Sam in the Suburbs

§ 4

It might, of course, be possible to lay no stress upon this occurrence—to ignore it and pass. In kissing, as kissing, there is nothing fundamentally reprehensible. The early Christians used to do it all the time to everyone they met. But the historian is too conscious of the raised eyebrows of his audience to attempt this attitude. Some explanation, he realises, some argument to show why Sam is not to be condemned out of hand, is imperative.

In these circumstances the embarrassing nature of the historian’s position is readily intelligible. Only a short while back he was inviting the customers to shudder with loathing at the spectacle of Claude Bates kissing this girl, and now, all in a flash, he finds himself faced with the task of endeavouring to palliate the behaviour of Sam Shotter in doing the very same thing.

Well, he must do the best he can. Let us marshal the facts.

In the first place, there stood on Mr. Wrenn’s desk, as on every other editorial desk in Tilbury House, a large framed card bearing the words, Do it Now! Who shall say whether this may not subconsciously have influenced the young man?

In the second place, when you have been carrying about a girl’s photograph in your breast pocket for four months and brooding over it several times a day with a beating heart, it is difficult for you to regard that girl, when you eventually meet her, as a perfect stranger.

And in the third place—and here we approach the very root of the matter—there was the smile.

Girls as pretty as Kay Derrick, especially if their faces are by nature a little grave, should be extremely careful how and when they smile. There was that about Kay’s face when in repose which, even when she was merely wondering what trimming to put on a hat, gave strangers the impression that here was a pure white soul musing wistfully on life’s sadness. The consequence was that when she smiled it was as if the sun had suddenly shone out through clouds. Her smile seemed to make the world on the instant a sweeter and a better place. Policemen, when she flashed it on them after being told the way somewhere, became of a sudden gayer, happier policemen and sang as they directed the traffic. Beggars, receiving it as a supplement to a small donation, perked up like magic and started to bite the ears of the passers-by with an abandon that made all the difference. And when they saw that smile, even babies in their perambulators stopped looking like peevish poached eggs and became almost human.

And it was this smile that she had bestowed upon Sam. And Sam, it will be remembered, had been waiting months and months for it.

We have made out, we fancy, a pretty good case for Samuel Shotter; and it was a pity that some kindly person was not present in Mr. Wrenn’s office at that moment to place these arguments before Kay. For not one of them occurred to her independently. She could see no excuse whatever for Sam’s conduct. She had wrenched herself from his grasp and moved to the other side of the desk, and across this she now regarded him with a blazing eye. Her fists were clenched and she was breathing quickly. She had the air of a girl who would have given a year’s pocket money for a copy of the Rev. Aubrey Jerningham’s Is There a Hell?

Gone was that delightful spirit of comradeship which, when he had been telling of his boyish dealings with Claude, had made him seem almost a kindred soul. Gone was that soft sensation of gratitude which had come to her on his assurance that he had not risked spoiling that repulsive youth by sparing the rod. All she felt now was that her first impressions of this young man had been right, and that she had been mauled and insulted by a black-hearted bounder whose very clothes should have warned her of his innate despicableness. It seems almost incredible that anyone should think such a thing of anybody, but it is a fact that in that instant Kay Derrick looked upon Sam as something even lower in the graduated scale of human subspecies than Claude Winnington-Bates.

As for Sam, he was still under the ether.

Nothing is more difficult for both parties concerned than to know what to say immediately after an occurrence like this. An agitated silence was brooding over the room, when the necessity for speech was removed by the re-entry of Mr. Wrenn.

Mr. Wrenn was not an observant man. Nor was he sensitive to atmosphere. He saw nothing unusual in his niece’s aspect, nothing out of the way in Sam’s. The fact that the air inside the office of Pyke’s Home Companion was quivering with charged emotion escaped his notice altogether. He addressed Sam genially.

“It is quite all right, Mr. Shotter. Lord Tilbury wishes you to start work on the Companion at once.”

Sam turned to him with the vague stare of the newly awakened sleepwalker.

“It will be nice having you in the office,” added Mr. Wrenn amiably. “I have been short-handed. By the way, Lord Tilbury asked me to send you along to him at once. He is just going out to lunch.”

“Lunch?” said Sam.

“He said you were lunching with him.”

“Oh, yes,” said Sam dully.

Mr. Wrenn watched him shamble out of the room with a benevolent eye.

“We’ll go and have a bite to eat too, my dear,” he said, removing the alpaca coat which it was his custom to wear in the office. “Haven’t had lunch with you since I don’t know when.” He reached for the hook which held his other coat. “I shall like having this young Shotter in the office,” he said. “He seems a nice young fellow.”

“He is the most utterly loathsome creature I have ever met,” said Kay.

Mr. Wrenn, startled, dropped his hat.

“Eh? What do you mean?”

“Just what I say. He’s horrible.”

“But, my dear girl, you only met him five minutes ago.”

“I know.”

Mr. Wrenn stooped for his hat and smoothed it with some agitation.

“This is rather awkward,” he said.

“What is?”

“Your feeling like that about young Shotter.”

“I don’t see why. I don’t suppose I shall ever meet him again.”

“But you will. I don’t see how it can be prevented. Lord Tilbury tells me that this young man has taken a lease on Mon Repos.”

“Mon Repos!” Kay clutched at the desk. “You don’t mean Mon Repos next door to us?”

“Yes; and it is so difficult to avoid one’s next-door neighbours.”

