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CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

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MONEY FOR NOTHING

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CHAPTER I

I

The picturesque village of Rudge-in-the-Vale dozed in the summer sunshine. Along its narrow High Street the only signs of life visible were a cat stropping its backbone against the Jubilee Watering Trough, some flies doing deep-breathing exercises on the hot window sills, and a little group of serious thinkers who, propped up against the wall of the Carmody Arms, were waiting for that establishment to open. At no time is there ever much doing in Rudge's main thoroughfare, but the hour at which a stranger, entering it, is least likely to suffer the illusion that he has strayed into Broadway, Piccadilly, or the Rue de Rivoli is at two o'clock on a warm afternoon in July.

You will find Rudge-in-the-Vale, if you search carefully, in that pleasant section of rural England where the gray stone of Gloucestershire gives place to Worcestershire's old red brick. Quiet, in fact, almost unconscious, it nestles beside the tiny river Skirme and lets the world go by, somnolently content with its Norman church, its eleven public-houses, its Pop.—to quote the Automobile Guide—of 3,541, and its only effort in the direction of modern progress, the emporium of Chas. Bywater, Chemist.

Chas. Bywater is a live wire. He takes no afternoon siesta, but works while others sleep. Rudge as a whole is inclined after luncheon to go into the back room, put a handkerchief over its face and take things easy for a bit. But not Chas. Bywater. At the moment at which this story begins he was all bustle and activity, and had just finished selling to Colonel Meredith Wyvern a bottle of Brophy's Paramount Elixir (said to be good for gnat bites).

Having concluded his purchase, Colonel Wyvern would have preferred to leave, but Mr. Bywater was a man who liked to sweeten trade with pleasant conversation. Moreover, this was the first time the Colonel had been inside his shop since that sensational affair up at the Hall two weeks ago, and Chas. Bywater, who held the unofficial position of chief gossip monger to the village, was aching to get to the bottom of that.

With the bare outline of the story he was, of course, familiar. Rudge Hall, seat of the Carmody family for so many generations, contained in its fine old park a number of trees which had been planted somewhere about the reign of Queen Elizabeth. This meant that every now and then one of them would be found to have become a wobbly menace to the passer-by, so that experts had to be sent for to reduce it with a charge of dynamite to a harmless stump. Well, two weeks ago, it seems, they had blown up one of the Hall's Elizabethan oaks and as near as a toucher, Rudge learned, had blown up Colonel Wyvern and Mr. Carmody with it. The two friends had come walking by just as the expert set fire to the train and had had a very narrow escape.

Thus far the story was common property in the village, and had been discussed nightly in the eleven tap-rooms of its eleven public-houses. But Chas. Bywater, with his trained nose for news and that sixth sense which had so often enabled him to ferret out the story behind the story when things happen in the upper world of the nobility and gentry, could not help feeling that there was more in it than this. He decided to give his customer the opportunity of confiding in him.

"Warm day, Colonel," he observed.

"Ur," grunted Colonel Wyvern.

"Glass going up, I see."

"Ur."

"May be in for a spell of fine weather at last."

"Ur."

"Glad to see you looking so well, Colonel, after your little accident," said Chas. Bywater, coming out into the open.

It had been Colonel Wyvern's intention, for he was a man of testy habit, to enquire of Mr. Bywater why the devil he couldn't wrap a bottle of Brophy's Elixir in brown paper and put a bit of string round it without taking the whole afternoon over the task: but at these words he abandoned this project. Turning a bright mauve and allowing his luxuriant eyebrows to meet across the top of his nose, he subjected the other to a fearful glare.

"Little accident?" he said. "Little accident?"

"I was alluding——"

"Little accident!"

"I merely——"

"If by little accident," said Colonel Wyvern in a thick, throaty voice, "you mean my miraculous escape from death when that fat thug up at the Hall did his very best to murder me, I should be obliged if you would choose your expressions more carefully. Little accident! Good God!"

Few things in this world are more painful than the realization that an estrangement has occurred between two old friends who for years have jogged amiably along together through life, sharing each other's joys and sorrows and holding the same views on religion, politics, cigars, wine, and the Decadence of the Younger Generation: and Mr. Bywater's reaction, on hearing Colonel Wyvern describe Mr. Lester Carmody, of Rudge Hall, until two short weeks ago his closest crony, as a fat thug, should have been one of sober sadness. Such, however, was not the case. Rather was he filled with an unholy exultation. All along he had maintained that there was more in that Hall business than had become officially known, and he stood there with his ears flapping, waiting for details.

These followed immediately and in great profusion: and Mr. Bywater, as he drank them in, began to realize that his companion had certain solid grounds for feeling a little annoyed. For when, as Colonel Wyvern very sensibly argued, you have been a man's friend for twenty years and are walking with him in his park and hear warning shouts and look up and realize that a charge of dynamite is shortly about to go off in your immediate neighbourhood, you expect a man who is a man to be a man. You do not expect him to grab you round the waist and thrust you swiftly in between himself and the point of danger, so that, when the explosion takes place, you get the full force of it and he escapes without so much as a singed eyebrow.

"Quite," said Mr. Bywater, hitching up his ears another inch.

Colonel Wyvern continued. Whether, if in a condition to give the matter careful thought, he would have selected Chas. Bywater as a confidant, one cannot say. But he was not in such a condition. The stoppered bottle does not care whose is the hand that removes its cork—all it wants is the chance to fizz: and Colonel Wyvern resembled such a bottle. Owing to the absence from home of his daughter, Patricia, he had had no one handy to act as audience for his grievances, and for two weeks he had been suffering torments. He told Chas. Bywater all.

