Jill the Reckless

CHAPTER VIII

Doctors, laying down the law in their usual confident way, tell us that the vitality of the human body is at its lowest at two o'clock in the morning: and that it is then, as a consequence, that the mind is least able to contemplate the present with equanimity, the future with fortitude, and the past without regret. Every thinking man, however, knows that this is not so. The true zero hour, desolate, gloom-ridden, and spectre-haunted, occurs immediately before dinner while we are waiting for that cocktail. It is then that, stripped for a brief moment of our armour of complacency and self-esteem, we see ourselves as we are—frightful chumps in a world where nothing goes right; a grey world in which, hoping to click, we merely get the raspberry; where, animated by the best intentions, we nevertheless succeed in perpetrating the scaliest bloomers and landing our loved ones neck-deep in the gumbo.

So reflected Freddie Rooke, that priceless old bean, sitting disconsolately in an arm-chair at the Drones Club about two weeks after Jill's departure from England, waiting for his friend Algy Martyn to trickle in and give him dinner.

Surveying Freddie, as he droops on his spine in the yielding leather, one is conscious of one's limitations as a writer. Gloom like his calls for the pen of a master. Zola could have tackled it nicely. Gorky might have made a stab at it. Dostoevsky would have handled it with relish. But for oneself the thing is too vast. One cannot wangle it. It intimidates. It would have been bad enough in any case, for Algy Martyn was late as usual and it always gave Freddie the pip to have to wait for dinner: but what made it worse was the fact that the Drones was not one of Freddie's clubs and so, until the blighter Algy arrived, it was impossible for him to get his cocktail. There he sat, surrounded by happy, laughing young men, each grasping a glass of the good old mixture-as-before, absolutely unable to connect. Some of them, casual acquaintances, had nodded to him, waved, and gone on lowering the juice,—a spectacle which made Freddie feel much as the wounded soldier would have felt if Sir Philip Sidney, instead of offering him the cup of water, had placed it to his own lips and drained it with a careless "Cheerio!" No wonder Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoi's Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city reservoir, he turns to the cupboard, only to find the vodka-bottle empty.

Freddie gave himself up to despondency: and, as always in these days when he was mournful, he thought of Jill. Jill's sad case was a continual source of mental anguish to him. From the first he had blamed himself for the breaking-off of her engagement with Derek. If he had not sent the message to Derek from the police-station, the latter would never have known about their arrest, and all would have been well. And now, a few days ago, had come the news of her financial disaster, with its attendant complications.

It had descended on Freddie like a thunderbolt through the medium of Ronny Devereux.

"I say," Ronny had said, "have you heard the latest? Your pal, Underhill, has broken off his engagement with Jill Mariner."

"I know; rather rotten, what!"

"Rotten? I should say so! It isn't done. I mean to say, chap can't chuck a girl just because she's lost her money. Simply isn't on the board, old man!"

"Lost her money? What do you mean?"

Ronny was surprised. Hadn't Freddie heard? Yes, absolute fact. He had it from the best authority. Didn't know how it had happened and all that, but Jill Mariner had gone completely bust; Underhill had given her the miss-in-baulk; and the poor girl had legged it, no one knew where. Oh, Freddie had met her and she had told him she was going to America? Well, then, legged it to America. But the point was that the swine Underhill had handed her the mitten just because she was broke, and that was what Ronny thought so bally rotten. Broker a girl is, Ronny meant to say, more a fellow should stick to her.

"But—" Freddie rushed to his hero's defence. "But it wasn't that at all. Something quite different. I mean, Derek didn't even know Jill had lost her money. He broke the engagement because...." Freddie stopped short. He didn't want everybody to know of that rotten arrest business, as they infallibly would if he confided in Ronny Devereux. Sort of thing he would never hear the last of. "He broke it off because of something quite different."

"Oh, yes!" said Ronny sceptically.

"But he did, really!"

Ronny shook his head.

"Don't you believe it, old son. Don't you believe it. Stands to reason it must have been because the poor girl was broke. You wouldn't have done it and I wouldn't have done it, but Underhill did, and that's all there is to it. I mean, a tick's a tick, and there's nothing more to say. Well, I know he's been a pal of yours, Freddie, but, next time I meet him, by Jove, I'll cut him dead. Only I don't know him to speak to, dash it!" concluded Ronny regretfully.

Ronny's news had upset Freddie. Derek had returned to the Albany a couple of days ago, moody and silent. They had lunched together at the Bachelors, and Freddie had been pained at the attitude of his fellow-clubmen. Usually, when he lunched at the Bachelors, his table became a sort of social centre. Cheery birds would roll up to pass the time of day, and festive old eggs would toddle over to have coffee and so forth, and all that sort of thing. Jolly! On this occasion nobody had rolled, and all the eggs present had taken their coffee elsewhere. There was an uncomfortable chill in the atmosphere of which Freddie had been acutely conscious, though Derek had not appeared to notice it. The thing had only come home to Derek yesterday at the Albany, when the painful episode of Wally Mason had occurred. It was this way....

"Hullo, Freddie, old top! Sorry to have kept you waiting."

Freddie looked up from his broken meditations, to find that his host had arrived.

"Hullo!"

"A quick bracer," said Algy Martyn, "and then the jolly old food-stuffs. It's pretty late, I see. Didn't notice how time was slipping."

Over the soup, Freddie was still a prey to gloom. For once the healing gin-and-vermouth had failed to do its noble work. He sipped sombrely, so sombrely as to cause comment from his host.

"Pipped?" enquired Algy solicitously.

"Pretty pipped," admitted Freddie.

"Backed a loser?"

"No."

"Something wrong with the old tum?"

"No.... Worried."

"Worried?"

"About Derek."

