and then I'll go for a long walk and think things over. I get rather bright after I've been walking a mile or two. Expect to hear from me shortly."
The evening was well advanced when Joss returned to Claines Hall. The rain had stopped, and a belated sun was shining brightly.
It had brought Lord Holbeton out into the grounds for a saunter before dinner.
Lord Holbeton was feeling in the pink. As he made his way down the drive he walked on air. He was honourably free from an alliance which, as has been shown, he had come to recognize as entangling, and he had in his pocket a cheque bearing his trustee's signature. If that was not a pretty goodish day's work George, second Baron Holbeton, would have been vastly interested to know what was.
He sang as he floated along, naturally selecting his favourite melody, and he had just got as far as the line about nests of robins in the hair and was rendering it with even more than his customary brio when there impinged upon his ears one of the gloomier passages of "Old Man River," and he perceived coming towards him the bowed figure of the chap Weatherby.
When a man singing "Trees" meets a man singing "Old Man River" something has to give. They cannot both continue to function. Lord Holbeton generously decided to be the one to yield. It gave him a slight pang not to be able to do the high, wobbly note on the ''hair," but a man learns to take the rough with the smooth.
"Hullo," he said. "What ho."
In normal circumstances he might not have been so expansive.
But this evening he was the friend of all mankind.
For a moment it seemed as if Joss, like Old Man River, would just keep rolling along. He was walking with bent head, his manner preoccupied. Then he appeared to realize that he had been addressed, and he halted.
"Oh, hullo."
It seemed to Lord Holbeton that the blighter looked a bit dejected, and he was not mistaken. His walk had brought Joss no solution of the problems confronting him. It had, indeed, merely deepened and intensified that unpleasant feeling, which comes to all of us at times, that he was in the soup and liable at any moment to sink without trace. He had endeavoured to be gay and debonair while discussing the future with Sally, but not for an instant had he lost sight of the fact that his future was a murky one.
"I say," said Lord Holbeton, "Sally's been telling me about you."
"Oh yes?"
"She says you're not a man. I mean, not really a man. I mean," said Lord Holbeton, determined to make his meaning clear, "you only signed on with old Steptoe so as to be near her."
"Yes."'
"Very creditable," said Lord Holbeton handsomely.
There was a pause. Joss, who had now been able to bring his mind to bear on these exchanges, was feeling somewhat embarrassed.
"She tells me you know old Duff."
"Yes.""
"Served under his banner and so forth."
"Yes."
"What an egg!"
"'Yes.''
"Rummy, if you come to think of it, that we never met. I mean, you constantly popping in and out of the office and self repeatedly dropping in to try to gouge the old boy for a bit of the stuff, you'd have thought we'd have run into one another."
"'Yes.''
"Still, there it is."
"'Yes.''
It occurred to Joss that up to the present all this cordiality had been a little one-sided and that it was time for him to do his bit.
"I hear I have to congratulate you," he said.
"Eh?"
"Duff has given you your money, I'm told."
"Oh, I see. Yes, yes, oh yes. I couldn't think what you meant for a moment. Yes, I've got the cheque on my person now. I'm going to London after dinner, so as to be right on the spot tomorrow morning for paying-in purposes in case he changes his mind. I've had that happen before."
"Oh yes?''
"Yes. When the old blister gets these spells of his that's how it works. While weakened by the pangs he's all mellowness and loving-kindness. But comes a time when the reaction sets in, and then he's his old self again. And that's when you want to watch out. I remember a couple of years ago he went to a city dinner, and next morning he sent for me and told me he'd come to t...he conclusion that he had been misjudging me all these years and that there was really a lot of good in me. And, to cut a long story short, he tottered to his desk and wrote me out a cheque for the full amount. And like an ass I wasted the rest of the day going round and showing it to chaps and having my health drunk, and by the time I got to the bank next morning I found he'd had the bally thing stopped. Taught me a lesson, that, I can tell you. If anyone happens to ask you my whereabouts at 9 A.M. tomorrow you can reply with perfect confidence that I'm standing on the steps of the City and Home Counties Bank, waiting for the establishment to open."
Joss was staring, openmouthed.
"You don't mean that?"
"I do. Right on the top step."