Kay’s teeth met with a little click.

“It can be done,” she said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

INTRODUCING A SYNDICATE

Here the writing is not only clear and golden but, when read, stimulating to the imagination. It runs:

The Tilbury Detective Agency, Ltd.
J. Sheringham Adair, Mgr.
Large and Efficient Staff

and conjures up visions of a suite of rooms filled with hawk-faced men examining bloodstains through microscopes or poring tensely over the papers connected with the singular affair of the theft of the maharajah’s ruby.

On the morning, however, on which Sam Shotter paid his visit to Tilbury House, only one man was sitting in the office of the detective agency. He was a small and weedy individual, clad in a suit brighter even than the one which Sam had purchased from the Brothers Cohen. And when it is stated in addition that he wore a waxed moustache and that his handkerchief, which was of colored silk, filled the air with a noisome perfume, further evidence is scarcely required to convince the reader that he is being introduced to a most undesirable character. Nevertheless, the final damning fact may as well be revealed. It is this—the man was not looking out of a window.

Tilbury Street is very narrow and the fourth-floor windows of this ramshackle building are immediately opposite those of the fourth floor of Tilbury House. Alexander Twist therefore was in a position, if he pleased, to gaze through into the private sanctum of the proprietor of the Mammoth Publishing Company and obtain the spiritual uplift which could hardly fail to result from the spectacle of that great man at work. Alone of London’s millions of inhabitants, he had it in his power to watch Lord Tilbury pacing up and down, writing at his desk or speaking into the dictating device who knows what terrific thoughts.

Yet he preferred to sit at a table playing solitaire—and, one is prepared to bet, cheating. One need not, one fancies, say more.

So absorbed was Mr. Twist in his foolish game that the fact that someone was knocking on the door did not at first penetrate his senses. It was only when the person outside, growing impatient, rapped the panel with some hard object which might have been the handle of a lady’s parasol that he raised his head with a start. He swept the cards into a drawer, gave his coat a settling tug and rose alertly. The knock sounded like business, and Mr. Twist, who was not only J. Sheringham Adair, Mgr., but the large and efficient staff as well, was not the man to be caught unprepared.

“Come in,” he shouted.

With a quick flick of his hand he scattered a top dressing of important-looking papers about the table and was bending over these with a thoughtful frown when the door opened.

At the sight of his visitor he relaxed the preoccupied austerity of his demeanour. The new-comer was a girl in the middle twenties, of bold but at the moment rather sullen good looks. She had the bright hazel eyes which seldom go with a meek and contrite heart. Her colouring was vivid, and in the light from the window her hair gleamed with a sheen that was slightly metallic.

“Why, hello, Dolly,” said Mr. Twist.

“Hello,” said the girl moodily.

“Haven’t seen you for a year, Dolly. Never knew you were this side at all. Take a seat.”

The visitor took a seat.

“For the love of pop, Chimp,” she said, eying him with a languid curiosity, “where did you get the fungus?”

Mr. Twist moved in candid circles, and the soubriquet Chimp—short for Chimpanzee—by which he was known not only to his intimates but to police officials in America who would have liked to become more intimate than they were, had been bestowed upon him at an early stage of his career in recognition of a certain simian trend which critics affected to see in the arrangement of his features.

“Looks good, don’t you think?” he said, stroking his moustache fondly. It and money were the only things he loved.

“Anything you say. And I suppose, when you know you may be in the coop any moment, you like to have all the hair you can while you can.”

Mr. Twist felt a little wounded. He did not like badinage about his moustache. He did not like tactless allusions to the coop. And he was puzzled by the unwonted brusqueness of the girl’s manner. The Dora Gunn he had known had been a cheery soul, quite unlike this tight-lipped, sombre-eyed person now before him.

The girl was looking about her. She seemed perplexed.

“What’s all this?” she asked, pointing her parasol at the writing on the window.

Mr. Twist smiled indulgently and with a certain pride. He was, he flattered himself, a man of ideas, and this of presenting himself to the world as a private investigator he considered one of his happiest.

“Just camouflage,” he said. “Darned useful to have a label. Keeps people from asking questions.”

“It won’t keep me from asking questions. That’s what I’ve come for. Say, Chimp, can you tell the truth without straining a muscle?”

“You know me, Dolly.”

“Yes, that’s why I asked. Well, I’ve come to get you to tell me something. Nobody listening?”

“Not a soul.”

“How about the office boy?”

“I haven’t got an office boy. Who do you think I am—Pierpont Morgan?”

Thus reassured, the girl produced a delicate handkerchief, formerly the property of Harrod’s Stores and parted from unwittingly by that establishment.

“Chimp,” she said, brushing away a tear, “I’m sim’ly miserable.”

Chimp Twist was not the man to stand idly by while beauty in distress wept before him. He slid up and was placing a tender arm about her shoulder, when she jerked herself away.

“You can tie a can to that stuff,” she said with womanly dignity. “I’d like you to know I’m married.”

“Married?”

“Sure. Day before yesterday—to Soapy Molloy.”

“Soapy!” Mr. Twist started. “What in the world did you want to marry that slab of Gorgonzola for?”

“I’ll ask you kindly, if you wouldn’t mind,” said the girl in a cold voice, “not to go alluding to my husband as slabs of Gorgonzola.”

“He is a slab of Gorgonzola.”

“He is not. Well, anyway, I’m hoping he’s not. It’s what I come here to find out.”

