“Guv’nor,” he announced, “I’ve got to give you a hiding, but I’d never have taken the job on if I’d known you were a bantam weight. Better come on and get it over. I shan’t do more than knock you about a bit.”
“I don’t think you’ll even do that,” Jacob replied, without moving.
The man solemnly took off his coat, unfastened his collar and tie and turned up his shirt sleeves as though he meant business.
“Come on, guv’nor,” he invited, making a feint in Jacob’s direction. “I won’t hurt you more than I can help.”
Jacob withdrew his right hand from behind his back, and the little revolver which he was holding flashed in a glint of sunshine.
“I’ll give you till I count ten to get outside,” he said.
The man promptly abandoned his sparring position and turned towards the grating.
“’Ere,” he called out truculently, “see that, guv’nor?”
“Don’t be afraid,” Hartwell rejoined. “It isn’t loaded.”
The prize fighter took a step forward.
“... ten,” concluded Jacob, who had been counting all the time.
There was a sharp report and a yell of pain. The prize fighter, hopping on his right leg and holding his left ankle, seized a bar of the grating.
“If you don’t let me out, you b—y b—s, I’ll pound you both into a jelly!” he shouted. “I’ve a damned good mind to do it now! This’ll cost you five hundred quid, this will! If I can’t fight next Tuesday, it’ll cost you a thousand. Open the b—y door!”
They let him out, and Jacob, through the aperture, watched the three men make slow progress to the boat, one on each side supporting the Glasgow Daisy, whose language the whole of the way was vociferous and obscene. Afterwards Jacob once more found time hanging heavily upon his hands. He sharpened his penknife and commenced to carve his initials on the wall. There were no signs of Lady Mary or any other visitors until after dinner. Then the Marquis came slowly down from the castle, paused to light a cigarette when he reached the boat, and paddled himself over, looking around all the time with the air of one enjoying the scenery and the beautiful evening. Finally he climbed the stone stairs and presented himself at the other side of the grating.
“Mr. Pratt,” he said, “I am sorry that you did not appreciate our friends’ little effort to provide you with some amusement in the way of your favourite sport.”
“Thank you,” Jacob replied, “I don’t fight professional heavyweights.”
“I am afraid,” the Marquis observed with a sigh, “that this particular heavyweight will not be in fighting trim again for some months. A heavy responsibility for you, Mr. Pratt.”
Jacob smiled.
“I didn’t engage him,” he said.
“In a sense, perhaps, you did not,” the Marquis admitted, “but yours appears to be the hand which maimed him. The Glasgow Daisy, as I believe he is called in pugilistic circles, appears to be a person of considerable determination, not to say obstinacy. He declines to leave the Castle until he has received at least five hundred pounds on account of his injury. I left him arguing the matter with Mr. Montague. The interview promised to be a stormy one.”
Jacob laughed softly.
“I hope he gives them both a hiding,” he remarked.
The Marquis coughed, and, coming a little nearer to the grating, scrutinised Jacob with some surprise.
“You seem to be keeping very fit,” he observed.
“Doing me a lot of good, this change of diet,” Jacob assured him. “We all eat too much.”
“Nevertheless,” the Marquis proceeded, “we feel that it is time our little enterprise was ended. I have a fancy to have you for a neighbour, Mr. Pratt.”
“Very charming of you,” Jacob replied. “So far as I have seen anything of the country around, I like it.”
“That,” the Marquis rejoined, “simplifies matters. The Lasswade Moor Estate, adjoining mine, is yours for fifty thousand pounds. I have the agreement in my pocket. To-morrow the price will be fifty-five thousand, and the next day sixty thousand.”
“When can I inspect the property?” Jacob asked.
The Marquis coughed.
“I fear,” he replied, “that there will be no opportunity for anything of that sort. You must take my word for it that the land which, although fortunately unentailed, has been in the possession of my family for centuries, is in every respect desirable.”
“Moorland and boulder-strewn heath, I suppose?” Jacob queried.
“It possesses the characteristics of common land,” the other admitted. “It would make an excellent golf links.”
“Nothing doing,” Jacob decided. “When I buy an estate, I shall want a house with it.”
“A mansion suitable to your requirements could easily be built.”
Jacob shook his head.
“The idea of building a modern house in such a spot,” he said, “distresses me.”
“I understand, then, that you decline to purchase my property?” the Marquis asked regretfully.
“In toto and absolutely,” was the firm reply. “In other words, I am not having any.”
“In that case,” the visitor announced, after a brief pause, “it is my somewhat painful duty to tell you that we have decided to stop your daily supply of bread and water. You thrive too well on it.”
“Just as you like,” was the careless rejoinder. “I can do with or without food.”
The Marquis contemplated his guest for several moments in silence.
“You will permit me to say, Mr. Pratt, that your courage moves me to the profoundest admiration,” he declared at last. “I trust that after this little business negotiation is concluded, I shall have the privilege of your friendship for many years to come.”
“You’re rather boring me,” Jacob told him mildly. “I want to get on with my initials. I’m doing them in Old English.”
“I should be sorry to interfere with so courteous a duty,” the Marquis replied—and departed.
CHAPTER XXII
From that time onward, notwithstanding Jacob’s unbroken composure, time began to hang heavily. Towards evening, he pulled up one of his strings and found sandwiches and whisky enough to keep him going. He received no more visitors, friendly or otherwise, and he listened in vain until nightfall for the sound of Lady Mary’s boat. In the morning, however, he was awakened early by the sound of her whistle below. The room was half full of grey mist. Leaning out of the aperture, he could scarcely distinguish her form as she stood up in the boat, and in the distance he could hear foghorns from passing steamers blowing.
“How are you?” she asked anxiously.
“Right as a trivet,” he assured her. “Wish I had a mirror, though, to see how I look in a beard.”
She scrutinised his appearance and laughed softly, balancing herself easily against the oar which she had stretched out to the side of the tower. The moisture of the sea was upon her face and hair. A very becoming peignoir imperfectly concealed her bathing dress.
“I never realised before what a spick-and-span person you were,” she observed. “You are beginning to look a little dishevelled, aren’t you? Would you really like me to bring you a mirror and some shaving things?”
“Are you beginning to make fun of me?” he asked, leaning a little farther out.
She shook her head, and he realised suddenly that there was a note of tragedy underneath her assumed cheerfulness. He went on talking desperately, trying not to notice the quiver of her lips.
“Because if you are I shall slip down and do my famous dive act. I don’t believe in your sunken rocks.”
