'Didn't you?'
'Of course I didn't. He was like that when I came up.'
Joe scrutinized Mr Bulpitt. The grass by the milestone having yielded no treasure, he was now crawling along the edge of the road with the air of a Nebuchadnezzar in search of better pasture.
'Like that?'
'Yes.'
'On his hands and knees?'
'Yes.'
'Circling and sniffing?'
'Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. A car must have knocked him down and gone on.'
'I suppose so.'
'Do you think he's dying?'
'He doesn't seem any too bobbish.'
'He said something, but he didn't speak properly.'
'Much stirred, no doubt. On these occasions a man's coarser side will come to the surface.'
'I mean I couldn't understand him. He just sort of gargled. He must have got concussion.'
'Where's the nearest doctor?'
'There's Dr Burke in the village, but he might be out now. He goes his rounds in the afternoon.'
'How about Walsingford?'
'There must be lots of doctors there, but I don't know where they live.'
'We had better drive there and ask. . . . Hello, he's getting up.'
Mr Bulpitt had risen and was coming toward them. It had suddenly occurred to him that the quest was not being conducted in the most scientific manner. Three heads are better than one. With his niece Jane and the young fellow whom he had now recognized as T. P. Vanringham's brother to fall in and work under his directions, he had all the material for an organized search party. He mentioned this.
'Say, I can't seem to find my teeth,' he said. 'I wish you two would come and lend a hand. They're around here somewheres.'
He was aware, as he spoke, that his diction lacked something of its customary bell-like clearness, but it surprised him, nevertheless, to see Joe give a shocked start and look at Jane, who looked back and said, 'There!' And his astonishment was increased when, a moment later, a sinewy arm passed itself about his waist and he found himself lifted gently and placed in the car. And before he could find breath for comment, Jane was at the wheel, Joe had swung himself into the dickey, and the car was backing and turning, and then speeding smoothly along the road to Walsingford.
A passionate sense of bereavement came upon Mr Bulpitt as he was snatched away. He was convinced that a little more intensive searching would have produced solid results, and he endeavoured to voice a protest.
A kindly hand came from behind him and patted his shoulder.
'It's quite all right,' said Joe. 'Sit back and wait for the medical treatment. Just relax . . . . Say, I know this bird,' he added, scanning the twisted face. 'He's living on the houseboat. His name's Bulpitt.'
'What! Why, so it is!'
'You know him?'
'He's my uncle.'
This was news to Joe. Nothing in the attitude of Sir Buckstone Abbott toward their passenger had suggested that the latter was his brother-in-law. Lacking to rather a marked extent that easy cordiality which one likes to see in Baronets toward their wives' kinfolk, it had resembled more that of a man confronted with a snake which is no relation.
'Was your mother's name Bulpitt?'
'Yes.'
'I think she did well to change it to a sweet name like Abbott. He's really your uncle, is he?'
'I said he was.'
'Well, step on the gas, or he'll be your late uncle.'
The car sped on. It seemed to Joe a suitable moment for pointing out a psychological aspect of the matter which might have escaped her notice.
'You know,' he said, steadying Mr Bulpitt with a hand on his back and leaning forward, 'deplorable though this accident is, we must remember that it has its brighter side. It has brought you and me very close together. There is nothing like the sharing of a great emotional experience for doing that. It forms a bond. It knits. After this, you will find yourself thinking differently of me.'
It is not easy for a girl to give a man a long level look, if she is driving a car and his head is just behind her left shoulder, but Jane did her best. The fact that it nearly dislocated her neck did not improve her frame of mind.
'You would be lucky if I did.'
'What do you mean?'
'I will tell you after we have seen the doctor.'
'Tell me now It may be my imagination, but there seems to me something strange about your manner. It has an odd curtness. Almost abrupt. Is something the matter?'
'Yes.'
'But what? What has happened? Why, the last time we met, you were allowing – I might say encouraging – me to put my arm round your waist. In the stable yard, you remember.'
