Ambrotox and Limping Dick

  CHAPTER IV.

  COFFEE.

  Randal Bellamy at fifty was the most successful patent lawyer of hisday. He had taken silk before he was forty, and for many years hadenjoyed, not only the largest practice, but a distinction unrivalled inhis own country and unsurpassed in the world.

  Such a man's knowledge in physics, chemistry and biology, though lessprecise, is often wider than that of the individual specialist. Hisfriendship with Theophilus Caldegard, begun at Cambridge, had lasted andgrown stronger with the years.

  On the evening of his brother's arrival he dressed for dinner later thanwas his custom. His bath had filled him with a boyish desire to whistleand sing; and now, as he tied his bow and felt the silk-lined comfort ofhis dinner-jacket, he heard with a throb of elation the soft sound of askirt go by his door.

  He murmured as he followed:

  "--lentus in umbra Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvas."

  But before he reached the stairhead, all other sounds were drowned byshouts of laughter from the billiard-room--good laughter and familiar;but the smile left his face and his pace slackened. He was, perhaps, tooold to wake the echoes, and Dick's laugh, he thought, was infectious asthe plague.

  In the wide, comfortable hall used instead of the drawing-room whichBellamy hated, he found Amaryllis smiling with a sparkle in her eyes, asif she too had been laughing.

  "Did you hear them?" she asked.

  Randal nodded.

  "Father hasn't laughed like that for years--billiards!" she said. "Yourbrother is just telling him shocking stories, Sir Randal."

  "How d'you know?" he asked.

  "I dressed as quickly as I could, and went to the billiard-room. Fathercouldn't speak, but just ran me out by the scruff of the neck."

  At this moment her attention was distracted by the bull-dog, sliding andtumbling down the stairs in his eagerness to reach his mistress.

  "Gorgon's behaving like a puppy," said Randal, smiling.

  "Oh, he's been laughing, too," said Amaryllis, fondling the soft ears."And he wants to tell me all the jokes."

  And then Caldegard and Dick Bellamy came down the stairs together.

  "What have you been doing to Gorgon?" asked Amaryllis.

  "Never mind the dog," said her father. "It's what this 'vaudevilleartist' has been doing to me!"

  "Oh, Gorgon, Gorgon! If those lips could only speak!" laughed the girl."Don't you think Gorgon's a good name for the ugly darling, Mr.Bellamy?" she said, as they went in to dinner.

  "Surely the Gorgon was a kind of prehistoric suffragette," objectedDick.

  "There you are, Amy," said her father, and turned to him. "Your brotherand I have quite failed to convince my illiterate daughter that the word_Gorgon_ is of the feminine gender."

  "Anyhow," said Amaryllis defiantly, as she took her seat at thedinner-table, "I looked it up in the dictionary, and all it said was: Amonster of fearful aspect.'"

  "He deserves it," said Dick.

  "He seems to have taken a great fancy to you, Mr. Bellamy," said thegirl.

  "Dogs always do," said Randal.

  "Always at the first meeting?" asked Amaryllis.

  "Nearly always. But that doesn't prove that I don't travel without aticket when I get the chance," replied Dick.

  "What _do_ you mean?" asked the girl.

  "Oh, the dog-and-baby theory's not dead yet. But I assure you, MissCaldegard, that the hardest case I ever met couldn't walk through a townwithout collecting every dog in the place. That's why he never succeededin his first profession."

  "What was he?" asked the girl.

  "Burglar," said Dick.

  "That's all very well," said his brother. "I know nothing about babies,but I've noticed that the man whom all dogs dislike is no good at all."

  "That's quite true," said Caldegard. "Remember Melchard, Amy?"

  Dick Bellamy caught the quiver of disgust which passed over the girl'sface before she answered.

  "Horrible person!" she said. "Trixy bit him, the dachshund next dooralways ran away from him, and Gorgon had to be chained up."

  "Who is this Melchard, Caldegard?" asked Randal.