“I forbid you to try,” she said firmly.
“I am in your hands,” he acquiesced.
“I couldn’t come last night,” she explained. “That beast of a Montague watched me all the evening.—Now let me get your breakfast up, in case we are interrupted.”
There followed five minutes of the new sport, after which Jacob found himself with a thermos flask filled with coffee, a packet of hard-boiled eggs, and more sandwiches.
“I should think that ought to see you through,” she said. “Things will probably happen to-day.”
“What sort of things?” he demanded eagerly.
She shook her head.
“I shan’t tell you anything! Only I’m doing my best.”
He leaned a little farther out of the aperture.
“You’re an amazing person,” he declared. “I can’t tell you, Lady Mary, how grateful I feel to you. You’ve enabled me to keep my end up. I should have hated being robbed by those blackguards—Hartwell and Montague, I mean,” he concluded hastily.
She sighed.
“Really, I have been rather unselfish,” she ruminated. “I suppose we should all have been quite flush for a month or two if this little adventure had come off.”
“Adventure?” Jacob repeated dubiously.
“That’s just how it seems to father,” she continued. “I suppose you wonder I’m not more embarrassed when I speak about him. I’m not a bit. As he remarked himself, he’s only trying to modernise the predatory instincts of a governing clan.”
“That’s how he looks at it, is it?” Jacob murmured.
She nodded.
“It’s in the atmosphere up here.”
“How’s the Glasgow Daisy?” he enquired, after a moment’s awkward pause.
“Broken ankle,” she told him. “They’re in a terrible state. He’ll have to cancel all his fights, and I heard Mr. Montague say last night that it will cost them the best part of a thousand pounds to settle with him.... Listen!”
A moment’s silence, then Lady Mary settled down to her oars.
“Voices!” she exclaimed. “I’m off.”
Jacob looked through the aperture on the landward side and saw pleasant things. First of all, through the mist, loomed up the figure of Montague, approaching at the double. Behind came Felixstowe, rapidly gaining upon him.
“Hi, you,” the latter cried, as Montague stooped to unfasten the boat, “let that rope alone!”
Montague turned around and hesitated. His pursuer stood by his side.
“I’ll relieve you, my pretty fellow,” he said. “Hand over the key of the tower. Come along, now. Three seconds.”
Montague contemplated Felixstowe’s somewhat weedy but not unathletic form, exceeded the time and fell with his head in the water. His assailant took the key from his pocket as he staggered to his feet, unfastened the rope and paddled across the channel. A moment later there were hasty steps upon the stone stairs and the door with its iron grating was unlocked. Jacob advanced to meet his friend.
“Jacob, old thing!”
“Felix! By Jove, I’m glad to see you!”
The two men shook hands. There was a moment’s silence, a slightly dubious atmosphere. Welcome though it was, Felixstowe’s intervention had its embarrassing side.
“You’re looking pretty fit, old chap, except that you need a barber,” the latter remarked.
“Thanks to Lady Mary,” Jacob told his deliverer. “She’s been feeding me with a fishing rod from the seaward side.”
“Good little sport! It was she who sent me the telegram—put me up to the game, in fact. I warned you, Jacob.”
“I didn’t exactly expect to meet Mr. Montague up here!” was the somewhat grim reply.
“Most likely spot in the United Kingdom!—Shall we beat it? Got a car waiting, and we can catch the morning train from the junction if we hurry.”
They descended the steps in silence, and Jacob drew a little breath of relief as they entered the boat. Montague was sitting upon the sands with both hands pressed over his eye, as they landed. He shrank back when he saw Jacob.
“What’s become of the other one?” Jacob enquired.
“Your man Dauncey came up with me,” Lord Felixstowe explained. “I rang him up directly I got Mary’s telegram. We met Hartwell just starting to follow Montague. I hung round long enough to see that he was getting what he deserved, and then I came on.”
They met a triumphant Dauncey, a moment or two later.
“Given him his gruel?” Lord Felixstowe asked pleasantly.
“He’s lying in the blackberry bushes,” was the grim reply.
They approached the front door, where the motor-car was standing. The Marquis strolled out to meet them, with a pleasant smile. He was entirely free from embarrassment and he addressed Jacob courteously.
“Mr. Pratt,” he said, “the fortune of war has changed. Breakfast is served in the dining-room. Might I suggest a bath and a shave?”
Jacob lost his head.
“You damned rascal!” he exclaimed.
The Marquis’s eyebrows were slightly elevated. Otherwise he was unmoved.
“My dear sir,” he rejoined, with a gently argumentative air, “of course I am a rascal. Every one of my family, from the days of the Highland robber who founded it, has been a rascal. So are you a rascal, when the opportunity presents itself. We all fight for our own hand in varying ways. A touch of my ancestry has evolved this little scheme, whose lamentable failure I deplore. A touch of your ancestry, my dear Mr. Pratt, would without a doubt induce you to dispose of some of those wonderful oil shares of yours in a hurry to a poorer man, if you thought their value was going to decline. Just now I am faced with failure. I do not lose my temper. I offer you freshly broiled trout, a delicious salmon, some eggs and bacon, and hot coffee.”
Jacob looked at Lord Felixstowe, and Lord Felixstowe looked at him. Up from the landing stage came Lady Mary, singing gaily.
“What about it, old dear?” Felixstowe asked. “We can catch the eleven-twenty.”
“Call it tribute,” the Marquis suggested ingratiatingly, “the tribute of the beaten foe. My servant shall attend you at the bathroom, Mr. Pratt. Do not keep us waiting longer than you can help. And remember, between ourselves—between gentlemen—not a word about the matter to the Marchioness or Lady Mary.”
Breakfast at the Castle was a sufficiently cheerful meal, chiefly owing to the efforts of Jacob and the Marquis. Mr. Dane Montague came limping past the windows but made no attempt to join the party. Hartwell was reported locked in his room, and the Marchioness, who came a little late, seemed utterly unaware that anything unusual had happened.
“So glad to see you back again, Mr. Pratt,” she murmured. “I trust that you enjoyed your visit to your friends.”
“You are very kind,” Jacob replied, a little staggered.
“Mr. Pratt brings us bad news,” the Marquis intervened suavely. “He is compelled to return to London this morning.”
“Mary will be very disappointed,” the Marchioness observed. “She has been so looking forward to some more tennis.”
“If Mr. Pratt felt able to reconsider his decision,” her husband began—
“Impossible!” Jacob interrupted curtly. “There are considerations,” he added, “which I cannot altogether ignore.”
