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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Indiscretions of Archie, by P. G. Wodehouse
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Indiscretions of Archie
+
+Author: P. G. Wodehouse
+
+Release Date: August 28, 2001 [eBook #3756]
+[Most recently updated: August 14, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Charles Franks, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team, and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INDISCRETIONS OF ARCHIE ***
+
+
+
+
+Indiscretions of Archie
+
+by P. G. Wodehouse
+
+
+Contents
+
+ CHAPTER I. DISTRESSING SCENE
+ CHAPTER II. A SHOCK FOR MR BREWSTER
+ CHAPTER III. MR BREWSTER DELIVERS SENTENCE
+ CHAPTER IV. WORK WANTED
+ CHAPTER V. STRANGE EXPERIENCES OF AN ARTIST’S MODEL
+ CHAPTER VI. THE BOMB
+ CHAPTER VII. MR ROSCOE SHERRIFF HAS AN IDEA
+ CHAPTER VIII. A DISTURBED NIGHT FOR DEAR OLD SQUIFFY
+ CHAPTER IX. A LETTER FROM PARKER
+ CHAPTER X. DOING FATHER A BIT OF GOOD
+ CHAPTER XI. SALVATORE CHOOSES THE WRONG MOMENT
+ CHAPTER XII. BRIGHT EYES—AND A FLY
+ CHAPTER XIII. RALLYING ROUND PERCY
+ CHAPTER XIV. THE SAD CASE OF LOONEY BIDDLE
+ CHAPTER XV. SUMMER STORMS
+ CHAPTER XVI. ARCHIE ACCEPTS A SITUATION
+ CHAPTER XVII. BROTHER BILL’S ROMANCE
+ CHAPTER XVIII. THE SAUSAGE CHAPPIE
+ CHAPTER XIX. REGGIE COMES TO LIFE
+ CHAPTER XX. THE-SAUSAGE-CHAPPIE-CLICKS
+ CHAPTER XXI. THE GROWING BOY
+ CHAPTER XXII. WASHY STEPS INTO THE HALL OF FAME
+ CHAPTER XXIII. MOTHER’S KNEE
+ CHAPTER XXIV. THE MELTING OF MR CONNOLLY
+ CHAPTER XXV. THE WIGMORE VENUS
+ CHAPTER XXVI. A TALE OF A GRANDFATHER
+
+
+
+
+It wasn’t Archie’s fault really. Its true he went to America and fell
+in love with Lucille, the daughter of a millionaire hotel proprietor
+and if he did marry her—well, what else was there to do?
+
+From his point of view, the whole thing was a thoroughly good egg; but
+Mr. Brewster, his father-in-law, thought differently, Archie had
+neither money nor occupation, which was distasteful in the eyes of the
+industrious Mr. Brewster; but the real bar was the fact that he had
+once adversely criticised one of his hotels.
+
+Archie does his best to heal the breach; but, being something of an
+ass, genus priceless, he finds it almost beyond his powers to placate
+“the man-eating fish” whom Providence has given him as a father-in-law
+
+
+
+
+P. G. Wodehouse
+
+AUTHOR OF “THE LITTLE WARRIOR,” “A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS,” “UNEASY MONEY,”
+ETC.
+
+NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY COPYRIGHT,1921, BY GEORGE H, DORAN
+COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE COMPANY
+(COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE)
+PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+TO
+B. W. KING-HALL
+
+My dear Buddy,—
+
+We have been friends for eighteen years. A considerable proportion of
+my books were written under your hospitable roof. And yet I have never
+dedicated one to you. What will be the verdict of Posterity on this?
+The fact is, I have become rather superstitious about dedications. No
+sooner do you label a book with the legend—
+
+
+TO MY
+BEST FRIEND
+X
+
+than X cuts you in Piccadilly, or you bring a lawsuit against him.
+There is a fatality about it. However, I can’t imagine anyone
+quarrelling with you, and I am getting more attractive all the time, so
+let’s take a chance.
+
+Yours ever,
+P. G. WODEHOUSE.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+DISTRESSING SCENE
+
+
+“I say, laddie!” said Archie.
+
+“Sir?” replied the desk-clerk alertly. All the employes of the Hotel
+Cosmopolis were alert. It was one of the things on which Mr. Daniel
+Brewster, the proprietor, insisted. And as he was always wandering
+about the lobby of the hotel keeping a personal eye on affairs, it was
+never safe to relax.
+
+“I want to see the manager.”
+
+“Is there anything I could do, sir?”
+
+Archie looked at him doubtfully.
+
+“Well, as a matter of fact, my dear old desk-clerk,” he said, “I want
+to kick up a fearful row, and it hardly seems fair to lug you into it.
+Why you, I mean to say? The blighter whose head I want on a charger is
+the bally manager.”
+
+At this point a massive, grey-haired man, who had been standing close
+by, gazing on the lobby with an air of restrained severity, as if
+daring it to start anything, joined in the conversation.
+
+“I am the manager,” he said.
+
+His eye was cold and hostile. Others, it seemed to say, might like
+Archie Moffam, but not he. Daniel Brewster was bristling for combat.
+What he had overheard had shocked him to the core of his being. The
+Hotel Cosmopolis was his own private, personal property, and the thing
+dearest to him in the world, after his daughter Lucille. He prided
+himself on the fact that his hotel was not like other New York hotels,
+which were run by impersonal companies and shareholders and boards of
+directors, and consequently lacked the paternal touch which made the
+Cosmopolis what it was. At other hotels things went wrong, and clients
+complained. At the Cosmopolis things never went wrong, because he was
+on the spot to see that they didn’t, and as a result clients never
+complained. Yet here was this long, thin, string-bean of an Englishman
+actually registering annoyance and dissatisfaction before his very
+eyes.
+
+“What is your complaint?” he enquired frigidly.
+
+Archie attached himself to the top button of Mr. Brewster’s coat, and
+was immediately dislodged by an irritable jerk of the other’s
+substantial body.
+
+“Listen, old thing! I came over to this country to nose about in search
+of a job, because there doesn’t seem what you might call a general
+demand for my services in England. Directly I was demobbed, the family
+started talking about the Land of Opportunity and shot me on to a
+liner. The idea was that I might get hold of something in America—”
+
+He got hold of Mr. Brewster’s coat-button, and was again shaken off.
+
+“Between ourselves, I’ve never done anything much in England, and I
+fancy the family were getting a bit fed. At any rate, they sent me over
+here—”
+
+Mr. Brewster disentangled himself for the third time.
+
+“I would prefer to postpone the story of your life,” he said coldly,
+“and be informed what is your specific complaint against the Hotel
+Cosmopolis.”
+
+“Of course, yes. The jolly old hotel. I’m coming to that. Well, it was
+like this. A chappie on the boat told me that this was the best place
+to stop at in New York—”
+
+“He was quite right,” said Mr. Brewster.
+
+“Was he, by Jove! Well, all I can say, then, is that the other New York
+hotels must be pretty mouldy, if this is the best of the lot! I took a
+room here last night,” said Archie quivering with self-pity, “and there
+was a beastly tap outside somewhere which went drip-drip-drip all night
+and kept me awake.”
+
+Mr. Brewster’s annoyance deepened. He felt that a chink had been found
+in his armour. Not even the most paternal hotel-proprietor can keep an
+eye on every tap in his establishment.
+
+“Drip-drip-drip!” repeated Archie firmly. “And I put my boots outside
+the door when I went to bed, and this morning they hadn’t been touched.
+I give you my solemn word! Not touched.”
+
+“Naturally,” said Mr. Brewster. “My employés are honest.”
+
+“But I wanted them cleaned, dash it!”
+
+“There is a shoe-shining parlour in the basement. At the Cosmopolis
+shoes left outside bedroom doors are not cleaned.”
+
+“Then I think the Cosmopolis is a bally rotten hotel!”
+
+Mr. Brewster’s compact frame quivered. The unforgivable insult had been
+offered. Question the legitimacy of Mr. Brewster’s parentage, knock Mr.
+Brewster down and walk on his face with spiked shoes, and you did not
+irremediably close all avenues to a peaceful settlement. But make a
+remark like that about his hotel, and war was definitely declared.
+
+“In that case,” he said, stiffening, “I must ask you to give up your
+room.”
+
+“I’m going to give it up! I wouldn’t stay in the bally place another
+minute.”
+
+Mr. Brewster walked away, and Archie charged round to the cashier’s
+desk to get his bill. It had been his intention in any case, though for
+dramatic purposes he concealed it from his adversary, to leave the
+hotel that morning. One of the letters of introduction which he had
+brought over from England had resulted in an invitation from a Mrs. van
+Tuyl to her house-party at Miami, and he had decided to go there at
+once.
+
+“Well,” mused Archie, on his way to the station, “one thing’s certain.
+I’ll never set foot in _that_ bally place again!”
+
+But nothing in this world is certain.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+A SHOCK FOR MR. BREWSTER
+
+
+Mr. Daniel Brewster sat in his luxurious suite at the Cosmopolis,
+smoking one of his admirable cigars and chatting with his old friend,
+Professor Binstead. A stranger who had only encountered Mr. Brewster in
+the lobby of the hotel would have been surprised at the appearance of
+his sitting-room, for it had none of the rugged simplicity which was
+the keynote of its owner’s personal appearance. Daniel Brewster was a
+man with a hobby. He was what Parker, his valet, termed a connoozer.
+His educated taste in Art was one of the things which went to make the
+Cosmopolis different from and superior to other New York hotels. He had
+personally selected the tapestries in the dining-room and the various
+paintings throughout the building. And in his private capacity he was
+an enthusiastic collector of things which Professor Binstead, whose
+tastes lay in the same direction, would have stolen without a twinge of
+conscience if he could have got the chance.
+
+The professor, a small man of middle age who wore tortoiseshell-rimmed
+spectacles, flitted covetously about the room, inspecting its treasures
+with a glistening eye. In a corner, Parker, a grave, lean individual,
+bent over the chafing-dish, in which he was preparing for his employer
+and his guest their simple lunch.
+
+“Brewster,” said Professor Binstead, pausing at the mantelpiece.
+
+Mr. Brewster looked up amiably. He was in placid mood to-day. Two weeks
+and more had passed since the meeting with Archie recorded in the
+previous chapter, and he had been able to dismiss that disturbing
+affair from his mind. Since then, everything had gone splendidly with
+Daniel Brewster, for he had just accomplished his ambition of the
+moment by completing the negotiations for the purchase of a site
+further down-town, on which he proposed to erect a new hotel. He liked
+building hotels. He had the Cosmopolis, his first-born, a summer hotel
+in the mountains, purchased in the previous year, and he was toying
+with the idea of running over to England and putting up another in
+London, That, however, would have to wait. Meanwhile, he would
+concentrate on this new one down-town. It had kept him busy and
+worried, arranging for securing the site; but his troubles were over
+now.
+
+“Yes?” he said.
+
+Professor Binstead had picked up a small china figure of delicate
+workmanship. It represented a warrior of pre-khaki days advancing with
+a spear upon some adversary who, judging from the contented expression
+on the warrior’s face, was smaller than himself.
+
+“Where did you get this?”
+
+“That? Mawson, my agent, found it in a little shop on the east side.”
+
+“Where’s the other? There ought to be another. These things go in
+pairs. They’re valueless alone.”
+
+Mr. Brewster’s brow clouded.
+
+“I know that,” he said shortly. “Mawson’s looking for the other one
+everywhere. If you happen across it, I give you _carte blanche_ to buy
+it for me.”
+
+“It must be somewhere.”
+
+“Yes. If you find it, don’t worry about the expense. I’ll settle up, no
+matter what it is.”
+
+“I’ll bear it in mind,” said Professor Binstead. “It may cost you a lot
+of money. I suppose you know that.”
+
+“I told you I don’t care what it costs.”
+
+“It’s nice to be a millionaire,” sighed Professor Binstead.
+
+“Luncheon is served, sir,” said Parker.
+
+He had stationed himself in a statutesque pose behind Mr. Brewster’s
+chair, when there was a knock at the door. He went to the door, and
+returned with a telegram.
+
+“Telegram for you, sir.”
+
+Mr. Brewster nodded carelessly. The contents of the chafing-dish had
+justified the advance advertising of their odour, and he was too busy
+to be interrupted.
+
+“Put it down. And you needn’t wait, Parker.”
+
+“Very good, sir.”
+
+The valet withdrew, and Mr. Brewster resumed his lunch.
+
+“Aren’t you going to open it?” asked Professor Binstead, to whom a
+telegram was a telegram.
+
+“It can wait. I get them all day long. I expect it’s from Lucille,
+saying what train she’s making.”
+
+“She returns to-day?”
+
+“Yes, Been at Miami.” Mr. Brewster, having dwelt at adequate length on
+the contents of the chafing-dish, adjusted his glasses and took up the
+envelope. “I shall be glad—Great Godfrey!”
+
+He sat staring at the telegram, his mouth open. His friend eyed him
+solicitously.
+
+“No bad news, I hope?”
+
+Mr. Brewster gurgled in a strangled way.
+
+“Bad news? Bad—? Here, read it for yourself.”
+
+Professor Binstead, one of the three most inquisitive men in New York,
+took the slip of paper with gratitude.
+
+“‘Returning New York to-day with darling Archie,’” he read. “‘Lots of
+love from us both. Lucille.’” He gaped at his host. “Who is Archie?” he
+enquired.
+
+“Who is Archie?” echoed Mr. Brewster helplessly. “Who is—? That’s just
+what I would like to know.”
+
+“‘Darling Archie,’” murmured the professor, musing over the telegram.
+“‘Returning to-day with darling Archie.’ Strange!”
+
+Mr. Brewster continued to stare before him. When you send your only
+daughter on a visit to Miami minus any entanglements and she mentions
+in a telegram that she has acquired a darling Archie, you are naturally
+startled. He rose from the table with a bound. It had occurred to him
+that by neglecting a careful study of his mail during the past week, as
+was his bad habit when busy, he had lost an opportunity of keeping
+abreast with current happenings. He recollected now that a letter had
+arrived from Lucille some time ago, and that he had put it away
+unopened till he should have leisure to read it. Lucille was a dear
+girl, he had felt, but her letters when on a vacation seldom contained
+anything that couldn’t wait a few days for a reading. He sprang for his
+desk, rummaged among his papers, and found what he was seeking.
+
+It was a long letter, and there was silence in the room for some
+moments while he mastered its contents. Then he turned to the
+professor, breathing heavily.
+
+“Good heavens!”
+
+“Yes?” said Professor Binstead eagerly. “Yes?”
+
+“Good Lord!”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Good gracious!”
+
+“What is it?” demanded the professor in an agony.
+
+Mr. Brewster sat down again with a thud.
+
+“She’s married!”
+
+“Married!”
+
+“Married! To an Englishman!”
+
+“Bless my soul!”
+
+“She says,” proceeded Mr. Brewster, referring to the letter again,
+“that they were both so much in love that they simply had to slip off
+and get married, and she hopes I won’t be cross. Cross!” gasped Mr.
+Brewster, gazing wildly at his friend.
+
+“Very disturbing!”
+
+“Disturbing! You bet it’s disturbing! I don’t know anything about the
+fellow. Never heard of him in my life. She says he wanted a quiet
+wedding because he thought a fellow looked such a chump getting
+married! And I must love him, because he’s all set to love me very
+much!”
+
+“Extraordinary!”
+
+Mr. Brewster put the letter down.
+
+“An Englishman!”
+
+“I have met some very agreeable Englishmen,” said Professor Binstead.
+
+“I don’t like Englishmen,” growled Mr. Brewster. “Parker’s an
+Englishman.”
+
+“Your valet?”
+
+“Yes. I believe he wears my shirts on the sly,’” said Mr. Brewster
+broodingly, “If I catch him—! What would you do about this, Binstead?”