Mr. Twist’s mind had returned to the perplexing matter of the marriage.

“I don’t get this,” he said. “I saw Soapy a couple of weeks back and he didn’t say he’d even met you.”

“He hadn’t then. We only run into each other ten days ago. I was walking up the Haymarket and I catch sight of a feller behind me out of the corner of my eye, so I faint on him, see?”

“You’re still in that line, eh?”

“Well, it’s what I do best, isn’t it?”

Chimp nodded. Dora Molloy—Fainting Dolly to her friends—was unquestionably an artist in her particular branch of industry. It was her practice to swoon in the arms of rich-looking strangers in the public streets and pick their pockets as they bent to render her assistance. It takes all sorts to do the world’s work.

“Well, then I seen it was Soapy, and so we go to lunch and have a nice chat. I always was strong for that boy, and we were both feeling kind of lonesome over here in London, so we fix it up. And now I’m sim’ly miserable.”

“What,” inquired Mr. Twist, “is biting you?”

“Well, I’ll tell you. This is what’s happened: Last night this bird Soapy goes out after supper and doesn’t blow in again till four in the morning. Four in the morning, I’ll trouble you, and us only married two days. Well, if he thinks a young bride’s going to stand for that sort of conduct right plumb spang in the middle of what you might call the honeymoon, he’s got a second guess due him.”

“What did you do?” asked Mr. Twist sympathetically, but with a touch of that rather unctuous complacency which bachelors display at moments like this.

“I did plenty. And he tried to alibi himself by pulling a story. That story the grand jury is now going to investigate and investigate good.... Chimp, did you ever hear of a man named Finglass?”

There was that in Mr. Twist’s manner that seemed to suggest that he was a reluctant witness, but he answered after a brief hesitation.

“Sure!”

“Oh, you did, eh? Well, who was he then?”

“He was big,” said Chimp, and there was a note of reverence in his voice. “One of the very biggest, old Finky was.”

“How was he big? What did he ever do?”

“Well, it was before your time and it happened over here, so I guess you may not have heard of it; but he took a couple of million dollars away from the New Asiatic Bank.”

Mrs. Molloy was undeniably impressed. The formidable severity of her manner seemed to waver.

“Were you and Soapy mixed up with him?”

“Sure! We were the best pals he had.”

“Is he alive?”

“No; he died in Buenos Aires the other day.”

Mrs. Molloy bit her lower lip thoughtfully.

“Say, it’s beginning to look to me like that story of Soapy’s was the goods after all. Listen, Chimp, I’d best tell you the whole thing. When I give Soapy the razz for staying out all night like the way he done, he pulled this long spiel about having had a letter from a guy he used to know named Finglass, written on his deathbed, saying that this guy Finglass hadn’t been able to get away with the money he’d swiped from this New Asiatic Bank on account the bulls being after him, and he’d had to leave the whole entire lot of it behind, hidden in some house down in the suburbs somewheres. And he told Soapy where the house was, and Soapy claims that what kep’ him out so late was he’d been searching the house, trying to locate the stuff. And what I want to know is, was he telling the truth or was he off somewheres at one of these here now gilded night-clubs, cutting up with a bunch of janes and doing me wrong?”

Again Mr. Twist seemed to resent the necessity of acting as a favourable witness for a man he obviously disliked. He struggled with his feelings for a space.

“Yes, it’s true,” he said at length.

“But listen here. This don’t seem to me to gee up. If this guy Finglass wanted Soapy to have the money, why did he wait all this time before telling him about it?”

“Thought he might find a chance of sneaking back and getting it himself, of course. But he got into trouble in Argentina almost as soon as he hit the place, and they stowed him away in the cooler; and he only got out in time to write the letters and then make his finish.”

“How do you know all that?”

“Finky wrote to me too.”

“Oh, did he? Well, then, here’s another thing that don’t seem to make sense: When he did finally get round to telling Soap about this money, why couldn’t he let him know where it was? I mean, why didn’t he say it’s under the mat or poked up the chimney or something, ’stead of leaving him hunt for it like he was playing button, button, where’s the button—or something?”

“Because,” said Mr. Twist bitterly, “Soapy and me were both pals of his, and he wanted us to share. And to make sure we should get together he told Soapy where the house was and me where the stuff was hidden in the house.”

“So you’ve only to pool your info’ to bring home the bacon?” cried Dolly, wide-eyed.

“That’s all.”

“Then why in time haven’t you done it?”

Mr. Twist snorted. It is not easy to classify snorts, but this was one which would have been recognised immediately by any expert as the snort despairing, caused by the contemplation of the depths to which human nature can sink.

“Because,” he said, “Soapy, the pig-headed stiff, thinks he can double-cross me and get it alone.”

“What?” Mrs. Molloy uttered a cry of wifely pride. “Well, isn’t that bright of my sweet old pieface! I’d never of thought the dear boy would have had the sense to think up anything like that.”

Mr. Twist was unable to share her pretty enthusiasm.

“A lot it’s going to get him!” he said sourly.

“Two million smackers it’s going to get him,” retorted Dolly.

“Two million smackers nothing! The stuff’s hidden in a place where he’d never think of looking in two million years.”

“You can’t bluff me, Chimp Twist,” said Dolly, gazing at him with the cold disdain of a princess confronted with a boll weevil. “If he keeps on looking, it stands to reason——”

She broke off. The door had opened and a man was entering. He was a fine, handsome, open-faced man of early middle age. At the sight of this person Chimp Twist’s eyes narrowed militantly, but Dolly flung herself into his arms with a remorseful cry.