It was a very vivid picture that he conjured up. Mr. Bywater could see the whole thing as clearly as if he had been present in person—from the blasting gang's first horrified realization that human beings had wandered into the danger zone to the almost tenser moment when, running up to sort out the tangled heap on the ground, they had observed Colonel Wyvern rise from his seat on Mr. Carmody's face and had heard him start to tell that gentleman precisely what he thought of him. Privately, Mr. Bywater considered that Mr. Carmody had acted with extraordinary presence of mind, and had given the lie to the theory, held by certain critics, that the landed gentry of England are deficient in intelligence. But his sympathies were, of course, with the injured man. He felt that Colonel Wyvern had been hardly treated, and was quite right to be indignant about it. As to whether the other was justified in alluding to his former friend as a jelly-bellied hell-hound, that was a matter for his own conscience to decide.

"I'm suing him," concluded Colonel Wyvern, regarding an advertisement of Pringle's Pink Pills with a smouldering eye.

"Quite."

"The only thing in the world that super-fatted old Blackhander cares for is money, and I'll have his last penny out of him, if I have to take the case to the House of Lords."

"Quite," said Mr. Bywater.

"I might have been killed. It was a miracle I wasn't. Five thousand pounds is the lowest figure any conscientious jury could put the damages at. And, if there were any justice in England, they'd ship the scoundrel off to pick oakum in a prison cell."

Mr. Bywater made noncommittal noises. Both parties to this unfortunate affair were steady customers of his, and he did not wish to alienate either by taking sides. He hoped the Colonel was not going to ask him for his opinion of the rights of the case.

Colonel Wyvern did not. Having relieved himself with some six minutes of continuous speech, he seemed to have become aware that he had bestowed his confidences a little injudiciously. He coughed and changed the subject.

"Where's that stuff?" he said. "Good God! Isn't it ready yet? Why does it take you fellows three hours to tie a knot in a piece of string?"

"Quite ready, Colonel," said Chas. Bywater hastily. "Here it is. I have put a little loop for the finger, to facilitate carrying."

"Is this stuff really any good?"

"Said to be excellent, Colonel. Thank you, Colonel. Much obliged, Colonel. Good day, Colonel."

Still fermenting at the recollection of his wrongs, Colonel Wyvern strode to the door: and, pushing it open with extreme violence, left the shop.

The next moment the peace of the drowsy summer afternoon was shattered by a hideous uproar. Much of this consisted of a high, passionate barking, the remainder being contributed by the voice of a retired military man, raised in anger. Chas. Bywater blenched, and, reaching out a hand toward an upper shelf, brought down, in the order named, a bundle of lint, a bottle of arnica, and one of the half-crown (or large) size pots of Sooth-o, the recognized specific for cuts, burns, scratches, nettle stings, and dog bites. He believed in Preparedness.

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II

While Colonel Wyvern had been pouring his troubles into the twitching ear of Chas. Bywater, there had entered the High Street a young man in golf clothes and Old Rugbian tie. This was John Carroll, nephew of Mr. Carmody, of the Hall. He had walked down to the village, accompanied by his dog Emily, to buy tobacco, and his objective, therefore, was the same many-sided establishment which was supplying the Colonel with Brophy's Elixir.

For do not be deceived by that "Chemist" after Mr. Bywater's name. It is mere modesty. Some whim leads this great man to describe himself as a chemist, but in reality he goes much deeper than that. Chas. is the Marshall Field of Rudge, and deals in everything, from crystal sets to mousetraps. There are several places in the village where you can get stuff they call tobacco, but it cannot be considered in the light of pipe-joy for the discriminating smoker. To obtain something that will leave a little skin on the roof of the mouth you must go to Mr. Bywater.

John came up the High Street with slow, meditative strides, a large and muscular young man whose pleasant features betrayed at the moment an inward gloom. What with being hopelessly in love and one thing and another, his soul was in rather a bruised condition these days, and he found himself deriving from the afternoon placidity of Rudge-in-the-Vale a certain balm and consolation. He had sunk into a dreamy trance when he was abruptly aroused by the horrible noise which had so shaken Chas. Bywater.

The causes which had brought about this disturbance were simple and are easily explained. It was the custom of the dog Emily, on the occasions when John brought her to Rudge to help him buy tobacco, to yield to an uncontrollable eagerness and gallop on ahead to Mr. Bywater's shop—where, with her nose wedged against the door, she would stand, sniffing emotionally, till somebody came and opened it. She had a morbid passion for cough drops, and experience had taught her that by sitting and ogling Mr. Bywater with her liquid amber eyes she could generally secure two or three. To-day, hurrying on as usual, she had just reached the door and begun to sniff when it suddenly opened and hit her sharply on the nose. And, as she shot back with a yelp of agony, out came Colonel Wyvern carrying his bottle of Brophy.

There is an etiquette in these matters on which all right-minded dogs insist. When people trod on Emily, she expected them immediately to fuss over her, and the same procedure seemed to her to be in order when they hit her on the nose with doors. Waiting expectantly, therefore, for Colonel Wyvern to do the square thing, she was stunned to find that he apparently had no intention of even apologizing. He was brushing past without a word, and all the woman in Emily rose in revolt against such boorishness.

"Just a minute!" she said dangerously. "Just one minute, if you please. Not so fast, my good man. A word with you, if I may trespass upon your valuable time."

The Colonel, chafing beneath the weight of his wrongs, perceived that they had been added to by a beast of a hairy dog that stood and yapped at him.

"Get out!" he bellowed.

Emily became hysterical.

"Indeed?" she said shrilly. "And who do you think you are, you poor clumsy Robot? You come hitting ladies on the nose as if you were the King of England, and as if that wasn't enough...."

"Go away, sir."

"Who the devil are you calling Sir?" Emily had the Twentieth Century girl's freedom of speech and breadth of vocabulary. "It's people like you that cause all this modern unrest and industrial strife. I know your sort well. Robbers and oppressors. And let me tell you another thing...."

At this point the Colonel very injudiciously aimed a kick at Emily.

It was not much of a kick, and it came nowhere near her, but it sufficed. Realizing the futility of words, Emily decided on action. And it was just as she had got a preliminary grip on the Colonel's left trouser leg that John arrived at the Front.

"Emily!!!" roared John, shocked to the core of his being.