+
+“Do?” The professor considered the point judicially. “Well, really,
+Brewster, I do not see that there is anything you can do. You must
+simply wait and meet the man. Perhaps he will turn out an admirable
+son-in-law.”
+
+“H’m!” Mr. Brewster declined to take an optimistic view. “But an
+Englishman, Binstead!” he said with pathos. “Why,” he went on, memory
+suddenly stirring, “there was an Englishman at this hotel only a week
+or two ago who went about knocking it in a way that would have amazed
+you! Said it was a rotten place! _My_ hotel!”
+
+Professor Binstead clicked his tongue sympathetically. He understood
+his friend’s warmth.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+MR. BREWSTER DELIVERS SENTENCE
+
+
+At about the same moment that Professor Binstead was clicking his
+tongue in Mr. Brewster’s sitting-room, Archie Moffam sat contemplating
+his bride in a drawing-room on the express from Miami. He was thinking
+that this was too good to be true. His brain had been in something of a
+whirl these last few days, but this was one thought that never failed
+to emerge clearly from the welter.
+
+Mrs. Archie Moffam, nee Lucille Brewster, was small and slender. She
+had a little animated face, set in a cloud of dark hair. She was so
+altogether perfect that Archie had frequently found himself compelled
+to take the marriage-certificate out of his inside pocket and study it
+furtively, to make himself realise that this miracle of good fortune
+had actually happened to him.
+
+“Honestly, old bean—I mean, dear old thing,—I mean, darling,” said
+Archie, “I can’t believe it!”
+
+“What?”
+
+“What I mean is, I can’t understand why you should have married a
+blighter like me.”
+
+Lucille’s eyes opened. She squeezed his hand.
+
+“Why, you’re the most wonderful thing in the world, precious!—Surely
+you know that?”
+
+“Absolutely escaped my notice. Are you sure?”
+
+“Of course I’m sure! You wonder-child! Nobody could see you without
+loving you!”
+
+Archie heaved an ecstatic sigh. Then a thought crossed his mind. It was
+a thought which frequently came to mar his bliss.
+
+“I say, I wonder if your father will think that!”
+
+“Of course he will!”
+
+“We rather sprung this, as it were, on the old lad,” said Archie
+dubiously. “What sort of a man _is_ your father?”
+
+“Father’s a darling, too.”
+
+“Rummy thing he should own that hotel,” said Archie. “I had a frightful
+row with a blighter of a manager there just before I left for Miami.
+Your father ought to sack that chap. He was a blot on the landscape!”
+
+It had been settled by Lucille during the journey that Archie should be
+broken gently to his father-in-law. That is to say, instead of bounding
+blithely into Mr. Brewster’s presence hand in hand, the happy pair
+should separate for half an hour or so, Archie hanging around in the
+offing while Lucille saw her father and told him the whole story, or
+those chapters of it which she had omitted from her letter for want of
+space. Then, having impressed Mr. Brewster sufficiently with his luck
+in having acquired Archie for a son-in-law, she would lead him to where
+his bit of good fortune awaited him.
+
+The programme worked out admirably in its earlier stages. When the two
+emerged from Mr. Brewster’s room to meet Archie, Mr. Brewster’s general
+idea was that fortune had smiled upon him in an almost unbelievable
+fashion and had presented him with a son-in-law who combined in almost
+equal parts the more admirable characteristics of Apollo, Sir Galahad,
+and Marcus Aurelius. True, he had gathered in the course of the
+conversation that dear Archie had no occupation and no private means;
+but Mr. Brewster felt that a great-souled man like Archie didn’t need
+them. You can’t have everything, and Archie, according to Lucille’s
+account, was practically a hundred per cent man in soul, looks,
+manners, amiability, and breeding. These are the things that count. Mr.
+Brewster proceeded to the lobby in a glow of optimism and geniality.
+
+Consequently, when he perceived Archie, he got a bit of a shock.
+
+“Hullo—ullo—ullo!” said Archie, advancing happily.
+
+“Archie, darling, this is father,” said Lucille.
+
+“Good Lord!” said Archie.
+
+There was one of those silences. Mr. Brewster looked at Archie. Archie
+gazed at Mr. Brewster. Lucille, perceiving without understanding why
+that the big introduction scene had stubbed its toe on some
+unlooked-for obstacle, waited anxiously for enlightenment. Meanwhile,
+Archie continued to inspect Mr. Brewster, and Mr. Brewster continued to
+drink in Archie.
+
+After an awkward pause of about three and a quarter minutes, Mr.
+Brewster swallowed once or twice, and finally spoke.
+
+“Lu!”
+
+“Yes, father?”
+
+“Is this true?”
+
+Lucille’s grey eyes clouded over with perplexity and apprehension.
+
+“True?”
+
+“Have you really inflicted this—_this_ on me for a son-in-law?” Mr.
+Brewster swallowed a few more times, Archie the while watching with a
+frozen fascination the rapid shimmying of his new relative’s
+Adam’s-apple. “Go away! I want to have a few words alone with
+this—This—_wassyourdamname?_” he demanded, in an overwrought manner,
+addressing Archie for the first time.
+
+“I told you, father. It’s Moom.”
+
+“Moom?”
+
+“It’s spelt M-o-f-f-a-m, but pronounced Moom.”
+
+“To rhyme,” said Archie, helpfully, “with Bluffinghame.”
+
+“Lu,” said Mr. Brewster, “run away! I want to speak to-to-to—”
+
+“You called me _this_ before,” said Archie.
+
+“You aren’t angry, father, dear?” said Lucilla.
+
+“Oh no! Oh no! I’m tickled to death!”
+
+When his daughter had withdrawn, Mr. Brewster drew a long breath.
+
+“Now then!” he said.
+
+“Bit embarrassing, all this, what!” said Archie, chattily. “I mean to
+say, having met before in less happy circs. and what not. Rum
+coincidence and so forth! How would it be to bury the jolly old
+hatchet—start a new life—forgive and forget—learn to love each
+other—and all that sort of rot? I’m game if you are. How do we go? Is
+it a bet?”
+
+Mr. Brewster remained entirely unsoftened by this manly appeal to his
+better feelings.
+
+“What the devil do you mean by marrying my daughter?”
+
+Archie reflected.
+
+“Well, it sort of happened, don’t you know! You know how these things
+_are!_ Young yourself once, and all that. I was most frightfully in
+love, and Lu seemed to think it wouldn’t be a bad scheme, and one thing
+led to another, and—well, there you are, don’t you know!”
+
+“And I suppose you think you’ve done pretty well for yourself?”
+
+“Oh, absolutely! As far as I’m concerned, everything’s topping! I’ve
+never felt so braced in my life!”
+
+“Yes!” said Mr. Brewster, with bitterness, “I suppose, from your
+view-point, everything _is_ ‘topping.’ You haven’t a cent to your name,
+and you’ve managed to fool a rich man’s daughter into marrying you. I
+suppose you looked me up in Bradstreet before committing yourself?”
+
+This aspect of the matter had not struck Archie until this moment.
+
+“I say!” he observed, with dismay. “I never looked at it like that
+before! I can see that, from your point of view, this must look like a
+bit of a wash-out!”
+
+“How do you propose to support Lucille, anyway?”
+
+Archie ran a finger round the inside of his collar. He felt
+embarrassed, His father-in-law was opening up all kinds of new lines of
+thought.
+
+“Well, there, old bean,” he admitted, frankly, “you rather have me!” He
+turned the matter over for a moment. “I had a sort of idea of, as it
+were, working, if you know what I mean.”
+
+“Working at what?”
+
+“Now, there again you stump me somewhat! The general scheme was that I
+should kind of look round, you know, and nose about and buzz to and fro
+till something turned up. That was, broadly speaking, the notion!”
+
+“And how did you suppose my daughter was to live while you were doing
+all this?”
+
+“Well, I think,” said Archie, “I _think_ we rather expected _you_ to
+rally round a bit for the nonce!”
+
+“I see! You expected to live on me?”
+
+“Well, you put it a bit crudely, but—as far as I had mapped anything
+out—that WAS what you might call the general scheme of procedure. You
+don’t think much of it, what? Yes? No?”
+
+Mr. Brewster exploded.
+
+“No! I do not think much of it! Good God! You go out of my hotel—_my_
+hotel—calling it all the names you could think of—roasting it to beat
+the band—”
+
+“Trifle hasty!” murmured Archie, apologetically. “Spoke without
+thinking. Dashed tap had gone _drip-drip-drip_ all night—kept me
+awake—hadn’t had breakfast—bygones be bygones—!”
+
+“Don’t interrupt! I say, you go out of my hotel, knocking it as no one
+has ever knocked it since it was built, and you sneak straight off and
+marry my daughter without my knowledge.”
+
+“Did think of wiring for blessing. Slipped the old bean, somehow. You
+know how one forgets things!”
+
+“And now you come back and calmly expect me to fling my arms round you
+and kiss you, and support you for the rest of your life!”
+
+“Only while I’m nosing about and buzzing to and fro.”
+
+“Well, I suppose I’ve got to support you. There seems no way out of it.
+I’ll tell you exactly what I propose to do. You think my hotel is a
+pretty poor hotel, eh? Well, you’ll have plenty of opportunity of
+judging, because you’re coming to live here. I’ll let you have a suite
+and I’ll let you have your meals, but outside of that—nothing doing!
+Nothing doing! Do you understand what I mean?”
+
+“Absolutely! You mean, ‘Napoo!’”
+
+“You can sign bills for a reasonable amount in my restaurant, and the
+hotel will look after your laundry. But not a cent do you get out of
+me. And, if you want your shoes shined, you can pay for it yourself in
+the basement. If you leave them outside your door, I’ll instruct the
+floor-waiter to throw them down the air-shaft. Do you understand? Good!
+Now, is there anything more you want to ask?”
+
+Archie smiled a propitiatory smile.
+
+“Well, as a matter of fact, I was going to ask if you would stagger
+along and have a bite with us in the grill-room?”
+
+“I will not!”
+
+“I’ll sign the bill,” said Archie, ingratiatingly. “You don’t think
+much of it? Oh, right-o!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+WORK WANTED
+
+
+It seemed to Archie, as he surveyed his position at the end of the
+first month of his married life, that all was for the best in the best
+of all possible worlds. In their attitude towards America, visiting
+Englishmen almost invariably incline to extremes, either detesting all
+that therein is or else becoming enthusiasts on the subject of the
+country, its climate, and its institutions. Archie belonged to the
+second class. He liked America and got on splendidly with Americans
+from the start. He was a friendly soul, a mixer; and in New York, that
+city of mixers, he found himself at home. The atmosphere of
+good-fellowship and the open-hearted hospitality of everybody he met
+appealed to him. There were moments when it seemed to him as though New
+York had simply been waiting for him to arrive before giving the word
+to let the revels commence.
+
+Nothing, of course, in this world is perfect; and, rosy as were the
+glasses through which Archie looked on his new surroundings, he had to
+admit that there was one flaw, one fly in the ointment, one individual
+caterpillar in the salad. Mr. Daniel Brewster, his father-in-law,
+remained consistently unfriendly. Indeed, his manner towards his new
+relative became daily more and more a manner which would have caused
+gossip on the plantation if Simon Legree had exhibited it in his
+relations with Uncle Tom. And this in spite of the fact that Archie, as
+early as the third morning of his stay, had gone to him and in the most
+frank and manly way, had withdrawn his criticism of the Hotel
+Cosmopolis, giving it as his considered opinion that the Hotel
+Cosmopolis on closer inspection appeared to be a good egg, one of the
+best and brightest, and a bit of all right.
+
+“A credit to you, old thing,” said Archie cordially.
+
+“Don’t call me old thing!” growled Mr. Brewster.
+
+“Right-o, old companion!” said Archie amiably.
+
+Archie, a true philosopher, bore this hostility with fortitude, but it
+worried Lucille.
+
+“I do wish father understood you better,” was her wistful comment when
+Archie had related the conversation.
+
+“Well, you know,” said Archie, “I’m open for being understood any time
+he cares to take a stab at it.”
+
+“You must try and make him fond of you.”
+
+“But how? I smile winsomely at him and what not, but he doesn’t
+respond.”
+
+“Well, we shall have to think of something. I want him to realise what
+an angel you are. You _are_ an angel, you know.”
+
+“No, really?”
+
+“Of course you are.”
+
+“It’s a rummy thing,” said Archie, pursuing a train of thought which
+was constantly with him, “the more I see of you, the more I wonder how
+you can have a father like—I mean to say, what I mean to say is, I wish
+I had known your mother; she must have been frightfully attractive.”
+
+“What would really please him, I know,” said Lucille, “would be if you
+got some work to do. He loves people who work.”
+
+“Yes?” said Archie doubtfully. “Well, you know, I heard him
+interviewing that chappie behind the desk this morning, who works like
+the dickens from early morn to dewy eve, on the subject of a mistake in
+his figures; and, if he loved him, he dissembled it all right. Of
+course, I admit that so far I haven’t been one of the toilers, but the
+dashed difficult thing is to know how to start. I’m nosing round, but
+the openings for a bright young man seem so scarce.”
+
+“Well, keep on trying. I feel sure that, if you could only find
+something to do, it doesn’t matter what, father would be quite
+different.”
+
+It was possibly the dazzling prospect of making Mr. Brewster quite
+different that stimulated Archie. He was strongly of the opinion that
+any change in his father-in-law must inevitably be for the better. A
+chance meeting with James B. Wheeler, the artist, at the Pen-and-Ink
+Club seemed to open the way.
+
+To a visitor to New York who has the ability to make himself liked it
+almost appears as though the leading industry in that city was the
+issuing of two-weeks’ invitation-cards to clubs. Archie since his
+arrival had been showered with these pleasant evidences of his
+popularity; and he was now an honorary member of so many clubs of
+various kinds that he had not time to go to them all. There were the
+fashionable clubs along Fifth Avenue to which his friend Reggie van
+Tuyl, son of his Florida hostess, had introduced him. There were the
+businessmen’s clubs of which he was made free by more solid citizens.
+And, best of all, there were the Lambs’, the Players’, the Friars’, the
+Coffee-House, the Pen-and-Ink,—and the other resorts of the artist, the
+author, the actor, and the Bohemian. It was in these that Archie spent
+most of his time, and it was here that he made the acquaintance of J.
+B. Wheeler, the popular illustrator.
+
+To Mr. Wheeler, over a friendly lunch, Archie had been confiding some
+of his ambitions to qualify as the hero of one of the
+Get-on-or-get-out-young-man-step-lively-books.
+
+“You want a job?” said Mr. Wheeler.
+
+“I want a job,” said Archie.
+
+Mr. Wheeler consumed eight fried potatoes in quick succession. He was
+an able trencherman.
+
+“I always looked on you as one of our leading lilies of the field,” he
+said. “Why this anxiety to toil and spin?”
+
+“Well, my wife, you know, seems to think it might put me one-up with
+the jolly old dad if I did something.”
+
+“And you’re not particular what you do, so long as it has the outer
+aspect of work?”
+
+“Anything in the world, laddie, anything in the world.”
+
+“Then come and pose for a picture I’m doing,” said J. B. Wheeler. “It’s
+for a magazine cover. You’re just the model I want, and I’ll pay you at
+the usual rates. Is it a go?”
+
+“Pose?”
+
+“You’ve only got to stand still and look like a chunk of wood. You can
+do that, surely?”
+
+“I can do that,” said Archie.
+
+“Then come along down to my studio to-morrow.”
+
+“Right-o!” said Archie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+STRANGE EXPERIENCES OF AN ARTIST’S MODEL
+
+
+“I say, old thing!”