“Oh, Soapy, darling! How I misjudged you!”

The new-comer had had the air of a man weighed down with the maximum amount of sorrow which a human being can bear. This demonstration, however, seemed to remove something of the burden.

“’S all right, sweetness,” he said, clasping her to his swelling bosom.

“Was I mean to my angel-face?”

“There, there, honey lamb!”

Chimp Twist looked sourly upon this nauseating scene of marital reconciliation.

“Ah, cut it out!” he growled.

“Chimp’s told me everything, baby doll,” proceeded Mrs. Molloy. “I know all about that money, and you just keep right along, precious, hunting for it by yourself. I don’t mind how often you stay out nights or how late you stay out.”

It was a generous dispensation, for which many husbands would have been grateful, but Soapy Molloy merely smiled a twisted, tortured smile of ineffable sadness. He looked like an unsuccessful candidate hearing the result of a presidential election.

“It’s all off, honey bunch,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s cold, petty. We’ll have to let Chimp in on it after all, sweetie-pie. I came here to put my cards on the table and have a show-down.”

A quivering silence fell upon the room. Mrs. Molloy was staring at her husband, aghast. As for Chimp, he was completely bewildered. The theory that his old comrade had had a change of heart—that his conscience, putting in some rapid work after getting off to a bad start, had caused him to regret his intention of double-crossing a friend, was too bizarre to be tenable. Soapy Molloy was not the sort of man to have changes of heart. Chimp, in his studies of the motion-picture drama, had once seen a film where a tough egg had been converted by hearing a church organ, but he knew Mr. Molloy well enough to be aware that all the organs in all the churches in London might play in his ear simultaneously without causing him to do anything more than grumble at the noise.

“The house has been taken,” said Soapy despondently.

“Taken? What do you mean?”

“Rented.”

“Rented? When?”

“I heard this morning. I was in a saloon down Fleet Street way, and two fellows come in and one of them was telling the other how he’d just rented this joint.”

Chimp Twist uttered a discordant laugh.

“So that’s what’s come of your darned smooth double-crossing act!” he said nastily. “Yes, I guess you better had let Chimp in on it. You want a man with brains now, not a guy that never thought up anything smarter than gypping suckers with a phony oil stock.”

Mr. Molloy bowed his head meekly before the blast. His wife was made of sterner stuff.

“You talk a lot, don’t you?” she said coldly.

“And I can do a lot,” retorted Mr. Twist, fingering his waxed moustache. “So you’d best come clean, Soapy, and have a show-down, like you say. Where is this joint?”

“Don’t you dare tell him before he tells you where the stuff is!” cried Mrs. Molloy.

“Just as you say,” said Chimp carelessly. He scribbled a few words on a piece of paper and covered them with his hand. “There! Now you write down your end of it and Dolly can read them both out.”

“Have you really thought up a scheme?” asked Mr. Molloy humbly.

“I’ve thought up a dozen.”

Mr. Molloy wrote in his turn and Dolly picked up the two papers.

“In the cistern!” she read.

“And the rest of it?” inquired Mr. Twist pressingly.

“Mon Repos, Burberry Road,” said Mr. Molloy.

“Ah!” said Chimp. “And if I’d known that a week ago, we’d have been worth a million dollars apiece by now.”

“Say, listen,” said Dolly, who was pensive and had begun to eye Mr. Twist in rather an unpleasant manner. “This stuff old Finglass swiped from the bank, what is it?”

“American bearer securities, sweetie,” said her husband, rolling the words round his tongue as if they were vintage port. “As good as dollar bills. What’s the dope you’ve thought up, Chimpie?” he asked, deferentially removing a piece of fluff from his ally’s coat sleeve.

“Just a minute!” said Dolly sharply. “If that’s so, how can this stuff be in any cistern? It would have melted, being all that time in the water.”

“It’s in a waterproof case, of course,” said Chimp.

“Oh, it is, is it?”

“What’s the matter, petty?” inquired Mr. Molloy. “You’re acting strange.”

“Am I? Well, if you want to know, I’m wondering if this guy is putting one over on us. How are we to know he’s telling us the right place?”

“Dolly!” said Mr. Twist, deeply pained.

“Dolly!” said Mr. Molloy, not so much pained as apprehensive. He had a very modest opinion of his own chances of thinking of any way for coping with the situation which had arisen, and everything, it seemed to him, depended upon being polite to Chimp Twist, who was admittedly a man of infinite resource and sagacity.

“If you think that of me——” began Mr. Twist.

“We don’t, Chimpie, we don’t,” interrupted Mr. Molloy hastily. “The madam is a little upset. Don’t listen to her. What is this scheme of yours, Chimpie?”

Perhaps Mrs. Molloy’s estimate of her husband’s talents as a strategist resembled his own. At any rate, she choked down certain words that had presented themselves to her militant mind and stood eying Chimp inquiringly.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Chimp. “But first let’s get the business end straight. How do we divvy?”

“Why, fifty-fifty, Chimp,” stammered Mr. Molloy, stunned at the suggestion implied in his words that any other arrangement could be contemplated. “Me and the madam counting as one, of course.”

Chimp laughed sardonically.

“Fifty-fifty nothing! I’m the brains of this concern, and the brains of a concern always gets paid highest. Look at Henry Ford! Look at the Archbishop of Canterbury!”