He had excellent lungs, and he used them to the last ounce of their power. A young man who sees the father of the girl he loves being swallowed alive by a Welsh terrier does not spare his voice. The word came out of him like the note of the Last Trump, and Colonel Wyvern, leaping spasmodically, dropped his bottle of Brophy. It fell on the pavement and exploded, and Emily, who could do her bit in a rough-and-tumble but barred bombs, tucked her tail between her legs and vanished. A faint, sleepy cheering from outside the Carmody Arms announced that she had passed that home from home and was going well.

John continued to be agitated. You would not have supposed, to look at Colonel Wyvern, that he could have had an attractive daughter, but such was the case, and John's manner was as concerned and ingratiating as that of most young men in the presence of the fathers of attractive daughters.

"I'm so sorry, Colonel. I do hope you're not hurt, Colonel."

The injured man, maintaining an icy silence, raked him with an eye before which sergeant-majors had once drooped like withered roses, and walked into the shop. The anxious face of Chas. Bywater loomed up over the counter. John hovered in the background. "I want another bottle of that stuff," said the Colonel shortly.

"I'm awfully sorry," said John.

"I dropped the other outside. I was attacked by a savage dog."

"I'm frightfully sorry."

"People ought not to have these pests running loose and not under proper control."

"I'm fearfully sorry."

"A menace to the community and a nuisance to everybody," said Colonel Wyvern.

"Quite," said Mr. Bywater.

Conversation languished. Chas. Bywater, realizing that this was no moment for lingering lovingly over brown paper and toying dreamily with string, lowered the record for wrapping a bottle of Brophy's Paramount Elixir by such a margin that he set up a mark for other chemists to shoot at for all time. Colonel Wyvern snatched it and stalked out, and John, who had opened the door for him and had not been thanked, tottered back to the counter and in a low voice expressed a wish for two ounces of the Special Mixture.

"Quite," said Mr. Bywater. "In one moment, Mr. John."

With the passing of Colonel Wyvern a cloud seemed to have rolled away from the chemist's world. He was his old, charmingly chatty self again. He gave John his tobacco, and, detaining him by the simple means of not handing over his change, surrendered himself to the joys of conversation.

"The Colonel appears a little upset, sir."

"Have you got my change?" said John.

"It seems to me he hasn't been the same man since that unfortunate episode up at the Hall. Not at all the same sunny gentleman."

"Have you got my change?"

"A very unfortunate episode, that," sighed Mr. Bywater.

"My change?"

"I could see, the moment he walked in here, that he was not himself. Shaken. Something in the way he looked at one. I said to myself 'The Colonel's shaken!'"

John, who had had such recent experience of the way Colonel Wyvern looked at one, agreed. He then asked if he might have his change.

"No doubt he misses Miss Wyvern," said Chas. Bywater, ignoring the request with an indulgent smile. "When a man's had a shock like the Colonel's had—when he's shaken, if you understand what I mean—he likes to have his loved ones around him. Stands to reason," said Mr. Bywater.

John had been anxious to leave, but he was so constituted that he could not tear himself away from anyone who had touched on the subject of Patricia Wyvern. He edged a little nearer the counter.

"Well, she'll be home again soon," said Chas. Bywater. "To-morrow, I understand."

A powerful current of electricity seemed to pass itself through John's body. Pat Wyvern had been away so long that he had fallen into a sort of dull apathy in which he wondered sometimes if he would ever see her again.

"What!"

"Yes, sir. She returned from France yesterday. She had a good crossing. She is at the Lincoln Hotel, Curzon Street, London. She thinks of taking the three-o'clock train to-morrow. She is in excellent health."

It did not occur to John to question the accuracy of the other's information, nor to be surprised at its minuteness of detail. Mr. Bywater, he was aware, had a daughter in the post office.

"To-morrow!" he gasped.

"Yes, sir. To-morrow."

"Give me my change," said John.

He yearned to be off. He wanted air and space in which he could ponder over this wonderful news.

"No doubt," said Mr. Bywater, "she...."

"Give me my change," said John.

Chas. Bywater, happening to catch his eye, did so.

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III

To reach Rudge Hall from the door of Chas. Bywater's shop, you go up the High Street, turn sharp to the left down River Lane, cross the stone bridge that spans the slow-flowing Skirme as it potters past on its way to join the Severn, carry on along the road till you come to the gates of Colonel Wyvern's nice little house, and then climb a stile and take to the fields. And presently you are in the park and can see through the trees the tall chimneys and red walls of the ancient home of the Carmodys.

The scene, when they are not touching off dynamite there under the noses of retired military officers, is one of quiet peace. For John it had always held a peculiar magic. In the fourteen years which had passed since the Wyverns had first come to settle in Rudge Pat had contrived, so far as he was concerned, to impress her personality ineffaceably on the landscape. Almost every inch of it was in some way associated with her. Stumps on which she had sat and swung her brown-stockinged legs; trees beneath which she had taken shelter with him from summer storms; gates on which she had climbed, fields across which she had raced, and thorny bushes into which she had urged him to penetrate in search of birds' eggs—they met his eye on every side. The very air seemed to be alive with her laughter. And not even the recollection that that laughter had generally been directed at himself was able to diminish for John the glamour of this mile of Fairyland.

Half-way across the park, Emily rejoined him with a defensive, Where-on-earth-did-you-disappear-to manner, and they moved on in company till they rounded the corner of the house and came to the stable yard. John had a couple of rooms over the stables, and thither he made his way, leaving Emily to fuss round Bolt, the chauffeur, who was washing the Dex-Mayo.

Arrived in his sitting room, he sank into a deck chair and filled his pipe with Mr. Bywater's Special Mixture. Then, putting his feet up on the table, he stared hard and earnestly at the photograph of Pat which stood on the mantelpiece.

It was a pretty face that he was looking at—one whose charm not even a fashionable modern photographer, of the type that prefers to depict his sitters in a gray fog with most of their features hidden from view, could altogether obscure. In the eyes, a little slanting, there was a Puck-like look, and the curving lips hinted demurely at amusing secrets. The nose had that appealing, yet provocative, air which slight tip-tiltedness gives. It seemed to challenge, and at the same time to withdraw.