+
+Archie spoke plaintively. Already he was looking back ruefully to the
+time when he had supposed that an artist’s model had a soft job. In the
+first five minutes muscles which he had not been aware that he
+possessed had started to ache like neglected teeth. His respect for the
+toughness and durability of artists’ models was now solid. How they
+acquired the stamina to go through this sort of thing all day and then
+bound off to Bohemian revels at night was more than he could
+understand.
+
+“Don’t wobble, confound you!” snorted Mr. Wheeler.
+
+“Yes, but, my dear old artist,” said Archie, “what you don’t seem to
+grasp—what you appear not to realise—is that I’m getting a crick in the
+back.”
+
+“You weakling! You miserable, invertebrate worm. Move an inch and I’ll
+murder you, and come and dance on your grave every Wednesday and
+Saturday. I’m just getting it.”
+
+“It’s in the spine that it seems to catch me principally.”
+
+“Be a man, you faint-hearted string-bean!” urged J. B. Wheeler. “You
+ought to be ashamed of yourself. Why, a girl who was posing for me last
+week stood for a solid hour on one leg, holding a tennis racket over
+her head and smiling brightly withal.”
+
+“The female of the species is more india-rubbery than the male,” argued
+Archie.
+
+“Well, I’ll be through in a few minutes. Don’t weaken. Think how proud
+you’ll be when you see yourself on all the bookstalls.”
+
+Archie sighed, and braced himself to the task once more. He wished he
+had never taken on this binge. In addition to his physical discomfort,
+he was feeling a most awful chump. The cover on which Mr. Wheeler was
+engaged was for the August number of the magazine, and it had been
+necessary for Archie to drape his reluctant form in a two-piece bathing
+suit of a vivid lemon colour; for he was supposed to be representing
+one of those jolly dogs belonging to the best families who dive off
+floats at exclusive seashore resorts. J. B. Wheeler, a stickler for
+accuracy, had wanted him to remove his socks and shoes; but there
+Archie had stood firm. He was willing to make an ass of himself, but
+not a silly ass.
+
+“All right,” said J. B. Wheeler, laying down his brush. “That will do
+for to-day. Though, speaking without prejudice and with no wish to be
+offensive, if I had had a model who wasn’t a weak-kneed,
+jelly-backboned son of Belial, I could have got the darned thing
+finished without having to have another sitting.”
+
+“I wonder why you chappies call this sort of thing ‘sitting,’” said
+Archie, pensively, as he conducted tentative experiments in osteopathy
+on his aching back. “I say, old thing, I could do with a restorative,
+if you have one handy. But, of course, you haven’t, I suppose,” he
+added, resignedly. Abstemious as a rule, there were moments when Archie
+found the Eighteenth Amendment somewhat trying.
+
+J. B. Wheeler shook his head.
+
+“You’re a little previous,” he said. “But come round in another day or
+so, and I may be able to do something for you.” He moved with a certain
+conspirator-like caution to a corner of the room, and, lifting to one
+side a pile of canvases, revealed a stout barrel, which he regarded
+with a fatherly and benignant eye. “I don’t mind telling you that, in
+the fullness of time, I believe this is going to spread a good deal of
+sweetness and light.”
+
+“Oh, ah,” said Archie, interested. “Home-brew, what?”
+
+“Made with these hands. I added a few more raisins yesterday, to speed
+things up a bit. There is much virtue in your raisin. And, talking of
+speeding things up, for goodness’ sake try to be a bit more punctual
+to-morrow. We lost an hour of good daylight to-day.”
+
+“I like that! I was here on the absolute minute. I had to hang about on
+the landing waiting for you.”
+
+“Well, well, that doesn’t matter,” said J. B. Wheeler, impatiently, for
+the artist soul is always annoyed by petty details. “The point is that
+we were an hour late in getting to work. Mind you’re here to-morrow at
+eleven sharp.”
+
+It was, therefore, with a feeling of guilt and trepidation that Archie
+mounted the stairs on the following morning; for in spite of his good
+resolutions he was half an hour behind time. He was relieved to find
+that his friend had also lagged by the wayside. The door of the studio
+was ajar, and he went in, to discover the place occupied by a lady of
+mature years, who was scrubbing the floor with a mop. He went into the
+bedroom and donned his bathing suit. When he emerged, ten minutes
+later, the charwoman had gone, but J. B. Wheeler was still absent.
+Rather glad of the respite, he sat down to kill time by reading the
+morning paper, whose sporting page alone he had managed to master at
+the breakfast table.
+
+There was not a great deal in the paper to interest him. The usual
+bond-robbery had taken place on the previous day, and the police were
+reported hot on the trail of the Master-Mind who was alleged to be at
+the back of these financial operations. A messenger named Henry Babcock
+had been arrested and was expected to become confidential. To one who,
+like Archie, had never owned a bond, the story made little appeal. He
+turned with more interest to a cheery half-column on the activities of
+a gentleman in Minnesota who, with what seemed to Archie, as he thought
+of Mr. Daniel Brewster, a good deal of resource and public spirit, had
+recently beaned his father-in-law with the family meat-axe. It was only
+after he had read this through twice in a spirit of gentle approval
+that it occurred to him that J. B. Wheeler was uncommonly late at the
+tryst. He looked at his watch, and found that he had been in the studio
+three-quarters of an hour.
+
+Archie became restless. Long-suffering old bean though he was, he
+considered this a bit thick. He got up and went out on to the landing,
+to see if there were any signs of the blighter. There were none. He
+began to understand now what had happened. For some reason or other the
+bally artist was not coming to the studio at all that day. Probably he
+had called up the hotel and left a message to this effect, and Archie
+had just missed it. Another man might have waited to make certain that
+his message had reached its destination, but not woollen-headed
+Wheeler, the most casual individual in New York.
+
+Thoroughly aggrieved, Archie turned back to the studio to dress and go
+away.
+
+His progress was stayed by a solid, forbidding slab of oak. Somehow or
+other, since he had left the room, the door had managed to get itself
+shut.
+
+“Oh, dash it!” said Archie.
+
+The mildness of the expletive was proof that the full horror of the
+situation had not immediately come home to him. His mind in the first
+few moments was occupied with the problem of how the door had got that
+way. He could not remember shutting it. Probably he had done it
+unconsciously. As a child, he had been taught by sedulous elders that
+the little gentleman always closed doors behind him, and presumably his
+subconscious self was still under the influence. And then, suddenly, he
+realised that this infernal, officious ass of a subconscious self had
+deposited him right in the gumbo. Behind that closed door, unattainable
+as youthful ambition, lay his gent’s heather-mixture with the green
+twill, and here he was, out in the world, alone, in a lemon-coloured
+bathing suit.
+
+In all crises of human affairs there are two broad courses open to a
+man. He can stay where he is or he can go elsewhere. Archie, leaning on
+the banisters, examined these alternatives narrowly. If he stayed where
+he was he would have to spend the night on this dashed landing. If he
+legged it, in this kit, he would be gathered up by the constabulary
+before he had gone a hundred yards. He was no pessimist, but he was
+reluctantly forced to the conclusion that he was up against it.
+
+It was while he was musing with a certain tenseness on these things
+that the sound of footsteps came to him from below. But almost in the
+first instant the hope that this might be J. B. Wheeler, the curse of
+the human race, died away. Whoever was coming up the stairs was
+running, and J. B. Wheeler never ran upstairs. He was not one of your
+lean, haggard, spiritual-looking geniuses. He made a large income with
+his brush and pencil, and spent most of it in creature comforts. This
+couldn’t be J. B. Wheeler.
+
+It was not. It was a tall, thin man whom he had never seen before. He
+appeared to be in a considerable hurry. He let himself into the studio
+on the floor below, and vanished without even waiting to shut the door.
+
+He had come and disappeared in almost record time, but, brief though
+his passing had been, it had been long enough to bring consolation to
+Archie. A sudden bright light had been vouchsafed to Archie, and he now
+saw an admirably ripe and fruity scheme for ending his troubles. What
+could be simpler than to toddle down one flight of stairs and in an
+easy and debonair manner ask the chappie’s permission to use his
+telephone? And what could be simpler, once he was at the ’phone, than
+to get in touch with somebody at the Cosmopolis who would send down a
+few trousers and what not in a kit bag. It was a priceless solution,
+thought Archie, as he made his way downstairs. Not even embarrassing,
+he meant to say. This chappie, living in a place like this, wouldn’t
+bat an eyelid at the spectacle of a fellow trickling about the place in
+a bathing suit. They would have a good laugh about the whole thing.
+
+“I say, I hate to bother you—dare say you’re busy and all that sort of
+thing—but would you mind if I popped in for half a second and used your
+’phone?”
+
+That was the speech, the extremely gentlemanly and well-phrased speech
+which Archie had prepared to deliver the moment the man appeared. The
+reason he did not deliver it was that the man did not appear. He
+knocked, but nothing stirred.
+
+“I say!”
+
+Archie now perceived that the door was ajar, and that on an envelope
+attached with a tack to one of the panels was the name “Elmer M. Moon”
+He pushed the door a little farther open and tried again.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Moon! Mr. Moon!” He waited a moment. “Oh, Mr. Moon! Mr. Moon!
+Are you there, Mr. Moon?”
+
+He blushed hotly. To his sensitive ear the words had sounded exactly
+like the opening line of the refrain of a vaudeville song-hit. He
+decided to waste no further speech on a man with such an unfortunate
+surname until he could see him face to face and get a chance of
+lowering his voice a bit. Absolutely absurd to stand outside a
+chappie’s door singing song-hits in a lemon-coloured bathing suit. He
+pushed the door open and walked in; and his subconscious self, always
+the gentleman, closed it gently behind him.
+
+“Up!” said a low, sinister, harsh, unfriendly, and unpleasant voice.
+
+“Eh?” said Archie, revolving sharply on his axis.
+
+He found himself confronting the hurried gentleman who had run
+upstairs. This sprinter had produced an automatic pistol, and was
+pointing it in a truculent manner at his head. Archie stared at his
+host, and his host stared at him.
+
+“Put your hands up,” he said.
+
+“Oh, right-o! Absolutely!” said Archie. “But I mean to say—”
+
+The other was drinking him in with considerable astonishment. Archie’s
+costume seemed to have made a powerful impression upon him.
+
+“Who the devil are you?” he enquired.
+
+“Me? Oh, my name’s—”
+
+“Never mind your name. What are you doing here?”
+
+“Well, as a matter of fact, I popped in to ask if I might use your
+’phone. You see—”
+
+A certain relief seemed to temper the austerity of the other’s gaze. As
+a visitor, Archie, though surprising, seemed to be better than he had
+expected.
+
+“I don’t know what to do with you,” he said, meditatively.
+
+“If you’d just let me toddle to the ’phone—”
+
+“Likely!” said the man. He appeared to reach a decision. “Here, go into
+that room.”
+
+He indicated with a jerk of his head the open door of what was
+apparently a bedroom at the farther end of the studio.
+
+“I take it,” said Archie, chattily, “that all this may seem to you not
+a little rummy.”
+
+“Get on!”
+
+“I was only saying—”
+
+“Well, I haven’t time to listen. Get a move on!”
+
+The bedroom was in a state of untidiness which eclipsed anything which
+Archie had ever witnessed. The other appeared to be moving house. Bed,
+furniture, and floor were covered with articles of clothing. A silk
+shirt wreathed itself about Archie’s ankles as he stood gaping, and, as
+he moved farther into the room, his path was paved with ties and
+collars.
+
+“Sit down!” said Elmer M. Moon, abruptly.
+
+“Right-o! Thanks,” said Archie, “I suppose you wouldn’t like me to
+explain, and what not, what?”
+
+“No!” said Mr. Moon. “I haven’t got your spare time. Put your hands
+behind that chair.”
+
+Archie did so, and found them immediately secured by what felt like a
+silk tie. His assiduous host then proceeded to fasten his ankles in a
+like manner. This done, he seemed to feel that he had done all that was
+required of him, and he returned to the packing of a large suitcase
+which stood by the window.
+
+“I say!” said Archie.
+
+Mr. Moon, with the air of a man who has remembered something which he
+had overlooked, shoved a sock in his guest’s mouth and resumed his
+packing. He was what might be called an impressionist packer. His aim
+appeared to be speed rather than neatness. He bundled his belongings
+in, closed the bag with some difficulty, and, stepping to the window,
+opened it. Then he climbed out on to the fire-escape, dragged the
+suit-case after him, and was gone.
+
+Archie, left alone, addressed himself to the task of freeing his
+prisoned limbs. The job proved much easier than he had expected. Mr.
+Moon, that hustler, had wrought for the moment, not for all time. A
+practical man, he had been content to keep his visitor shackled merely
+for such a period as would permit him to make his escape unhindered. In
+less than ten minutes Archie, after a good deal of snake-like writhing,
+was pleased to discover that the thingummy attached to his wrists had
+loosened sufficiently to enable him to use his hands. He untied himself
+and got up.
+
+He now began to tell himself that out of evil cometh good. His
+encounter with the elusive Mr. Moon had not been an agreeable one, but
+it had had this solid advantage, that it had left him right in the
+middle of a great many clothes. And Mr. Moon, whatever his moral
+defects, had the one excellent quality of taking about the same size as
+himself. Archie, casting a covetous eye upon a tweed suit which lay on
+the bed, was on the point of climbing into the trousers when on the
+outer door of the studio there sounded a forceful knocking.
+
+“Open up here!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+THE BOMB
+
+
+Archie bounded silently out into the other room and stood listening
+tensely. He was not a naturally querulous man, but he did feel at this
+point that Fate was picking on him with a somewhat undue severity.
+
+“In th’ name av th’ Law!”
+
+There are times when the best of us lose our heads. At this juncture
+Archie should undoubtedly have gone to the door, opened it, explained
+his presence in a few well-chosen words, and generally have passed the
+whole thing off with ready tact. But the thought of confronting a posse
+of police in his present costume caused him to look earnestly about him
+for a hiding-place.
+
+Up against the farther wall was a settee with a high, arching back,
+which might have been put there for that special purpose. He inserted
+himself behind this, just as a splintering crash announced that the
+Law, having gone through the formality of knocking with its knuckles,
+was now getting busy with an axe. A moment later the door had given
+way, and the room was full of trampling feet. Archie wedged himself
+against the wall with the quiet concentration of a clam nestling in its
+shell, and hoped for the best.
+
+It seemed to him that his immediate future depended for better or for
+worse entirely on the native intelligence of the Force. If they were
+the bright, alert men he hoped they were, they would see all that junk
+in the bedroom and, deducing from it that their quarry had stood not
+upon the order of his going but had hopped it, would not waste time in
+searching a presumably empty apartment. If, on the other hand, they
+were the obtuse, flat-footed persons who occasionally find their way
+into the ranks of even the most enlightened constabularies, they would
+undoubtedly shift the settee and drag him into a publicity from which
+his modest soul shrank. He was enchanted, therefore, a few moments
+later, to hear a gruff voice state that th’ mutt had beaten it down th’
+fire-escape. His opinion of the detective abilities of the New York
+police force rose with a bound.
+
+There followed a brief council of war, which, as it took place in the
+bedroom, was inaudible to Archie except as a distant growling noise. He
+could distinguish no words, but, as it was succeeded by a general
+trampling of large boots in the direction of the door and then by
+silence, he gathered that the pack, having drawn the studio and found
+it empty, had decided to return to other and more profitable duties. He
+gave them a reasonable interval for removing themselves, and then poked
+his head cautiously over the settee.
+
+All was peace. The place was empty. No sound disturbed the stillness.
+
+Archie emerged. For the first time in this morning of disturbing
+occurrences he began to feel that God was in his heaven and all right
+with the world. At last things were beginning to brighten up a bit, and
+life might be said to have taken on some of the aspects of a good egg.
+He stretched himself, for it is cramping work lying under settees, and,
+proceeding to the bedroom, picked up the tweed trousers again.