“Bit of an exodus, I should imagine,” Felixstowe remarked. “Our friend Mr. Hartwell was just ringing for a Bradshaw as I came down.”
“It is so difficult to amuse guests before the shooting begins,” the Marchioness sighed.
Dauncey ate his breakfast in almost stupefied silence. He found himself alone with Jacob for a moment in the hall afterwards.
“Have we all gone mad, Jacob?” he asked. “Or have you developed an hysterical sense of humour? Why haven’t we locked the old man up and sent for the police?”
“It’s the young ’un,” Jacob explained. “I like ’em both. Besides, what’s the use of making a fuss? You’ve punished Hartwell, Felixstowe has settled with Dane Montague, and they’ve the Glasgow Daisy to deal with between them.”
“It’s the old man I can’t understand,” Dauncey confessed. “He sits there like a lay figure of courtesy and kindliness. To listen to him, one would believe that he would rather die than have a guest ill-used.”
Their host himself, accompanied by his son, came suddenly out of the breakfast room. For the first time, the former appeared discomposed. He came at once to Jacob and addressed him without preamble.
“Mr. Pratt,” he said, “I have only this moment properly understood the very disgraceful and unworthy attempt on the part of my two other guests to carry out a scheme of private vengeance upon you whilst subject to the incarceration necessitated by my plans.”
“You are referring,” Jacob observed coldly, “to the affair of the Glasgow Daisy?”
“I beg, sir,” the Marquis continued, “that you will acquit me of all complicity in that most unwarrantable and improper attempt to inflict punishment upon you. For your incarceration I accept the responsibility. That you were kept short of food was a natural adjunct to our enterprise. The other branch of the affair, however, humiliates me. I regret it extremely. I tender to you, Mr. Pratt, my apologies.”
Jacob bowed.
“I am very glad to hear,” he said, “that you were not a party to the most brutal portion of the plot. At the same time, to be quite frank with you, Marquis, I should have expected from you some expression of regret for your rather serious breach of hospitality. It is surely not a slight thing to starve and imprison an invited guest with the view of extorting money from him.”
The Marquis smiled tolerantly.
“The matter presents itself to you, naturally, Mr. Pratt, in a distorted light,” he observed. “I am quite sure that if I had been brought up in your environment, your point of view would be mine. You must remember, however, that we are now upon the soil where my forefathers for many generations kept together a great army of dependents by exacting tribute from those more richly endowed with this world’s goods. If you will look closely around you, Mr. Pratt, you will see that even the Castle, which has been the property of my family for seven hundred years, is sadly in need of repair. We lack too many modern conveniences. My garden wall needs fresh buttresses, an engine house is necessary to pump water from the well—in short, the estate needs money. Not having it, I can only adopt the general principle which is common to all mankind. I endeavour to procure it from others.”
“The prisons of England,” Dauncey remarked, “are filled with temporary visitors who have imbibed the same ideas.”
The Marquis gazed at Dauncey as though confronted by some new sort of natural curiosity to whose appearance in the world he was inclined to extend a mild but unenthusiastic welcome.
“You have more apprehension than your friend, I am sure, Mr. Pratt,” he said. “If you will excuse me, I will see that the arrangements for your departure are in progress.”...
It seemed to Jacob that Lady Mary was keeping purposely out of his way. At a few minutes before the time for their departure, she appeared, however, and drew him to one side down one of the garden walks.
“Mr. Pratt,” she said, “I don’t know what you’re thinking of all of us.”
“I know what I’m thinking about one of you, at any rate,” he declared gratefully. “I should have been most unhappy if I had been compelled to leave without thanking you from the bottom of my heart for your kindness.”
“I am more thankful than I can tell you that I was able to do what I did,” she assured him earnestly, “and I want you, if you can, to set that as much as possible against my father’s shocking breach of the laws of hospitality. Only he can’t help it, poor man. He has a whimsical attitude towards life which seems unchangeable.”
“I shall forget it,” Jacob promised. “Thanks to you, nothing serious occurred.”
“There is one thing more,” she went on. “Believe me, I am not approaching this in the same spirit as my father, but if by any chance you found yourself able to do anything for Jack—in the shape of employment, I mean—it would be so good for him and such a relief to me.”
“I shall be going to America very shortly,” Jacob reflected, “in which case I shall need some one to help me with my correspondence. Dauncey will have to stay at home to look after my interests here.”
“That would be wonderful,” she declared enthusiastically. “Jack really isn’t a fool—in fact he is quite clever in some things—but he does need steadying down, and I’m so afraid that if nothing happens he will drift into taking life as casually as—as—”
“I understand,” Jacob interrupted. “Leave it to me, Lady Mary. Something shall be done, I promise you.”
The motor horn was sounding and they turned back. Jacob, notwithstanding the disgraceful treatment which he had received, was conscious of a curious unwillingness to take his place in the car and leave Kelsoton Castle behind him.
“You must let me know,” his companion begged softly, “how things go on with you and Miss Bultiwell.”
“There will never be anything to tell you,” he assured her. “I am becoming quite confident about that.”
She smiled at him enigmatically. Her footsteps, too, were lagging.
“Our love affairs don’t seem to be prospering, do they?” she sighed.
Jacob leaned a little towards her.
“I should be almost content,”—
Dauncey interrupted them a little ruthlessly. He held his watch in his hand.
“This is the only train to-day, Jacob,” he broke in, “and Lord Felixstowe says that we shall barely catch it.”
Jacob climbed into the car. The Marquis bade them all a punctilious and courteous farewell. Lady Mary waved her hand and swung away down the little path that led to the sea. When Jacob looked back, there was no one standing upon the Castle steps but the Marquis, bland, courteous, a very striking and distinguished figure. So ended Jacob’s visit, momentous in more ways than one.
CHAPTER XXIII
With a sigh of relief, Jacob handed his driver to the caddy and watched the career of a truly hit ball down the smooth fairway. There was a little murmur of applause from a hundred or so of onlookers. By that stroke, Jacob had opened the Cropstone Wood Golf Links.
“Pretty certain where your name will come on the handicap list, Mr. Pratt,” his opponent observed, after his own somewhat inferior effort.
“If I can qualify for scratch,” Jacob replied, as they marched off together, first of twenty-three couples of prize-competing Cropstone Woodites, “one of the ambitions of my life will be gratified.”