This was the latest of the Pat photographs, and she had given it to him three months ago, just before she left to go and stay with friends at Le Touquet. And now she was coming home....

John Carroll was one of those solid persons who do not waver in their loyalties. He had always been in love with Pat, and he always would be, though he would have had to admit that she gave him very little encouragement. There had been a period when, he being fifteen and she ten, Pat had lavished on him all the worship of a small girl for a big boy who can wiggle his ears and is not afraid of cows. But since then her attitude had changed. Her manner toward him nowadays alternated between that of a nurse toward a child who is not quite right in the head and that of the owner of a clumsy but rather likable dog.

Nevertheless, he loved her. And she was coming home....

John sat up suddenly. He was a slow thinker, and only now did it occur to him just what the position of affairs would be when she did come home. With this infernal feud going on between his uncle Lester and the old Colonel she would probably look on him as in the enemy's camp and refuse to see or speak to him.

The thought chilled him to the marrow. Something, he felt, must be done, and swiftly. And, with a flash of inspiration of a kind that rarely came to him, he saw what that something was. He must go up to London this afternoon, tell her the facts, and throw himself on her clemency. If he could convince her that he was whole-heartedly pro-Colonel and regarded his uncle Lester as the logical successor to Doctor Crippen and the Brides-in-the-Bath murderer, things might straighten themselves.

Once the brain gets working, there is no knowing where it will stop. The very next instant there had come to John Carroll a thought so new and breathtaking that he uttered an audible gasp.

Why shouldn't he ask Pat to marry him?

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IV

John sat tingling from head to foot. The scales seemed to have fallen from his eyes, and he saw clearly where he might quite conceivably have been making a grave blunder all these years. Deeply as he had always loved Pat, he had never—now he came to think of it—told her so. And in this sort of situation the spoken word is quite apt to make all the difference.

Perhaps that was why she laughed at him so frequently—because she was entertained by the spectacle of a man, obviously in love with her, refraining year after year from making any verbal comment on the state of his emotions.

Resolution poured over John in a strengthening flood. He looked at his watch. It was nearly three. If he got the two-seater and started at once, he could be in London by seven, in nice time to take her to dinner somewhere. He hurried down the stairs and out into the stable yard.

"Shove that car out of the way, Bolt," said John, eluding Emily, who, wet to the last hair, was endeavouring to climb up him. "I want to get the two-seater."

"Two-seater, sir?"

"Yes. I'm going to London."

"It's not there, Mr. John," said the chauffeur, with the gloomy satisfaction which he usually reserved for telling his employer that the battery had run down.

"Not there? What do you mean?"

"Mr. Hugo took it, sir, an hour ago. He told me he was going over to see Mr. Carmody at Healthward Ho. Said he had important business and knew you wouldn't object."

The stable yard reeled before John. Not for the first time in his life, he cursed his light-hearted cousin. "Knew you wouldn't object!" It was just the fat-headed sort of thing Hugo would have said.

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CHAPTER II

I

There is something about those repellent words, Healthward Ho, that has a familiar ring. You feel that you have heard them before. And then you remember. They have figured in letters to the daily papers from time to time.

THE STRAIN OF MODERN LIFE

DO WE EAT TOO MUCH?

SHOULD THE CHAPERONE BE RESTORED?

These letters and many others, though bearing a pleasing variety of signatures, proceeded in fact from a single gifted pen—that of Doctor Twist himself—and among that class of the public which consistently does itself too well when the gong goes and yet is never wholly free from wistful aspirations toward a better liver they had created a scattered but quite satisfactory interest in Healthward Ho. Clients had enrolled themselves on the doctor's books, and now, on this summer afternoon, he was enabled to look down from his study window at a group of no fewer than eleven of them, skipping with skipping ropes under the eye of his able and conscientious assistant, ex-Sergeant-Major Flannery.

Sherlock Holmes—and even, on one of his bright days, Doctor Watson—could have told at a glance which of those muffled figures was Mr. Flannery. He was the only one who went in instead of out at the waist-line. All the others were well up in the class of man whom Julius Cæsar once expressed a desire to have about him. And pre-eminent among them in stoutness, dampness, and general misery was Mr. Lester Carmody, of Rudge Hall.

The fact that Mr. Carmody was by several degrees the most unhappy-looking member of this little band of martyrs was due to his distress, unlike that of his fellow-sufferers, being mental as well as physical. He was allowing his mind, for the hundredth time, to dwell on the paralyzing cost of these hygienic proceedings.

Thirty guineas a week, thought Mr. Carmody as he bounded up and down. Four pound ten a day.... Three shillings and ninepence an hour.... Three solid farthings a minute.... To meditate on these figures was like turning a sword in his heart. For Lester Carmody loved money as he loved nothing else in this world except a good dinner.

Doctor Twist turned from the window. A maid had appeared bearing a card on a salver.

"Show him in," said Doctor Twist, having examined this. And presently there entered a lissom young man in a gray flannel suit.

"Doctor Twist?"

"Yes, sir."

The newcomer seemed a little surprised. It was as if he had been expecting something rather more impressive, and was wondering why, if the proprietor of Healthward Ho had the ability which he claimed, to make New Men for Old, he had not taken the opportunity of effecting some alterations in himself. For Doctor Twist was a small man, and weedy. He had a snub nose and an expression of furtive slyness. And he wore a waxed moustache.

However, all this was not the visitor's business. If a man wishes to wax his moustache, it is a matter between himself and his God.

"My name's Carmody," he said. "Hugo Carmody."

"Yes. I got your card."

"Could I have a word with my uncle?"

"Sure, if you don't mind waiting a minute. Right now," explained Doctor Twist, with a gesture toward the window, "he's occupied."

Hugo moved to the window, looked out, and started violently.

"Great Scott!" he exclaimed.

