Lady Vera had sprung from her chair and was now standing on the rug, panting at him. Lord Hoddesdon ground a heel into the carpet. There were moments when his sister reminded him of a rocketing pheasant; and, while he liked rocketing pheasants at the proper time and in their proper place, he strongly objected to amateur imitations of them in a small drawing-room.
'What is it?' he demanded irritably.
Lady Vera found speech.
'George, I've just come from dining with Lady Corstorphine.'
'Well?'
'At Mario's.'
'Well?'
'And what do you think?'
'What on earth do you mean, what do I think?'
'Ann was there.'
'Why shouldn't she be?'
'Not with us. She was up in the balcony.'
'Well?'
Lady Vera held her brother with a glittering eye, and delivered her thunderbolt.
'She was with a man, George!'
Lord Hoddesdon made one last feeble attempt to clutch at the vanishing skirts of Happiness. But he knew, even as he spoke, that the effort was futile.
'No harm in that,' he said, though quaveringly. 'Can't see any harm in that. Girls nowadays . . .'
'Don't be a fool, George,' said Lady Vera curtly, shattering his last hope. 'If it had been Toddy Malling or Bertie Winch or any of the men she goes dancing with, do you suppose I should be upset? This was a man I had never seen before. It was obviously the man!'
'Not the one Jane Venables said she saw with her in her car that day!'
'It must have been.'
'You can't be certain,' pleaded Lord Hoddesdon faintly.
'I can make certain,' said Lady Vera. 'Here is Ann. I will ask her.'
A latch-key had turned in the front door, and from the hall there came the voice of a girl. She was singing softly to herself.
'She sounds happy!' said Lord Hoddesdon apprehensively.
'And she looked happy in the restaurant,' said Lady Vera. Her voice was grim. 'They were staring into each other's eyes.'
'No!'
'And holding hands.'
'No, dash it!'
'I saw them, I tell you.'
The door opened.
'Ah, Ann, my dear,' said Lady Vera. 'So you've got back.'
Ann's gaiety had waned. No girl enjoys a disagreeable scene, and she knew that there was one before her. Anything like subterfuge was foreign to Ann Moon's nature. She had no intention of concealing what had happened. The only thing that was perplexing her was the problem of how best to reveal it. Some people, she knew, preferred their bad news broken to them gently. Others would rather that you poured it over them like a pail of water and got it done with.
She was still debating within herself the comparative merits of the two methods, when Lady Vera went on speaking and she knew that neither would be needed.
'Who was your friend?' asked Lady Vera.
'Fellow you were dining with,' added Lord Hoddesdon, underlining the point. 'Fellow,' he went on, removing the last trace of ambiguity, 'who was up in the balcony with you at Mario's?'
'Yes,' said Lady Vera, in a voice of the purest steel. 'You were holding his hand, if you remember, and gazing into his eyes.'
It was a situation in which a nice girl should have quailed. An exceptionally nice girl might even have burst into tears and covered her face with her hands. Ann, after an uncontrollable start, was unfortunate enough to see the ludicrous side of the affair. Before she could check it, a happy laugh was echoing through the room.
Lord Hoddesdon's views on happy laughs were identical with his views on rocketing pheasants. At the proper time nobody enjoyed them more than himself. At a moment like this, and from a girl who had been playing fast and loose – yes, dash it, fast and loose with his only confounded son, he resented them keenly.
'Don't giggle!' he cried.
Ann became grave.
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'Only it seemed so funny that you should have been looking on all the time.'
'The humorous aspect of the matter,' said Lady Vera heavily, 'is not the one that appeals to me.'
'I'm sorry,' said Ann. 'I shouldn't have . . . It was too bad of me. . . . But you know how it is when you're nervous.'
'Nervous!' Lord Hoddesdon snorted. 'You nervous? If ever I've seen a girl calmer and more – er – what's the word? – more – ah – begins with a b. . . .'
'George,' said Lady Vera, 'be quiet.'
Lord Hoddesdon subsided into his chair. He seemed to be wishing that he had brought his Dictionary of Synonyms along with him this evening.