  "He came to me about eighteen months ago, and stayed about nine; a verycapable practical chemist; had worked for some time in the factory of aDutch rubber company. Sumatra, I think, or the Malay Peninsula. Triedunqualified dentistry after he came home, went broke and got anintroduction to me. That's what he told me. An accurate and painstakingworker, and never asked questions."

  Dick began to be interested.

  "But I really can't see anything horrible in all that," said Randal.

  "At first it was what he was, not what he did," said Caldegard. "Tall,slender, effeminate, over-dressed, native coarseness which would not behidden by spasmodic attempts at fine manners, and a foul habit ofscenting his handkerchiefs and even his clothes with some weird stuff hemade himself; left a trail behind him wherever he went. It smeltsomething like a mixture of orris-root and attar of roses."

  Amaryllis wiped her lips, and Dick Bellamy thought her cheeks nearly aswhite as the little handkerchief.

  "What did the fellow do?" asked Randal.

  "For one thing, I discovered that he carried a hypodermic syringe; so Iwatched him--morphia--not a bad case, but getting worse. And then," saidCaldegard, looking towards his daughter, "he had the presumption----"

  "Oh, father, please!" cried Amaryllis.

  "I'm sorry, my dear," said her father. "I was only----"

  He was interrupted by a crash, a fumbling and a burst of flame. One ofthe four-branched candlesticks had been upset, and its rose-colouredshades were on fire. Very coolly the two Bellamys' pinched out theflames and replaced the candles.

  "Hope that didn't startle you, Miss Caldegard," said Randal.

  "Not a bit," said Amaryllis, smiling.

  "What a clumsy devil you are, Dick," he continued.

  "I was trying to get the sugar," said Dick.

  Randal tasted his coffee. "Cook's got one fault, Dick," he said. "Shecan't make coffee; and we've been spoiled."

  "Yes, indeed," said Caldegard. "I've never in my life drunk black coffeeto beat what your yellow-haired Dutch girl used to make."

  Randal turned to his brother. "Parlour-maid, Dick. Best servant I everhad. Didn't mind the country, and after she'd been here a fortnightdisclosed a heaven-sent gift for making coffee. Took some diplomacy, Ican tell you, to get cook to cede her rights."

  "Why haven't you got her now?" asked Dick.

  "Mother started dying in Holland," replied his brother, "and we miss ourcoffee."

  "I'll do it to-morrow night," said Dick.

  "What'll Rogers say?" said Randal.

  "Rogers? You don't tell me you've got Rogers still?"

  "Of course I have."

  "Not _my_ Mrs. Rogers!" exclaimed Dick. "Why, she'd let me skate allover her kitchen, if I wanted to."

  * * * * *

  Randal Bellamy, although he had a motor-car and used the telephone,lagged lovingly behind the times in less important matters. He was proudof his brass candlesticks, and hated electric light.

  While Amaryllis was saying good-night to her host, Dick Bellamy lightedher candle and waited for her at the foot of the stairs. When shereached him, she did not at once take it, so that they mounted severalsteps together; then she paused.

  "Good night, Mr. Bellamy. I hope you didn't hurt your fingers, puttingthe fire out. Are you a very awkward person?" she asked, looking up athim whimsically.

  "Shocking," said Dick. "I'm always doing things like that."

  "I believe you are," she replied softly. "Thank you so much."

  When he went to his room that night, Dick Bellamy was followed by avivid ghost with reddish-gold hair, golden-brown, expressive eyes,adorable mouth, and skin of perfect texture, over neck and shoulders ofa creamy whiteness which melted into the warmer colour of the face bygradation so fine that none could say where that flush as of a summersunset first
touched the snow.

  As he got into bed, he told himself that he did not object to beinghaunted up to midnight, nor even over the edge of sleep, by a spook soattractive. But if it should come to waking too early to a spectreimplacable--well, that had happened to him once only, long ago, and hedidn't want it to happen again.

  But the car would be all right to-morrow--there was always the car.