“Do you mean to say,” demanded Dolly, “that if Soapy was sitting in with the Archbishop of Canterbury on a plan for skinning a sucker the archbish wouldn’t split Even Stephen?”

“It isn’t like that at all,” retorted Mr. Twist with spirit. “It’s more as if Soapy went to the Archbishop of Canterbury and asked him to slip him a scheme for skinning the mug.”

“Well, in that case,” said Mr. Molloy, “I venture to assert that the archbishop would simply say to me, ‘Molloy,’ he’d say——”

Dolly wearied of a discussion which seemed to her too academic for the waste of valuable moments.

“Sixty-forty,” she said brusquely.

“Seventy-thirty,” emended Chimp.

“Sixty-five-thirty-five,” said Mr. Molloy.

“Right!” said Chimp. “And now I’ll tell you what to do.” I’ll give you five minutes first to see if you can think of it for yourself, and if you can’t, I’ll ask you not to start beefing because it’s so simple and not worth the money.”

Five minutes’ concentrated meditation produced no brain wave in Mr. Molloy, who, outside his chosen profession of selling valueless oil stock to a trusting public, was not a very gifted man.

“Well, then,” said Chimp, “here you are: You go to that fellow who’s taken the joint and ask him to let you buy it off him.”

“Well, of all the fool propositions!” cried Dolly shrilly, and even Mr. Molloy came near to sneering.

“Not so good, you don’t think?” continued Chimp, uncrushed. “Well, then, listen here to the rest of it. Dolly calls on this fellow first. She acts surprised because her father hasn’t arrived yet.”

“Her what?”

“Her father. Then she starts in vamping this guy all she can. If she hasn’t lost her pep since she last tried that sort of thing, the guy ought to be in pretty good shape for Act Two by the time the curtain rings up. That’s when you blow in, Soapy.”

“Am I her father?” asked Mr. Molloy, a little blankly.

“Sure, you’re her father. Why not?”

Mr. Molloy, who was a little sensitive about the difference in age between his bride and himself, considered that Chimp was not displaying his usual tact, but muttered something about greying himself up some at the temples.

“Then what?” asked Dolly.

“Then,” said Chimp, “Soapy does a spiel.”

Mr. Molloy brightened. He knew himself to be at his best when it came to a spiel.

“Soapy says he was born in this joint—ages and ages ago.”

“What do you mean—ages and ages ago?” said Mr. Molloy, starting.

“Ages and ages ago,” repeated Chimp firmly, “before he had to emigrate to America and leave the dear old place to be sold. He has loving childhood recollections of the lawn where he played as a kiddy and worships every brick in the place. All his favourite relations pegged out in the rooms upstairs, and all like that. Well, I’m here to say,” concluded Chimp emphatically, “that if that guy has any sentiment in him and if Dolly has done the preliminary work properly, he’ll drop.”

There was a tense silence.

“It’ll work,” said Soapy.

“It might work,” said Dolly, more doubtfully.

“It will work,” said Soapy. “I shall be good. I will have that lobster weeping into his handkerchief inside three minutes.”

“A lot depends on Dolly,” Chimp reminded him.

“Don’t you worry about that,” said the lady stoutly. “I’ll be good too. But listen here; I’ve got to dress this act. This is where I have to have that hat with the bird-of-paradise feather that I see in Regent Street this morning.”

“How much?” inquired the rest of the syndicate in a single breath.

“Eighteen guineas.”

“Eighteen guineas!” said Chimp.

“Eighteen guineas!” said Soapy.

They looked at each other wanly, while Dolly, unheeded, spoke of ships and ha’porths of tar.

“And a new dress,” she continued, warming to her work. “And new shoes and a new parasol and new gloves and new——”

“Have a heart, petty,” pleaded Mr. Molloy. “Exercise a little discretion, sweetness.”

Dolly was firm.

“A girl,” she said, “can’t do herself justice in a tacky lid. You know that. And you know as well as I do that the first thing a gentleman does is to look at a dame’s hoofs. And as for gloves, I simply beg you to cast an eye on these old things I’ve got on now and ask yourselves——”

“Oh, all right, all right,” said Chimp.

“All right,” echoed Mr. Molloy.

Their faces were set grimly. These men were brave, but they were suffering.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE CHIRRUP

“Only a quarter-past.”

“Sure your washrah?”

“I put it right yesterday.”

At this moment there came faintly from afar a sweet, musical chiming.

“There’s the college clock striking the quarter,” said Kay.

Mr. Wrenn’s fever subsided. If it was only a quarter-past he was on velvet. He could linger and chat for a while. He could absolutely dally. He pushed back his chair and lighted a cigarette with the air of a leisured man.

“Kay, my dear,” he said, “I’ve been thinking—about this young fellow Shotter.”

Kay jumped. By an odd coincidence, she had herself been thinking of Sam at that moment. It annoyed her to think of Sam, but she constantly found herself doing it.

“I really think we ought to invite him to dinner one night.”

“No!”

“But he seems so anxious to be friendly. Only yesterday he asked me if he could drop round some time and borrow the garden roller. He said he understood that that was always the first move in the suburbs toward establishing good neighbourly relations.”

“If you ask him to dinner I shall go out.”

“I can’t understand why you dislike him so much.”

“Well, I just do.”

“He seems to admire you tremendously.”

“Does he?”

“He keeps talking about you—asking what you were like as a child and whether you ever did you hair differently and things of that kind.”