He gaped down at the group below. Mr. Carmody and colleagues had now discarded the skipping ropes and were performing some unpleasant-looking bending and stretching exercises, holding their hands above their heads and swinging painfully from what one may loosely term their waists. It was a spectacle well calculated to astonish any nephew.

"How long has he got to go on like that?" asked Hugo, awed.

Doctor Twist looked at his watch.

"They'll be quitting soon now. Then a cold shower and rub down, and they'll be through till lunch."

"Cold shower?"

"Yes."

"You mean to say you make my uncle Lester take cold shower baths?"

"That's right."

"Good God!"

A look of respect came into Hugo's face as he gazed upon this master of men. Anybody who, in addition to making him tie himself in knots under a blazing sun, could lure Uncle Lester within ten yards of a cold shower bath was entitled to credit.

"I suppose after all this," he said, "they do themselves pretty well at lunch?"

"They have a lean mutton chop apiece, with green vegetables and dry toast."

"Is that all?"

"That's all."

"And to drink?"

"Just water."

"Followed, of course, by a spot of port?"

"No, sir."

"No port?"

"Certainly not."

"You mean—literally—no port?"

"Not a drop. If your old man had gone easier on the port, he'd not have needed to come to Healthward Ho."

"I say," said Hugo, "did you invent that name?"

"Sure. Why?"

"Oh, I don't know. I just thought I'd ask."

"Say, while I think of it," said Doctor Twist, "have you any cigarettes?"

"Oh, rather." Hugo produced a bulging case. "Turkish this side, Virginian that."

"Not for me. I was only going to say that when you meet your uncle just bear in mind he isn't allowed tobacco."

"Not allowed...? You mean to say you tie Uncle Lester into a lover's knot, shoot him under a cold shower, push a lean chop into him accompanied by water, and then don't even let the poor old devil get his lips around a single gasper?"

"That's right."

"Well, all I can say is," said Hugo, "it's no life for a refined Caucasian."

Dazed by the information he had received, he began to potter aimlessly about the room. He was not particularly fond of his uncle. Mr. Carmody Senior's practice of giving him no allowance and keeping him imprisoned all the year round at Rudge would alone have been enough to check anything in the nature of tenderness, but he did not think he deserved quite all that seemed to be coming to him at Healthward Ho.

He mused upon his uncle. A complex character. A man with Lester Carmody's loathing for expenditure ought by rights to have been a simple liver, existing off hot milk and triturated sawdust like an American millionaire. That Fate should have given him, together with his prudence in money matters, a recklessness as regarded the pleasures of the table seemed ironic.

"I see they've quit," said Doctor Twist, with a glance out of the window. "If you want to have a word with your uncle you could do it now. No bad news, I hope?"

"If there is I'm the one that's going to get it. Between you and me," said Hugo, who had no secrets from his fellow men, "I've come to try to touch him for a bit of money."

"Is that so?" said Doctor Twist, interested. Anything to do with money always interested the well-known American physician and physical culture expert.

"Yes," said Hugo. "Five hundred quid, to be exact."

He spoke a little despondently, for, having arrived at the window again, he was in a position now to take a good look at his uncle. And so forbidding had bodily toil and mental disturbance rendered the latter's expression that he found the fresh young hopes with which he had started out on this expedition rapidly ebbing away. If Mr. Carmody were to burst—and he looked as if he might do so at any moment—he, Hugo, being his nearest of kin, would inherit, but, failing that, there seemed to be no cash in sight whatever.

"Though when I say 'touch'," he went on, "I don't mean quite that. The stuff is really mine. My father left me a few thousand, you see, but most injudiciously made Uncle Lester my trustee, and I'm not allowed to get at the capital without the old blighter's consent. And now a pal of mine in London has written offering me a half share in a new night club which he's starting if I will put up five hundred pounds."

"I see."

"And what I ask myself," said Hugo, "is will Uncle Lester part? That's what I ask myself. I can't say I'm betting on it."

"From what I have seen of Mr. Carmody, I shouldn't say that parting was the thing he does best."

"He's got absolutely no gift for it whatever," said Hugo gloomily.

"Well, I wish you luck," said Doctor Twist. "But don't you try to bribe him with cigarettes."

"Do what?"

"Bribe him with cigarettes. After they have been taking the treatment for a while, most of these birds would give their soul for a coffin nail."

Hugo started. He had not thought of this; but, now that it had been called to his attention, he saw that it was most certainly an idea.

"And don't keep him standing around longer than you can help. He ought to get under that shower as soon as possible."

"I suppose I couldn't tell him that owing to my pleading and persuasion you've consented to let him off a cold shower to-day?"

"No, sir."

"It would help," urged Hugo. "It might just sway the issue, as it were."

"Sorry. He must have his shower. When a man's been exercising and has got himself into a perfect lather of sweat...."

"Keep it clean," said Hugo coldly. "There is no need to stress the physical side. Oh, very well, then, I suppose I shall have to trust to tact and charm of manner. But I wish to goodness I hadn't got to spring business matters on him on top of what seems to have been a slightly hectic morning."

He shot his cuffs, pulled down his waistcoat, and walked with a resolute step out of the room. He was about to try to get into the ribs of a man who for a lifetime had been saving up to be a miser and who, even apart from this trait in his character, held the subversive view that the less money young men had the better for them. Hugo was a gay optimist, cheerful of soul and a mighty singer in the bath tub, but he could not feel very sanguine. However, the Carmodys were a bulldog breed. He decided to have a pop at it.

---

II

Theoretically, no doubt, the process of exercising flaccid muscles, opening hermetically sealed pores, and stirring up a liver which had long supposed itself off the active list ought to engender in a man a jolly sprightliness. In practice, however, this is not always so. That Lester Carmody was in no radiant mood was shown at once by the expression on his face as he turned in response to Hugo's yodel from the rear. In spite of all that Healthward Ho had been doing to Mr. Carmody this last ten days, it was plain that he had not yet got that Kruschen feeling.

