A sort of shiver passed through her frame and she began to slide across the room, clenching and unclenching her hands. Her teeth were set, her eyes large and luminous, and it seemed to me that Reginald was for it.
And then with a quick movement Ann stepped between us.
'What are you going to do?' 'Plenty.'
'You won't touch this child,' said Ann.
I couldn't see April now, for Ann was in the way, but I heard her do that drawing-in-breath business again, and most disagreeable it sounded. I thought she was going to say 'Huh?' but she didn't. She said 'No?'
'No?' she said.
'No,' said Ann.
There was a silence. I remember once, years ago in the old silent days, seeing a picture where the heroine, captured by savages, lay bound on an altar, and all that stood between her and the high priest's knife was the hero, who was telling the high priest to unhand her. I knew now how that heroine must have felt.
'Get out of my way,' said April.
'I won't,' said Ann.
April whistled a bar or two.
'You're fired,' she said.
'Very well,' said Ann.
'And I'll see that nobody else engages you as a press agent.'
'Very well,' said Ann.
April June stalked to the door. She paused for an instant on the threshold, glared at Ann, glared at me, and stalked out.
An unpleasant girl. I can't think why I ever liked her.
Ann cut my bonds, and I left my seat. I turned to her and opened my mouth, then shut it again. It had been my intention to thank her with all the eloquence I could scoop up for her splendid conduct in thus for a second time saving me from the powers of darkness, but the sight of her face stopped me.
She was not bathed in tears, for she was not the sort of girl who weeps to any great extent, but she looked licked to a splinter, and I realized what it must be meaning to her, losing like this the job for which she had worked so hard and on which she had been counting so much. Whole thing unquestionably a pretty nasty jar.
And she had dished her aims and dreams purely in order to save me from the fury of A. June. My admiration for her courage and unselfishness, seething on top of all the pancakes I had eaten, threatened to choke me.
'I say,' I said, foozling the words a bit, 'I'm frightfully sorry.'
'It doesn't matter.'
'But I am.'
'That's all right, Joseph.' 'I -1 don't know what to say.'
'It's quite all right, Joey dear. You don't suppose I was going to stand by and let her —' 'But you've lost your job.' 'I'll get another.' 'But she said—'
'Perhaps not as a press agent -I suppose she has enough influence to queer me in that way - and, anyhow, press agent's jobs don't come along all the time - but something.'
An idea struck me, enabling me to look on the bright side. If you could call it the bright side.
'But, of course, you don't really need a job. You're going to get married,' I said, wincing a bit as I spoke the words, for the idea of her getting married was dashed unpleasant - in fact more or less like a spear-thrust through the vitals.
She looked at me in surprise.
'How do you know that?'
I had to think quick.
'Oh - er - Eggy told me.'
'Oh, yes. He came to give you an elocution lesson yesterday, didn't he? How did you get on?' ‘Oh, fine.'
'You must have done, if you call him "Eggy" already.' 'He's got quite a bit of money.'
'So I believe. But it won't be any use to me, because the engagement is off.' 'What!'
'Broken. Last night. So I shall have to be looking out for a job, you see. I have an idea that I shall end up as a dentist's assistant. The girl who helps Mr Burwash told me she was leaving. I might get her place.'
I was unable to speak. The thought of Eggy's foul treachery in tying a can to this noble girl, and the thought of Ann - my wonderful Ann - wasting her splendid gifts abetting B. K. Burwash in his molar-jerking, combined to tangle up the vocal cords.
'But we won't waste valuable time talking about that now,' said Ann. 'What we've got to think of is what is to become of you.'
'Me?'
'Why, yes, my poor lamb. We shall have to dispose of you somehow. You can't go back to Mr Brinkmeyer.'
I saw that she was right. Contemplating her swivet, I had rather given a miss to the fact that I was in no slight swivet myself. And the mental anguish of sitting tied up in a chair with April June bearing down on me had helped to take my mind off it. When an angry woman is spitting on her hands and poising herself to give you one on the submaxillary, you find yourself concentrating on the immediate rather than the more distant future. Into this I was now at liberty to peep.