“Oh!”

“I rather wish you didn’t object to him so much. I should like to see something of him out of office hours. I find him a very pleasant fellow myself, and extremely useful in the office. He has taken that Aunt Ysobel page off my hands. You remember how I used to hate having to write that?”

“Is that all he does?”

Mr. Wrenn chuckled.

“By no means,” he said amusedly.

“What are you laughing at?”

“I was thinking,” explained Mr. Wrenn, “of something that happened yesterday. Cordelia Blair called to see me with one of her usual grievances——”

“Oh, no!” said Kay sympathetically. Her uncle, she knew, was much persecuted by female contributors who called with grievances at the offices of Pyke’s Home Companion; and of all these gifted creatures, Miss Cordelia Blair was the one he feared most. “What was the trouble this time?”

“Apparently the artist who is illustrating Hearts Aflame had drawn Leslie Mordyke in a lounge suit instead of dress clothes.”

“Why don’t you bite these women’s heads off when they come bothering you? You shouldn’t be so nice to them.”

“I can’t, my dear,” said Mr. Wrenn plaintively. “I don’t know why it is, but the mere sight of a woman novelist who is all upset seems to take all the heart out of me. I sometimes wish I could edit some paper like Tiny Tots or Our Feathered Chums. I don’t suppose indignant children come charging in on Mason or outraged canaries on Mortimer.... But I was telling you—when I heard her voice in the outer office, I acquainted this young fellow Shotter briefly with the facts, and he most nobly volunteered to go out and soothe her.”

“I can’t imagine him soothing anyone.”

“Well, he certainly had the most remarkable effect on Miss Blair. He came back ten minutes later to say that all was well and that she had gone away quite happy.”

“Did he tell you how he had managed it?”

“No.” Another chuckle escaped Mr. Wrenn. “Kay, it isn’t possible—you don’t imagine—you don’t suppose he could conceivably, on such a very slight acquaintance, have kissed her, do you?”

“I should think it very probable.”

“Well, I’m bound to own——”

“Don’t laugh in that horrible, ghoulish way, uncle!”

“I can’t help it. I could see nothing, you understand, as I was in the inner office; but there were most certainly sounds that suggested——”

Mr. Wrenn broke off. Again that musical chiming had come faintly to his ears. But this time its effect was the reverse of soothing. He became a thing of furious activity. He ran to and fro, seizing his hat and dropping it, picking it up and dropping his brief case, retrieving the brief case and dropping his stick. By the time he had finally shot out of the front door with his hat on his head, his brief case in his hand and his stick dangling from his arm, it was as if a tornado had passed through the interior of San Rafael, and Kay, having seen him off, went out into the garden to try to recover.

It was a pleasant, sunny morning, and she made for her favourite spot, the shade of the large tree that hung over the edge of the lawn, a noble tree, as spreading as that which once sheltered the Village Blacksmith. Technically, this belonged to Mon Repos, its roots being in the latter’s domain; but its branches had grown out over the fence, and San Rafael, with that injustice which is so marked a feature of human affairs, got all the benefit of its shade.

Seated under this, with a gentle breeze ruffling her hair, Kay gave herself up to meditation.

She felt worried and upset and in the grip of one of her rare moods of despondency. She had schooled herself to pine as little as possible for the vanished luxury of Midways, but when she did so pine it was always at this time of the day. For although she had adjusted herself with almost complete success to the conditions of life at San Rafael, she had not yet learned to bear up under the suburban breakfast.

At Midways the meal had been so leisurely, so orderly, so spacious, so redolent of all that is most delightful in the country life of the wealthy; a meal of soft murmurs and rustling papers, of sunshine falling on silver in the summer, of crackling fires in winter; a take-your-time meal; a thing of dignity and comfort. Breakfast at San Rafael was a mere brutish bolting of food, and it jarred upon her afresh each morning.

The breeze continued to play in her hair. Birds hopped upon the grass. Someone down the road was using a lawn mower. Gradually the feeling of having been jolted and shaken by some rude force began to pass from Kay, and she was just reaching the stage where, re-establishing connection with her sense of humour, she would be able to look upon the amusing side of the recent scramble, when from somewhere between earth and heaven there spoke a voice.

“Oo-oo!” said the voice.

Kay was puzzled. Though no ornithologist, she had become reasonably familiar with the distinctive notes of such of our feathered chums as haunted the garden of San Rafael, and this did not appear to be one of them.

“I see you,” proceeded the voice lovingly. “How’s your pore head, dearie?”

The solution of the mystery presented itself at last. Kay raised her eyes and beheld, straddled along a branch almost immediately above her, a lean, stringy man of ruffianly aspect, his naturally unlovely face rendered additionally hideous by an arch and sentimental smile. For a long instant this person goggled at her, and she stared back at him. Then, with a gasp that sounded confusedly apologetic, he scrambled back along the branch like an anthropoid ape, and dropping to earth beyond the fence, galloped blushingly up the garden.

Kay sprang to her feet. She had been feeling soothed, but now a bubbling fury had her in its grip. It was bad enough that outcasts like Sam Shotter should come and camp themselves next door to her. It was bad enough that they should annoy her uncle, a busy man, with foolish questions about what she had been like as a child and whether she had ever done her hair differently. But when their vile retainers went to the length of climbing trees and chirruping at her out of them, the situation, it seemed to her, passed beyond the limit up to which a spirited girl may reasonably be expected to endure.