What really were his ambitions, Jacob wondered, in the pretty little luncheon room at the club an hour or so later, as he resumed his seat amidst a storm of applause, having renounced to the next successful competitor the cup which he had himself presented and won. Upon the handicap sheet the magic letter “Scr.” had already been emblazoned opposite to his name, as the result of a very sound seventy-nine on an eighty bogey course. There was scarcely one of his investments which was not prospering. His health was perfect. There were many people leaning upon him, and not in vain, for happiness. He had been obliged to put a limit on the premium which might be paid for houses on the Cropstone Wood Estate, and even then, notwithstanding his unwonted liberality in the matter of a tennis club, golf course and swimming bath, the investment introduced to him in so unpropitious a manner was a thoroughly remunerative one. He had won four first prizes at the Temple Flower Show. His bungalow at Marlingden was the admiration of all the neighbourhood, his flat at the Milan Court the last word in luxury and elegance. And yet there was a void.
He looked out of the windows of the clubhouse at the cottage where Sybil Bultiwell and her mother had first taken up their abode, and his thoughts wandered away from the uproarious little scene over which he was presiding. Called to himself by the necessity of acknowledging a universal desire to drink his health, he looked around the table and realised what it was that he lacked. There were a dozen women present, comely enough, but only in one or two cases more than ordinarily good-looking; they were there because they were the helpmates of the men who brought them, sharers in their daily struggle, impressed with the life duty of sympathy, houseproud a little, perhaps, and with some of the venial faults of a small community, but—their husbands’ companions, the “alter ego” of the man whose nature demands the leaven of sentiment as the flowers need their morning bath of dew. And Jacob still lived and was alone. On his right sat the proud and buxom mother of the captain of the club, a young bank clerk; on his left, the wife of the secretary, a lady who persisted in remaining good-looking although she had eight children and but a single nursemaid.
“And only one word more,” the secretary concluded, crumpling up the typewritten slips in his hand, wiping the perspiration from his forehead, and trying to convey the impression that the whole of what had gone before had come from his lips as spontaneously as these last few words. “I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, to drink the health of our president and generous benefactor, Mr. Jacob Pratt, and when we all meet again next year, as a married man I have only one wish to add to those which we have already expressed, and that is that there may be a Mrs. Jacob Pratt to share in his pleasures, his triumphs, and, if by any evil chance he should ever have any, his sorrows.”
There were rounds of applause. Every one stood up and held out their glasses towards him, and Jacob was forced back again into this very real world of men and women made comfortable in their daily lives by his efforts. He said his few words of thanks simply but gracefully and, in accordance with the programme of the day, they trooped out afterwards to the lawn in front of the freshly plastered clubhouse and drank their coffee at small round tables, looking down the course, discussing the various holes, and making matches for the next Saturday afternoon and Sunday. A girl at the adjoining table leaned over and asked him a question.
“Do you know what has become of the Bultiwells, Mr. Pratt?” she enquired.
“Mrs. Bultiwell, I believe, went to stay with some relatives in Devonshire,” he replied. “The last I heard of Miss Bultiwell was that she had taken a position as governess somewhere near Belgrave Square.”
“A governess!” his questioner repeated. “Fancy her not being married! Don’t you think she’s awfully pretty, Mr. Pratt?”
“I do,” Jacob agreed.
“And so good at tennis, too,” the girl continued. “I wish she’d come back.”
“Quite a tragical story, her father’s death,” a man at the same table observed. “I don’t know whether you ever heard about it, Mr. Pratt. He was a leather merchant in a very large way in the city, but got into difficulties somehow. His one hope was that a friend who had a lot of money would come into partnership with him. It seems that the friend not only refused to do so when the moment came, but was rather rough on poor old Bultiwell about the way he had been conducting his business—so much so that he blew out his brains in the office, an hour or so after their interview.”
“How brutal of the friend!” the girl observed. “He might have let him down gently. You wouldn’t do a thing like that, would you, Mr. Pratt?”
Jacob opened his lips to tell the truth, but closed them again. After all, why should he say a single word to mar the pervading impression of good-heartedness and happiness? The man was so anxious to improve his acquaintance with Jacob; the girl, who had moved her chair as though unconsciously a little closer to his, even more so. He met the smiling question in her eyes a little gravely but with no lack of friendliness.
“One never knows quite what one would do under certain circumstances,” he said. “If Mr. Bultiwell, for instance, had tried to deceive his friend and had been found out, I imagine it is only fair that he should have heard the truth.”
“He must have been told it in a cruel way, though, or he would never have committed suicide,” the girl persisted. “I am quite sure that you couldn’t do anything in a cruel way, Mr. Pratt.”
“I am going to be cruel to myself, at any rate,” Jacob replied, “and go over and start those foursomes.”
Jacob rose to his feet. The girl’s look of disappointment was so ingenuous that he turned back to her.
“Won’t you come with me, Miss Haslem?” he invited.
She sprang up and walked gladly by his side, chattering away as they stood on a slight eminence overlooking the first tee, using all the simple and justifiable weapons in her little armoury of charms to win a smile and a little notice, perhaps even a later thought from the great man of the day whose wealth alone made him seem almost like a hero of romance. She was a pleasant-faced girl, with clear brown eyes and masses of hair brushed back from her forehead and left unhandicapped by any headgear to dazzle the eye of the beholder. Her blouse was cut a little low, but the writer of the young ladies’ journal, who had sent her the pattern, had assured her that it was no lower than fashion permitted. Her white skirt was a little short, and her stockings were very nearly silk. She was twenty-two years old, fairly modest, moderately truthful, respectably brought up, but she was the eldest of four, and she would have fallen at Jacob’s feet and kissed the ground beneath them for a sign of his favour. Jacob, with the echoes of that tragic story still in his ears, wondered, as he stood with his hands behind his back, whether in those few minutes, when he had taken his meed of revenge, he had indeed raised up a ghost which was to follow him through life. More than anything in the world, what he wanted besides the good-fellowship of other men was the love and companionship of a wife. Was his to be the dream of Tantalus? Here, young womanhood of his own class, eager, sufficiently comely, stood striving to weave the spell of her sex upon him, with a lack of success which was almost pitiable. It was the selective instinct with which he was cursed. Something had even gone from the sad pleasure with which he used to be able to conjure up pictures of Sybil. It was almost as though the thought of her had ceased to attract him, and with the passing of the spell which she had laid upon him had come a passion as strong as ever for her sex, coupled with hopeless and glacial indifference to its human interpretesses. The girl began to feel the strain of a monosyllabic listener, but she had the courage of a heroine. She clutched her companion’s arm as her father topped his drive from the first tee. As though by accident, her fingers remained on Jacob’s coat sleeve.