"Derek? Who's...? Oh, you mean Underhill?"

"Yes."

Algy Martyn chased an elusive piece of carrot about his soup plate, watching it interestedly as it slid coyly from the spoon.

"Oh?" he said, with sudden coolness. "What about him?"

Freddie was too absorbed in his subject to notice the change in his friend's tone.

"A dashed unpleasant thing," he said, "happened yesterday morning at my place. I was just thinking about going out to lunch, when the door-bell rang and Barker said a chappie of the name of Mason would like to see me. I didn't remember any Mason, but Barker said the chappie said he knew me when I was a kid. So he loosed him into the room, and it turned out to be a fellow I used to know years ago down in Worcestershire. I didn't know him from Adam at first, but gradually the old bean got to work, and I placed him. Wally Mason his name was. Rummily enough, he had spoken to me at the Leicester that night when the fire was, but not being able to place him, I had given him the miss somewhat. You know how it is. Cove you've never been introduced to says something to you in a theatre, and you murmur something and sheer off. What?"

"Absolutely," agreed Algy Martyn. He thoroughly approved of Freddie's code of etiquette. Sheer off. Only thing to do.

"Well, anyhow, now that he had turned up again and told me who he was, I began to remember. We had been kids together, don't you know. (What's this? Salmon? Oh, right ho.) So I buzzed about and did the jovial host, you know; gave him a drink and a toofer, and all that sort of thing; and talked about the dear old days and what not. And so forth, if you follow me. Then he brought the conversation round to Jill. Of course he knew Jill at the same time when he knew me, down in Worcestershire, you see. We were all pretty pally in those days, if you see what I mean. Well, this man Mason, it seems, had heard somewhere about Jill losing her money, and he wanted to know if it was true. I said absolutely. Hadn't heard any details, but Ronny had told me, and Ronny had had it from some one who had stable information and all that sort of thing. 'Dashed shame, isn't it?' I said. 'She's gone to America, you know.' 'I didn't know,' he said. 'I understood she was going to be married quite soon.' Well, of course, I told him that that was off. He didn't say anything for a bit, then he said 'Off?' I said 'Off.' 'Did she break it off?' asked the chappie. 'Well, no,' I said. 'As a matter of fact Derek broke it off.' He said 'Oh!' (What? Oh yes, a bit of pheasant will be fine.) Where was I? Oh, yes. He said 'Oh!' Now, before this, I ought to tell you, this chappie Mason had asked me to come out and have a bit of lunch. I had told him I was lunching with Derek, and he said 'Right ho,' or words to that effect, 'Bring him along.' Derek had been out for a stroll, you see, and we were waiting for him to come in. Well, just at this point or juncture, if you know what I mean, in he came, and I said' Oh, what ho!' and introduced Wally Mason. 'Oh, do you know Underhill?' I said, or something like that. You know the sort of thing. And then...."

Freddie broke off and drained his glass. The recollection of that painful moment had made him feverish. Social difficulties always did.

"Then what?" enquired Algy Martyn.

"Well, it was pretty rotten. Derek held out his hand, as a chappie naturally would, being introduced to a strange chappie, and Wally Mason, giving it an absolute miss, went on talking to me just as if we were alone, you know. Look here. Here was I, where this knife is. Derek over here—this fork—with his hand out. Mason here—this bit of bread. Mason looks at his watch, and says 'I'm sorry, Freddie, but I find I've an engagement for lunch. So long!' and biffed out, without apparently knowing that Derek was on the earth. I mean...." Freddie reached for his glass. "What I mean is, it was dashed embarrassing. I mean, cutting a fellow dead in my rooms. I don't know when I've felt so rotten!"

Algy Martyn delivered judgment with great firmness.

"Chappie was perfectly right!"

"No, but I mean...."

"Absolutely correct-o," insisted Algy sternly. "Underhill can't dash about all over the place giving the girl he's engaged to the mitten because she's broke, and expect no notice to be taken of it. If you want to know what I think, old man, your pal Underhill—I can't imagine what the deuce you see in him, but, school together and so forth, makes a difference, I suppose—I say, if you want to know what I think, Freddie, the blighter Underhill would be well advised either to leg it after Jill and get her to marry him or else lie low for a goodish while till people have forgotten the thing. I mean to say, fellows like Ronny and I and Dick Wimpole and Archie Studd and the rest of our lot—well, we all knew Jill and thought she was a topper and had danced with her here and there and seen her about and all that, and naturally we feel pretty strongly about the whole dashed business. Underhill isn't in our particular set, but we all know most of the people he knows, and we talk about this business, and the thing gets about, and there you are! My sister, who was a great pal of Jill's, swears that all the girls she knows mean to cut Underhill. I tell you, Freddie, London's going to get pretty hot for him if he doesn't do something dashed quick and with great rapidity!"

"But you haven't got the story right, old thing!"

"How not?"

"Well, I mean you think and Ronny thinks and all the rest of you think that Derek broke off the engagement because of the money. It wasn't that at all."

"What was it, then?"

"Well.... Well, look here, it makes me seem a fearful ass and all that, but I'd better tell you. Jill and I were going down one of those streets near Victoria and a blighter was trying to slay a parrot...."

"Parrot-shooting's pretty good in those parts, they tell me," interjected Algy satirically.

"Don't interrupt, old man. This parrot had got out of one of the houses, and a fellow was jabbing at it with a stick, and Jill—you know what she's like; impulsive, I mean, and all that—Jill got hold of the stick and biffed him with some vim, and a policeman rolled up and the fellow made a fuss and the policeman took Jill and me off to chokey. Well, like an ass, I sent round to Derek to bail us out, and that's how he heard of the thing. Apparently he didn't think a lot of it, and the result was that he broke off the engagement."