"I mean, is that really what happens with J. B.?''
"Invariably."
"Then you think...Well, take a case. If, while under the influence, he thought he was in love with someone—"
"Old Duff?" said Lord Holbeton incredulously.
''I'm just taking the first instance that comes into my mind."
"I should be vastly surprised if even after a city dinner—"
"Just for the sake of argument. You think that later on, when he was feeling better, remorse would supervene?''
"Super what?''
"You think he would regret?''
"Oh, bitterly, beyond a question."
Something seemed to go off inside Joss like a spring. It was hope dawning.
"I must ponder on this," he said. "You have opened up a new line of thought."
"You going?"
"If you don't mind. I should like to meditate."
"Oh, rather," said Lord Holbeton with a spacious wave of his hand, as if to indicate that he was free to do so wherever he pleased, all over the grounds. 'Go ahead. Give my regards to Sally if you see her."
Again there was a pause. Once more Joss felt embarrassed. He could not forget that this was the man whom he had deprived of the only girl who could possibly matter to any man. True, the second baron was not looking notably depressed, but that, he presumed, merely signified that he was wearing the mask, biting the bullet and keeping a stiff upper lip.
''I'm sorry," he said awkwardly.
"Sorry?"
"About Sally and me."
"What, already?" said Lord Holbeton, surprised.
"I mean . . I can understand how you must be feeling . . .
•
"Oh, that?" said Lord Holbeton, comprehending. "My dear chap, don't give it another thought. I'm all right. I'm feeling fine.
Once I've got that cheque safely deposited I shan't have a care in the world. I shall go to Italy and have my voice trained. Best thing that could have happened, is my view of the matte
r. Nice girl, of course. None better. But personally I consider that a man's an ass to get married. Silly business altogether, I've decided."
It was a point which Joss would have liked to debate hotly, but he was unable to give his mind to it. Was that, he was asking himself, what J. B. Duff was feeling or shortly about to feel? He walked back to the house and, reaching the staff quarters, found Chibnall at the telephone.
"Yes?" he was saying. " 'Oo? Weatherby? Yes, here he is. You're wanted on the telephone," said Chibnall, speaking coldly.
Joss took the instrument.
"Hullo?"
"Weatherby?"
"Yes.''
"Listen. Can anybody hear?"
Joss looked round. He was alone.
"No."
"Then listen. Can you come here right away?"
"I dare say I could fit it in."
"Then listen. Go find that girl of yours and get that portrait from her and bring it with you."
"You want it?"
"Of course I want it."
"You said you didn't."
"I've changed my mind."
"'Oh.''
"Understand?"
"Perfectly."
"Then come along. And listen," said Mr Duff, "make it snappy."
Chapter XVIII
In fancying that he had sensed in Chibnall's manner at their recent encounter a certain coldness, Joss had not erred. The sound of Mr Duff's voice over the wire had shocked the butler to his foundations. Brief though their conversation in the Gardenia Tea Shoppe had been, he had recognized it immediately; and it was with a feeling that now was the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party that he had handed over the instrument. The thought that two of the underworld are using his employer's telephone for the hatching of their low plots can never be an agreeable one to a zealous butler.
As always when he had solid thinking to do, he had made his way to the cell-like seclusion of his pantry. The servants' hall, with its flow of merry quip and flashing badinage, he reserved for his more convivial moments when he was in the mood for a gay whirl. He poured himself out a glass of port and sat down to ponder.
Stern though his determination was to foil whatever foul designs this precious pair might be meditating, there was mingled with it a touch of resentment. It seemed unjust to him that a man who was paid for buttling should be compelled to throw in gratis, as a sort of bonus to his employer, the unremitting efforts of a secret service man .and a highly trained watchdog. It was quite possible that the man Weatherby and his associate were planning some lightning stroke in the night, and that would mean sitting up again.
Reflecting how much he liked his sleep and how cramped he had felt after that last vigil, Chibnall almost regretted that he was so conscientious.
He had finished his glass of port and was considering the advisability of stimulating his brain further through this medium when the hallboy entered to say that he was wanted on the telephone. The voice that spoke in his ear as he adjusted the receiver was that of Miss Pym.