“Poor dad!” she sighed. “Did you see him miss his drive? He’ll be so disappointed. He used to play quite well, but that wretched City—he doesn’t seem to be able to shake it off, nowadays. I wonder why it’s so difficult, Mr. Pratt,” she added, raising her eyes artlessly to his, “for some people to make money?”
“We haven’t all the same luck,” Jacob observed.
“Dad rushes home on Saturdays so tired,” she went on, “and then wonders why he plays golf so badly, wonders why mother isn’t always cheerful, and why we girls can’t dress on twopence a week. Why, stockings alone,”—she lifted her foot from the ground, gazed pensively at it for a moment and then suddenly returned it. Her ankle was certainly shapely, and the brevity of her skirts and a slight breeze permitted a just appreciation of a good many inches of mysterious white hose. “But of course you don’t know anything about the price of women’s clothes,” she broke in with a laugh. “I hope you don’t mind my hair looking a perfect mop. I never can keep it tidy out of doors, and I hate a hat.”
Jacob patiently did his best.
“I like to see girls without their hats when they have hair as pretty as yours,” he assured her, “and some day or other you must play me a round of golf for a dozen pairs of stockings.”
“Wouldn’t I just love to!” she exclaimed with joy. “Now or any other old time! I warn you that I should cheat, though. The vision of a dozen pairs of stockings melting into thin air because of your wonderful play would be too harrowing.—What on earth is that?”
Jacob, too, was listening with an air of suddenly awakened interest. Up the hill came a black speck, emitting from behind a cloud of smoke and punctuating its progress with the customary series of explosions.
“I do wish I had a two-seater,” the girl sighed.
“I rather believe it’s some one for me,” Jacob said, stepping eagerly forward.
The girl remained by his side. Felix brought the car to the side of the road which wound its way across the common, shook the dust from his clothes and waved his hand joyously to Jacob.
“Forty-seven minutes, my revered chief!” he exclaimed, as he approached, waving a missive in his hand. “See what it is to have some one amongst your bodyguard who can perform miracles!”
“What have you brought?” Jacob asked.
“A cable! Dauncey thought I had better bring it down.”
Jacob read it, and read it over again. It was a dispatch from New York, handed in that morning:
Regret to say your brother seriously ill. Should be deeply grateful if you would expedite your proposed visit. Am urgently in need of advice and help. Please come Saturday’s steamer if possible.
Sydney Morse, Secretary.
Jacob folded up the dispatch and placed it in his breast pocket. Then he suddenly remembered the girl.
“Felix,” he said, “let me present you to Miss Haslem. Lord Felixstowe—Miss Haslem.”
The two young people exchanged the customary greetings. The girl began to apologise for her hair. Her cup of happiness was very nearly filled. And then Jacob dashed it to the ground.
“I want you to take me back to town as soon as you’ve had a drink,” he intervened, addressing the young man. “We sail for America to-morrow.”
CHAPTER XXIV
Felixstowe carefully concluded the enfolding of Jacob’s outstretched form in an enormous rug, placed a tumbler of soda water and some dry biscuits within easy reach of him, and stepped back to inspect his handiwork.
“A bit drawn about the gills, old top,” he remarked sympathetically. “How are you feeling now?”
“Better,” Jacob murmured weakly. “And kindly remember that I am your employer, and don’t call me ‘old top.’”
“Sorry,” was the cheerful reply. “One has to drop into this sort of thing by degrees. I’ve a kind of naturally affectionate disposition, you know, when I’m with a pal.”
“Get your typewriter and practise,” Jacob directed. “I’ll try and give you a letter.”
“So to the daily toil,” the young man chanted, as he turned away. “I’ve got the little beauty in the saloon.”
Jacob groaned and closed his eyes, for the motion of the steamer, two days out of Liverpool for New York, still awoke revolutionary symptoms in his interior. Presently Felixstowe returned, carrying a small typewriter. He arranged himself in the adjoining chair, drew up his knees, took out the typewriter from its case, and, with his pipe in the corner of his mouth, sat waiting.
“Ready,” he announced.
“Oh, damn!” Jacob groaned. “Write a letter to yourself.”
“I’ll write a line to you,” the young man suggested soothingly.
He attacked his task very much as a child trying to spell out “The Bluebells of Scotland” on a piano with one finger. In a few minutes, with an air of pride, he drew out the sheet and passed it to his companion. Jacob stretched out a feeble hand and read listlessly.
Dear Mr. Pratt,
I believe that a couple of dry Martini cocktails would do us both good.
Faithfully yours,
Felixstowe.
Sec. (Very sec!)
A weak smile parted Jacob’s lips and he grunted assent. Felixstowe exchanged cabalistic signs with the deck steward, and in due course the latter appeared with a couple of glasses filled with frosted amber liquid. Jacob hesitated for a moment doubtfully.
“Try mental suggestion,” the young man advised, looking lovingly at his glass. “Put it where the cat can’t get it and say to yourself, ‘This is going to do me good.’ Cheerio!”
Two empty glasses were replaced upon the tray. Jacob raised himself a little in his chair.
“I believe I feel better already,” he announced.
“Won’t know yourself in an hour’s time,” his companion assured him. “I shall give you a pint of champagne and a sandwich at twelve o’clock, and you’ll be taking me on at shuffleboard after lunch. Hullo, another wireless!”
“Read it for me,” Jacob directed.
The young man tore open the envelope and read out the message:
Brother’s condition unchanged. Your presence urgently needed. Will meet New York. Morse, Secretary.
“Poor old Sam!” Jacob murmured.
“He’ll pull through, if he’s got your constitution,” Felixstowe observed cheerfully. “I’ve never seen you under the weather yet.”
“That’s because I take care of myself,” Jacob said a little severely.
“Great Cæsar’s ghost! Hi!”
The young secretary was sitting bolt upright in his chair. A man and a woman, passing along the deck, turned in surprise at the challenge. The surprise speedily became amazement, and the amazement universal.
“Sybil Bultiwell!” Jacob gasped, forgetting all about his seasickness.
“Maurice Penhaven!” Felixstowe exclaimed. “What in the name of thunder are you two doing here together?”
Sybil, being a woman, was the first to recover herself. She laughed softly.