Algy Martyn had listened to this recital with growing amazement.

"He broke it off because of that?"

"Yes."

"What absolute rot!" said Algy Martyn. "I don't believe a word of it!"

"I say, old man!"

"I don't believe a word of it," repeated Algy firmly.

"And nobody else will either. It's dashed good of you, Freddie, to cook up a yarn like that to try and make things look better for the blighter, but it won't work. Such a damn silly story, too!" said Algy with some indignation.

"But it's true!"

"What's the use, Freddie, between old pals?" said Algy protestingly. "You know perfectly well that Underhill's a worm of the most pronounced order, and that, when he found out that Jill hadn't any money, he chucked her."

"But why should Derek care whether Jill was well off or not? He's got enough money of his own."

"Nobody," said Algy judicially, "has got enough money of his own. Underhill thought he was marrying a girl with a sizable chunk of the ready, and, when the fuse blew out, he decided it wasn't good enough. For Heaven's sake don't let's talk any more about the blighter. It gives me a pain to think of him."

II

Freddie returned to the Albany in a state of gloom and uneasiness. Algy's remarks, coming on top of the Wally Mason episode, had shaken him. The London in which he and Derek moved and had their being is nothing but a village, and it was evident that village gossip was hostile to Derek. People were talking about him. Local opinion had decided that he had behaved badly. Already one man had cut him. Freddie blenched at a sudden vision of streetfuls of men, long Piccadillys of men, all cutting him, one after the other. Something had got to be done.

The subject was not an easy one to broach to his somewhat forbidding friend, as he discovered when the latter arrived about half an hour later. Derek had been attending the semi-annual banquet of the Worshipful Dry-Salters Company down in the City, understudying one of the speakers, a leading member of Parliament, who had been unable to appear; and he was still in the grip of that feeling of degraded repletion which City dinners induce.

Yet, unfavourably disposed as, judging by his silence and the occasional moody grunts he uttered, he appeared to be to a discussion of his private affairs, it seemed to Freddie impossible that the night should be allowed to pass without some word spoken on the subject. He thought of Ronny and what Ronny had said, of Algy and what Algy had said, of Wally Mason and how Wally had behaved in this very room; and he nerved himself to the task.

"Derek, old top."

A grunt.

"I say, Derek, old bean."

Derek roused himself, and looked gloomily across the room to where he stood, warming his legs at the blaze.

"Well?"

Freddie found a difficulty in selecting words. A ticklish business, this. One that might well have disconcerted a diplomat. Freddie was no diplomat, and the fact enabled him to find a way in the present crisis. Equipped by nature with an amiable tactlessness and a happy gift of blundering, he charged straight at the main point, and landed on it like a circus elephant alighting on a bottle.

"I say, you know, about Jill!"

He stooped to rub the backs of his legs, on which the fire was playing with a little too fierce a glow, and missed his companion's start and the sudden thickening of his bushy eyebrows.

"Well?" said Derek again.

Freddie nerved himself to proceed. A thought flashed across his mind that Derek was looking exactly like Lady Underhill. It was the first time he had seen the family resemblance quite so marked.

"Ronny Devereux was saying...." faltered Freddie.

"Damn Ronny Devereux!"

"Oh, absolutely! But...."

"Ronny Devereux! Who the devil is Ronny Devereux?"

"Why, old man, you've heard me speak of him, haven't you? Pal of mine. He came down to the station with Algy and me to meet your mater that morning."

"Oh, that fellow? And he has been saying something about...?"

"It isn't only Ronny, you know," Freddie hastened to interject. "Algy Martyn's talking about it, too. And lots of other fellows. And Algy's sister and a lot of peoples They're all saying...."

"What are they saying?"

Freddie bent down and chafed the back of his legs. He simply couldn't look at Derek while he had that Lady Underhill expression on the old map. Rummy he had never noticed before how extraordinarily like his mother he was. Freddie was conscious of a faint sense of grievance. He could not have put it into words, but what he felt was that a fellow had no right to go about looking like Lady Underhill.

"What are they saying?" repeated Derek grimly.

"Well...." Freddie hesitated. "That it's a bit tough.... On Jill, you know."

"They think I behaved badly?"

"Well.... Oh, well, you know!"

Derek smiled a ghastly smile. This was not wholly due to mental disturbance. The dull heaviness which was the legacy of the Dry-Salters' dinner had begun to change to something more actively unpleasant. A sub-motive of sharp pain had begun to run through it, flashing in and out like lightning through a thunder-cloud. He felt sullen and vicious.

"I wonder," he said with savage politeness, "if, when you chat with your friends, you would mind choosing some other topic than my private affairs."

"Sorry, old man. But they started it, you know."

"And, if you feel you've got to discuss me, kindly keep it to yourself. Don't come and tell me what your damned friends said to each other and to you and what you said to them, because it bores me. I'm not interested. I don't value their opinions as much as you seem to." Derek paused, to battle in silence with the imperious agony within him. "It was good of you to put me up here," he went on, "but I think I won't trespass on your hospitality any longer. Perhaps you'll ask Barker to pack my things to-morrow." Derek moved, as majestically as an ex-guest of the Worshipful Company of Dry-Salters may, in the direction of the door. "I shall go to the Savoy."

"Oh, I say, old man! No need to do that."

"Good night."

"But, I say...."

"And you can tell your friend Devereux that, if he doesn't stop poking his nose into my private business, I'll pull it off."

"Well," said Freddie doubtfully, "of course I don't suppose you know, but.... Ronny's a pretty hefty bird. He boxed for Cambridge in the light-weights the last year he was up, you know. He...."