+
+Clothes had a fascination for Archie. Another man, in similar
+circumstances, might have hurried over his toilet; but Archie, faced by
+a difficult choice of ties, rather strung the thing out. He selected a
+specimen which did great credit to the taste of Mr. Moon, evidently one
+of our snappiest dressers, found that it did not harmonise with the
+deeper meaning of the tweed suit, removed it, chose another, and was
+adjusting the bow and admiring the effect, when his attention was
+diverted by a slight sound which was half a cough and half a sniff;
+and, turning, found himself gazing into the clear blue eyes of a large
+man in uniform, who had stepped into the room from the fire-escape. He
+was swinging a substantial club in a negligent sort of way, and he
+looked at Archie with a total absence of bonhomie.
+
+“Ah!” he observed.
+
+“Oh, _there_ you are!” said Archie, subsiding weakly against the chest
+of drawers. He gulped. “Of course, I can see you’re thinking all this
+pretty tolerably weird and all that,” he proceeded, in a propitiatory
+voice.
+
+The policeman attempted no analysis of his emotions, He opened a mouth
+which a moment before had looked incapable of being opened except with
+the assistance of powerful machinery, and shouted a single word.
+
+“Cassidy!”
+
+A distant voice gave tongue in answer. It was like alligators roaring
+to their mates across lonely swamps.
+
+There was a rumble of footsteps in the region of the stairs, and
+presently there entered an even larger guardian of the Law than the
+first exhibit. He, too, swung a massive club, and, like his colleague,
+he gazed frostily at Archie.
+
+“God save Ireland!” he remarked.
+
+The words appeared to be more in the nature of an expletive than a
+practical comment on the situation. Having uttered them, he draped
+himself in the doorway like a colossus, and chewed gum.
+
+“Where ja get him?” he enquired, after a pause.
+
+“Found him in here attimpting to disguise himself.”
+
+“I told Cap. he was hiding somewheres, but he would have it that he’d
+beat it down th’ escape,” said the gum-chewer, with the sombre triumph
+of the underling whose sound advice has been overruled by those above
+him. He shifted his wholesome (or, as some say, unwholesome) morsel to
+the other side of his mouth, and for the first time addressed Archie
+directly. “Ye’re pinched!” he observed.
+
+Archie started violently. The bleak directness of the speech roused him
+with a jerk from the dream-like state into which he had fallen. He had
+not anticipated this. He had assumed that there would be a period of
+tedious explanations to be gone through before he was at liberty to
+depart to the cosy little lunch for which his interior had been sighing
+wistfully this long time past; but that he should be arrested had been
+outside his calculations. Of course, he could put everything right
+eventually; he could call witnesses to his character and the purity of
+his intentions; but in the meantime the whole dashed business would be
+in all the papers, embellished with all those unpleasant flippancies to
+which your newspaper reporter is so prone to stoop when he sees half a
+chance. He would feel a frightful chump. Chappies would rot him about
+it to the most fearful extent. Old Brewster’s name would come into it,
+and he could not disguise it from himself that his father-in-law, who
+liked his name in the papers as little as possible, would be sorer than
+a sunburned neck.
+
+“No, I say, you know! I mean, I mean to say!”
+
+“Pinched!” repeated the rather larger policeman.
+
+“And annything ye say,” added his slightly smaller colleague, “will be
+used agenst ya ’t the trial.”
+
+“And if ya try t’escape,” said the first speaker, twiddling his club,
+“ya’ll getja block knocked off.”
+
+And, having sketched out this admirably clear and neatly-constructed
+scenario, the two relapsed into silence. Officer Cassidy restored his
+gum to circulation. Officer Donahue frowned sternly at his boots.
+
+“But, I say,” said Archie, “it’s all a mistake, you know. Absolutely a
+frightful error, my dear old constables. I’m not the lad you’re after
+at all. The chappie you want is a different sort of fellow altogether.
+Another blighter entirely.”
+
+New York policemen never laugh when on duty. There is probably
+something in the regulations against it. But Officer Donahue permitted
+the left corner of his mouth to twitch slightly, and a momentary
+muscular spasm disturbed the calm of Officer Cassidy’s granite
+features, as a passing breeze ruffles the surface of some bottomless
+lake.
+
+“That’s what they all say!” observed Officer Donahue.
+
+“It’s no use tryin’ that line of talk,” said Officer Cassidy.
+“Babcock’s squealed.”
+
+“Sure. Squealed ’s morning,” said Officer Donahue.
+
+Archie’s memory stirred vaguely.
+
+“Babcock?” he said. “Do you know, that name seems familiar to me,
+somehow. I’m almost sure I’ve read it in the paper or something.”
+
+“Ah, cut it out!” said Officer Cassidy, disgustedly. The two constables
+exchanged a glance of austere disapproval. This hypocrisy pained them.
+“Read it in th’ paper or something!”
+
+“By Jove! I remember now. He’s the chappie who was arrested in that
+bond business. For goodness’ sake, my dear, merry old constables,” said
+Archie, astounded, “you surely aren’t labouring under the impression
+that I’m the Master-Mind they were talking about in the paper? Why,
+what an absolutely priceless notion! I mean to say, I ask you, what!
+Frankly, laddies, do I look like a Master-Mind?”
+
+Officer Cassidy heaved a deep sigh, which rumbled up from his interior
+like the first muttering of a cyclone.
+
+“If I’d known,” he said, regretfully, “that this guy was going to turn
+out a ruddy Englishman, I’d have taken a slap at him with m’ stick and
+chanced it!”
+
+Officer Donahue considered the point well taken.
+
+“Ah!” he said, understandingly. He regarded Archie with an unfriendly
+eye. “I know th’ sort well! Trampling on th’ face av th’ poor!”
+
+“Ya c’n trample on the poor man’s face,” said Officer Cassidy,
+severely; “but don’t be surprised if one day he bites you in the leg!”
+
+“But, my dear old sir,” protested Archie, “I’ve never trampled—”
+
+“One of these days,” said Officer Donahue, moodily, “the Shannon will
+flow in blood to the sea!”
+
+“Absolutely! But—”
+
+Officer Cassidy uttered a glad cry.
+
+“Why couldn’t we hit him a lick,” he suggested, brightly, “an’ tell th’
+Cap. he resisted us in th’ exercise of our jooty?”
+
+An instant gleam of approval and enthusiasm came into Officer Donahue’s
+eyes. Officer Donahue was not a man who got these luminous inspirations
+himself, but that did not prevent him appreciating them in others and
+bestowing commendation in the right quarter. There was nothing petty or
+grudging about Officer Donahue.
+
+“Ye’re the lad with the head, Tim!” he exclaimed admiringly.
+
+“It just sorta came to me,” said Mr. Cassidy, modestly.
+
+“It’s a great idea, Timmy!”
+
+“Just happened to think of it,” said Mr. Cassidy, with a coy gesture of
+self-effacement.
+
+Archie had listened to the dialogue with growing uneasiness. Not for
+the first time since he had made their acquaintance, he became vividly
+aware of the exceptional physical gifts of these two men. The New York
+police force demands from those who would join its ranks an extremely
+high standard of stature and sinew, but it was obvious that jolly old
+Donahue and Cassidy must have passed in first shot without any
+difficulty whatever.
+
+“I say, you know,” he observed, apprehensively.
+
+And then a sharp and commanding voice spoke from the outer room.
+
+“Donahue! Cassidy! What the devil does this mean?”
+
+Archie had a momentary impression that an angel had fluttered down to
+his rescue. If this was the case, the angel had assumed an effective
+disguise—that of a police captain. The new arrival was a far smaller
+man than his subordinates—so much smaller that it did Archie good to
+look at him. For a long time he had been wishing that it were possible
+to rest his eyes with the spectacle of something of a slightly less
+out-size nature than his two companions.
+
+“Why have you left your posts?”
+
+The effect of the interruption on the Messrs. Cassidy and Donahue was
+pleasingly instantaneous. They seemed to shrink to almost normal
+proportions, and their manner took on an attractive deference.
+
+Officer Donahue saluted.
+
+“If ye plaze, sorr—”
+
+Officer Cassidy also saluted, simultaneously.
+
+“’Twas like this, sorr—”
+
+The captain froze Officer Cassidy with a glance and, leaving him
+congealed, turned to Officer Donahue.
+
+“Oi wuz standing on th’ fire-escape, sorr,” said Officer Donahue, in a
+tone of obsequious respect which not only delighted, but astounded
+Archie, who hadn’t known he could talk like that, “accordin’ to
+instructions, when I heard a suspicious noise. I crope in, sorr, and
+found this duck—found the accused, sorr—in front of the mirror,
+examinin’ himself. I then called to Officer Cassidy for assistance. We
+pinched—arrested um, sorr.”
+
+The captain looked at Archie. It seemed to Archie that he looked at him
+coldly and with contempt.
+
+“Who is he?”
+
+“The Master-Mind, sorr.”
+
+“The what?”
+
+“The accused, sorr. The man that’s wanted.”
+
+“You may want him. I don’t,” said the captain. Archie, though relieved,
+thought he might have put it more nicely. “This isn’t Moon. It’s not a
+bit like him.”
+
+“Absolutely not!” agreed Archie, cordially. “It’s all a mistake, old
+companion, as I was trying to—”
+
+“Cut it out!”
+
+“Oh, right-o!”
+
+“You’ve seen the photographs at the station. Do you mean to tell me you
+see any resemblance?”
+
+“If ye plaze, sorr,” said Officer Cassidy, coming to life.
+
+“Well?”
+
+“We thought he’d bin disguising himself, the way he wouldn’t be
+recognised.”
+
+“You’re a fool!” said the captain.
+
+“Yes, sorr,” said Officer Cassidy, meekly.
+
+“So are you, Donahue.”
+
+“Yes, sorr.”
+
+Archie’s respect for this chappie was going up all the time. He seemed
+to be able to take years off the lives of these massive blighters with
+a word. It was like the stories you read about lion-tamers. Archie did
+not despair of seeing Officer Donahue and his old college chum Cassidy
+eventually jumping through hoops.
+
+“Who are you?” demanded the captain, turning to Archie.
+
+“Well, my name is—”
+
+“What are you doing here?”
+
+“Well, it’s rather a longish story, you know. Don’t want to bore you,
+and all that.”
+
+“I’m here to listen. You can’t bore _me_.”
+
+“Dashed nice of you to put it like that,” said Archie, gratefully. “I
+mean to say, makes it easier and so forth. What I mean is, you know how
+rotten you feel telling the deuce of a long yarn and wondering if the
+party of the second part is wishing you would turn off the tap and go
+home. I mean—”
+
+“If,” said the captain, “you’re reciting something, stop. If you’re
+trying to tell me what you’re doing here, make it shorter and easier.”
+
+Archie saw his point. Of course, time was money—the modern spirit of
+hustle—all that sort of thing.
+
+“Well, it was this bathing suit, you know,” he said.
+
+“What bathing suit?”
+
+“Mine, don’t you know. A lemon-coloured contrivance. Rather bright and
+so forth, but in its proper place not altogether a bad egg. Well, the
+whole thing started, you know, with my standing on a bally pedestal
+sort of arrangement in a diving attitude—for the cover, you know. I
+don’t know if you have ever done anything of that kind yourself, but it
+gives you a most fearful crick in the spine. However, that’s rather
+beside the point, I suppose—don’t know why I mentioned it. Well, this
+morning he was dashed late, so I went out—”
+
+“What the devil are you talking about?”
+
+Archie looked at him, surprised.
+
+“Aren’t I making it clear?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Well, you understand about the bathing suit, don’t you? The jolly old
+bathing suit, you’ve grasped that, what?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Oh, I say,” said Archie. “That’s rather a nuisance. I mean to say, the
+bathing suit’s what you might call the good old pivot of the whole
+dashed affair, you see. Well, you understand about the cover, what?
+You’re pretty clear on the subject of the cover?”
+
+“What cover?”
+
+“Why, for the magazine.”
+
+“What magazine?”
+
+“Now there you rather have me. One of these bright little periodicals,
+you know, that you see popping to and fro on the bookstalls.”
+
+“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the captain. He looked
+at Archie with an expression of distrust and hostility. “And I’ll tell
+you straight out I don’t like the looks of you. I believe you’re a pal
+of his.”
+
+“No longer,” said Archie, firmly. “I mean to say, a chappie who makes
+you stand on a bally pedestal sort of arrangement and get a crick in
+the spine, and then doesn’t turn up and leaves you biffing all over the
+countryside in a bathing suit—”
+
+The reintroduction of the bathing suit motive seemed to have the worst
+effect on the captain. He flushed darkly.
+
+“Are you trying to josh me? I’ve a mind to soak you!”
+
+“If ye plaze, sorr,” cried Officer Donahue and Officer Cassidy in
+chorus. In the course of their professional career they did not often
+hear their superior make many suggestions with which they saw eye to
+eye, but he had certainly, in their opinion, spoken a mouthful now.
+
+“No, honestly, my dear old thing, nothing was farther from my
+thoughts—”
+
+He would have spoken further, but at this moment the world came to an
+end. At least, that was how it sounded. Somewhere in the immediate
+neighbourhood something went off with a vast explosion, shattering the
+glass in the window, peeling the plaster from the ceiling, and sending
+him staggering into the inhospitable arms of Officer Donahue.
+
+The three guardians of the Law stared at one another.
+
+“If ye plaze, sorr,” said Officer Cassidy, saluting.
+
+“Well?”
+
+“May I spake, sorr?”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Something’s exploded, sorr!”
+
+The information, kindly meant though it was, seemed to annoy the
+captain.
+
+“What the devil did you think I thought had happened?” he demanded,
+with not a little irritation, “It was a bomb!”
+
+Archie could have corrected this diagnosis, for already a faint but
+appealing aroma of an alcoholic nature was creeping into the room
+through a hole in the ceiling, and there had risen before his eyes the
+picture of J. B. Wheeler affectionately regarding that barrel of his on
+the previous morning in the studio upstairs. J. B. Wheeler had wanted
+quick results, and he had got them. Archie had long since ceased to
+regard J. B. Wheeler as anything but a tumour on the social system, but
+he was bound to admit that he had certainly done him a good turn now.
+Already these honest men, diverted by the superior attraction of this
+latest happening, appeared to have forgotten his existence.
+
+“Sorr!” said Officer Donahue.
+
+“Well?”
+
+“It came from upstairs, sorr.”
+
+“Of course it came from upstairs. Cassidy!”
+
+“Sorr?”
+
+“Get down into the street, call up the reserves, and stand at the front
+entrance to keep the crowd back. We’ll have the whole city here in five
+minutes.”
+
+“Right, sorr.”
+
+“Don’t let anyone in.”
+
+“No, sorr.”
+
+“Well, see that you don’t. Come along, Donahue, now. Look slippy.”
+
+“On the spot, sorr!” said Officer Donahue.
+
+A moment later Archie had the studio to himself. Two minutes later he
+was picking his way cautiously down the fire-escape after the manner of
+the recent Mr. Moon. Archie had not seen much of Mr. Moon, but he had
+seen enough to know that in certain crises his methods were sound and
+should be followed. Elmer Moon was not a good man; his ethics were poor
+and his moral code shaky; but in the matter of legging it away from a
+situation of peril and discomfort he had no superior.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+MR. ROSCOE SHERRIFF HAS AN IDEA
+
+
+Archie inserted a fresh cigarette in his long holder and began to smoke
+a little moodily. It was about a week after his disturbing adventures
+in J. B. Wheeler’s studio, and life had ceased for the moment to be a
+thing of careless enjoyment. Mr. Wheeler, mourning over his lost
+home-brew and refusing, like Niobe, to be comforted, has suspended the
+sittings for the magazine cover, thus robbing Archie of his life-work.
+Mr. Brewster had not been in genial mood of late. And, in addition to
+all this, Lucille was away on a visit to a school-friend. And when
+Lucille went away, she took with her the sunshine. Archie was not
+surprised at her being popular and in demand among her friends, but
+that did not help him to become reconciled to her absence.