“We do seem to come across one another in strange places and under strange conditions, don’t we?” she said to Jacob. “This, perhaps, is the strangest of all. I am on my honeymoon.”
“Married?” Jacob gasped, throwing off his rugs and sitting upright. “But I was going to—you were—oh, damn!”
She made a little grimace and drew him to one side.
“I can guess what is in your mind, Mr. Pratt,” she said, “and I want to have a perfectly clear understanding with you. Tell me now, did I ever give you the slightest encouragement? Did I ever give you the faintest reason to hope that I should ever, under any circumstances, be willing to marry you?”
“I can’t say that you did,” Jacob admitted sadly, gripping at the rail against which they were standing. “I never left off hoping, though.”
“Now that I have become unexpectedly a very happy woman,” Sybil went on, with a new softness in her tone, “I will confess that I was perhaps unreasonable so far as regards your treatment of my father.”
“Thank God for that, anyhow!” Jacob muttered.
“There were times,” Sybil went on reflectively, “when I very nearly admired you.”
“For example?”
“When you opened the door of the house in Russell Square for me and calmly took back your notes which I had been to fetch. That was one time, at any rate. But I never had the slightest feeling of affection for you, or the slightest intention of marrying you, however long you waited. Now I am going to tell you something else, if I may.”
“Go on, please,” Jacob begged, in a melancholy tone.
“I do not think that you have ever been really in love with me. You are rather a sentimental person, and you were in love with a girl in a white gown who walked with you in a rose garden one wonderful evening, and was very kind to you simply to atone for other people’s rudeness. It wasn’t you I was being kind to at all. It was simply a sensitive guest who had been a little hurt.”
“I see,” he sighed.
“I had no idea,” she went on reflectively, “that you were likely to misunderstand. It was one of my father’s weaknesses that he sometimes forgot himself and did not sufficiently consider people’s feelings. He was rude to you that night, and I was ashamed and did my best to atone. I had no idea that you were going to take it all so seriously. But I want you, Mr. Pratt,” she went on earnestly, “to remember this. It was no real person with whom you walked in the garden that night. It was no real person the recollection of whom you have chosen to keep in your heart all this time, and with whom you have fancied yourself in love. It was just a creature of your own fancy. You are such a kind-hearted person really, and you ought to be happy. Can’t you untwine all those sentimental fancies of yours and find some really nice, human girl with whom to bedeck them? There are so many women in the world, Jacob Pratt, who would like to have you for a husband, apart from your money.”
“If it weren’t for the money—” Jacob began sadly.
She interrupted him with a little peal of laughter.
“Faithless!” she exclaimed. “I can see that you have some one in your mind already. Don’t think too much about your wealth. I am a very ordinary sort of girl, you know, and it didn’t make any difference to me. Maurice hasn’t as many hundreds a year as you have thousands, but I am quite content. Your money may make marriage more possible with a girl who has been extravagantly brought up, but that needn’t prevent her really caring for you. So please cheer up, Mr. Jacob Pratt, and let us all be friends.”
They turned back towards the others. The explanation between Lord Felixstowe and his sister’s quondam fiancé had been delayed by the intervention of the Captain, who had paused on his daily promenade to say a few words. Felixstowe was just then, however, undertaking his obvious duty.
“Seems to me, young fellow,” he said, addressing Penhaven, “that a few words of explanation are due between us two.”
“You needn’t come the heavy brother,” the latter replied. “Your sister and I broke our engagement mutually, some time ago. I can assure you, and she will tell you the same, that her feelings towards me have changed far more completely even than mine towards her.”
“Well, I’m jiggered!” Lord Felixstowe exclaimed.
“Where did you and Captain Penhaven meet?” Jacob asked miserably.
“I used to go in, as you know, and play Lady Mary’s accompaniments,” Sybil explained. “Captain Penhaven was often there and used to take me home sometimes. From my own observation,” she went on, “I can confirm what Maurice has just said about the relations between Lady Mary and himself. For some reason or other she became absolutely indifferent to him about that time.”
“So, according to you two, nobody’s got a grievance,” Felixstowe observed. “If my new employer’s satisfied—well, I suppose that’s an end of it.”
“Your what?” Sybil demanded.
The young man waved his hand genially towards Jacob.
“He’s taken me on as secretary,” he announced. “First job, trip out to America to visit sick brother and look after business complications. We’ve dealt with weighty affairs already this morning.”
“What’s become of your Mr. Dauncey, then?” Sybil enquired.
“I have made him secretary of the Cropstone Wood Estates Company,” Jacob told her. “He has my affairs to look after as well while I am away.”
A sound familiar to the nautical ears of Lord Felixstowe reached them from the bows of the ship.
“Sun’s over the yardarm,” he announced. “How are you feeling now, old—Mr. Pratt?”
“You order,” Jacob replied.
It was a moderately cheerful little party who drank the health of the bride and bridegroom. Afterwards, however, Jacob passed a day of curiously tangled sensations. The summons to New York had been too peremptory for him to delay even an hour, but he had sent a note to Miss Bultiwell at the address in Belgrave Square, asking for a few minutes’ interview before he left. Naturally he had received no answer. Now he was face to face with absolute and accomplished failure in one of the fixed purposes of his life. He was an obstinate person, used to success,—so used to it, in fact, that the present situation left him dazed. His first determination, when success had smiled upon him, had been to marry Sybil Bultiwell. He had never flinched from that purpose. He had even, in his heart, considered himself engaged. Any thoughts which might have come to him of any other woman he had pushed away as a species of infidelity. And now there wasn’t any Sybil Bultiwell. She was married and out of his reach. He felt that the proper thing for him to do was to go down to his cabin and nurse his broken heart; instead of which he drank champagne for dinner, found a few kindred spirits who liked a mild game of poker, and went to bed whistling at two o’clock in the morning. His young companion, who had won a fiver and was in a most beatific state, came and sat on his bunk whilst he undressed.
“Jacob, my well-beloved,” he said, “you are taking this little setback like a hero.”
“What setback?” Jacob asked.
“Little affair of Miss Bultiwell,” Felixstowe replied, gazing admiringly at Jacob’s well-suspended silk socks. “Mary told me all about it.”
Jacob sighed heavily.
“Nasty knock for me,” he admitted, with a curiously unconvincing note of gloom in his tone.
“And Mary, poor old girl, is in the same boat,” Felixstowe went on reflectively. “Still, she never cared much for Maurice ... led him an awful dance, the last few months. And you were head over heels in love with Miss Bultiwell, weren’t you?”