Derek slammed the door. Freddie was alone. He stood rubbing his legs for some minutes, a rueful expression on his usually cheerful face. Freddie hated rows. He liked everything to jog along smoothly. What a rotten place the world was these days! Just one thing after another. First, poor old Jill takes the knock and disappears. He would miss her badly. What a good sort! What a pal! And now—gone. Biffed off. Next, Derek. Together, more or less, ever since Winchester, and now—bing!...

Freddie heaved a sigh, and reached out for the Sporting Times, his never-failing comfort in times of depression. He lit another cigar and curled up in one of the arm-chairs. He was feeling tired. He had been playing squash all the afternoon, a game at which he was exceedingly expert and to which he was much addicted.

Time passed. The paper slipped to the floor. A cold cigar followed it. From the depths of the chair came a faint snore....

A hand on his shoulder brought Freddie with a jerk from troubled dreams. Derek was standing beside him. A bent, tousled Derek, apparently in pain.

"Freddie!"

"Hullo!"

A spasm twisted Derek's face.

"Have you got any pepsin?"

Derek uttered a groan. What a mocker of our petty human dignity is this dyspepsia, bringing low the haughtiest of us, less than love itself a respecter of persons. This was a different Derek from the man who had stalked stiffly from the room two hours before. His pride had been humbled upon the rack.

"Pepsin?"

"Yes. I've got the most damned attack of indigestion."

The mists of sleep rolled away from Freddie. He was awake again, and became immediately helpful. These were the occasions when the Last of the Rookes was a good man to have at your side. It was Freddie who suggested that Derek should recline in the arm-chair which he had vacated; Freddie who nipped round the corner to the all-night chemist's and returned with a magic bottle guaranteed to relieve an ostrich after a surfeit of tenpenny nails; Freddie who mixed and administered the dose.

His ministrations were rewarded. Presently the agony seemed to pass. Derek recovered.

One would say that Derek became himself again, but that the mood of gentle remorse which came upon him as he lay in the arm-chair was one so foreign to his nature. Freddie had never seen him so subdued. He was like a convalescent child. Between them, the all-night chemist and the Dry. Salters seemed to have wrought a sort of miracle. These temporary softenings of personality frequently follow City dinners. The time to catch your Dry-Salter in angelic mood is the day after the semi-annual banquet. Go to him then and he will give you his watch and chain.

"Freddie," said Derek.

They were sitting over the dying fire. The clock on the mantelpiece, beside which Jill's photograph had stood pointed to ten minutes past two. Derek spoke in a low, soft voice. Perhaps the doctors are right after all, and two o'clock is the hour at which our self-esteem deserts us, leaving in its place regret for past sins, good resolutions for future behaviour.

"What do Martyn and the others say about ... you know?"

Freddie hesitated. Pity to start all that again.

"Oh, I know," went on Derek. "They say I behaved like a cad."

"Oh, well...."

"They are quite right. I did."

"Oh, I shouldn't say that, you know. Faults on both sides and all that sort of rot."

"I did!" Derek stared into the fire. Scattered all over London at that moment, probably a hundred Worshipful Dry-Salters were equally sleepless and subdued, looking wide-eyed into black pasts. "Is it true she has gone to America, Freddie?"

"She told me she was going."

"What a fool I've been!"

The clock ticked on through the silence. The fire sputtered faintly, then gave a little wheeze, like a very old man. Derek rested his chin on his hands, gazing into the ashes.

"I wish to God I could go over there and find her."

"Why don't you?"

"How can I? There may be an election coming on at any moment. I can't stir."

Freddie leaped from his seat. The suddenness of the action sent a red-hot corkscrew of pain through Derek's head.

"What the devil's the matter?" he demanded irritably. Even the gentle mood which comes with convalescence after a City dinner is not guaranteed to endure against this sort of thing.

"I've got an idea, old bean!"

"Well, there's no need to dance, is there?"

"I've nothing to keep me here, you know. What's the matter with my popping over to America and finding Jill?" Freddie tramped the floor, aglow. Each beat of his foot jarred Derek, but he made no complaint.

"Could you?" he asked eagerly.

"Of course I could. I was saying only the other day that I had half a mind to buzz over. It's a wheeze! I'll get on the next boat and charge over in the capacity of a jolly old ambassador. Have her back in no time. Leave it to me, old thing! This is where I come out strong!"

CHAPTER IX

It was a slow ride, halted repeatedly by congestion of the traffic, but a short one for Jill. She was surprised at herself, a Londoner of long standing, for feeling so provincial and being so impressed. But London was far away. It belonged to a life that seemed years ago and a world from which she had parted for ever. Moreover, this was undeniably a stupendous city through which her taxi-cab was carrying her. At Times Square the stream of the traffic plunged into a whirlpool, swinging out of Broadway to meet the rapids which poured in from east, west, and north. On Fifth Avenue all the motor-cars in the world were gathered together. On the pavements, pedestrians, muffled against the nipping chill of the crisp air, hurried to and fro. And, above, that sapphire sky spread a rich velvet curtain which made the tops of the buildings stand out like the white minarets of some eastern city of romance.

The cab drew up in front of a stone apartment house; and Jill, getting out, passed under an awning through a sort of mediæval courtyard, gay with potted shrubs, to an inner door. She was impressed. Evidently the tales one heard of fortunes accumulated overnight in this magic city were true, and one of them must have fallen to the lot of Uncle Chris. For nobody to whom money was a concern could possibly afford to live in a place like this. If Croesus and the Count of Monte Cristo had applied for lodging there, the authorities would probably have looked on them a little doubtfully at first and hinted at the desirability of a month's rent in advance.