+
+He gazed rather wistfully across the table at his friend, Roscoe
+Sherriff, the Press-agent, another of his Pen-and-Ink Club
+acquaintances. They had just finished lunch, and during the meal
+Sherriff, who, like most men of action, was fond of hearing the sound
+of his own voice and liked exercising it on the subject of himself, had
+been telling Archie a few anecdotes about his professional past. From
+these the latter had conceived a picture of Roscoe Sherriff’s life as a
+prismatic thing of energy and adventure and well-paid withal—just the
+sort of life, in fact, which he would have enjoyed leading himself. He
+wished that he, too, like the Press-agent, could go about the place
+“slipping things over” and “putting things across.” Daniel Brewster, he
+felt, would have beamed upon a son-in-law like Roscoe Sherriff.
+
+“The more I see of America,” sighed Archie, “the more it amazes me. All
+you birds seem to have been doing things from the cradle upwards. I
+wish I could do things!”
+
+“Well, why don’t you?”
+
+Archie flicked the ash from his cigarette into the finger-bowl.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know, you know,” he said, “Somehow, none of our family
+ever have. I don’t know why it is, but whenever a Moffam starts out to
+do things he infallibly makes a bloomer. There was a Moffam in the
+Middle Ages who had a sudden spasm of energy and set out to make a
+pilgrimage to Jerusalem, dressed as a wandering friar. Rum ideas they
+had in those days.”
+
+“Did he get there?”
+
+“Absolutely not! Just as he was leaving the front door his favourite
+hound mistook him for a tramp—or a varlet, or a scurvy knave, or
+whatever they used to call them at that time—and bit him in the fleshy
+part of the leg.”
+
+“Well, at least he started.”
+
+“Enough to make a chappie start, what?”
+
+Roscoe Sherriff sipped his coffee thoughtfully. He was an apostle of
+Energy, and it seemed to him that he could make a convert of Archie and
+incidentally do himself a bit of good. For several days he had been,
+looking for someone like Archie to help him in a small matter which he
+had in mind.
+
+“If you’re really keen on doing things,” he said, “there’s something
+you can do for me right away.”
+
+Archie beamed. Action was what his soul demanded.
+
+“Anything, dear boy, anything! State your case!”
+
+“Would you have any objection to putting up a snake for me?”
+
+“Putting up a snake?”
+
+“Just for a day or two.”
+
+“But how do you mean, old soul? Put him up where?”
+
+“Wherever you live. Where do you live? The Cosmopolis, isn’t it? Of
+course! You married old Brewster’s daughter. I remember reading about
+it.”
+
+“But, I say, laddie, I don’t want to spoil your day and disappoint you
+and so forth, but my jolly old father-in-law would never let me keep a
+snake. Why, it’s as much as I can do to make him let me stop on in the
+place.”
+
+“He wouldn’t know.”
+
+“There’s not much that goes on in the hotel that he doesn’t know,” said
+Archie, doubtfully.
+
+“He mustn’t know. The whole point of the thing is that it must be a
+dead secret.”
+
+Archie flicked some more ash into the finger-bowl.
+
+“I don’t seem absolutely to have grasped the affair in all its aspects,
+if you know what I mean,” he said. “I mean to say—in the first
+place—why would it brighten your young existence if I entertained this
+snake of yours?”
+
+“It’s not mine. It belongs to Mme. Brudowska. You’ve heard of her, of
+course?”
+
+“Oh yes. She’s some sort of performing snake female in vaudeville or
+something, isn’t she, or something of that species or order?”
+
+“You’re near it, but not quite right. She is the leading exponent of
+high-brow tragedy on any stage in the civilized world.”
+
+“Absolutely! I remember now. My wife lugged me to see her perform one
+night. It all comes back to me. She had me wedged in an orchestra-stall
+before I knew what I was up against, and then it was too late. I
+remember reading in some journal or other that she had a pet snake,
+given her by some Russian prince or other, what?”
+
+“That,” said Sherriff, “was the impression I intended to convey when I
+sent the story to the papers. I’m her Press-agent. As a matter of fact,
+I bought Peter-its name’s Peter-myself down on the East Side. I always
+believe in animals for Press-agent stunts. I’ve nearly always had good
+results. But with Her Nibs I’m handicapped. Shackled, so to speak. You
+might almost say my genius is stifled. Or strangled, if you prefer it.”
+
+“Anything you say,” agreed Archie, courteously, “But how? Why is your
+what-d’you-call-it what’s-its-named?”
+
+“She keeps me on a leash. She won’t let me do anything with a kick in
+it. If I’ve suggested one rip-snorting stunt, I’ve suggested twenty,
+and every time she turns them down on the ground that that sort of
+thing is beneath the dignity of an artist in her position. It doesn’t
+give a fellow a chance. So now I’ve made up my mind to do her good by
+stealth. I’m going to steal her snake.”
+
+“Steal it? Pinch it, as it were?”
+
+“Yes. Big story for the papers, you see. She’s grown very much attached
+to Peter. He’s her mascot. I believe she’s practically kidded herself
+into believing that Russian prince story. If I can sneak it away and
+keep it away for a day or two, she’ll do the rest. She’ll make such a
+fuss that the papers will be full of it.”
+
+“I see.”
+
+“Wow, any ordinary woman would work in with me. But not Her Nibs. She
+would call it cheap and degrading and a lot of other things. It’s got
+to be a genuine steal, and, if I’m caught at it, I lose my job. So
+that’s where you come in.”
+
+“But where am I to keep the jolly old reptile?”
+
+“Oh, anywhere. Punch a few holes in a hat-box, and make it up a
+shakedown inside. It’ll be company for you.”
+
+“Something in that. My wife’s away just now and it’s a bit lonely in
+the evenings.”
+
+“You’ll never be lonely with Peter around. He’s a great scout. Always
+merry and bright.”
+
+“He doesn’t bite, I suppose, or sting or what-not?”
+
+“He may what-not occasionally. It depends on the weather. But, outside
+of that, he’s as harmless as a canary.”
+
+“Dashed dangerous things, canaries,” said Archie, thoughtfully. “They
+peck at you.”
+
+“Don’t weaken!” pleaded the Press-agent
+
+“Oh, all right. I’ll take him. By the way, touching the matter of
+browsing and sluicing. What do I feed him on?”
+
+“Oh, anything. Bread-and-milk or fruit or soft-boiled egg or
+dog-biscuit or ants’-eggs. You know—anything you have yourself. Well,
+I’m much obliged for your hospitality. I’ll do the same for you another
+time. Now I must be getting along to see to the practical end of the
+thing. By the way, Her Nibs lives at the Cosmopolis, too. Very
+convenient. Well, so long. See you later.”
+
+Archie, left alone, began for the first time to have serious doubts. He
+had allowed himself to be swayed by Mr. Sherriff’s magnetic
+personality, but now that the other had removed himself he began to
+wonder if he had been entirely wise to lend his sympathy and
+co-operation to the scheme. He had never had intimate dealings with a
+snake before, but he had kept silkworms as a child, and there had been
+the deuce of a lot of fuss and unpleasantness over them. Getting into
+the salad and what-not. Something seemed to tell him that he was asking
+for trouble with a loud voice, but he had given his word and he
+supposed he would have to go through with it.
+
+He lit another cigarette and wandered out into Fifth Avenue. His
+usually smooth brow was ruffled with care. Despite the eulogies which
+Sherriff had uttered concerning Peter, he found his doubts increasing.
+Peter might, as the Press-agent had stated, be a great scout, but was
+his little Garden of Eden on the fifth floor of the Cosmopolis Hotel
+likely to be improved by the advent of even the most amiable and
+winsome of serpents? However—
+
+“Moffam! My dear fellow!”
+
+The voice, speaking suddenly in his ear from behind, roused Archie from
+his reflections. Indeed, it roused him so effectually that he jumped a
+clear inch off the ground and bit his tongue. Revolving on his axis, he
+found himself confronting a middle-aged man with a face like a horse.
+The man was dressed in something of an old-world style. His clothes had
+an English cut. He had a drooping grey moustache. He also wore a grey
+bowler hat flattened at the crown—but who are we to judge him?
+
+“Archie Moffam! I have been trying to find you all the morning.”
+
+Archie had placed him now. He had not seen General Mannister for
+several years—not, indeed, since the days when he used to meet him at
+the home of young Lord Seacliff, his nephew. Archie had been at Eton
+and Oxford with Seacliff, and had often visited him in the Long
+Vacation.
+
+“Halloa, General! What ho, what ho! What on earth are you doing over
+here?”
+
+“Let’s get out of this crush, my boy.” General Mannister steered Archie
+into a side-street, “That’s better.” He cleared his throat once or
+twice, as if embarrassed. “I’ve brought Seacliff over,” he said,
+finally.
+
+“Dear old Squiffy here? Oh, I say! Great work!”
+
+General Mannister did not seem to share his enthusiasm. He looked like
+a horse with a secret sorrow. He coughed three times, like a horse who,
+in addition to a secret sorrow, had contracted asthma.
+
+“You will find Seacliff changed,” he said. “Let me see, how long is it
+since you and he met?”
+
+Archie reflected.
+
+“I was demobbed just about a year ago. I saw him in Paris about a year
+before that. The old egg got a bit of shrapnel in his foot or
+something, didn’t he? Anyhow, I remember he was sent home.”
+
+“His foot is perfectly well again now. But, unfortunately, the enforced
+inaction led to disastrous results. You recollect, no doubt, that
+Seacliff always had a—a tendency;—a—a weakness—it was a family
+failing—”
+
+“Mopping it up, do you mean? Shifting it? Looking on the jolly old
+stuff when it was red and what not, what?”
+
+“Exactly.”
+
+Archie nodded.
+
+“Dear old Squiffy was always rather a lad for the wassail-bowl. When I
+met him in Paris, I remember, he was quite tolerably blotto.”
+
+“Precisely. And the failing has, I regret to say, grown on him since he
+returned from the war. My poor sister was extremely worried. In fact,
+to cut a long story short, I induced him to accompany me to America. I
+am attached to the British Legation in Washington now, you know.”
+
+“Oh, really?”
+
+“I wished Seacliff to come with me to Washington, but he insists on
+remaining in New York. He stated specifically that the thought of
+living in Washington gave him the—what was the expression he used?”
+
+“The pip?”
+
+“The pip. Precisely.”
+
+“But what was the idea of bringing him to America?”
+
+“This admirable Prohibition enactment has rendered America—to my
+mind—the ideal place for a young man of his views.” The General looked
+at his watch. “It is most fortunate that I happened to run into you, my
+dear fellow. My train for Washington leaves in another hour, and I have
+packing to do. I want to leave poor Seacliff in your charge while I am
+gone.”
+
+“Oh, I say! What!”
+
+“You can look after him. I am credibly informed that even now there are
+places in New York where a determined young man may obtain
+the—er—stuff, and I should be infinitely obliged—and my poor sister
+would be infinitely grateful—if you would keep an eye on him.” He
+hailed a taxi-cab. “I am sending Seacliff round to the Cosmopolis
+to-night. I am sure you will do everything you can. Good-bye, my boy,
+good-bye.”
+
+Archie continued his walk. This, he felt, was beginning to be a bit
+thick. He smiled a bitter, mirthless smile as he recalled the fact that
+less than half an hour had elapsed since he had expressed a regret that
+he did not belong to the ranks of those who do things. Fate since then
+had certainly supplied him with jobs with a lavish hand. By bed-time he
+would be an active accomplice to a theft, valet and companion to a
+snake he had never met, and—as far as could gather the scope of his
+duties—a combination of nursemaid and private detective to dear old
+Squiffy.
+
+It was past four o’clock when he returned to the Cosmopolis. Roscoe
+Sherriff was pacing the lobby of the hotel nervously, carrying a small
+hand-bag.
+
+“Here you are at last! Good heavens, man, I’ve been waiting two hours.”
+
+“Sorry, old bean. I was musing a bit and lost track of the time.”
+
+The Press-agent looked cautiously round. There was nobody within
+earshot.
+
+“Here he is!” he said.
+
+“Who?”
+
+“Peter.”
+
+“Where?” said Archie, staring blankly.
+
+“In this bag. Did you expect to find him strolling arm-in-arm with me
+round the lobby? Here you are! Take him!”
+
+He was gone. And Archie, holding the bag, made his way to the lift. The
+bag squirmed gently in his grip.
+
+The only other occupant of the lift was a striking-looking woman of
+foreign appearance, dressed in a way that made Archie feel that she
+must be somebody or she couldn’t look like that. Her face, too, seemed
+vaguely familiar. She entered the lift at the second floor where the
+tea-room is, and she had the contented expression of one who had tea’d
+to her satisfaction. She got off at the same floor as Archie, and
+walked swiftly, in a lithe, pantherish way, round the bend in the
+corridor. Archie followed more slowly. When he reached the door of his
+room, the passage was empty. He inserted the key in his door, turned
+it, pushed the door open, and pocketed the key. He was about to enter
+when the bag again squirmed gently in his grip.
+
+From the days of Pandora, through the epoch of Bluebeard’s wife, down
+to the present time, one of the chief failings of humanity has been the
+disposition to open things that were better closed. It would have been
+simple for Archie to have taken another step and put a door between
+himself and the world, but there came to him the irresistible desire to
+peep into the bag now—not three seconds later, but now. All the way up
+in the lift he had been battling with the temptation, and now he
+succumbed.
+
+The bag was one of those simple bags with a thingummy which you press.
+Archie pressed it. And, as it opened, out popped the head of Peter. His
+eyes met Archie’s. Over his head there seemed to be an invisible mark
+of interrogation. His gaze was curious, but kindly. He appeared to be
+saying to himself, “Have I found a friend?”
+
+Serpents, or Snakes, says the Encyclopaedia, are reptiles of the
+saurian class Ophidia, characterised by an elongated, cylindrical,
+limbless, scaly form, and distinguished from lizards by the fact that
+the halves (_rami_) of the lower jaw are not solidly united at the
+chin, but movably connected by an elastic ligament. The vertebra are
+very numerous, gastrocentrous, and procoelous. And, of course, when
+they put it like that, you can see at once that a man might spend hours
+with combined entertainment and profit just looking at a snake.
+
+Archie would no doubt have done this; but long before he had time
+really to inspect the halves (_rami_) of his new friend’s lower jaw and
+to admire its elastic fittings, and long before the gastrocentrous and
+procoelous character of the other’s vertebrae had made any real
+impression on him, a piercing scream almost at his elbow—startled him
+out of his scientific reverie. A door opposite had opened, and the
+woman of the elevator was standing staring at him with an expression of
+horror and fury that went through, him like a knife. It was the
+expression which, more than anything else, had made Mme. Brudowska what
+she was professionally. Combined with a deep voice and a sinuous walk,
+it enabled her to draw down a matter of a thousand dollars per week.
+
+Indeed, though the fact gave him little pleasure, Archie, as a matter
+of fact, was at this moment getting about—including war-tax—two dollars
+and seventy-five cents worth of the great emotional star for nothing.
+For, having treated him gratis to the look of horror and fury, she now
+moved towards him with the sinuous walk and spoke in the tone which she
+seldom permitted herself to use before the curtain of act two, unless
+there was a whale of a situation that called for it in act one.
+
+“Thief!”
+
+It was the way she said it.
+
+Archie staggered backwards as though he had been hit between the eyes,
+fell through the open door of his room, kicked it to with a flying
+foot, and collapsed on the bed. Peter, the snake, who had fallen on the
+floor with a squashy sound, looked surprised and pained for a moment;
+then, being a philosopher at heart, cheered up and began hunting for
+flies under the bureau.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+A DISTURBED NIGHT FOR DEAR OLD SQUIFFY
+
+
+Peril sharpens the intellect. Archie’s mind as a rule worked in rather
+a languid and restful sort of way, but now it got going with a rush and
+a whir. He glared round the room. He had never seen a room so devoid of
+satisfactory cover. And then there came to him a scheme, a ruse. It
+offered a chance of escape. It was, indeed, a bit of all right.