'When I was in the stable yard, I had not read the letter which I found waiting for me on the hall table.'
'A letter?'
'It came by the second post.'
A certain uneasiness began to steal upon Joe. In itself, of course, there was nothing unusual in the fact of her having received mail by the second post. He had, indeed, while conversing with her in the stable yard, seen the postman flash by on his bicycle. But he seemed to sense something sinister in her tone. Moreover, though that look of hers had been brief and wobbly rather than long and level, it had been long enough to enable him to discern the glitter in her eye.
'Oh, yes?' he said.
'It was from Adrian Peake.'
Joe removed his hand from Mr Bulpitt's back and began slowly to scratch his chin. A far less astute man than he would have been warned by this statement that trouble was in the air. He was well aware that the twerp Peake, having taken pen in hand, might quite conceivably have touched on topics with great potentialities of embarrassment in them.
However, as usual, he did his best.
'From Adrian Peake, eh? Now, let me see, who is Adrian Peake? Of course; yes, I remember. I have a sort of slight acquaintance with him. . . . I wouldn't drive so fast, if I were you.'
Jane drove faster.
'Mr Vanringham, did you know that Adrian was the man to whom I was engaged?'
'Now, how in the world could I have known that?'
'I imagine Tubby told you. Did he?'
'Well, as a matter of fact, yes. Yes, now that I recall it, he did.'
'I thought so. And did you tell Adrian that he had better go away, because my father was furious with him and was looking for him with a horsewhip?'
Joe sighed. All this was making everything very difficult.
'Why, yes,' he said. 'I had been meaning to tell you about that. Yes, that's right.'
'Thank you. That is all I wanted to know.'
With tight lips and tilted chin, she increased her pressure on the accelerator. A wordless cry proceeded from Mr Bulpitt, whom a rough spot in the road had caused to bound in his seat like ice in a cocktail shaker.
'I think what he is trying to say,' suggested Joe, 'is that we should all be more comfortable if you would slow down a little. Try to hold the thought that you are driving an ambulance rather than a Juggernaut.' He leaned farther forward as the advice was taken. And now to go back to what we were talking about,' he said. 'I'm glad you have brought this matter up, because I have been wanting to explain. You concede that all is fair in love and war?'
'I don't.'
'That makes my explanation rather difficult, then. I acted on the assumption that it was. It seemed to me that only by eliminating Peake at a fairly early point in the proceedings could I secure the leisure and freedom from interruption which I required. You know how it is when you are trying to show yourself to a girl at your best and there's another fellow hanging around. I had an idea that my little ruse would send him shooting off like a rabbit, and it did. Indeed, few rabbits would have acted so promptly.'
'You have ruined my whole life.'
'I don't see how.'
'Adrian has broken off the engagement.'
'He has?'
'Yes.'
'Well, that's fine.'
'Don't talk like that!'
'I will talk like that. You don't love him.'
'I do.'
'You don't.'
Jane's lip, already much bitten that afternoon, received another nip.
'Well, we will not discuss the point.'
'Pompous,' said Joe warningly.
'Will you stop calling me pompous!'
'I'm sorry.'
Once more, regardless of Mr Bulpitt's creature comforts, she trod on the accelerator, and Joe, about to speak further, saw that it would be useless now to continue to put forward reasoned arguments. He leaned back and gave himself up to thought.
He was a good deal affected by the irony of it all. Here was the girl he loved, tilting her chin at him and mutely allowing him to gather that his standing with her was approximately that of some slug or worm, and all because he had told Adrian Peake that her father was after him with a hunting crop. And you couldn't get away from the fact that her father was. If ever since the world began a Baronet had been desirous of laying into a twerp with the blunt instrument in question, Sir Buckstone Abbott was that Baronet and Adrian Peake that twerp. The only possible criticism the sternest judge could make of his actions was that he had slightly antedated his information.