Nor, at the discovery that a nephew whom he had supposed to be twenty miles away was standing at his elbow, did anything in the nature of sudden joy help to fill him with sweetness and light.

"How the devil did you get here?" were his opening words of welcome. His scarlet face vanished for an instant into the folds of a large handkerchief; then reappeared, wearing a look of acute concern. "You didn't," he quavered, "come in the Dex-Mayo?"

A thought to shake the sturdiest man. It was twenty miles from Rudge Hall to Healthward Ho, and twenty miles back again from Healthward Ho to Rudge Hall. The Dex-Mayo, that voracious car, consumed a gallon of petrol for every ten miles it covered. And for a gallon of petrol they extorted from you nowadays the hideous sum of one shilling and sixpence halfpenny. Forty miles, accordingly, meant—not including oil, wear and tear of engines, and depreciation of tires—a loss to his purse of over six shillings—a heavy price to pay for the society of a nephew whom he had disliked since boyhood.

"No, no," said Hugo hastily. "I borrowed John's two-seater,"

"Oh," said Mr. Carmody, relieved.

There was a pause, employed by Mr. Carmody in puffing; by Hugo in trying to think of something to say that would be soothing, tactful, ingratiating, and calculated to bring home the bacon. He turned over in his mind one or two conversational gambits.

("Well, Uncle, you look very rosy."

Not quite right.

"I say, Uncle what ho the School-Girl Complexion?"

Absolutely no! The wrong tone altogether.

Ah! That was more like it. "Fit." Yes, that was the word.)

"You look very fit, Uncle," said Hugo.

Mr. Carmody's reply to this was to make a noise like a buffalo pulling its foot out of a swamp. It might have been intended to be genial, or it might not. Hugo could not tell. However, he was a reasonable young man, and he quite understood that it would be foolish to expect the milk of human kindness instantly to come gushing like a geyser out of a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound uncle who had just been doing bending and stretching exercises. He must be patient and suave—the Sympathetic Nephew.

"I expect it's been pretty tough going, though," he proceeded. "I mean to say, all these exercises and cold showers and lean chops and so forth. Terribly trying. Very upsetting. A great ordeal. I think it's wonderful the way you've stuck it out. Simply wonderful. It's Character that does it. That's what it is. Character. Many men would have chucked the whole thing up in the first two days."

"So would I," said Mr. Carmody, "only that damned doctor made me give him a cheque in advance for the whole course."

Hugo felt damped. He had had some good things to say about Character, and it seemed little use producing them now.

"Well, anyway, you look very fit. Very fit indeed. Frightfully fit. Remarkably fit. Extraordinarily fit." He paused. This was getting him nowhere. He decided to leap straight to the point at issue. To put his fortune to the test, to win or lose it all. "I say, Uncle Lester, what I really came about this afternoon was a matter of business."

"Indeed? I supposed you had come merely to babble. What business?"

"You know a friend of mine named Fish?"

"I do not know a friend of yours named Fish."

"Well, he's a friend of mine. His name's Fish. Ronnie Fish."

"What about him?"

"He's starting a new night club."

"I don't care," said Mr. Carmody, who did not.

"It's just off Bond Street, in the heart of London's pleasure-seeking area. He's calling it the Hot Spot."

The only comment Mr. Carmody vouchsafed on this piece of information was a noise like another buffalo. His face was beginning to lose its vermilion tinge, and it seemed possible that in a few moments he might come off the boil.

"I had a letter from him this morning. He says he will give me a half share if I put up five hundred quid."

"Then you won't get a half share," predicted Mr. Carmody.

"But I've got five hundred. I mean to say, you're holding a lot more than that in trust for me."

"Holding," said Mr. Carmody, "is the right word."

"But surely you'll let me have this quite trivial sum for a really excellent business venture that simply can't fail? Ronnie knows all about night clubs. He's practically lived in them since he came down from Cambridge."

"I shall not give you a penny. Have you no conception of the duties of a trustee? Trust money has to be invested in gilt-edged securities."

"You'll never find a gilter-edged security than a night club run by Ronnie Fish."

"If you have finished this nonsense I will go and take my shower bath."

"Well, look here, Uncle, may I invite Ronnie to Rudge, so that you can have a talk with him?"

"You may not. I have no desire to talk with him."

"You'd like Ronnie. He has an aunt in the looney-bin."

"Do you consider that a recommendation?"

"No, I just mentioned it."

"Well, I refuse to have him at Rudge."

"But listen, Uncle. The vicar will be round any day now to get me to perform at the village concert. If Ronnie were on the spot, he and I could do the Quarrel Scene from Julius Cæsar and really give the customers something for their money."

Even this added inducement did not soften Mr. Carmody.

"I will not invite your friends to Rudge."

"Right ho," said Hugo, a game loser. He was disappointed, but not surprised. All along he had felt that that Hot Spot business was merely a Utopian dream. There are some men who are temperamentally incapable of parting with five hundred pounds, and his uncle Lester was one of them. But in the matter of a smaller sum it might be that he would prove more pliable, and of this smaller sum Hugo had urgent need. "Well, then, putting that aside," he said, "there's another thing I'd like to chat about for a moment, if you don't mind."

"I do," said Mr. Carmody.

"There's a big fight on to-night at the Albert Hall. Eustace Rodd and Cyril Warburton are going twenty rounds for the welter-weight championship. Have you ever noticed," said Hugo, touching on a matter to which he had given some thought, "a rather odd thing about boxers these days? A few years ago you never heard of one that wasn't Beefy This or Porky That or Young Cat's-meat or something. But now they're all Claudes and Harolds and Cuthberts. And when you consider that the heavyweight champion of the world is actually named Eugene, it makes you think a bit. However, be that as it may, these two birds are going twenty rounds to-night, and there you are."

"What," inquired Mr. Carmody, "is all this drivel?"

He eyed his young relative balefully. In an association that had lasted many years, he had found Hugo consistently irritating to his nervous system, and he was finding him now rather more trying than usual.