She returned to the house, fermenting, and as she reached the hall the front doorbell rang.

Technically, when the front doorbell of San Rafael rang, it was Claire Lippett’s duty to answer it; but Claire was upstairs making beds. Kay stalked across the hall, and having turned the handle, found confronting her a young woman of spectacular appearance, clad in gorgeous raiment and surmounted by a bird-of-paradise-feathered hat so much too good for her that Kay’s immediate reaction of beholding it was one of simple and ignoble jealousy. It was the sort of hat she would have liked to be able to afford herself, and its presence on the dyed hair of another cemented the prejudice which that other’s face and eyes had aroused within her.

“Does a guy named Shotter live here?” asked the visitor. Then, with the air of one remembering a part and with almost excessive refinement, “Could I see Mr. Shotter, if you please?”

“Mr. Shotter lives next door,” said Kay frostily.

“Oh, thank yaw. Thank yaw so much.”

“Not at all,” said Kay.

She shut the door and went into the drawing-room. The feeling of being in a world bounded north, east, south and west by Sam Shotter had thoroughly poisoned her day.

She took pen, ink and paper and wrote viciously for a few moments.

“Claire,” she called.

“’Ullo!” replied a distant voice.

“I’m leaving a note on the hall table. Will you take it next door some time?”

“Right-ho!” bellowed the obliging Miss Lippett.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

VISITORS AT MON REPOS

“I’m afraid you’ll find the place in rather a mess,” he said apologetically, leading the way to the drawing-room. “I’ve only just moved in.”

The visitor replied that, on the contrary, she thought it cute.

“I seem to know this joint by heart,” she said. “I’ve heard so much about it from old pop.”

“I don’t think I am acquainted with Mr. Popp.”

“My father, I mean. He used to live here when he was a tiny kiddy.”

“Really? I should have taken you for an American.”

“I am American, and don’t let anyone tell you different.”

“I won’t.”

“One hundred per cent, that’s me,” Sam nodded.

“‘Oh, say, can you see by the dawn’s early light?’” he said reverently.

“‘What so proudly’—I never can remember any more.”

“No one,” Sam reminded her, “knows the words but the Argentines....”

“...And the Portuguese and the Greeks.” The lady beamed. “Say, don’t tell me you’re American too!”

“My mother was.”

“Why, this is fine! Pop’ll be tickled to death.”

“Is your father coming here too?”

“Well, I should say so! You don’t think I pay calls on strange gentlemen all by myself, do you?” said the lady archly. “But listen! If you’re American, we’re sitting pretty, because it’s only us Americans that’s got real sentiment in them. Ain’t it the truth?”

“I don’t quite understand. Why do you want me to have sentiment?”

“Pop’ll explain all that when he arrives. I’m surprised he hasn’t blown in yet. I didn’t think I’d get here first.” She looked about her. “It seems funny to think of pop as a little kiddy in this very room.”

“Your father was English then?”

“Born in England—born here—born in this very house. Just to think of pop playing all them childish games in this very room!”

Sam began to wish that she would stop. Her conversation was beginning to give the place a queer feeling. The room had begun to seem haunted by a peculiar being of middle-aged face and juvenile costume. So much so that when she suddenly exclaimed, “There’s pop!” he had a momentary impression that a whiskered elder in Lord Fauntleroy clothes was about to dance out from behind the sofa.

Then he saw that his visitor was looking out of the window and, following her gaze, noted upon the front steps a gentleman of majestic port.

“I’ll go and let him in,” he said.

“Do you live here all alone?” asked the lady, and Sam got the idea that she spoke eagerly.

“Oh, no, I’ve a man. But he’s busy somewhere.”

“I see,” she said disappointedly.

The glimpse which Sam had caught of the new arrival through the window had been a sketchy one. It was only as he opened the door that he got a full view of him. And having done so, he was a little startled. It is always disconcerting to see a familiar face where one had expected a strange one. This was the man he had seen in the bar that day when he had met Hash in Fleet Street.

“Mr. Shotter?”

“Yes.”

It seemed to Sam that the man had aged a good deal since he had seen him last. The fact was that Mr. Molloy, in greying himself up at the temples, had rather overdone the treatment. Still, though stricken in years, he looked a genial, kindly, honest soul.

“My name is Gunn, Mr. Shotter—Thomas G. Gunn.”

It had been Mr. Molloy’s intention—for he was an artist and liked to do a thing, as he said, properly—to adopt for this interview the pseudonym of J. Felkin Haggenbakker, that seeming to his critical view the sort of name a sentimental millionaire who had made a fortune in Pittsburgh and was now revisiting the home of his boyhood ought to have. The proposal had been vetoed by Dolly, who protested that she did not intend to spend hours of her time in unnecessary study.

“Won’t you come in?” said Sam.

He stood aside to let his visitor pass, wondering again where it was that he had originally seen the man. He hated to forget a face and personality which should have been unforgettable. He ushered Mr. Gunn into the drawing-room, still pondering.

“So there you are, pop,” said the lady. “Say, pop, isn’t it dandy? Mr. Shotter’s an American.”

Mr. Gunn’s frank eyes lit up with gratification.

“Ah! Then you are a man of sentiment, Mr. Shotter. You will understand. You will not think it odd that a man should cherish all through his life a wistful yearning for the place where he was born.”

“Not at all,” said Sam politely, and might have reminded his visitor that the feeling, a highly creditable one, was shared by practically all America’s most eminent song writers.