He awoke from his reverie to find that the car had stopped. Some moments back, scattered houses had come into view, to be succeeded by other houses, less scattered, and for the last few minutes they had been running through a grove of uninterrupted red brick. This in its turn had given way to shops, public houses and all the other familiar phenomena of the principal street of a flourishing country town. It was outside one of these public houses, not far from an empty green charabanc against whose bonnet a uniformed driver leaned smoking a cigarette, that Jane had brought the two-seater to a halt. Joe hopped down from the rumble seat and stood waiting for orders.
Jane's face, he was sorry to see, was still cold and set. She jerked her head imperiously at the driver of the charabanc.
'Ask him where the nearest doctor is.'
'He won't know. Something tells me he is a stranger in these parts himself.'
'Then go and ask in the public house.'
'Very well. Can I bring you a little something from the bar?'
'Would you mind hurrying, please?'
'Watch!' said Joe. 'Gone with the wind.'
And Jane, relieved of his noxious presence, was free to devote her mind to the mystery of this sudden reappearance of her Uncle Sam – a problem which, as Sherlock Holmes would have said, seemed to present several features of interest.
Of the peculiar circumstances which had rendered Mr Bulpitt so unpopular with her father, Jane was entirely ignorant. Sir Buckstone had shrunk from letting her know that her family tree was tainted by the presence among its branches of plasterers, and – a still more compelling reason for silence – he did not wish her to be in a position, on the Princess Dwornitzchek's arrival, to let fall some incautious remark, such as the best of girls are apt to do, which would put that lady in possession of the facts.
Secrecy had seemed to him best, and he had accordingly answered her inquiry as to what had become of her uncle since she had talked with him in the dining-room, with the statement that business had called him back to London. She had been left with the impression that as soon as his business was completed, Mr Bulpitt would be coming to live at the Hall.
And now it appeared that he had been in the neighbourhood all the time, his headquarters the houseboat Mignonette.
There could be only one solution of this. Recalling her father's emotion at the prospect of having to place his relative by marriage on the free list, Jane saw what had happened. Torn between the sacred obligations of hospitality and an ignoble desire to save a bit on the weekly books, he had allowed love of gold to win the battle. Instead of a cosy bedroom at the Hall, he had given his brother-in-law a houseboat which, even when new, had scarcely been fit for human habitation.
Sitting there at the wheel of her Widgeon Seven, Jane blushed with shame for her parsimonious parent. This infamy, she felt, must end. If Conscience was unable to convince him how wrong it was to behave like a comic-supplement Scotsman, the matter must be taken out of his hands. From the doctor's door she proposed to drive Mr Bulpitt straight to Walsingford Hall and there deposit him, to be nursed back to health and strength. Even Buck, she felt, obsessed though he was by that Aberdonian urge of his to keep expenses down, would have to admit that this broken man could not be left alone on a houseboat.
She had reached this conclusion, and was feeling brighter and happier, as girls do when they have made up their minds to start something, when a voice spoke, a high-pitched, squeaky voice, like that of a ventriloquist's dummy, and she became aware that she was being addressed by the driver of the charabanc. He had left his post and was standing a few feet away, gazing at Mr Bulpitt with undisguised interest.
'I beg your pardon?' she said – a little coldly, for she had wanted to be alone with her thoughts. Moreover, Joe's outstanding villainy had given her a temporary prejudice against men. With every wish to be broad-minded, a girl cannot welcome conversation with members of a sex which includes people like Joe Vanringham.
The driver of the charabanc was a small, sharp-nosed individual who looked like a pimply weasel. As he stood staring at Mr Bulpitt, every pimple on his face was alive with curiosity. The injured man was now leaning back with closed eyes in a kind of dull stupor of resignation. He had come to the conclusion that nothing could bridge the gulfs of misunderstanding which yawned between himself and his rescuers, and that his only course was to be patient till he had seen the doctor, whose trained senses would immediately detect where the trouble lay. Following Joe's advice, he was relaxing. And he presented such a striking resemblance to a newspaper photograph of the victim of a hatchet murder that the Weasel, who had opened his remarks with the words 'Lor lumme,' proceeded immediately to probe into first causes.