"I only meant to point out that Ronnie Fish has sent me a ticket, and I thought that, if you were to spring a tenner for the necessary incidental expenses—bed, breakfast, and so on ... well, there I would be, don't you know."

"You mean you wish to go to London to see a boxing contest?"

"That's it."

"Well, you're not going. You know I have expressly forbidden you to visit London. The last time I was weak enough to allow you to go there, what happened? You spent the night in a police station."

"Yes, but that was Boat-Race Night."

"And I had to pay five pounds for your fine."

Hugo dismissed the past with a gesture.

"The whole thing," he said, "was an unfortunate misunderstanding, and, if you ask me, the verdict of posterity will be that the policeman was far more to blame than I was. They're letting a bad type of men into the force nowadays. I've noticed it on several occasions. Besides, it won't happen again."

"You are right. It will not."

"On second thoughts, then, you will spring that tenner?"

"On first, second, third, and fourth thoughts I will do nothing of the kind."

"But, Uncle, do you realize what it would mean if you did?"

"The interpretation I would put upon it is that I was suffering from senile decay."

"What it would mean is that I should feel you trusted me, Uncle Lester, that you had faith in me. There's nothing so dangerous as a want of trust. Ask anybody. It saps a young man's character."

"Let it," said Mr. Carmody callously.

"If I went to London, I could see Ronnie Fish and explain all the circumstances about my not being able to go into that Hot Spot thing with him."

"You can do that by letter."

"It's so hard to put things properly in a letter."

"Then put them improperly," said Mr. Carmody. "Once and for all, you are not going to London."

He had started to turn away as the only means possible of concluding this interview, when he stopped, spellbound. For Hugo, as was his habit when matters had become difficult and required careful thought, was pulling out of his pocket a cigarette case.

"Goosh!" said Mr. Carmody, or something that sounded like that.

He made an involuntary motion with his hand, as a starving man will make toward bread: and Hugo, with a strong rush of emotion, realized that the happy ending had been achieved and that at the eleventh hour matters could at last be put on a satisfactory business basis.

"Turkish this side, Virginian that," he said. "You can have the lot for ten quid."

"Say, I think you'd best be getting along and taking your shower, Mr. Carmody," said the voice of Doctor Twist, who had come up unobserved and was standing at his elbow.

The proprietor of Healthward Ho had a rather unpleasant voice, but never had it seemed so unpleasant to Mr. Carmody as it did at that moment. Parsimonious though he was, he would have given much for the privilege of heaving a brick at Doctor Twist. For at the very instant of this interruption he had conceived the Machiavellian idea of knocking the cigarette case out of Hugo's hand and grabbing what he could from the débris: and now this scheme must be abandoned.

With a snort which came from the very depths of an overwrought soul, Lester Carmody turned and shuffled off toward the house.

"Say, you shouldn't have done that," said Doctor Twist, waggling a reproachful head at Hugo. "No, sir, you shouldn't have done that. Not right to tantalize the poor fellow."

Hugo's mind seldom ran on parallel lines with that of his uncle, but it was animated now by the identical thought which only a short while back Mr. Carmody had so wistfully entertained. He, too, was feeling that what Doctor Twist needed was a brick thrown at him. When he was able to speak, however, he did not mention this, but kept the conversation on a pacific and businesslike note.

"I say," he said, "you couldn't lend me a tenner, could you?"

"I could not," agreed Doctor Twist.

In Hugo's mind the inscrutable problem of why an all-wise Creator should have inflicted a man like this on the world deepened.

"Well, I'll be pushing along, then," he said moodily.

"Going already?"

"Yes, I am."

"I hope," said Doctor Twist, as he escorted his young guest to his car, "you aren't sore at me for calling you down about those student's lamps. You see, maybe your uncle was hoping you would slip him one, and the disappointment will have made him kind of mad. And part of the system here is to have the patients think tranquil thoughts."

"Think what?"

"Tranquil, beautiful thoughts. You see, if your mind's all right, your body's all right. That's the way I look at it."

Hugo settled himself at the wheel.

"Let's get this clear," he said. "You expect my uncle Lester to think beautiful thoughts?"

"All the time."

"Even under a cold shower?"

"Yes, sir."

"God bless you!" said Hugo.

He stepped on the self-starter, and urged the two-seater pensively down the drive. He was glad when the shrubberies hid him from the view of Doctor Twist, for one wanted to forget a fellow like that as soon as possible. A moment later, he was still gladder: for, as he turned the first corner, there popped out suddenly from a rhododendron bush a stout man with a red and streaming face. Lester Carmody had had to hurry, and he was not used to running.

"Woof!" he ejaculated, barring the fairway.

Relief flooded over Hugo. The marts of trade had not been closed after all.

"Give me those cigarettes!" panted Mr. Carmody.

For an instant Hugo toyed with the idea of creating a rising market. But he was no profiteer. Hugo Carmody, the Square Dealer.

"Ten quid," he said, "and they're yours."

Agony twisted Mr. Carmody's glowing features.

"Five," he urged.

"Ten," said Hugo.

"Eight."

"Ten."

Mr. Carmody made the great decision.

"Very well. Give me them. Quick."

"Turkish this side, Virginian that," said Hugo.

The rhododendron bush quivered once more from the passage of a heavy body: birds in the neighbouring trees began to sing again their anthems of joy: and Hugo, in his trousers pocket two crackling five-pound notes, was bowling off along the highway.

Even Doctor Twist could have found nothing to cavil at in the beauty of the thoughts he was thinking. He carolled like a linnet in the springtime.

---

CHAPTER III

"Yes, sir," Hugo Carmody was assuring a listening world as he turned the two-seater in at the entrance of the stable yard of Rudge Hall some thirty minutes later, "that's my baby. No, sir, don't mean maybe. Yes, sir, that's my baby now. And, by the way, by the way...."

"Blast you!" said his cousin John, appearing from nowhere. "Get out of that car."