'Gosh!' I said.
'It's a problem, isn't it? Have you any views?' 'I had thought of going to England.' 'England?'
'If, of course, I could collect the necessary cash.' 'But why England?'
Not, in the circs, easy to answer that. 'Oh, I just thought of it.'
'Well, think of something else, my poor child. You certainly get the craziest ideas, Joseph. Apart from the fact that you would have nowhere to go when you got there, you couldn't so much as begin to get there. Where's your passport? Do you think a shipping office would sell transportation to anyone of your age? You would be detained for enquiries and then mailed back to Miss Brinkmeyer.'
I hadn't thought of that. In conceiving the plan of going to England and settling down at Biddleford, I had, I am free to admit, merely sketched out the broad, general outlines of the thing, leaving the details to be filled in later.
'There's only one thing. You must go home to your mother at Chillicothe, Ohio. So listen. I can't drive you there myself, because my car's only borrowed, but I'll go to the nearest garage and hire something to take you home. Your mother can pay when you arrive. I will explain to them. All right, then, I'll be going. Good-bye.'
'Good-bye.'
'I'll be back to see you off. Cheer up, Joseph. Things will dry straight one of these days.'
She pushed off. There was a pancake left on the dish. I ate it moodily. Then, feeling stifled indoors, I wandered out of the house and started to walk up the lane, kicking stones.
She had told me to cheer up, but I was dashed if I could do it. She had said that things would dry straight one of these days, but I was blowed if I could see when. The more I contemplated the general outlook, the ballier it seemed.
I mean to say, leaving Ann's swivet out of it and concentrating on my own, what was the position of affairs? Hopeless love gnawed at my heart, and would doubtless continue so to gnaw. But, even apart from that, how about it?
The future seemed to me to look about as black as it could stick. I hadn't been any too keen on being a child star, when all my tastes and habits lay in the direction of being a third earl, but it would have been a dashed sight better than being an ex-child star, as I was now.
There might have been some faint satisfaction to be gained from feeling that one was the Idol of American Motherhood. Of this I was now deprived. Taking a line through the attitude of those Michigan specimens, it was only too plain that the sole emotion American Motherhood would feel towards me from now on would be a strong desire to bounce a brick off my head.
Presumably I would have to settle down to a life of retired obscurity with Joey Cooley's parent in Chillicothe, Ohio. And while he had told me that this parent cooked an excellent fried chicken, Southern style, I can't say I found myself relishing the prospect much. You know how it is, getting to know a strange woman. It takes you a long time to feel at your ease. Difficult at the outset to discover mutual tastes and congenial subjects of conversation.
With all this on my mind it is not surprising that as I turned into the main road I was in a pretty profound reverie. What jerked me out of it was the sound of a motor bicycle coming along at the dickens of a speed. And, looking round, I found the bally thing right on top of me.
I had just time to note that the o
ccupant of the saddle was clad in a quiet grey suit and that his socks, which were of powder blue, melted into tasteful suede shoes, when there was a yell and a toot, one of the handlebars biffed me on the head, and I turned three somersaults and knew no more.
Chapter 27
WHEN I came to, I was lying by the side of the road with my eyes shut and a nasty lumpy feeling in the skull. A voice was speaking. 'Hey I' it said.
My first idea was that I was in Heaven and that this was an angel trying to get acquainted, but I was too occupied with skull to take a look and ascertain. I just lay there.
'Hey,' said the voice again. 'Are you dead?'
A moment before, I should have replied 'Yes' without hesitation, but now doubts were beginning to creep in. The bean was clearing. I thought it over a bit longer and was convinced.
'No,' I said.
And by way of producing evidence to back up the statement, I opened my eyes. They fell upon something which brought me up with a round turn.
For an instant, I thought that I was having those things chaps have that begin with 'h'. Then the bean cleared still further and I saw that this was not so.