In a glass case behind the inner door, reading a newspaper and chewing gum, sat a dignified old man in the rich uniform of a general in the Guatemalan army. He was a brilliant spectacle. He wore no jewellery, but this, no doubt, was due to a private distaste for display. As there was no one else of humbler rank at hand from whom Jill could solicit an introduction and the privilege of an audience, she took the bold step of addressing him directly.

"I want to see Major Selby, please."

The Guatemalan general arrested for a moment the rhythmic action of his jaws, lowered his paper and looked at her with raised eyebrows. At first Jill thought that he was registering haughty contempt, then she saw what she had taken for scorn was surprise.

"Major Selby?"

"Major Selby."

"No Major Selby living here."

"Major Christopher Selby."

"Not here," said the associate of ambassadors and the pampered pet of Guatemala's proudest beauties. "Never heard of him in my life!"

II

Jill had read works of fiction in which at certain crises everything had "seemed to swim" in front of the heroine's eyes, but never till this moment had she experienced that remarkable sensation herself. The Saviour of Guatemala did not actually swim, perhaps, but he certainly flickered. She had to blink to restore his prismatic outlines to their proper sharpness. Already the bustle and noise of New York had begun to induce in her that dizzy condition of unreality which one feels in dreams, and this extraordinary statement added the finishing touch.

Perhaps the fact that she had said "please" to him when she opened the conversation touched the heart of the hero of a thousand revolutions. Dignified and beautiful as he was to the eye of the stranger, it is unpleasant to have to record that he lived in a world which rather neglected the minor courtesies of speech. People did not often say "please" to him. "Here!" "Hi!" and "Gosh darn you!" yes; but seldom "please." He seemed to approve of Jill, for he shifted his chewing-gum to a position which facilitated speech, and began to be helpful.

"What was the name again?"

"Selby."

"Howja spell it?"

"S-e-l-b-y."

"S-e-l-b-y. Oh, Selby?"

"Yes, Selby."

"What was the first name?"

"Christopher."

"Christopher?"

"Yes, Christopher."

"Christopher Selby? No one of that name living here."

"But there must be."

The veteran shook his head with an indulgent smile.

"You want Mr. Sipperley," he said tolerantly. In Guatemala these mistakes are always happening. "Mr. George Sipperley. He's on the fourth floor. What name shall I say?"

He had almost reached the telephone when Jill stopped him. This is an age of just-as-good substitutes, but she refused to accept any unknown Sipperley as a satisfactory alternative for Uncle Chris.

"I don't want Mr. Sipperley. I want Major Selby."

"Howja spell it once more?"

"S-e-l-b-y."

"S-e-l-b-y. No one of that name living here. Mr. Sipperley—" he spoke in a wheedling voice, as if determined, in spite of herself, to make Jill see what was in her best interests—"Mr. Sipperley's on the fourth floor. Gentleman in the real estate business," he added insinuatingly. "He's got blond hair and a Boston bull-dog."

"He may be all you say, and he may have a dozen bull-dogs...."

"Only one. Jack his name is."

"... But he isn't the right man. It's absurd. Major Selby wrote to me from this address. This is Eighteen East Fifty-seventh Street?"

"This is Eighteen East Fifty-seventh Street," conceded the other cautiously.

"I've got his letter here." She opened her bag, and gave an exclamation of dismay. "It's gone!"

"Mr. Sipperley used to have a friend staying with him last Fall. A Mr. Robertson. Dark-complexioned man with a moustache."

"I took it out to look at the address, and I was sure I put it back. I must have dropped it."

"There's a Mr. Rainsby on the seventh floor. He's a broker down on Wall Street. Short man with an impediment in his speech."

Jill snapped the clasp of her bag.

"Never mind," she said. "I must have made a mistake. I was quite sure that this was the address, but it evidently isn't. Thank you so much. I'm so sorry to have bothered you."

She walked away, leaving the Terror of Paraguay and all points west speechless: for people who said "Thank you so much" to him were even rarer than those who said "please." He followed her with an affectionate eye till she was out of sight, then, restoring his chewing-gum to circulation, returned to the perusal of his paper. A momentary suggestion presented itself to his mind that what Jill had really wanted was Mr. Willoughby on the eighth floor, but it was too late to say so now; and soon, becoming absorbed in the narrative of a spirited householder in Kansas who had run amuck with a hatchet and slain six, he dismissed the matter from his mind.

III

Jill walked back to Fifth Avenue, crossed it, and made her way thoughtfully along the breezy street which, flanked on one side by the Park and on the other by the green-roofed Plaza Hotel and the apartment houses of the wealthy, ends in the humbler and more democratic spaces of Columbus Circle. She perceived that she was in that position, familiar to melodrama, of being alone in a great city. The reflection brought with it a certain discomfort. The bag that dangled from her wrist contained all the money she had in the world, the very broken remains of the twenty dollars which Uncle Chris had sent her at Brookport. She had nowhere to go, nowhere to sleep, and no immediately obvious means of adding to her capital. It was a situation which she had not foreseen when she set out to walk to Brookport station.

She pondered over the mystery of Uncle Chris' disappearance, and found no solution. The thing was inexplicable. She was as sure of the address he had given in his letter as she was of anything in the world. Yet at that address nothing had been heard of him. His name was not even known. These were deeper waters than Jill was able to fathom.

She walked on aimlessly. Presently she came to Columbus Circle, and, crossing Broadway at the point where that street breaks out into an eruption of automobile shops, found herself, suddenly hungry, opposite a restaurant whose entire front was a sheet of plate glass. On the other side of this glass, at marble-topped tables, apparently careless of their total lack of privacy, sat the impecunious, lunching, their every mouthful a spectacle for the passer-by. It reminded Jill of looking at fishes in an aquarium. In the centre of the window, gazing out in a distrait manner over piles of apples and grape-fruit, a white-robed ministrant at a stove juggled ceaselessly with buckwheat cakes. He struck the final note in the candidness of the establishment, a priest whose ritual contained no mysteries. Spectators with sufficient time on their hands to permit them to stand and watch were enabled to witness a New York midday meal in every stage of its career, from its protoplasmic beginnings as a stream of yellowish-white liquid poured on top of the stove to its ultimate Nirvana in the interior of the luncher in the form of an appetising cake. It was a spectacle which no hungry girl could resist. Jill went in, and, as she made her way among the tables, a voice spoke her name.