He pointed an interested cigarette.
'Woss the matter wiv'im?'
If he had hoped for a burst of animated girlish confidences, he was disappointed. Jane's manner remained cold and reserved, and she replied aloofly:
'He has been hurt.'
'I'll say he's been hurt! Lord love a duck! Wot happened? Jawernaccident?'
'No,' said Jane, and her foot began to tap on the floor of the Widgeon. It seemed to her that Joe had had time by now to ascertain the addresses of ten doctors.
Her response evidently struck the Weasel as childish. His manner took on a touch of severity, like that of a prosecuting counsel who intends to stand no nonsense from an evasive witness. He frowned and placed his cigarette behind his ear, the better to conduct the cross-examination.
'Wodyer mean?' he demanded.
Jane gazed into the middle distance.
'Wodyer mean, you didn't tawernaccident?' persisted the Weasel. 'You muster radernaccident. Look at the pore bloke. 'Is features are a masker blood.' He paused for a moment, awaiting a reply. 'Bleedin' profusely,' he added. Then, with stiffness: 'I said 'is features was a masker blood.'
'I heard you,' said Jane.
Her brusqueness affected the Weasel unpleasantly. Even at the beginning of this interview, he had been in none too amiable a mood, owing to the fact that his passengers, absorbed in their own selfish thirsts, had poured into the public house, intent on slaking them, without thinking to invite him to join them in a gargle. He was now thoroughly stirred up and ripe for the class war. Jane's was a delicate beauty which, as a rule, made men with whom she came in contact feel chivalrous and protective. It merely awoke the Weasel's worst feelings. There had been a patrician hauteur in her voice which made him wish that Stalin could have been there to give her a piece of his mind.
'Ho!' he said.
Jane said nothing.
'Ask you a civil question, and you bite at a man.'
Jane did not reply.
'Think you're everybody,' proceeded the Weasel, in Stalin's absence doing his best to handle the affair with spirit, but a lit
tle conscious that the latter would have said something snappier than that.
Jane gazed before her.
'It's women like you that cause the Death Toll of the Roads,' said the Weasel bitterly.
'Woddidesay?' inquired a new voice.
''E said that it's women like 'er that cause the Death Toll of the Roads,' replied another. And, looking round, Jane perceived that what had begun as a duologue had become a symposium.
As a centre of life and thought, the High Street of Walsingford, like the High Streets of other English country towns, varied according to the day of the week. On Saturdays and market days it was virtually a modern Babylon, at other times less bustling and congested. This was one of its medium afternoons. There were no farmers in gaiters prodding pigs in the ribs, but a fair assortment of residents had turned out, and half a dozen of these, male and female, were now gathered about the two-seater. And once more, much as she disliked him, Jane wished Joe would return.
As the eyes of those present fell upon Mr Bulpitt, a startled gasp of horror arose.
'Coo!' said a citizen in a bowler hat.
'Look at 'im!' said a woman in a cricket cap.
'Yus,' cried the Weasel, driving home his point, 'look at 'im. Bleedin' profusely. And does she care?'
The man in the bowler hat seemed staggered.
'Don't she care?'
'No! Don't give a damn, she don't.'
'Coo!' said the man in the bowler hat, and the woman in the cricket cap drew in her breath with a sharp hiss.
Jane stirred indignantly in her seat. There are few things more exasperating to an innocent girl who prides herself on the almost religious carefulness of her driving than to be thrust into the position of a haughty and callous aristocrat of the old pre-Revolution French regime, the sort of person who used to bowl over the children of the proletariat in his barouche and get fists shaken at him, and she found her temper mounting.
And she was about to deliver a hot denial of the charge, when it suddenly occurred to Mr Bulpitt, who had been listening with some interest to the exchanges, to try to put everything right with a brief address to the crowd. He rose, accordingly, and began to speak.
The result was sensational. His appearance alone had been enough to purify the citizenry of Walsingford with pity and terror. That awful, wordless babble appalled them.