Standing before me was little Joey Cooley in person. There was no possibility of error. There were the knickerbockers, there were the golden curls. And at the same moment I caught sight of my legs, stretching out towards the horizon. They were long and beefy and clad in quiet grey trousers, terminating at the ankles in powder-blue socks that melted, as it were, into tasteful suede shoes.
I suppose some fellows would have been non-plussed. Possibly a day or so earlier I might have been non-plussed myself. But the vivid life which I had been living of late had sharpened my faculties, and I was on to what had happened in a flash.
We were back again as before.
I could see quite easily how the thing had been worked. It was that smash that had done the trick. At the precise moment when it had laid me out cold, it must have laid the kid Cooley out cold, and while we were both laid out cold we had done another of our switches. I had no recollection of the incident, but no doubt we had got together in the fourth dimension, talked the things over briefly, and decided that now was an admirable opportunity of getting back to what I believe, though I wouldn't swear to it, is called the status quo.
'What ho!' I exclaimed.
After what had passed between this young shrimp and myself at our last meeting, I would have been well within my rights, no doubt, in being a bit stand-offish. We had parted, I mean to say, if you remember, on distant terms, he having shrugged my shoulders and sneered at me and gone off and left me alone with the ravening Murphy. But I was feeling much too bucked to be sniffy. I fairly beamed at the little Gawd-help-us.
'What ho, what hoi' I said. 'I say, do you notice anything?'
'Notice what?'
'Why, the old status quo, if that's the expression I want, Have you observed that we're back again?'
'Oh, yes. I got that. How do you suppose it happened?'
I hadn't had time to think it all out, of course, but I gave my view for what it was worth. He nodded understandingly.
'I see. Same old routine. It wasn't my fault,' he went on, with a touch of sullen defensiveness in his voice. 'I blew my horn.'
'Oh, quite.'
'What were you doing, wandering around on the road that way?' 'Just musing.'
'And how do you come to be here at all?'
'This is where George and Eddie and Fred brought me.'
'Who are George and Eddie and Fred?'
'Rather decent coves. Kidnappers.' His face cleared.
'Oh, that kidnapping stunt came off, all right, did it?' 'Not a hitch.'
'And this is their hide-out? That house down the lane there?' 'That's right.' 'What happened?'
'Well, it's a long story. We started off with some breakfast—'
He uttered an exclamation.
'Breakfast! So that was it? The moment I got back into this body of mine, I thought you must have been doing something to it since I had it last. It seemed fuller. It had kind of lost that hollow feeling. Breakfast, eh? What did you have?'
'Sausages, followed by pancakes.'
His eye lit up.
'Any left?'
'You can't want any more already.' 'I do too.'
'There may be some in the kitchen. Can you cook sausages?'
'I'm not sure. But I can try. And maybe there'd be some bacon, as well. And eggs. And bread. If I've got to go back to Ma Brinkmeyer, with Clause B of my contract operating, I'll need to stoke up.'
The time had come, I saw, to break the news to him.
'I wouldn't go back to the Brinkmeyers, if I were you.'
'Talk sense. My contract's got three years to run.'
'Not now.'
'Eh?'
'Haven't you seen the Sunday paper?' 'No. Why?'
'Well, I'm sorry to say,' I said, 'that inadvertently, if you know what the word means, I've rather let you in a bit.'
And in a few simple words I informed him of the state of affairs.
I needn't have worried. I've never seen a child so profoundly braced. In supposing that he would be all broken up at the news that his professional career had been ruined, I had been right off the mark. Nowhere near it.
'Well, sir,' he said, regarding me affectionately, 'I'll say you've done me a good turn all right. You couldn't have done me a better turn if you'd sat up nights studying how to. No, sir!'
I was astounded.
'You're pleased and gratified?' I said, quite unable to grasp.
'You bet I'm pleased and gratified. This lets me out nicely. Now I can go straight back to Chillicothe.' He broke off, his exuberance waning a bit. 'Or can I?'
'Why not?'
'How am I to get there?'
I waved a hand lightly. And the relief of being able to wave my own hand was simply terrific. 'Oh, that's all arranged.' 'It is?'