"Miss Mariner!"

Jill jumped, and thought for a moment that the thing must have been an hallucination. It was impossible that anybody in the place should have called her name. Except for Uncle Chris, wherever he might be, she knew no one in New York. Then the voice spoke again, competing valiantly with a clatter of crockery so uproarious as to be more like something solid than a mere sound.

"I couldn't believe it was you!"

A girl in blue had risen from the nearest table, and was staring at her in astonishment. Jill recognized her instantly. Those big, pathetic eyes, like a lost child's, were unmistakable. It was the parrot girl, the girl whom she and Freddie Rooke had found in the drawing-room at Ovingdon Square that afternoon when the foundations of the world had given way and chaos had begun.

"Good gracious!" cried Jill. "I thought you were in London!"

That feeling of emptiness and panic, the result of her interview with the Guatemalan general at the apartment house, vanished magically. She sat down at this unexpected friend's table with a light heart.

"Whatever are you doing in New York?" asked the girl. "I never knew you meant to come over."

"It was a little sudden. Still, here I am. And I'm starving. What are those things you're eating?"

"Buckwheat cakes."

"Oh, yes. I remember Uncle Chris talking about them on the boat. I'll have some."

"But when did you come over?"

"I landed about ten days ago. I've been down at a place called Brookport on Long Island. How funny running into you like this!"

"I was surprised that you remembered me."

"I've forgotten your name," admitted Jill frankly. "But that's nothing. I always forget names."

"My name's Nelly Bryant."

"Of course. And you're on the stage, aren't you?"

"Yes. I've just got work with Goble and Cohn.... Hullo, Phil!"

A young man with a lithe figure and smooth black hair brushed straight back from his forehead had paused at the table on his way to the cashier's desk.

"Hello, Nelly."

"I didn't know you lunched here."

"Don't often. Been rehearsing with Joe up at the Century Roof, and had a quarter of an hour to get a bite. Can I sit down?"

"Sure. This is my friend, Miss Mariner."

The young man shook hands with Jill, flashing an approving glance at her out of his dark, restless eyes.

"Pleased to meet you."

"This is Phil Brown," said Nelly. "He plays the straight for Joe Widgeon. They're the best jazz-and-hokum team on the Keith Circuit."

"Oh, hush!" said Mr. Brown modestly. "You always were a great little booster, Nelly."

"Well, you know you are! Weren't you held over at the Palace last time? Well, then!"

"That's true," admitted the young man. "Maybe we didn't gool 'em, eh? Stop me on the street and ask me! Only eighteen bows second house Saturday!"

Jill was listening, fascinated.

"I can't understand a word," she said. "It's like another language."

"You're from the other side, aren't you?" asked Mr. Brown.

"She only landed a week ago," said Nelly.

"I thought so from the accent," said Mr. Brown. "So our talk sort of goes over the top, does it? Well, you'll learn American soon, if you stick around."

"I've learned some already," said Jill. The relief of meeting Nelly had made her feel very happy. She liked this smooth-haired young man. "A man on the train this morning said to me, 'Would you care for the morning paper, sister?' I said, 'No, thanks, brother, I want to look out of the window and think!'"

"You meet a lot of fresh guys on trains," commented Mr. Brown austerely. "You want to give 'em the cold-storage eye." He turned to Nelly. "Did you go down to Ike, as I told you?"

"Yes."

"Did you cop?"

"Yes. I never felt so happy in my life. I'd waited over an hour on that landing of theirs, and then Johnny Miller came along, and I yelled in his ear that I was after work, and he told me it would be all right. He's awfully good to girls who've worked in shows for him before. If it hadn't been for him I might have been waiting there still."

"Who," enquired Jill, anxious to be abreast of the conversation, "is Ike?"

"Mr. Goble. Where I've just got work. Goble and Cohn, you know."

"I never heard of them!"

The young man extended his hand.

"Put it there!" he said. "They never heard of me! At least, the fellow I saw when I went down to the office hadn't! Can you beat it!"

"Oh, did you go down there, too?" asked Nelly.

"Sure. Joe wanted to get in another show on Broadway. He'd sort of got tired of vodevil. Say, I don't want to scare you, Nelly, but, if you ask me, that show they're putting out down there is a citron! I don't think Ike's got a cent of his own money in it. My belief is that he's running it for a lot of amateurs. Why, say, listen! Joe and I blow in there to see if there's anything for us, and there's a tall guy in tortoise-shell cheaters sitting in Ike's office. Said he was the author and was engaging the principals. We told him who we were, and it didn't make any hit with him at all. He said he had never heard of us. And, when we explained, he said no, there wasn't going to be any of our sort of work in the show. Said he was making an effort to give the public something rather better than the usual sort of thing. No specialities required. He said it was an effort to restore the Gilbert and Sullivan tradition. Say, who are these Gilbert and Sullivan guys, anyway? They get written up in the papers all the time and I never met any one who'd run across them. If you want my opinion, that show down there is a comic opera!"

"For heaven's sake!" Nelly had the musical comedy performer's horror of the older-established form of entertainment. "Why, comic opera died in the year one!"

"Well, these guys are going to dig it up. That's the way it looks to me." He lowered his voice. "Say, I saw Clarice last night," he said in a confidential undertone. "It's all right."