+
+Peter, the snake, loafing contentedly about the carpet, found himself
+seized by what the Encyclopaedia calls the “distensible gullet” and
+looked up reproachfully. The next moment he was in his bag again; and
+Archie, bounding silently into the bathroom, was tearing the cord off
+his dressing-gown.
+
+There came a banging at the door. A voice spoke sternly. A masculine
+voice this time.
+
+“Say! Open this door!”
+
+Archie rapidly attached the dressing-gown cord to the handle of the
+bag, leaped to the window, opened it, tied the cord to a projecting
+piece of iron on the sill, lowered Peter and the bag into the depths,
+and closed the window again. The whole affair took but a few seconds.
+Generals have received the thanks of their nations for displaying less
+resource on the field of battle.
+
+He opened the door. Outside stood the bereaved woman, and beside her a
+bullet-headed gentleman with a bowler hat on the back of his head, in
+whom Archie recognised the hotel detective.
+
+The hotel detective also recognised Archie, and the stern cast of his
+features relaxed. He even smiled a rusty but propitiatory smile. He
+imagined—erroneously—that Archie, being the son-in-law of the owner of
+the hotel, had a pull with that gentleman; and he resolved to proceed
+warily lest he jeopardise his job.
+
+“Why, Mr. Moffam!” he said, apologetically. “I didn’t know it was you I
+was disturbing.”
+
+“Always glad to have a chat,” said Archie, cordially. “What seems to be
+the trouble?”
+
+“My snake!” cried the queen of tragedy. “Where is my snake?”
+
+Archie, looked at the detective. The detective looked at Archie.
+
+“This lady,” said the detective, with a dry little cough, “thinks her
+snake is in your room, Mr. Moffam.”
+
+“Snake?”
+
+“Snake’s what the lady said.”
+
+“My snake! My Peter!” Mme. Brudowska’s voice shook with emotion. “He is
+here—here in this room.”
+
+Archie shook his head.
+
+“No snakes here! Absolutely not! I remember noticing when I came in.”
+
+“The snake is here—here in this room. This man had it in a bag! I saw
+him! He is a thief!”
+
+“Easy, ma’am!” protested the detective. “Go easy! This gentleman is the
+boss’s son-in-law.”
+
+“I care not who he is! He has my snake! Here—here in this room!”
+
+“Mr. Moffam wouldn’t go round stealing snakes.”
+
+“Rather not,” said Archie. “Never stole a snake in my life. None of the
+Moffams have ever gone about stealing snakes. Regular family tradition!
+Though I once had an uncle who kept gold-fish.”
+
+“Here he is! Here! My Peter!”
+
+Archie looked at the detective. The detective looked at Archie. “We
+must humour her!” their glances said.
+
+“Of course,” said Archie, “if you’d like to search the room, what? What
+I mean to say is, this is Liberty Hall. Everybody welcome! Bring the
+kiddies!”
+
+“I will search the room!” said Mme. Brudowska.
+
+The detective glanced apologetically at Archie.
+
+“Don’t blame me for this, Mr. Moffam,” he urged.
+
+“Rather not! Only too glad you’ve dropped in!”
+
+He took up an easy attitude against the window, and watched the empress
+of the emotional drama explore. Presently she desisted, baffled. For an
+instant she paused, as though about to speak, then swept from the room.
+A moment later a door banged across the passage.
+
+“How do they get that way?” queried the detective, “Well, g’bye, Mr.
+Moffam. Sorry to have butted in.”
+
+The door closed. Archie waited a few moments, then went to the window
+and hauled in the slack. Presently the bag appeared over the edge of
+the window-sill.
+
+“Good God!” said Archie.
+
+In the rush and swirl of recent events he must have omitted to see that
+the clasp that fastened the bag was properly closed; for the bag, as it
+jumped on to the window-sill, gaped at him like a yawning face. And
+inside it there was nothing.
+
+Archie leaned as far out of the window as he could manage without
+committing suicide. Far below him, the traffic took its usual course
+and the pedestrians moved to and fro upon the pavements. There was no
+crowding, no excitement. Yet only a few moments before a long green
+snake with three hundred ribs, a distensible gullet, and gastrocentrous
+vertebras must have descended on that street like the gentle rain from
+Heaven upon the place beneath. And nobody seemed even interested. Not
+for the first time since he had arrived in America, Archie marvelled at
+the cynical detachment of the New Yorker, who permits himself to be
+surprised at nothing.
+
+He shut the window and moved away with a heavy heart. He had not had
+the pleasure of an extended acquaintanceship with Peter, but he had
+seen enough of him to realise his sterling qualities. Somewhere beneath
+Peter’s three hundred ribs there had lain a heart of gold, and Archie
+mourned for his loss.
+
+Archie had a dinner and theatre engagement that night, and it was late
+when he returned to the hotel. He found his father-in-law prowling
+restlessly about the lobby. There seemed to be something on Mr.
+Brewster’s mind. He came up to Archie with a brooding frown on his
+square face.
+
+“Who’s this man Seacliff?” he demanded, without preamble. “I hear he’s
+a friend of yours.”
+
+“Oh, you’ve met him, what?” said Archie. “Had a nice little chat
+together, yes? Talked of this and that, no!”
+
+“We have not said a word to each other.”
+
+“Really? Oh, well, dear old Squiffy is one of those strong, silent
+fellers you know. You mustn’t mind if he’s a bit dumb. He never says
+much, but it’s whispered round the clubs that he thinks a lot. It was
+rumoured in the spring of nineteen-thirteen that Squiffy was on the
+point of making a bright remark, but it never came to anything.”
+
+Mr. Brewster struggled with his feelings.
+
+“Who _is_ he? You seem to know him.”
+
+“Oh yes. Great pal of mine, Squiffy. We went through Eton, Oxford, and
+the Bankruptcy Court together. And here’s a rummy coincidence. When
+they examined _me_, I had no assets. And, when they examined Squiffy,
+_he_ had no assets! Rather extraordinary, what?”
+
+Mr. Brewster seemed to be in no mood for discussing coincidences.
+
+“I might have known he was a friend of yours!” he said, bitterly.
+“Well, if you want to see him, you’ll have to do it outside my hotel.”
+
+“Why, I thought he was stopping here.”
+
+“He is—to-night. To-morrow he can look for some other hotel to break
+up.”
+
+“Great Scot! Has dear old Squiffy been breaking the place up?”
+
+Mr. Brewster snorted.
+
+“I am informed that this precious friend of yours entered my grill-room
+at eight o’clock. He must have been completely intoxicated, though the
+head waiter tells me he noticed nothing at the time.”
+
+Archie nodded approvingly.
+
+“Dear old Squiffy was always like that. It’s a gift. However woozled he
+might be, it was impossible to detect it with the naked eye. I’ve seen
+the dear old chap many a time whiffled to the eyebrows, and looking as
+sober as a bishop. Soberer! When did it begin to dawn on the lads in
+the grill-room that the old egg had been pushing the boat out?”
+
+“The head waiter,” said Mr. Brewster, with cold fury, “tells me that he
+got a hint of the man’s condition when he suddenly got up from his
+table and went the round of the room, pulling off all the table-cloths,
+and breaking everything that was on them. He then threw a number of
+rolls at the diners, and left. He seems to have gone straight to bed.”
+
+“Dashed sensible of him, what? Sound, practical chap, Squiffy. But
+where on earth did he get the—er—materials?”
+
+“From his room. I made enquiries. He has six large cases in his room.”
+
+“Squiffy always was a chap of infinite resource! Well, I’m dashed sorry
+this should have happened, don’t you know.”
+
+“If it hadn’t been for you, the man would never have come here.” Mr.
+Brewster brooded coldly. “I don’t know why it is, but ever since you
+came to this hotel I’ve had nothing but trouble.”
+
+“Dashed sorry!” said Archie, sympathetically.
+
+“Grrh!” said Mr. Brewster.
+
+Archie made his way meditatively to the lift. The injustice of his
+father-in-law’s attitude pained him. It was absolutely rotten and all
+that to be blamed for everything that went wrong in the Hotel
+Cosmopolis.
+
+While this conversation was in progress, Lord Seacliff was enjoying a
+refreshing sleep in his room on the fourth floor. Two hours passed. The
+noise of the traffic in the street below faded away. Only the rattle of
+an occasional belated cab broke the silence. In the hotel all was
+still. Mr. Brewster had gone to bed. Archie, in his room, smoked
+meditatively. Peace may have been said to reign.
+
+At half-past two Lord Seacliff awoke. His hours of slumber were always
+irregular. He sat up in bed and switched the light on. He was a
+shock-headed young man with a red face and a hot brown eye. He yawned
+and stretched himself. His head was aching a little. The room seemed to
+him a trifle close. He got out of bed and threw open the window. Then,
+returning to bed, he picked up a book and began to read. He was
+conscious of feeling a little jumpy, and reading generally sent him to
+sleep.
+
+Much has been written on the subject of bed-books. The general
+consensus of opinion is that a gentle, slow-moving story makes the best
+opiate. If this be so, dear old Squiffy’s choice of literature had been
+rather injudicious. His book was _The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_,
+and the particular story which he selected for perusal was the one
+entitled, “The Speckled Band.” He was not a great reader, but, when he
+read, he liked something with a bit of zip to it.
+
+Squiffy became absorbed. He had read the story before, but a long time
+back, and its complications were fresh to him. The tale, it may be
+remembered, deals with the activities of an ingenious gentleman who
+kept a snake, and used to loose it into people’s bedrooms as a
+preliminary to collecting on their insurance. It gave Squiffy pleasant
+thrills, for he had always had a particular horror of snakes. As a
+child, he had shrunk from visiting the serpent house at the Zoo; and,
+later, when he had come to man’s estate and had put off childish
+things, and settled down in real earnest to his self-appointed mission
+of drinking up all the alcoholic fluid in England, the distaste for
+Ophidia had lingered. To a dislike for real snakes had been added a
+maturer shrinking from those which existed only in his imagination. He
+could still recall his emotions on the occasion, scarcely three months
+before, when he had seen a long, green serpent which a majority of his
+contemporaries had assured him wasn’t there.
+
+Squiffy read on:—
+
+“Suddenly another sound became audible—a very gentle, soothing sound,
+like that of a small jet of steam escaping continuously from a kettle.”
+
+
+Lord Seacliff looked up from his book with a start. Imagination was
+beginning to play him tricks. He could have sworn that he had actually
+heard that identical sound. It had seemed to come from the window. He
+listened again. No! All was still. He returned to his book and went on
+reading.
+
+“It was a singular sight that met our eyes. Beside the table, on a
+wooden chair, sat Doctor Grimesby Rylott, clad in a long dressing-gown.
+His chin was cocked upward and his eyes were fixed in a dreadful, rigid
+stare at the corner of the ceiling. Round his brow he had a peculiar
+yellow band, with brownish speckles, which seemed to be bound tightly
+round his head.”
+    “I took a step forward. In an instant his strange head-gear began
+    to move, and there reared itself from among his hair the squat,
+    diamond-shaped head and puffed neck of a loathsome serpent...”
+
+
+“Ugh!” said Squiffy.
+
+He closed the book and put it down. His head was aching worse than
+ever. He wished now that he had read something else. No fellow could
+read himself to sleep with this sort of thing. People ought not to
+write this sort of thing.
+
+His heart gave a bound. There it was again, that hissing sound. And
+this time he was sure it came from the window.
+
+He looked at the window, and remained staring, frozen. Over the sill,
+with a graceful, leisurely movement, a green snake was crawling. As it
+crawled, it raised its head and peered from side to side, like a
+shortsighted man looking for his spectacles. It hesitated a moment on
+the edge of the sill, then wriggled to the floor and began to cross the
+room. Squiffy stared on.
+
+It would have pained Peter deeply, for he was a snake of great
+sensibility, if he had known how much his entrance had disturbed the
+occupant of the room. He himself had no feeling but gratitude for the
+man who had opened the window and so enabled him to get in out of the
+rather nippy night air. Ever since the bag had swung open and shot him
+out onto the sill of the window below Archie’s, he had been waiting
+patiently for something of the kind to happen. He was a snake who took
+things as they came, and was prepared to rough it a bit if necessary;
+but for the last hour or two he had been hoping that somebody would do
+something practical in the way of getting him in out of the cold. When
+at home, he had an eiderdown quilt to sleep on, and the stone of the
+window-sill was a little trying to a snake of regular habits. He
+crawled thankfully across the floor under Squiffy’s bed. There was a
+pair of trousers there, for his host had undressed when not in a frame
+of mind to fold his clothes neatly and place them upon a chair. Peter
+looked the trousers over. They were not an eiderdown quilt, but they
+would serve. He curled up in them and went to sleep. He had had an
+exciting day, and was glad to turn in.
+
+After about ten minutes, the tension of Squiffy’s attitude relaxed. His
+heart, which had seemed to suspend its operations, began beating again.
+Reason reasserted itself. He peeped cautiously under the bed. He could
+see nothing.
+
+Squiffy was convinced. He told himself that he had never really
+believed in Peter as a living thing. It stood to reason that there
+couldn’t really be a snake in his room. The window looked out on
+emptiness. His room was several stories above the ground. There was a
+stern, set expression on Squiffy’s face as he climbed out of bed. It
+was the expression of a man who is turning over a new leaf, starting a
+new life. He looked about the room for some implement which would carry
+out the deed he had to do, and finally pulled out one of the
+curtain-rods. Using this as a lever, he broke open the topmost of the
+six cases which stood in the corner. The soft wood cracked and split.
+Squiffy drew out a straw-covered bottle. For a moment he stood looking
+at it, as a man might gaze at a friend on the point of death. Then,
+with a sudden determination, he went into the bathroom. There was a
+crash of glass and a gurgling sound.
+
+Half an hour later the telephone in Archie’s room rang. “I say, Archie,
+old top,” said the voice of Squiffy.
+
+“Halloa, old bean! Is that you?”
+
+“I say, could you pop down here for a second? I’m rather upset.”
+
+“Absolutely! Which room?”
+
+“Four-forty-one.”
+
+“I’ll be with you eftsoons or right speedily.”
+
+“Thanks, old man.”
+
+“What appears to be the difficulty?”
+
+“Well, as a matter of fact, I thought I saw a snake!”
+
+“A snake!”
+
+“I’ll tell you all about it when you come down.”
+
+Archie found Lord Seacliff seated on his bed. An arresting aroma of
+mixed drinks pervaded the atmosphere.
+
+“I say! What?” said Archie, inhaling.
+
+“That’s all right. I’ve been pouring my stock away. Just finished the
+last bottle.”
+
+“But why?”
+
+“I told you. I thought I saw a snake!”
+
+“Green?”
+
+Squiffy shivered slightly.
+
+“Frightfully green!”
+
+Archie hesitated. He perceived that there are moments when silence is
+the best policy. He had been worrying himself over the unfortunate case
+of his friend, and now that Fate seemed to have provided a solution, it
+would be rash to interfere merely to ease the old bean’s mind. If
+Squiffy was going to reform because he thought he had seen an imaginary
+snake, better not to let him know that the snake was a real one.
+
+“Dashed serious!” he said.
+
+“Bally dashed serious!” agreed Squiffy. “I’m going to cut it out!”
+
+“Great scheme!”
+
+“You don’t think,” asked Squiffy, with a touch of hopefulness, “that it
+could have been a real snake?”
+
+“Never heard of the management supplying them.”
+
+“I thought it went under the bed.”
+
+“Well, take a look.”