'Oh, rather. There will be a car here shortly to take you.'
'Well, that's swell. Whose idea was that?'
'Ann Bannister's.'
'It would be. What a girl!'
‘Ah!'
'There's a girl that's got a head on her shoulders.' 'And what a head!' 'I love Ann.' 'Me, too.'
He seemed surprised.
'You?'
'Certainly.'
'Do you love two of them, then?' 'I beg your pardon?'
'You told me you were that way about April June.'
I shuddered.
'Do me a favour,' I said. 'Don't mention that name to me. How right you were, young Cooleyl How unerring was your judgement of character. When you called her a pill.'
'She's a pill, all right.' 'Definitely a pill.' 'A whale of a pill.' 'A frightful pill.' 'Yessir!' 'Yessir!'
We seemed to be pretty straight on that point. I turned to another.
'Rummy,' I said, 'that you hadn't seen the Sunday paper. Don't you read it as a rule?'
It seemed to me that a slight shadow passed over his brow again. He appeared a trifle embarrassed, I thought.
'Why, yes,' he said, 'I do. Only to-day I was stopped -sort of.'
'Stopped - sort of?'
'Yes, interrupted - kind of - before I could get down to it.'
'Who interrupted you?' 'This cop.' 'Which cop?'
His embarrassment increased.
'Say, listen,' he said, 'there's something I ought to tell you. I was meaning to let you have it before this, but we got to talking of other things. It was this way. I'd just bought the paper this morning, and I was starting to read it on the street outside the Garden of the Hesperides, when up comes a cop on a motor-bicycle and asks me am I Lord Havershot.'
'To which you replied —?'
'Yessir. He then ups and pinches me for assaulting Ma Brinkmeyer. It's an open-and-shut case, he says, because it seems where when I was chasing her around that pool I dropped your card-case.'
'Great Scott!'
'Sure. But wait. You ain't heard nothin' yet. You know that lovely wallop o
f yours, the one that travels about eight inches, with a sort of corkscrew twist on it?'
I tottered.
'You didn't —'
'Yessir. Plumb on the snoot. Down he went, and I swiped his motor-bike and lit out. I was heading for Mexico. And let me tell you sump'n. If I was you, if that motor-bike is still working, why, I'd keep right on heading for Mexico. If I was you. Yessir. And now I think I'll be going along and snaring myself a sausage. These pancakes of yours seem to be kind of wearing off a little.'
He disappeared down the lane, and I made a beeline for the motor-bike to look it over. If this body of mine, for whose rash acts I must now once more take the responsibility, had been going about hitting policemen, I could see that his advice about getting over the border into Mexico was sound.
It was a dashed sight more than the bike was. The thing was a mere macedoine. I concluded my post-mortem and turned away. Not by means of this majestic ruin could I win to safety.
It seemed to me that the best thing I could do would be to wait till the hired car came to fetch the kid and get him to give me a lift to this Chillicothe place of his, which would at least take me into another State, and I went to the house to ask him if this would be all right. I found him in the kitchen, preparing to get busy with a large frying-pan, and he said it would be quite all right. Glad of my company, he was decent enough to say.
'And you'll be sitting pretty, once you're over the State line,' he said. 'They can't get at you there.'
'You're sure of that?'
'Sure I'm sure. They'd have to extradicate you, or whatever it's called.' A horn tooted without.
'Hello,' he said. 'Somebody at the door. If it's for me, tell 'em I'm not ready yet.' I was struck by a disquieting thought. 'Suppose it's somebody for me?' 'The cops, you mean? Couldn't be.' 'It might.'
'Well, if it is, poke 'em in the snoot.'
It was with a good deal of uneasiness that I made my way to the front door and opened it. I had not this child's simple faith in snoot-poking as a panacea for all ills. Outside, a car was standing, and my relief was substantial on perceiving that it was not a police car, but just one of those diseased old two-seaters which are so common in Hollywood.
Somebody was getting out of it. Somebody who seemed strangely familiar. 'Golly I' I exclaimed.