'I'm sorry,' said Ann for the third time, 'and if I had known about it sooner I would have told you sooner, but I am afraid I am not going to marry Godfrey.'
Lord Hoddesdon heaved slightly, like a volcano erroneously supposed to be extinct. His sister, noting the symptoms, raised a compelling hand.
'George!'
'Aren't I to say a word?' demanded Lord Hoddesdon with pathos.
'No.'
'Oh, very well. I'm the head of the family. Biskerton is my only son. This girl comes calmly in and tells us that she proposes to throw him over like a – like a – well, to throw him over. And I am not to say a word. I see. Precisely. Quite. I suppose,' said Lord Hoddesdon witheringly, 'that you would have no objection to my amusing myself with a game of solitaire while you two discuss this affair – this affair in which I, of course, have no interest whatever. Ha!' said his lordship, feeling, in spite of himself, a good deal better.
Lady Vera turned to Ann.
'Perhaps you will explain?'
'I don't think there is anything to explain.'
'Of course not,' said Lord Hoddesdon heartily, addressing a china cat which stood on a small table at his elbow. 'Certainly not. Nothing to explain. Quite so. Very bad form of us to be inquisitive. But let me tell you . . .'
'George!'
'Oh, all right,' said Lord Hoddesdon.
'I mean,' said Ann, 'if you saw me at Mario's, you must know that . . .'
'I know, what apparently seems to you the only point worthy of discussion, that you propose to jilt my nephew in favour of this man you were dining with tonight. But I think that, as you have been put in my charge by your parents and that I am, therefore, in a position of trust and responsibility, I am entitled to ask . . .'
'Who the devil is the mouldy feller?' said Lord Hoddesdon, rising suddenly to the surface.
Lady Vera tightened her lips. The question was, in essence, the high spot to which her speech was tending, though she would have phrased it differently. But she liked to ask her own questions for herself. She directed at her brother a glance which sent him back into the recesses of his chair, and turned to Ann expectantly.
'Yes,' she said. 'Who is he?'
'His name is Conway.'
'And what is he?'
'He is in the Secret Service.'
Lord Hoddesdon, though crushed, could not let this pass.
'Secret Service?' he said. 'Secret Service? Secret Service? Never heard such nonsense in my life.'
'George!'
'Yes, but dash it . . .'
'George!'
'Oh, all right!'
'He is in the Secret Service, is he?' said Lady Vera, ignoring a low rumbling from the volcano. 'He told you that?'
'Yes.'
'Tonight?'
'No. When we first met.'
'When was that?'
'About a week ago.'
'A week! A week! A week! . . .'
'George!'
'Oh, all right.'
'So you have known this young man you intend to marry as long as a week?' said Lady Vera. 'Fancy! Might I ask how you made his acquaintance?'
'He jumped into my car.'
'He – what? Why did he do that?'
'He was chasing The Sniffer. . . .'
'I'm afraid I don't understand this modern slang. What do you mean by chasing The Sniffer?'
'He was trying to catch a criminal called The
Sniffer. Only he wasn't. I mean, it wasn't The Sniffer after all. But he thought it was, and he jumped into my car and I drove him down to Esher. And then I met him again.'
'Where?'
'At the Bassingers' dance.'
'Oh!' Lady Vera was a little shaken. 'He knows the Bassingers, does he?'
Ann was her honest self.
'No,' she said.
'But you say he was at their dance?'
'He came there because he saw me going up in the elevator. He wasn't invited.'
The Volcano erupted. An eye-witness, who had been present on both occasions, would have been irresistibly reminded of the Mont Pelee horror.
'Wasn't invited? Wasn't invited? A gate-crasher! You hear that? My only son isn't good enough for the girl, so she goes out and picks up a blasted gate-crasher!'
The revelation had moved Lady Vera so deeply that she could not even spare the time to say 'George!'
'Well!' she said, drawing in her breath sharply.
'I thought it was very sporting of him,' said Ann defiantly.
'Sporting!'
'Well, it was. To do a thing like that just because he wanted to see me so much. It isn't very pleasant for a man to be turned out of a dance.'
'So he was turned out? I see. Charming! And when did you meet him again?'