+
+Squiffy shuddered.
+
+“Not me! I say, old top, you know, I simply can’t sleep in this room
+now. I was wondering if you could give me a doss somewhere in yours.”
+
+“Rather! I’m in five-forty-one. Just above. Trot along up. Here’s the
+key. I’ll tidy up a bit here, and join you in a minute.”
+
+Squiffy put on a dressing-gown and disappeared. Archie looked under the
+bed. From the trousers the head of Peter popped up with its usual
+expression of amiable enquiry. Archie nodded pleasantly, and sat down
+on the bed. The problem of his little friend’s immediate future wanted
+thinking over.
+
+He lit a cigarette and remained for a while in thought. Then he rose.
+An admirable solution had presented itself. He picked Peter up and
+placed him in the pocket of his dressing-gown. Then, leaving the room,
+he mounted the stairs till he reached the seventh floor. Outside a room
+half-way down the corridor he paused.
+
+From within, through the open transom, came the rhythmical snoring of a
+good man taking his rest after the labours of the day. Mr. Brewster was
+always a heavy sleeper.
+
+“There’s always a way,” thought Archie, philosophically, “if a chappie
+only thinks of it.”
+
+His father-in-law’s snoring took on a deeper note. Archie extracted
+Peter from his pocket and dropped him gently through the transom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+A LETTER FROM PARKER
+
+
+As the days went by and he settled down at the Hotel Cosmopolis,
+Archie, looking about him and revising earlier judgments, was inclined
+to think that of all his immediate circle he most admired Parker, the
+lean, grave valet of Mr. Daniel Brewster. Here was a man who, living in
+the closest contact with one of the most difficult persons in New York,
+contrived all the while to maintain an unbowed head, and, as far as one
+could gather from appearances, a tolerably cheerful disposition. A
+great man, judge him by what standard you pleased. Anxious as he was to
+earn an honest living, Archie would not have changed places with Parker
+for the salary of a movie-star.
+
+It was Parker who first directed Archie’s attention to the hidden
+merits of Pongo. Archie had drifted into his father-in-law’s suite one
+morning, as he sometimes did in the effort to establish more amicable
+relations, and had found it occupied only by the valet, who was dusting
+the furniture and bric-a-brac with a feather broom rather in the style
+of a man-servant at the rise of the curtain of an old-fashioned farce.
+After a courteous exchange of greetings, Archie sat down and lit a
+cigarette. Parker went on dusting.
+
+“The guv’nor,” said Parker, breaking the silence, “has some nice little
+objay dar, sir.”
+
+“Little what?”
+
+“Objay dar, sir.”
+
+Light dawned upon Archie.
+
+“Of course, yes. French for junk. I see what you mean now. Dare say
+you’re right, old friend. Don’t know much about these things myself.”
+
+Parker gave an appreciative flick at a vase on the mantelpiece.
+
+“Very valuable, some of the guv’nor’s things.” He had picked up the
+small china figure of the warrior with the spear, and was grooming it
+with the ostentatious care of one brushing flies off a sleeping Venus.
+He regarded this figure with a look of affectionate esteem which seemed
+to Archie absolutely uncalled-for. Archie’s taste in Art was not
+precious. To his untutored eye the thing was only one degree less foul
+than his father-in-law’s Japanese prints, which he had always observed
+with silent loathing. “This one, now,” continued Parker. “Worth a lot
+of money. Oh, a lot of money.”
+
+“What, Pongo?” said Archie incredulously.
+
+“Sir?”
+
+“I always call that rummy-looking what-not Pongo. Don’t know what else
+you could call him, what!”
+
+The valet seemed to disapprove of this levity. He shook his head and
+replaced the figure on the mantelpiece.
+
+“Worth a lot of money,” he repeated. “Not by itself, no.”
+
+“Oh, not by itself?”
+
+“No, sir. Things like this come in pairs. Somewhere or other there’s
+the companion-piece to this here, and if the guv’nor could get hold of
+it, he’d have something worth having. Something that connoozers would
+give a lot of money for. But one’s no good without the other. You have
+to have both, if you understand my meaning, sir.”
+
+“I see. Like filling a straight flush, what?”
+
+“Precisely, sir.”
+
+Archie gazed at Pongo again, with the dim hope of discovering virtues
+not immediately apparent to the casual observer. But without success.
+Pongo left him cold—even chilly. He would not have taken Pongo as a
+gift, to oblige a dying friend.
+
+“How much would the pair be worth?” he asked. “Ten dollars?”
+
+Parker smiled a gravely superior smile. “A leetle more than that, sir.
+Several thousand dollars, more like it.”
+
+“Do you mean to say,” said Archie, with honest amazement, “that there
+are chumps going about loose—absolutely loose—who would pay that for a
+weird little object like Pongo?”
+
+“Undoubtedly, sir. These antique china figures are in great demand
+among collectors.”
+
+Archie looked at Pongo once more, and shook his head.
+
+“Well, well, well! It takes all sorts to make a world, what!”
+
+What might be called the revival of Pongo, the restoration of Pongo to
+the ranks of the things that matter, took place several weeks later,
+when Archie was making holiday at the house which his father-in-law had
+taken for the summer at Brookport. The curtain of the second act may be
+said to rise on Archie strolling back from the golf-links in the cool
+of an August evening. From time to time he sang slightly, and wondered
+idly if Lucille would put the finishing touch upon the all-rightness of
+everything by coming to meet him and sharing his homeward walk.
+
+She came in view at this moment, a trim little figure in a white skirt
+and a pale blue sweater. She waved to Archie; and Archie, as always at
+the sight of her, was conscious of that jumpy, fluttering sensation
+about the heart, which, translated into words, would have formed the
+question, “What on earth could have made a girl like that fall in love
+with a chump like me?” It was a question which he was continually
+asking himself, and one which was perpetually in the mind also of Mr.
+Brewster, his father-in-law. The matter of Archie’s unworthiness to be
+the husband of Lucille was practically the only one on which the two
+men saw eye to eye.
+
+“Hallo—allo—allo!” said Archie. “Here we are, what! I was just hoping
+you would drift over the horizon.”
+
+Lucille kissed him.
+
+“You’re a darling,” she said. “And you look like a Greek god in that
+suit.”
+
+“Glad you like it.” Archie squinted with some complacency down his
+chest. “I always say it doesn’t matter what you pay for a suit, so long
+as it’s _right_. I hope your jolly old father will feel that way when
+he settles up for it.”
+
+“Where is father? Why didn’t he come back with you?”
+
+“Well, as a matter of fact, he didn’t seem any too keen on my company.
+I left him in the locker-room chewing a cigar. Gave me the impression
+of having something on his mind.”
+
+“Oh, Archie! You didn’t beat him _again?_”
+
+Archie looked uncomfortable. He gazed out to sea with something of
+embarrassment.
+
+“Well, as a matter of fact, old thing, to be absolutely frank, I, as it
+were, did!”
+
+“Not badly?”
+
+“Well, yes! I rather fancy I put it across him with some vim and not a
+little emphasis. To be perfectly accurate, I licked him by ten and
+eight.”
+
+“But you promised me you would let him beat you to-day. You know how
+pleased it would have made him.”
+
+“I know. But, light of my soul, have you any idea how dashed difficult
+it is to get beaten by your festive parent at golf?”
+
+“Oh, well!” Lucille sighed. “It can’t be helped, I suppose.” She felt
+in the pocket of her sweater. “Oh, there’s a letter for you. I’ve just
+been to fetch the mail. I don’t know who it can be from. The
+handwriting looks like a vampire’s. Kind of scrawly.”
+
+Archie inspected the envelope. It provided no solution.
+
+“That’s rummy! Who could be writing to me?”
+
+“Open it and see.”
+
+“Dashed bright scheme! I will, Herbert Parker. Who the deuce is Herbert
+Parker?”
+
+“Parker? Father’s valet’s name was Parker. The one he dismissed when he
+found he was wearing his shirts.”
+
+“Do you mean to say any reasonable chappie would willingly wear the
+sort of shirts your father—? I mean to say, there must have been some
+mistake.”
+
+“Do read the letter. I expect he wants to use your influence with
+father to have him taken back.”
+
+“_My_ influence? With your _father_? Well, I’m dashed. Sanguine sort of
+Johnny, if he does. Well, here’s what he says. Of course, I remember
+jolly old Parker now—great pal of mine.”
+
+Dear Sir,—It is some time since the undersigned had the honour of
+conversing with you, but I am respectfully trusting that you may recall
+me to mind when I mention that until recently I served Mr. Brewster,
+your father-in-law, in the capacity of valet. Owing to an unfortunate
+misunderstanding, I was dismissed from that position and am now
+temporarily out of a job. “How art thou fallen from Heaven, O Lucifer,
+son of the morning!” (Isaiah xiv. 12.)
+
+
+“You know,” said Archie, admiringly, “this bird is hot stuff! I mean to
+say he writes dashed well.”
+
+It is not, however, with my own affairs that I desire to trouble you,
+dear sir. I have little doubt that all will be well with me and that I
+shall not fall like a sparrow to the ground. “I have been young and now
+am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed
+begging bread” (Psalms xxxvii. 25). My object in writing to you is as
+follows. You may recall that I had the pleasure of meeting you one
+morning in Mr. Brewster’s suite, when we had an interesting talk on the
+subject of Mr. B.’s _objets d’art_. You may recall being particularly
+interested in a small china figure. To assist your memory, the figure
+to which I allude is the one which you whimsically referred to as
+Pongo. I informed you, if you remember, that, could the accompanying
+figure be secured, the pair would be extremely valuable.
+    I am glad to say, dear sir, that this has now transpired, and is on
+    view at Beale’s Art Galleries on West Forty-Fifth Street, where it
+    will be sold to-morrow at auction, the sale commencing at
+    two-thirty sharp. If Mr. Brewster cares to attend, he will, I
+    fancy, have little trouble in securing it at a reasonable price. I
+    confess that I had thought of refraining from apprising my late
+    employer of this matter, but more Christian feelings have
+    prevailed. “If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him
+    drink; for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head”
+    (Romans xii. 20). Nor, I must confess, am I altogether uninfluenced
+    by the thought that my action in this matter may conceivably lead
+    to Mr. B. consenting to forget the past and to reinstate me in my
+    former position. However, I am confident that I can leave this to
+    his good feeling.
+
+
+I remain, respectfully yours,
+Herbert Parker.
+
+
+Lucille clapped her hands.
+
+“How splendid! Father _will_ be pleased!”
+
+“Yes. Friend Parker has certainly found a way to make the old dad fond
+of him. Wish _I_ could!”
+
+“But you can, silly! He’ll be delighted when you show him that letter.”
+
+“Yes, with Parker. Old Herb. Parker’s is the neck he’ll fall on—not
+mine.”
+
+Lucille reflected.
+
+“I wish—” she began. She stopped. Her eyes lit up. “Oh, Archie,
+darling, I’ve got an idea!”
+
+“Decant it.”
+
+“Why don’t you slip up to New York to-morrow and buy the thing, and
+give it to father as a surprise?”
+
+Archie patted her hand kindly. He hated to spoil her girlish
+day-dreams.
+
+“Yes,” he said. “But reflect, queen of my heart! I have at the moment
+of going to press just two dollars fifty in specie, which I took off
+your father this after-noon. We were playing twenty-five cents a hole.
+He coughed it up without enthusiasm—in fact, with a nasty hacking
+sound—but I’ve got it. But that’s all I have got.”
+
+“That’s all right. You can pawn that ring and that bracelet of mine.”
+
+“Oh, I say, what! Pop the family jewels?”
+
+“Only for a day or two. Of course, once you’ve got the thing, father
+will pay us back. He would give you all the money we asked him for, if
+he knew what it was for. But I want to surprise him. And if you were to
+go to him and ask him for a thousand dollars without telling him what
+it was for, he might refuse.”
+
+“He might!” said Archie. “He might!”
+
+“It all works out splendidly. To-morrow’s the Invitation Handicap, and
+father’s been looking forward to it for weeks. He’d hate to have to go
+up to town himself and not play in it. But you can slip up and slip
+back without his knowing anything about it.”
+
+Archie pondered.
+
+“It sounds a ripe scheme. Yes, it has all the ear-marks of a somewhat
+fruity wheeze! By Jove, it _is_ a fruity wheeze! It’s an egg!”
+
+“An egg?”
+
+“Good egg, you know. Halloa, here’s a postscript. I didn’t see it.”
+
+P.S.—I should be glad if you would convey my most cordial respects to
+Mrs. Moffam. Will you also inform her that I chanced to meet Mr.
+William this morning on Broadway, just off the boat. He desired me to
+send his regards and to say that he would be joining you at Brookport
+in the course of a day or so. Mr. B. will be pleased to have him back.
+“A wise son maketh a glad father” (Proverbs x. 1).
+
+
+“Who’s Mr. William?” asked Archie.
+
+“My brother Bill, of course. I’ve told you all about him.”
+
+“Oh yes, of course. Your brother Bill. Rummy to think I’ve got a
+brother-in-law I’ve never seen.”
+
+“You see, we married so suddenly. When we married, Bill was in Yale.”
+
+“Good God! What for?”
+
+“Not jail, silly. Yale. The university.”
+
+“Oh, ah, yes.”
+
+“Then he went over to Europe for a trip to broaden his mind. You must
+look him up to-morrow when you get back to New York. He’s sure to be at
+his club.”
+
+“I’ll make a point of it. Well, vote of thanks to good old Parker! This
+really does begin to look like the point in my career where I start to
+have your forbidding old parent eating out of my hand.”
+
+“Yes, it’s an egg, isn’t it!”
+
+“Queen of my soul,” said Archie enthusiastically, “it’s an omelette!”
+
+The business negotiations in connection with the bracelet and the ring
+occupied Archie on his arrival in New York to an extent which made it
+impossible for him to call on Brother Bill before lunch. He decided to
+postpone the affecting meeting of brothers-in-law to a more convenient
+season, and made his way to his favourite table at the Cosmopolis
+grill-room for a bite of lunch preliminary to the fatigues of the sale.
+He found Salvatore hovering about as usual, and instructed him to come
+to the rescue with a minute steak.
+
+Salvatore was the dark, sinister-looking waiter who attended, among
+other tables, to the one at the far end of the grill-room at which
+Archie usually sat. For several weeks Archie’s conversations with the
+other had dealt exclusively with the bill of fare and its contents; but
+gradually he had found himself becoming more personal. Even before the
+war and its democratising influences, Archie had always lacked that
+reserve which characterises many Britons; and since the war he had
+looked on nearly everyone he met as a brother. Long since, through the
+medium of a series of friendly chats, he had heard all about
+Salvatore’s home in Italy, the little newspaper and tobacco shop which
+his mother owned down on Seventh Avenue, and a hundred other personal
+details. Archie had an insatiable curiosity about his fellow-man.
+
+“Well done,” said Archie.
+
+“Sare?”
+
+“The steak. Not too rare, you know.”
+
+“Very good, sare.”
+
+Archie looked at the waiter closely. His tone had been subdued and sad.
+Of course, you don’t expect a waiter to beam all over his face and give
+three rousing cheers simply because you have asked him to bring you a
+minute steak, but still there was something about Salvatore’s manner
+that disturbed Archie. The man appeared to have the pip. Whether he was
+merely homesick and brooding on the lost delights of his sunny native
+land, or whether his trouble was more definite, could only be
+ascertained by enquiry. So Archie enquired.
+
+“What’s the matter, laddie?” he said sympathetically. “Something on
+your mind?”
+
+“Sare?”
+
+“I say, there seems to be something on your mind. What’s the trouble?”
+
+The waiter shrugged his shoulders, as if indicating an unwillingness to
+inflict his grievances on one of the tipping classes.
+
+“Come on!” persisted Archie encouragingly. “All pals here. Barge along,
+old thing, and let’s have it.”