“I adored her,” Jacob declared, taking a long gulp of the whisky and soda which he had brought in for a nightcap. “Worshipped her,” he added, finishing it with much satisfaction.
Felixstowe sighed sympathetically.
“Rotten luck for you, having ’em on board, honeymooning,” he observed. “Never mind, keep a stiff upper lip, old thing. Let me know if I can butt in any time on the right side. You’ll perhaps stay in your stateroom to-morrow?”
“Not I!” was the hasty reply. “I shall face it out.”
“Hero!” his companion murmured. “Don’t you brood over this thing, Jacob. Close your eyes and try and count sheep, or something of that sort. Call me in if you get very melancholy during the night, and I’ll read to you.”
“You needn’t worry,” Jacob assured him. “I have an iron will. And don’t be so long in the bath to-morrow morning.”
“Tap three times on the door,” the young man enjoined, “and I will remember that it is my master’s voice.”
CHAPTER XXV
They steamed slowly past the Statue of Liberty, early in the afternoon a few days later. Jacob and his young companion were leaning over the rail, watching the great, tangled city slowly define itself through a shroud of mist.
“One good thing about this voyage,” the latter remarked sympathetically, “it’s taken your mind off yourself—made you forget your troubles, in a kind of way.”
“You mean about poor Sam?”
“I’m afraid I wasn’t thinking about your brother,” Felixstowe confessed. “I was thinking of the other little affair. Of course, it’s been rather a bad egg for you, so to speak, having her pop up every minute or two, but there’s something about life on one of these great liners—I don’t know what it is, but you seem to be able to shove all sorts of things out of your mind, eh?”
Jacob felt for a moment rather ashamed of himself. It was not like him to be inconstant in anything, and he would not for a moment admit that what he had regarded as the passion of his life had been merely a fantasy. At the same time, he could not ignore the fact that during the last few days he had been conscious of a sense of freedom which was altogether pleasant.
“I have conquered that,” he declared proudly. “For me it is finished. You must have observed my indifference at dinner last night. I find myself able to converse with her now without the slightest emotion.”
“Fine!” was the enthusiastic rejoinder. “You must have a will of iron. Those things do pull you about a bit, though. I remember an affair of my own with little Kitty Bond—second from the left in the front row of the Gaiety, you know. For three days she was simply dropping sugarplums down my throat, never took her eyes off me all through the show, welcome at any hour to the flat, though mother was in the country visiting the parson uncle—all the usual sort of slush, you know. And then one day some one told her about dad and figured out what my income was likely to be. Little Johnny in the rubber market it was. I shall never forget the night Kitty introduced me and then went off to supper with him in his coupé. Fairly gave me the pip.”
“I beg,” Jacob said with dignity, “that you will not compare your calf love for a picture-postcard young lady with what might easily have been a great passion.”
Felixstowe tapped a cigarette upon the rail and lit it.
“It took me more than three days to get over it, at any rate,” he remarked pointedly.
A grave-looking, clean-shaven young man, very neatly dressed and wearing thin, gold-rimmed spectacles, met them as they stepped off the steamer.
“Mr. Jacob Pratt, I am sure?” he said. “My name is Morse—Sydney H. Morse. I am your brother’s secretary.”
“How is Sam?” Jacob enquired eagerly.
“He is in precisely the same condition of coma,” the secretary replied. “The physician says that he may remain so for days.”
“Shall I be able to see him?”
“Doctor Bardolf will discuss that with you, Mr. Pratt. In the meantime, one of your brother’s servants is here to see after all the luggage and pass it through the Customs, if you will hand him the list. I have a car here for you and—and—”
“My secretary,” Jacob indicated. “Mr. Sydney Morse—Lord Felixstowe.”
The former, startled for a moment out of his gravity, solemnly shook hands.
“Glad to meet you, Lord Felixstowe,” he said impressively. “Welcome to New York.”
“I am very glad to be here,” Felixstowe observed, as he returned the other’s salute in friendly fashion. “Gay little hamlet, what?”
“It’s a city full of interest, sir,” the other affirmed.
“You’ll have to show me around. I bet you know the ropes. The pick of the world’s fluff on its home soil, eh?”
The New Yorker looked a little staggered and edged his way towards Jacob.
“Here is the car, Mr. Pratt,” he announced, opening the door of a very handsome limousine.
“Where are you taking us?” Jacob enquired.
“To your brother’s house in Riverside Drive.”
“Wouldn’t it be more convenient for us to go to an hotel?” Jacob suggested. “With sickness in the house, it seems to me that it would be better.”
“Your brother would never forgive me if I allowed such a thing,” Morse protested earnestly. “The house is very large, and there are half a dozen suites well out of hearing of Mr. Pratt’s rooms. Besides, you will be able to see him then at the earliest possible moment.”
“Just as you say,” Jacob assented.
Their first drive through New York—up Fifth Avenue and along Riverside Drive—was far too interesting for conversation to flourish. The brownstone house which finally turned out to be their destination, and which had once belonged to a famous multimillionaire, surpassed all their expectations. An English butler hurried forward at the sound of Morse’s latchkey. A fountain banked with flowers was playing in the middle of a circular hall. The light was toned and softened by exquisite stained-glass windows. Everywhere was an air of unbounded luxury. The adjoining suites into which Jacob and his companion were ushered surpassed anything they had seen in domestic architecture. They had scarcely had time to look around before a coloured servant in livery, with a white linen coat, presented Scotch whisky and soda, and a silver pail of ice, on a magnificent salver.
“I am going to like this country,” Lord Felixstowe declared with conviction. “Say when, Jacob.”
The secretary, who had left them for a few minutes, returned presently with a dignified personage whom he introduced as the senior of the physicians in attendance upon Mr. Samuel Pratt.
“Doctor Bardolf has attended your brother for many years,” he explained.
“I am very glad to meet you, sir,” the physician said, as he shook hands. “I am going to pull your brother through this trouble, all right, but you must be patient.”
“That’s good hearing,” Jacob declared heartily.
“He is now,” the physician continued, “in a state of coma, following upon brain fever. I’d like you not to be in any hurry to visit him for a day or two. I want him to come to himself quite naturally and not to be brought round by the shock of seeing any one unexpectedly.”
“I am entirely in your hands,” Jacob replied. “Now that I am on the spot, I feel much more comfortable.”
“So do I,” Morse echoed, with a little sigh of relief.