'Tonight.'
'And . . .'
'He kissed me,' said Ann stoutly, wishing, for she was a self-respecting modern girl, that she had been able to refrain from blushing. 'And I kissed him. And he told me he loved me. And I told him I loved him. And then we went off to dinner.'
There was a silence, broken only by a noise from Lord Hoddesdon like the bubbling of molten lava.
'And you know nothing about him,' said Lady Vera, 'except that he says he is in the Secret Service and is not persona grata at the Bassingers' dances? Has this remarkable person any fixed abode? Or does he just wander about the streets jumping into girls' cars?'
'He lives,' said Ann softly, breathing the address in a devout voice, for it was sacred to her, 'at The Nook, Mulberry Grove, Valley Fields.'
'What!' cried Lady Vera.
'What!' cried Lord Hoddesdon.
'Why, what's the matter?' asked Ann, surprised.
'Nothing,' said Lady Vera.
'Nothing,' said Lord Hoddesdon.
'If you're thinking that people have no right to live in the suburbs,' said Ann, once more with defiance in her voice, 'he has to, because they don't pay you much in the Secret Service.'
'I see,' said Lady Vera silkily. 'This young man is not well off. How lucky he has decided to marry money.'
'What do you mean?' cried Ann. 'Are you suggesting . . . ?'
Lady Vera's manner changed. She became so intensely motherly that her brother, rumbling in his chair, stared at her, awed.
'My dear child,' she said, and her smile was a composite of all of the smiles of all the mothers in filmdom, 'of course I know just how you are feeling about this man, but you really must use your intelligence. It is not as if you were a stupid, unsophisticated girl. You have seen quite enough of the world to know that life is not a fairy-story.'
'Or a twopenny novelette,' said Lord Hoddesdon.
'Or a twopenny novelette,' said Lady Vera. 'You know what big cities are like. London is full of adventurers, as I suppose New York is. This man is one of them.'
'He isn't!'
'My dear child, of course he is. And you could see it for yourself if you were not blinded by infatuation. Jumping into girls' cars! Honest men don't jump into girls' cars.'
'I don't,' said Lord Hoddesdon, mentioning a case in point. 'Never jumped into a girl's car in my life.'
'I am talking to Ann, George,' said Lady Vera gently. 'We are not interested in your autobiography. What you don't realize, dear,' she proceeded, 'is that you are a very well-known girl. Your photograph has been in all the weekly papers. You have been seen about everywhere. There are a dozen ways in which this man could have got to know you by sight. Obviously he must have marked you down; and when he saw you in your car that day he seized his opportunity. He knew how it would appeal to an imaginative girl, a man jumping in beside her and asking her to help him pursue a criminal. He knew that you are the daughter of a very rich man . . .'
Ann had had sufficient.
'I'm not going to listen to any more,' she said pinkly.
'There isn't any more to listen to,' said Lady Vera. 'I have told you the whole story. And, if you have any sense at all, you will realize for yourself . . .'
'Good night,' said Ann, and went out with her chin up.
She left behind her an electric silence. Lord Hoddesdon was the first to break it.
'Well?' he said.
'What on earth do you mean by "Well?" ' retorted Lady Vera. She was still tingling with the battle-spirit, and it rendered her irritable.
'What do you make of it?'
'What do I make of what?'
'I mean, do you suppose you have convinced her about this fellow? Being an adventurer and all that?'
'At least I have given her something to think about.'
Lord Hoddesdon pulled at his moustache.
'Odd about that address.'
'My dear George,' said Lady Vera, with the same patient contempt with which another great mind was wont to say 'My dear Watson', 'I really cannot see why you should consider it odd.'
'Well, dash it,' protested his lordship, 'the coincidence – you can't say it's not a coincidence. Mulberry Grove, Valley Fields, is where Godfrey is living.'
'Exactly. And I have no doubt that this man has somehow managed to scrape acquaintance with Godfrey. Godfrey, who has no idea of reticence but babbles all his most private affairs into the ear of the first person who comes along, must undoubtedly have told him who he was and, I suppose, showed him Ann's photograph and mentioned that she was a very romantic girl. And when the man found her sitting alone in her car, he saw his chance.'