"It is?"

"We've made it up. It was like this...."

His conversation took an intimate turn. He expounded for Nelly's benefit the inner history, with all its ramifications, of a recent unfortunate rift between himself and "the best little girl in Flatbush"—what he had said, what she had said, what her sister had said, and how it all came right in the end. Jill might have felt a little excluded, but for the fact that a sudden and exciting idea had come to her. She sat back, thinking.... After all, what else was she to do? She must do something....

She bent forward and interrupted Mr. Brown in his description of a brisk passage of arms between himself and the best little girl's sister, who seemed to be an unpleasant sort of person in every way.

"Mr. Brown."

"Hello?"

"Do you think there would be any chance for me if I asked for work at Goble and Cohn's?"

"You're joking!" cried Nelly.

"I'm not at all."

"But what do you want with work?"

"I've got to find some. And right away, too."

"I don't understand."

Jill hesitated. She disliked discussing her private affairs, but there was obviously no way of avoiding it. Nelly was round-eyed and mystified, and Mr. Brown had manifestly no intention whatever of withdrawing tactfully. He wanted to hear all.

"I've lost my money," said Jill.

"Lost your money! Do you mean...?"

"I've lost it all. Every penny I had in the world."

"Tough!" interpolated Mr. Brown judicially. "I was broke once way out in a tank-town in Oklahoma. The manager skipped with our salaries. Last we saw of him he was doing the trip to Canada in nothing flat."

"But how?" gasped Nelly.

"It happened about the time we met in London. Do you remember Freddie Rooke, who was at our house that afternoon?"

A dreamy look came into Nelly's eyes. There had not been an hour since their parting when she had not thought of that immaculate sportsman. It would have amazed Freddie, could he have known, but to Nelly Bryant he was the one perfect man in an imperfect world.

"Do I!" she sighed ecstatically.

Mr. Brown shot a keen glance at her.

"Aha!" he cried facetiously. "Who is he, Nelly? Who is this blue-eyed boy?"

"If you want to know," said Nelly, defiance in her tone, "he's the fellow who gave me fifty pounds, with no strings tied to it—get that!—when I was broke in London! If it hadn't been for him, I'd be there still."

"Did he?" cried Jill. "Freddie!"

"Yes. Oh, Gee!" Nelly sighed once more. "I suppose I'll never see him again in this world."

"Introduce me to him, if you do," said Mr. Brown. "He sounds just the sort of little pal I'd like to have!"

"You remember hearing Freddie say something about losing money in a slump on the Stock Exchange," proceeded Jill. "Well, that was how I lost mine. It's a long story, and it's not worth talking about, but that's how things stand, and I've got to find work of some sort, and it looks to me as if I should have a better chance of finding it on the stage than anywhere else."

"I'm terribly sorry."

"Oh, it's all right. How much would these people Goble and Cohn give me if I got an engagement?"

"Only forty a week."

"Forty dollars a week! It's wealth! Where are they?"

"Over at the Gotham Theatre in Forty-second Street."

"I'll go there at once."

"But you'll hate it. You don't realize what it's like. You wait hours and hours and nobody sees you."

"Why shouldn't I walk straight in and say that I've come for work?"

Nelly's big eyes grew bigger.

"But you couldn't!'

"Why not?"

"Why, you couldn't!"

"I don't see why."

Mr. Brown intervened with decision.

"You're dead right," he said to Jill approvingly. "If you ask me, that's the only sensible thing to do. Where's the sense of hanging around and getting stalled? Managers are human guys, some of 'em. Probably, if you were to try it, they'd appreciate a bit of gall. It would show 'em you'd got pep. You go down there and try walking straight in. They can't eat you. It makes me sick when I see all those poor devils hanging about outside these offices, waiting to get noticed and nobody ever paying any attention to them. You push the office-boy in the face if he tries to stop you, and go in and make 'em take notice. And, whatever you do, don't leave your name and address! That's the old, moth-eaten gag they're sure to try to pull on you. Tell 'em there's nothing doing. Say you're out for a quick decision! Stand 'em on their heads!"

Jill got up, fired by this eloquence. She called for her check.

"Good-bye," she said. "I'm going to do exactly as you say. Where can I find you afterwards?" she said to Nelly.

"You aren't really going?"

"I am!"

Nelly scribbled on a piece of paper.

"Here's my address. I'll be in all evening."

"I'll come and see you. Good-bye, Mr. Brown. And thank you."

"You're welcome!" said Mr. Brown.

Nelly watched Jill depart with wide eyes.

"Why did you tell her to do that?" she said.

"Why not?" said Mr. Brown. "I started something, didn't I? Well, I guess I'll have to be leaving, too. Got to get back to rehearsal. Say, I like that friend of yours, Nelly. There's no yellow streak about her! I wish her luck!"

CHAPTER X

Nobody, except perhaps the night-watchman, had ever seen this bench empty. At whatever hour of the day you happened to call, you would always find three wistful individuals seated side by side with their eyes on the tiny ante-room where sat the office-boy, the telephone-girl, and Mr. Goble's stenographer. Beyond this was the door marked "Private," through which, as it opened to admit some careless, debonair thousand-dollar-a-week comedian who sauntered in with a jaunty "Hello, Ike!" or some furred and scented female star, the rank and file of the profession were greeted, like Moses on Pisgah, with a fleeting glimpse of the promised land, consisting of a large desk and a section of a very fat man with spectacles and a bald head or a younger man with fair hair and a double chin.