“Your brother is not a man with many friends, Mr. Pratt,” the physician proceeded, “and in the present state of the stock markets it has not been thought advisable to advertise his illness. I dare say, therefore, that Mr. Morse will be very glad of your advice and help in many directions. I know, in fact, that he has been anxiously awaiting it.”
“I have indeed,” the young man confessed earnestly. “Mr. Pratt as a rule enjoys such excellent health that we have never even contemplated a situation like this.”
“I shall be pleased to do what I can,” Jacob promised, a little dubiously. “My brother and I are partners, of course, in the Pratt Oil Combine, but I know very little of his affairs outside.”
The physician smiled.
“Your brother has the reputation of being extraordinarily fortunate,” he said. “That, however, is outside my province. I have only to add, Mr. Pratt, that the invalid has two nurses, the best I could find in New York, in constant attendance upon him. Any change in his condition would bring me to his bedside in less than ten minutes. Until to-morrow, I beg to take my leave.”
The physician hurried away, and a few minutes later Morse also excused himself, on the pretext of a heavy mail. Jacob and his young companion made luxurious use of their wonderful bathrooms, subsequently attiring themselves in the garments laid out by a ubiquitous and efficient valet, after which Felixstowe set up his typewriter and insisted upon justifying his existence. Jacob accordingly dictated a few lines to Dauncey, which his anxious secretary took down with great care. Felixstowe smudged his fingers badly with the carbon copy and, after Jacob had appended his signature, stamped and addressed the missive with punctilious attention.
“There is no doubt whatever,” he declared, as he gave the letter over to the care of a specially summoned servant and threw himself into the most comfortable of the easy-chairs, “that a certain amount of work does give spice to the day’s pleasure.”
“You’ll have to do a great deal more than that,” Jacob warned him, “when the busy days come along.”
“And why not?” was the grandiloquent reply. “When I get going, I shall be able to do a great deal more without fatigue. Six o’clock, old dear,” he added, glancing at his watch, “and mark you, something tells me that before long that genial blackamoor, with the smile which seems to slit his face in two, will be here with cocktails. Footsteps outside! Why, I can hear the ice chinking in the shaker!”
The door opened—to admit only Morse, however. Felixstowe’s face fell. The newcomer was attired in dinner clothes, which accorded fairly well with the tenets of eastern civilisation except that his jacket was unusually long and his black tie of the flowing description.
“Mr. Pratt has an excellent chef here,” he announced, “but I thought that as you two gentlemen are strangers in New York, you would probably like to sample one of the best restaurants. I have ordered dinner at the Waldorf. It is not so exclusive as some of the other places, but I feel sure that you will find it amusing.”
“Is the bird’s-nesting good there?” Felixstowe enquired anxiously.
“Bird’s-nesting? I don’t quite get you,” Morse replied, politely puzzled.
“The fluff,” his questioner explained, “the skirts,—the little ladies who help to make the world a cheerful and a joyous place.”
Mr. Morse proved that behind his severe expression and depressing spectacles he was only human. He smiled.
“The Waldorf is, I believe, very largely patronised by New York ladies,” he said. “I am afraid that in that respect I am not a very efficient cicerone. I shall be able to introduce you, however, to others who may be able to atone for my deficiency in that direction.”
Morse was as good as his word. He had a plentiful acquaintance, and the anxiety for news concerning Mr. Samuel Pratt brought visitors continually to his table. His answer to one was practically his answer to all.
“Just fine,” he replied to an elderly stockbroker who questioned him rather closely. “He is just now back in the Adirondacks, having the time of his life, I guess. Going to bring home a great collection of heads and finish up with a fortnight at the salmon—Why, yes, Mr. Kindacott,” he went on, a little doubtfully, “I could get a little note through, if you particularly wished it, but you know what Mr. Pratt’s orders were—no business except in a matter of great urgency. I am dealing with most everything from Riverside Drive.”
The stockbroker passed on. Felixstowe glanced at his vis-à-vis with admiration.
“I should never have guessed from the look of you that you could tell ’em like that,” he remarked.
Morse smiled deprecatingly.
“It is not my custom,” he admitted, “to depart from the truth, but in a business life out here you have to put scruples behind you. If they knew down in Wall Street that Mr. Samuel was as ill as he is, a whole bunch of stocks we are interested in would tumble down half a dozen points. That is why I didn’t introduce you, Mr. Pratt, as well as Lord Felixstowe,” he added, turning to Jacob. “If they got to know that you were Mr. Samuel’s brother, over from England, it would make them kind of restless.”
“I quite understand,” Jacob assented. “I have no desire to make acquaintances on this side until Sam is well enough to go round with me.”
The meal, a very excellent and somewhat prolonged one, came to a conclusion about ten o’clock. Morse glanced at his watch.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I am now entirely at your service. If you would like to go home, I admit that it is my usual custom to retire early. If, on the other hand, Lord Felixstowe, or even you, Mr. Pratt, would like to see a little New York night life, I will do my best.”
“I am for the giddy whirl,” Felixstowe declared promptly. “I have eaten strange and delicious food of an exhilarating character. The flavour of terrapin is upon my palate. I am imbibing New York. It is getting into my blood.”
“You are also imbibing a considerable quantity of Pommery,” Jacob observed. “I may have letters for the English mail at nine o’clock to-morrow morning, remember.”
“You will find me waiting by your bedside,” the young man promised. “To-night the magic of a strange city calls.”
“If you will take the car home, Mr. Pratt,” Morse suggested, “Lord Felixstowe and I will take a taxi—that is to say, unless you care to join us.”
Jacob shook his head.
“Show Lord Felixstowe everything there is to be seen,” he begged. “As soon as my brother is out of danger, I’ll have a turn around myself.”
Towards three o’clock, Jacob, who was reading in bed, heard stealthy footsteps in the next room. He coughed and Felixstowe at once entered.
“So you’ve got back,” Jacob remarked, laying down his book.
Felixstowe’s tie had escaped an inch or two to the right, his theatre hat was set well on the back of his head, his expression was beatific.
“Jacob, old bean,” he declared, sitting down heavily upon the bed, “we’ve got the knock. London’s a back number. We’re beaten at the post.”
“In what respect?”
“The lasses!” Felixstowe exclaimed, smacking the part of the bed where he imagined Jacob’s leg to be,—“the lasses, the drink and the gilded halls! And I’ll tell you another thing. Our friend Morse can take off his spectacles and go a bit. He’s no stranger on the merry-go-rounds.... Gee! What’s that?”