“Well, that is how I feel, Mr. Shotter,” said the other bluffly, “and I am not ashamed to confess it. This house is very dear to me. I was born in it.”

“So Miss Gunn was telling me.”

“Ah, she has told you? Yes, Mr. Shotter, I am a man who has seen men and cities. I have lived in the hovels of the poor, I have risen till, if I may say so, I am welcomed in the palaces of the rich. But never, rich or poor, have I forgotten this old place and the childhood associations which hallow it.”

He paused. His voice had trembled and sunk to a whisper in those last words, and now he turned abruptly and looked out of a window. His shoulders heaved significantly for an instant and something like a stifled sob broke the stillness of the room. But when a moment later he swung round he was himself again, the tough, sturdy old J. Felkin Haggenbakker—or, rather, Thomas G. Gunn—who was so highly respected, and perhaps a little feared, at the Rotary Club in Pittsburgh.

“Well, I must not bore you, Mr. Shotter. You are, no doubt, a busy man. Let me be brief. Mr. Shotter, I want this house.”

“You want what?” said Sam, bewildered. He had had no notion that he was going to be swept into the maelstrom of a business transaction.

“Yes, sir, I want this house. And let me tell you that money is no object. I’ve lots of money.” He dismissed money with a gesture. “I have my whims and I can pay for them. How much for the house, Mr. Shotter?”

Sam felt that it behooved him to keep his head. He had not the remotest intention of selling for all the gold in Pittsburgh a house which, in the first place, did not belong to him and, secondly, was next door to Kay Derrick.

“I’m very sorry——” he began.

Mr. Gunn checked him with an apologetic lift of the hand.

“I was too abrupt,” he said. “I rushed the thing. A bad habit of mine. When I was prospecting in Nevada, the boys used to call me Hair-Trigger Gunn. I ought to have stated my position more clearly.”

“Oh, I understand your position.”

“You realise then that this isn’t a house to me; it is a shrine?”

“Yes, yes; but——”

“It contains,” said Mr. Gunn with perfect truth, “something very precious to me.”

“Yes; but——”

“It is my boyhood that is enshrined here—my innocent, happy, halcyon boyhood. I have played games at my mother’s knee in this very room. I have read tales from the Scriptures with her here. It was here that my mother, seated at the piano, used to sing—sing——”

His voice died away again. He blew his nose and turned once more to the window. But though he was under the impression that he had achieved a highly artistic aposiopesis, he could hardly have selected a more unfortunate word to stammer brokenly. Something resembling an electric thrill ran through Sam. Memory, dormant, had responded to the code word.

Sing Sing! He knew now where he had seen this man before.

It is the custom of the Welfare League of America’s most famous penitentiary to alleviate the monotony of the convict’s lot by giving periodical performances of plays, produced and acted by the personnel of the prison. When the enterprising burglar isn’t burgling, in fact, he is probably memorising the words of some popular lyric for rendition on the next big night.

To one of these performances, some eighteen months back, Sam had been taken by a newspaper friend. The hit of the evening had been this very Thomas G. Gunn, then a mere number, in the rôle of a senator.

Mr. Gunn had resumed his address. He was speaking once more of his mother, and speaking well. But he was not holding his audience. Sam cut in on his eloquence.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’m afraid this house is not for sale.”

“But, Mr. Shotter——”

“No,” said Sam. “I have a very special reason for wishing to stay here, and I intend to remain. And now I’m afraid I must ask you——”

“Suppose I look in this evening and take the matter up again?” pleaded Mr. Gunn, finding with some surprise that he had been edged out onto the steps and making a last stand there.

“It’s no use. Besides, I shan’t be in this evening. I’m dining out.”

“Will anybody be in?” asked Miss Gunn suddenly, breaking a long silence.

“Why, yes,” said Sam, somewhat surprised, “the man who works here. Why?”

“I was only thinking that if we called he might show us over the place.”

“Oh, I see. Well, good-bye.”

“But, say now, listen——”

“Good-bye,” said Sam.

He closed the door and made his way to the kitchen. Hash, his chair tilted back against the wall, was smoking a thoughtful pipe.

“Who was it, Sam?”

“Somebody wanting to buy the house. Hash, there’s something fishy going on.”

“Ur?”

“Do you remember me pointing out a man to you in that bar in Fleet Street?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it was the same fellow. And do you remember me saying that I was sure I had seen him before somewhere?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ve remembered where it was. It was in Sing Sing, and he was serving a sentence there.”

Mr. Todhunter’s feet came to the floor with a crash.

“There’s something darned peculiar about this house, Hash. I slept in it the night I landed, and there was a fellow creeping around with an electric torch. And now this man, whom I know to be a crook, puts up a fake story to make me let him have it. What do you think, Hash?”

“I’ll tell you what I think,” said Mr. Todhunter, alarmed. “I think I’m going straight out to buy a good watchdog.”

“It’s a good idea.”

“I don’t like these bad characters hanging about. I had a cousin in the pawnbroking line what was hit on the ’ead by a burglar with a antique vase. That’s what happened to him, all through hearing a noise in the night and coming down to see what it was.”

“But what’s at the back of all this? What do you make of it?”

“Ah, there you have me,” said Hash frankly. “But that don’t alter the fact that I’m going to get a dog.”

“I should. Get something pretty fierce.”

“I’ll get a dog,” said Hash solemnly, “that’ll feed on nails and bite his own mother.”