"Sidney!"
"Hullo."
"Are you there?"
"1 am."
"Sidney!"
"Hullo."
Miss Pym, who was plainly much stirred, now proceeded to utter about two hundred and fifty words in the space of time more customarily reserved for uttering ten, and Chibnall felt obliged to remonstrate.
"Who is this speaking?"
"Me, of course, Vera."
"Then don't talk like Donald Duck, my girl. You're fusing the wire."
Thus rebuked, Miss Pym applied the brakes.
"Sidney, it's those two men."
Chibnall started. This was more interesting. He had supposed, when the conversation began, that he was merely about to listen to one of those rambling addresses to which his loved one, in common with so many of her sex, was so addicted when she took the receiver in hand.
"Eh? What about them?"
"They're here."
"Where?"
"In my bar. Plotting."
"Then get back there and listen. Haven't you any sense?"
Miss Pym said that Chibnall needn't bite a girl's head off. Chibnall said that he had not bitten a girl's head off but that every instant was precious. Miss Pym conceded this but said that, he that as it might, there was no necessity to go biting a girl's head off.
''I'm going to listen," she said, wounded. ''I've been listening."
"What did they say?"
"Nothing much. Well, they wouldn't, would they, with me there?"
"You said they were plotting."
"I meant they were going to plot as soon as I was out of the way. So far, they've been talking about marriage."
"Marriage?"
"Yes. The thin one seemed to like it. The stout one didn't. Oh, Sid-nee!"
"Well?"
"The stout one's taken his moustache off!"
"What!"
"Yes. Not a trace of it left. Well, I'm going to listen now. I had to ring you up first and tell you. They're sitting right under that little sliding-panel thing that you send the drinks into the lounge through by, and I'm going to open it an inch or two. I'll be able to hear all."
"Go on, then, and ring me the moment you have."
"All right, all right, all right, all right, all right," said Miss Pym, once more giving evidence that she was not her usual calm self.
"What did you think I was going to do?"
She hung up the receiver and darted to the panel with rapid, silent footsteps, like Drexdale Drew in the Limehouse Mystery that time when he listened in on the conversation in the steelpaneled room at the Blue Chicken. Cautiously she slid it open, and through the aperture there came a snatch of dialogue so significant that it was all she could do to stop herself giving a long, low whistle of astonishment. ( Drexdale Drew, it will be remembered, was guilty of this imprudence on the occasion to which we have referred, and it was that that led to all the subsequent unpleasantness with the Faceless Fiend and the Thing in the Cellar. ) The dialogue ran as follows :
The Stout One : Then where is it?
The Thin One: Hidden in my room.
The Stout One: Well, go fetch it.
The Thin One: No, J. B. Before letting you get your hooks on it I wish to talk turkey.
Miss Pym clung to the shelf below the little sliding-panel thing that you send the drinks into the lounge through by, her ears standing straight up from the side of her head. This, she was telling herself, or the whole trend of the conversation had deceived her, was the real ginger.
The example of this girl in dismissing lightly, as if devoid of interest, the earlier portion of the interview between Joss Weatherby and Mr Duff is one that cannot be followed by a conscientious historian. When two such minds are discussing a subject of such universal concern as the holy state of marriage one must not scamp and abridge. It is not enough merely to say that the thin one seemed to like it and the stout one didn't. Their actual words must be placed on the record.
The conversation began in the lounge, where Joss, hastening to the Rose and Crown, had found Mr Duff huddled in a chair, looking like an Epstein sculpture. The young man's opening remark, as that of anybody else in his place would have done, dealt with the new and improved conditions prevailing on his elder's upper lip.
"Thank God!"
"Eh?"
"You've removed it."
"She made me."
"Who?"
"Beatrice Chavender," said Mr Duff glumly. He had not particularly valued the moustache, but his proud spirit chafed at coercion.
The mention of that name enabled Joss to bring up without further delay the main subject on the agenda paper.
"Tell me, J. B., arising from that, is it true what they say about Dixie?''
"Eh?''
"It's correct, is it, this story I hear about you being engaged?''
"That's what I wish someone would tell me."
"You are reported to have said you were."
"She acts as if
I was."
"But you aren't sure?''