"Hullo, John," said Hugo. "So there you are, John. I say, John, I've just been paying a call on the head of the family over at Healthward Ho. Why they don't run excursion trains of sightseers there is more than I can understand. It's worth seeing, believe me. Large, fat men doing bending and stretching exercises. Tons of humanity leaping about with skipping ropes. Never a dull moment from start to finish, and all clean, wholesome fun, mark you, without a taint of vulgarity or suggestiveness. Pack some sandwiches and bring the kiddies. And let me tell you the best thing of all, John...."

"I can't stop to listen. You've made me late already."

"Late for what?"

"I'm going to London."

"You are?" said Hugo, with a smile at the happy coincidence. "So am I. You can give me a lift."

"I won't."

"I am certainly not going to run behind."

"You're not going to London."

"You bet I'm going to London."

"Well, go by train, then."

"And break into hard-won cash, every penny of which will be needed for the big time in the metropolis? A pretty story!"

"Well, anyway, you aren't coming with me."

"Why not?"

"I don't want you."

"John," said Hugo, "there is more in this than meets the eye. You can't deceive me. You are going to London for a purpose. What purpose?"

"If you really want to know, I'm going to see Pat."

"What on earth for? She'll be here to-morrow. I looked in at Chas. Bywater's this morning for some cigarettes—and, gosh, how lucky it was I did!—by the way, he's putting them down to you—and he told me she's arriving by the three-o'clock train."

"I know. Well, I happen to want to see her very particularly to-night."

Hugo eyed his cousin narrowly. He was marshalling the facts and drawing conclusions.

"John," he said, "this can mean but one thing. You are driving a hundred miles in a shaky car—that left front tire wants a spot of air. I should look to it before you start, if I were you—to see a girl whom you could see to-morrow in any case by the simple process of meeting the three-o'clock train. Your state of mind is such that you prefer—actually prefer—not to have my company. And, as I look at you, I note that you are blushing prettily. I see it all. You've at last decided to propose to Pat. Am I right or wrong?"

John drew a deep breath. He was not one of those men who derive pleasure from parading their inmost feelings and discussing with others the secrets of their hearts. Hugo, in a similar situation, would have advertised his love like the hero of a musical comedy; he would have made the round of his friends, confiding in them; and, when the supply of friends had given out, would have buttonholed the gardener. But John was different. To hear his aspirations put into bald words like this made him feel as if he were being divested of most of his more important garments in a crowded thoroughfare.

"Well, that settles it," said Hugo briskly. "Such being the case, of course you must take me along. I will put in a good word for you. Pave the way."

"Listen," said John, finding speech. "If you dare to come within twenty miles of us...."

"It would be wiser. You know what you're like. Heart of gold but no conversation. Try to tackle this on your own and you'll bungle it."

"You keep out of this," said John, speaking in a low, husky voice that suggested the urgent need of one of those throat lozenges purveyed by Chas. Bywater and so esteemed by the dog Emily. "You keep right out of this."

Hugo shrugged his shoulders.

"Just as you please. Hugo Carmody is the last man," he said, a little stiffly, "to thrust his assistance on those who do not require same. But a word from me would make all the difference, and you know it. Rightly or wrongly, Pat has always looked up to me, regarded me as a wise elder brother, and, putting it in a nutshell, hung upon my lips. I could start you off right. However, since you're so blasted independent, carry on, only bear this in mind—when it's all over and you are shedding scalding tears of remorse and thinking of what might have been, don't come yowling to me for sympathy, because there won't be any."

John went upstairs and packed his bag. He packed well and thoroughly. This done, he charged down the stairs, and perceived with annoyance that Hugo was still inflicting the stable yard with his beastly presence.

But Hugo was not there to make jarring conversation. He was present now, it appeared, solely in the capacity of Good Angel.

"I've fixed up that tire," said Hugo, "and filled the tank and put in a drop of oil and passed an eye over the machinery in general. She ought to run nicely now."

John melted. His mood had softened, and he was in a fitter frame of mind to remember that he had always been fond of his cousin.

"Thanks. Very good of you. Well, good-bye."

"Good-bye," said Hugo. "And heaven speed your wooing, boy."

Freed from the restrictions placed upon a light two-seater by the ruts and hillocks of country lanes, John celebrated his arrival on the broad main road that led to London by placing a large foot on the accelerator and keeping it there. He was behind time, and he intended to test a belief which he had long held, that a Widgeon Seven can, if pressed, do fifty. To the scenery, singularly beautiful in this part of England, he paid no attention. Automatically avoiding wagons by an inch and dreamily putting thoughts of the hereafter into the startled minds of dogs and chickens, he was out of Worcestershire and into Gloucestershire almost before he had really settled in his seat. It was only when the long wall that fringes Blenheim Park came into view that it was borne in upon him that he would be reaching Oxford in a few minutes and could stop for a well-earned cup of tea. He noted with satisfaction that he was nicely ahead of the clock.

He drifted past the Martyrs' Memorial, and, picking his way through the traffic, drew up at the door of the Clarendon. He alighted stiffly, and stretched himself. And as he did so, something caught his attention out of the corner of his eye. It was his cousin Hugo, climbing down from the dickey.

"A very nice run," said Hugo with satisfaction. "I should say we made pretty good time."

He radiated kindliness and satisfaction with all created things. That John was looking at him in rather a peculiar way, and apparently trying to say something, he did not seem to notice.

"A little refreshment would be delightful," he observed. "Dusty work, sitting in dickeys. By the way, I got on to Pat on the 'phone before we left, and there's no need to hurry. She's dining out and going to a theatre to-night."

"What!" cried John, in agony.

"It's all right. Don't get the wind up. She's meeting us at eleven-fifteen at the Mustard Spoon. I'll come on there from the fight and we'll have a nice home evening. I'm still a member, so I'll sign you in. And, what's more, if all goes well at the Albert Hall and Cyril Warburton is half the man I think he is and I can get some sporting stranger to bet the other way at reasonable odds, I'll pay the bill."

"You're very kind!"

"I try to be, John," said Hugo modestly. "I try to be. I don't think we ought to leave it all to the Boy Scouts."

---