'I see. I've often thought,' said Lord Hoddesdon, with a father's sad earnestness, 'that Godfrey ought to be in some sort of mental institution. He has gone and messed things up thoroughly now. Is there anything we can do, do you think?'
'Of course there is something we can do. You don't imagine that I am going to sit quietly and see this man ruin Ann's life? I should imagine that the thing will resolve itself into a question of money. Mr Frisby must buy him off.'
'You think he would?'
'Of course he would. He will be just as anxious as we are to free Ann from this entanglement.'
'Why?'
'His sister, Ann's mother, is, I understand, the sort of woman who would make herself exceedingly unpleasant if Ann were to marry the wrong man.'
'Ah!' said Lord Hoddesdon, enlightened. He knew all about unpleasant sisters.
'So,' said Lady Vera, 'you had better go down to Valley Fields tomorrow morning and see this man. I'll get Mr Frisby to give you a cheque.'
Lord Hoddesdon started violently. Until this moment he had been looking on the affair in a spirit of easy detachment. He had never dreamed that there would be any suggestion of his undertaking the negotiations. The mere idea of paying a return visit to the stamping-ground of the disciple of Stayling and running the risk of renewing his acquaintance with that extraordinarily belligerent little person with the eyeglass and the vocabulary appalled him.
'Go to Valley Fields!' he cried. 'I'm dashed if I do.'
'George!'
'No,' returned Lord Hoddesdon, reckless of the lion-tamer's gleam in his sister's eye, 'I will not. You aren't going to get me down to that hell on earth, not if you argue all night.'
'George!'
'It's no good saying "George"! I'm not going. I don't like Valley Fields. There's something about the place. It's unlucky.'
'Don't be absurd.'
'Absurd, eh? Well, look what happened last time. I went down there in a grey top-hat that I had meant to see me through another half-dozen Ascots, and I only just managed to escape with my life in a c
loth cap with purple checks. And that wasn't all. That wasn't half of it. I had to run – run like a hare, dash it! to escape being murdered by a beer-swilling native. I had to gallop into back gardens and leap through windows. And you calmly ask me to go over all that again! I can see myself ! No,' said Lord Hoddesdon, firmly, 'I approve of the idea of offering this bounder money to release Ann, but I decline to be appointed paymaster. Do the thing in a regular and orderly manner, I say. Go to your friend Frisby and tell him to send his lawyer to interview this fellow. It's a lawyer's job. Good night, Vera!'
And, seizing his hat, Lord Hoddesdon sprang for the door. He could have lingered, had he wished, to hear what his sister had to say in reply to this ultimatum, but he did not wish.
CHAPTER 10
I
Although the little luncheon arranged by Lord Biskerton and his friend Berry Conway had been designed primarily as a celebration of their joint felicity, they had scarcely settled themselves at the table before it lost this carefree aspect and became undisguisedly a discussion of ways and means. The peculiar complexity of their position had escaped neither of them. Each had been doing solid thinking overnight, and the business note was struck almost immediately.
'What it all boils down to,' said the Biscuit, when the waiter had left them and it was possible to deal with matters more intimate than the bill of fare, 'is where do we go from here?'
Berry nodded. This was, he recognized, the problem.
'I am not saying,' proceeded the Biscuit, 'that this isn't the maddest, merriest day of all the glad new year, because it is. We love. Excellent! We are loved. Capital! Nothing could be sweeter. But now the question arises, how the dickens are we going to collect enough cash to push the thing through to a happy conclusion? We must not fail to realize that between us we have got just about enough to pay for one marriage ceremony. And we shall need a couple.'
Berry nodded again. He had not failed to realize this.
'Because,' said the Biscuit, 'there is none of that one-portion-between-two stuff with clergymen. Each time the firing-squad assembles, even though it be on the same morning and with a breathing-space of only a few minutes, the vicar wants his little envelope. So we are faced by the eternal problem of Money and how to get it. Who,' he asked, looking across the room, 'is the red-faced bird who has just waved a paternal hand at us? I don't know him. One of your City friends?'