The keynote of the mass meeting on the landing was one of determined, almost aggressive smartness. The men wore bright overcoats with bands round the waist, the women those imitation furs which to the uninitiated eye appear so much more expensive than the real thing. Everybody looked very dashing and very young, except about the eyes. Most of the eyes that glanced at Jill were weary. The women were nearly all blondes, blondness having been decided upon in the theatre as the colour that brings the best results. The men were all so much alike that they seemed to be members of one large family—an illusion which was heightened by the scraps of conversation, studded with "dears," "old mans," and "honeys," which came to Jill's ears. A stern fight for supremacy was being waged by a score or so of lively and powerful young scents.

For a moment Jill was somewhat daunted by the spectacle, but she recovered almost immediately. The exhilarating and heady influence of New York still wrought within her. The Berserk spirit was upon her, and she remembered the stimulating words of Mr. Brown, of Brown and Widgeon, the best jazz-and-hokum team on the Keith Circuit. "Walk straight in!" had been the burden of his inspiring address. She pushed her way through the crowd until she came to the small ante-room.

In the ante-room were the outposts, the pickets of the enemy. In one corner a girl was hammering energetically and with great speed on a typewriter; a second girl, seated at a switchboard, was having an argument with Central which was already warm and threatened to descend shortly to personalities; on a chair tilted back so that it rested against the wall, a small boy sat eating sweets and reading the comic page of an evening newspaper. All three were enclosed, like zoological specimens, in a cage formed by a high counter terminating in brass bars.

Beyond these watchers on the threshold was the door marked "Private." Through it, as Jill reached the outer defences, filtered the sound of a piano.

Those who have studied the subject have come to the conclusion that the boorishness of New York theatrical managers' office-boys cannot be the product of mere chance. Somewhere, in some sinister den in the criminal districts of the town, there is a school where small boys are trained for these positions, where their finer instincts are rigorously uprooted and rudeness systematically inculcated by competent professors. Of this school the Cerberus of Messrs. Goble and Cohn had been the star scholar. Quickly seeing his natural gifts, his teachers had given him special attention. When he had graduated, it had been amidst the cordial good wishes of the entire staff. They had taught him all they knew, and they were proud of him. They felt that he would do them credit.

This boy raised a pair of pink-rimmed eyes to Jill, sniffed, bit his thumb-nail, and spoke. He was a snub-nosed boy. His ears and hair were vermilion. His name was Ralph. He had seven hundred and forty-three pimples.

"Woddyerwant?" enquired Ralph, coming within an ace of condensing the question into a word of one syllable.

"I want to see Mr. Goble."

"Zout!" said the Pimple King, and returned to his paper.

There will, no doubt, always be class distinctions. Sparta had her kings and her helots, King Arthur's Round Table its knights and its scullions, America her Simon Legree and her Uncle Tom. But in no nation and at no period of history has any one ever been so brutally superior to any one else as is the Broadway theatrical office-boy to the caller who wishes to see the manager. Thomas Jefferson held these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Theatrical office-boys do not see eye to eye with Thomas. From their pinnacle they look down on the common herd, the canaille, and despise them. They coldly question their right to live.

Jill turned pink. Mr. Brown, her guide and mentor, foreseeing this situation, had, she remembered, recommended "pushing the office-boy in the face": and for a moment she felt like following his advice. Prudence, or the fact that he was out of reach behind the brass bars, restrained her. Without further delay she made for the door of the inner room. That was her objective, and she did not intend to be diverted from it. Her fingers were on the handle before any of those present divined her intention. Then the stenographer stopped typing and sat with raised fingers, aghast. The girl at the telephone broke off in mid-sentence and stared round over her shoulder. Ralph, the office-boy, outraged, dropped his paper and constituted himself the spokesman of the invaded force.

"Hey!"

Jill stopped and eyed the lad militantly.

"Were you speaking to me?"

"Yes, I was speaking to you!"

"Don't do it again with your mouth full," said Jill, turning to the door.

The belligerent fire in the office-boy's pink-rimmed eyes was suddenly dimmed by a gush of water. It was not remorse that caused him to weep, however. In the heat of the moment he had swallowed a large, jagged sweet, and he was suffering severely.

"You can't go in there!" he managed to articulate, his iron will triumphing over the flesh sufficiently to enable him to speak.

"I am going in there!"

"That's Mr. Goble's private room."

"Well, I want a private talk with Mr. Goble."

Ralph, his eyes still moist, felt that the situation was slipping from his grip. This sort of thing had never happened to him before. "I tell ya he zout!"

Jill looked at him sternly.

"You wretched child!" she said, encouraged by a sharp giggle from the neighbourhood of the switchboard. "Do you know where little boys go who don't speak the truth? I can hear him playing the piano. Now he's singing! And it's no good telling me he's busy. If he was busy, he wouldn't have time to sing. If you're as deceitful as this at your age, what do you expect to be when you grow up? You're an ugly little boy, you've got red ears, and your collar doesn't fit! I shall speak to Mr. Goble about you."

With which words Jill opened the door and walked in.

"Good afternoon," she said brightly.

After the congested and unfurnished discomfort of the landing, the room in which Jill found herself had an air of cosiness and almost of luxury. It was a large room, solidly upholstered. Along the further wall, filling nearly the whole of its space, stood a vast and gleaming desk, covered with a litter of papers which rose at one end of it to a sort of mountain of play-scripts in buff covers. There was a bookshelf to the left. Photographs covered the walls. Near the window was a deep leather lounge; to the right of this stood a small piano, the music-stool of which was occupied by a young man with untidy black hair that needed cutting. On top of the piano, taking the eye immediately by reason of its bold brightness, was balanced a large cardboard poster. Much of its surface was filled by a picture of a youth in polo costume bending over a blonde goddess in a bathing-suit. What space was left displayed the legend:

ISAAC GOBLE AND JACOB COHN

PRESENT