+
+Salvatore, thus admonished, proceeded in a hurried undertone—with one
+eye on the headwaiter—to lay bare his soul. What he said was not very
+coherent, but Archie could make out enough of it to gather that it was
+a sad story of excessive hours and insufficient pay. He mused awhile.
+The waiter’s hard case touched him.
+
+“I’ll tell you what,” he said at last. “When jolly old Brewster comes
+back to town—he’s away just now—I’ll take you along to him and we’ll
+beard the old boy in his den. I’ll introduce you, and you get that
+extract from Italian opera off your chest which you’ve just been
+singing to me, and you’ll find it’ll be all right. He isn’t what you
+might call one of my greatest admirers, but everybody says he’s a
+square sort of cove and he’ll see you aren’t snootered. And now,
+laddie, touching the matter of that steak.”
+
+The waiter disappeared, greatly cheered, and Archie, turning, perceived
+that his friend Reggie van Tuyl was entering the room. He waved to him
+to join his table. He liked Reggie, and it also occurred to him that a
+man of the world like the heir of the van Tuyls, who had been popping
+about New York for years, might be able to give him some much-needed
+information on the procedure at an auction sale, a matter on which he
+himself was profoundly ignorant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+DOING FATHER A BIT OF GOOD
+
+
+Reggie Van Tuyl approached the table languidly, and sank down into a
+chair. He was a long youth with a rather subdued and deflated look, as
+though the burden of the van Tuyl millions was more than his frail
+strength could support. Most things tired him.
+
+“I say, Reggie, old top,” said Archie, “you’re just the lad I wanted to
+see. I require the assistance of a blighter of ripe intellect. Tell me,
+laddie, do you know anything about sales?”
+
+Reggie eyed him sleepily.
+
+“Sales?”
+
+“Auction sales.”
+
+Reggie considered.
+
+“Well, they’re sales, you know.” He checked a yawn. “Auction sales, you
+understand.”
+
+“Yes,” said Archie encouragingly. “Something—the name or
+something—seemed to tell me that.”
+
+“Fellows put things up for sale you know, and other fellows—other
+fellows go in and—and buy ’em, if you follow me.”
+
+“Yes, but what’s the procedure? I mean, what do I do? That’s what I’m
+after. I’ve got to buy something at Beale’s this afternoon. How do I
+set about it?”
+
+“Well,” said Reggie, drowsily, “there are several ways of bidding, you
+know. You can shout, or you can nod, or you can twiddle your fingers—”
+The effort of concentration was too much for him. He leaned back limply
+in his chair. “I’ll tell you what. I’ve nothing to do this afternoon.
+I’ll come with you and show you.”
+
+When he entered the Art Galleries a few minutes later, Archie was glad
+of the moral support of even such a wobbly reed as Reggie van Tuyl.
+There is something about an auction room which weighs heavily upon the
+novice. The hushed interior was bathed in a dim, religious light; and
+the congregation, seated on small wooden chairs, gazed in reverent
+silence at the pulpit, where a gentleman of commanding presence and
+sparkling pince-nez was delivering a species of chant. Behind a gold
+curtain at the end of the room mysterious forms flitted to and fro.
+Archie, who had been expecting something on the lines of the New York
+Stock Exchange, which he had once been privileged to visit when it was
+in a more than usually feverish mood, found the atmosphere oppressively
+ecclesiastical. He sat down and looked about him. The presiding priest
+went on with his chant.
+
+“Sixteen-sixteen-sixteen-sixteen-sixteen—worth three
+hundred—sixteen-sixteen-sixteen-sixteen-sixteen—ought to bring five
+hundred—sixteen-sixteen-seventeen-seventeen-eighteen-eighteen
+nineteen-nineteen-nineteen.”
+
+He stopped and eyed the worshippers with a glittering and reproachful
+eye. They had, it seemed, disappointed him. His lips curled, and he
+waved a hand towards a grimly uncomfortable-looking chair with insecure
+legs and a good deal of gold paint about it. “Gentlemen! Ladies and
+gentlemen! You are not here to waste my time; I am not here to waste
+yours. Am I seriously offered nineteen dollars for this
+eighteenth-century chair, acknowledged to be the finest piece sold in
+New York for months and months? Am I—twenty? I thank you.
+Twenty-twenty-twenty-twenty. _Your_ opportunity! Priceless. Very few
+extant. Twenty-five-five-five-five-thirty-thirty. Just what you are
+looking for. The only one in the City of New York.
+Thirty-five-five-five-five. Forty-forty-forty-forty-forty. Look at
+those legs! Back it into the light, Willie. Let the light fall on those
+legs!”
+
+Willie, a sort of acolyte, manœuvred the chair as directed. Reggie van
+Tuyl, who had been yawning in a hopeless sort of way, showed his first
+flicker of interest.
+
+“Willie,” he observed, eyeing that youth more with pity than reproach,
+“has a face like Jo-Jo the dog-faced boy, don’t you think so?”
+
+Archie nodded briefly. Precisely the same criticism had occurred to
+him.
+
+“Forty-five-five-five-five-five,” chanted the high-priest. “Once
+forty-five. Twice forty-five. Third and last call, forty-five. Sold at
+forty-five. Gentleman in the fifth row.”
+
+Archie looked up and down the row with a keen eye. He was anxious to
+see who had been chump enough to give forty-five dollars for such a
+frightful object. He became aware of the dog-faced Willie leaning
+towards him.
+
+“Name, please?” said the canine one.
+
+“Eh, what?” said Archie. “Oh, my name’s Moffam, don’t you know.” The
+eyes of the multitude made him feel a little nervous “Er—glad to meet
+you and all that sort of rot.”
+
+“Ten dollars deposit, please,” said Willie.
+
+“I don’t absolutely follow you, old bean. What is the big thought at
+the back of all this?”
+
+“Ten dollars deposit on the chair.”
+
+“What chair?”
+
+“You bid forty-five dollars for the chair.”
+
+“Me?”
+
+“You nodded,” said Willie, accusingly. “If,” he went on, reasoning
+closely, “you didn’t want to bid, why did you nod?”
+
+Archie was embarrassed. He could, of course, have pointed out that he
+had merely nodded in adhesion to the statement that the other had a
+face like Jo-Jo the dog-faced boy; but something seemed to tell him
+that a purist might consider the excuse deficient in tact. He hesitated
+a moment, then handed over a ten-dollar bill, the price of Willie’s
+feelings. Willie withdrew like a tiger slinking from the body of its
+victim.
+
+“I say, old thing,” said Archie to Reggie, “this is a bit thick, you
+know. No purse will stand this drain.”
+
+Reggie considered the matter. His face seemed drawn under the mental
+strain.
+
+“Don’t nod again,” he advised. “If you aren’t careful, you get into the
+habit of it. When you want to bid, just twiddle your fingers. Yes,
+that’s the thing. Twiddle!”
+
+He sighed drowsily. The atmosphere of the auction room was close; you
+weren’t allowed to smoke; and altogether he was beginning to regret
+that he had come. The service continued. Objects of varying
+unattractiveness came and went, eulogised by the officiating priest,
+but coldly received by the congregation. Relations between the former
+and the latter were growing more and more distant. The congregation
+seemed to suspect the priest of having an ulterior motive in his
+eulogies, and the priest seemed to suspect the congregation of a
+frivolous desire to waste his time. He had begun to speculate openly as
+to why they were there at all. Once, when a particularly repellent
+statuette of a nude female with an unwholesome green skin had been
+offered at two dollars and had found no bidders—the congregation
+appearing silently grateful for his statement that it was the only
+specimen of its kind on the continent—he had specifically accused them
+of having come into the auction room merely with the purpose of sitting
+down and taking the weight off their feet.
+
+“If your thing—your whatever-it-is, doesn’t come up soon, Archie,” said
+Reggie, fighting off with an effort the mists of sleep, “I rather think
+I shall be toddling along. What was it you came to get?”
+
+“It’s rather difficult to describe. It’s a rummy-looking sort of
+what-not, made of china or something. I call it Pongo. At least, this
+one isn’t Pongo, don’t you know—it’s his little brother, but presumably
+equally foul in every respect. It’s all rather complicated, I know,
+but—hallo!” He pointed excitedly. “By Jove! We’re off! There it is!
+Look! Willie’s unleashing it now!”
+
+Willie, who had disappeared through the gold curtain, had now returned,
+and was placing on a pedestal a small china figure of delicate
+workmanship. It was the figure of a warrior in a suit of armour
+advancing with raised spear upon an adversary. A thrill permeated
+Archie’s frame. Parker had not been mistaken. This was undoubtedly the
+companion-figure to the redoubtable Pongo. The two were identical. Even
+from where he sat Archie could detect on the features of the figure on
+the pedestal the same expression of insufferable complacency which had
+alienated his sympathies from the original Pongo.
+
+The high-priest, undaunted by previous rebuffs, regarded the figure
+with a gloating enthusiasm wholly unshared by the congregation, who
+were plainly looking upon Pongo’s little brother as just another of
+those things.
+
+“This,” he said, with a shake in his voice, “is something very special.
+China figure, said to date back to the Ming Dynasty. Unique. Nothing
+like it on either side of the Atlantic. If I were selling this at
+Christie’s in London, where people,” he said, nastily, “have an
+educated appreciation of the beautiful, the rare, and the exquisite, I
+should start the bidding at a thousand dollars. This afternoon’s
+experience has taught me that that might possibly be too high.” His
+pince-nez sparkled militantly, as he gazed upon the stolid throng.
+“Will anyone offer me a dollar for this unique figure?”
+
+“Leap at it, old top,” said Reggie van Tuyl. “Twiddle, dear boy,
+twiddle! A dollar’s reasonable.”
+
+Archie twiddled.
+
+“One dollar I am offered,” said the high-priest, bitterly. “One
+gentleman here is not afraid to take a chance. One gentleman here knows
+a good thing when he sees one.” He abandoned the gently sarcastic
+manner for one of crisp and direct reproach. “Come, come, gentlemen, we
+are not here to waste time. Will anyone offer me one hundred dollars
+for this superb piece of—” He broke off, and seemed for a moment almost
+unnerved. He stared at someone in one of the seats in front of Archie.
+“Thank you,” he said, with a sort of gulp. “One hundred dollars I am
+offered! One hundred—one hundred—one hundred—”
+
+Archie was startled. This sudden, tremendous jump, this wholly
+unforeseen boom in Pongos, if one might so describe it, was more than a
+little disturbing. He could not see who his rival was, but it was
+evident that at least one among those present did not intend to allow
+Pongo’s brother to slip by without a fight. He looked helplessly at
+Reggie for counsel, but Reggie had now definitely given up the
+struggle. Exhausted nature had done its utmost, and now he was leaning
+back with closed eyes, breathing softly through his nose. Thrown on his
+own resources, Archie could think of no better course than to twiddle
+his fingers again. He did so, and the high-priest’s chant took on a
+note of positive exuberance.
+
+“Two hundred I am offered. Much better! Turn the pedestal round,
+Willie, and let them look at it. Slowly! Slowly! You aren’t spinning a
+roulette-wheel. Two hundred. Two-two-two-two-two.” He became suddenly
+lyrical. “Two-two-two—There was a young lady named Lou, who was
+catching a train at two-two. Said the porter, ‘Don’t worry or hurry or
+scurry. It’s a minute or two to two-two!’ Two-two-two-two-two!”
+
+Archie’s concern increased. He seemed to be twiddling at this voluble
+man across seas of misunderstanding. Nothing is harder to interpret to
+a nicety than a twiddle, and Archie’s idea of the language of twiddles
+and the high-priest’s idea did not coincide by a mile. The high-priest
+appeared to consider that, when Archie twiddled, it was his intention
+to bid in hundreds, whereas in fact Archie had meant to signify that he
+raised the previous bid by just one dollar. Archie felt that, if given
+time, he could make this clear to the high-priest, but the latter gave
+him no time. He had got his audience, so to speak, on the run, and he
+proposed to hustle them before they could rally.
+
+“Two hundred—two hundred—two—three—thank you,
+sir—three-three-three-four-four-five-five-six-six-seven-seven-seven—”
+
+Archie sat limply in his wooden chair. He was conscious of a feeling
+which he had only experienced twice in his life—once when he had taken
+his first lesson in driving a motor and had trodden on the accelerator
+instead of the brake; the second time more recently, when he had made
+his first down-trip on an express lift. He had now precisely the same
+sensation of being run away with by an uncontrollable machine, and of
+having left most of his internal organs at some little distance from
+the rest of his body. Emerging from this welter of emotion, stood out
+the one clear fact that, be the opposition bidding what it might, he
+must nevertheless secure the prize. Lucille had sent him to New York
+expressly to do so. She had sacrificed her jewellery for the cause. She
+relied on him. The enterprise had become for Archie something almost
+sacred. He felt dimly like a knight of old hot on the track of the Holy
+Grail.
+
+He twiddled again. The ring and the bracelet had fetched nearly twelve
+hundred dollars. Up to that figure his hat was in the ring.
+
+“Eight hundred I am offered. Eight hundred. Eight-eight-eight-eight—”
+
+A voice spoke from somewhere at the back of the room. A quiet, cold,
+nasty, determined voice.
+
+“Nine!”
+
+Archie rose from his seat and spun round. This mean attack from the
+rear stung his fighting spirit. As he rose, a young man sitting
+immediately in front of him rose too and stared likewise. He was a
+square-built resolute-looking young man, who reminded Archie vaguely of
+somebody he had seen before. But Archie was too busy trying to locate
+the man at the back to pay much attention to him. He detected him at
+last, owing to the fact that the eyes of everybody in that part of the
+room were fixed upon him. He was a small man of middle age, with
+tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles. He might have been a professor or
+something of the kind. Whatever he was, he was obviously a man to be
+reckoned with. He had a rich sort of look, and his demeanour was the
+demeanour of a man who is prepared to fight it out on these lines if it
+takes all the summer.
+
+“Nine hundred I am offered. Nine-nine-nine-nine—”
+
+Archie glared defiantly at the spectacled man.
+
+“A thousand!” he cried.
+
+The irruption of high finance into the placid course of the afternoon’s
+proceedings had stirred the congregation out of its lethargy. There
+were excited murmurs. Necks were craned, feet shuffled. As for the
+high-priest, his cheerfulness was now more than restored, and his faith
+in his fellow-man had soared from the depths to a very lofty altitude.
+He beamed with approval. Despite the warmth of his praise he would have
+been quite satisfied to see Pongo’s little brother go at twenty
+dollars, and the reflection that the bidding had already reached one
+thousand and that his commission was twenty per cent, had engendered a
+mood of sunny happiness.
+
+“One thousand is bid!” he carolled. “Now, gentlemen, I don’t want to
+hurry you over this. You are all connoisseurs here, and you don’t want
+to see a priceless china figure of the Ming Dynasty get away from you
+at a sacrifice price. Perhaps you can’t all see the figure where it is.
+Willie, take it round and show it to ’em. We’ll take a little
+intermission while you look carefully at this wonderful figure. Get a
+move on, Willie! Pick up your feet!”
+
+Archie, sitting dazedly, was aware that Reggie van Tuyl had finished
+his beauty sleep and was addressing the young man in the seat in front.
+
+“Why, hallo,” said Reggie. “I didn’t know you were back. You remember
+me, don’t you? Reggie van Tuyl. I know your sister very well. Archie,
+old man, I want you to meet my friend, Bill Brewster. Why, dash it!” He
+chuckled sleepily. “I was forgetting. Of course! He’s your—”
+
+“How are you?” said the young man. “Talking of my sister,” he said to
+Reggie, “I suppose you haven’t met her husband by any chance? I suppose
+you know she married some awful chump?”
+
+“Me,” said Archie.
+
+“How’s that?”
+
+“I married your sister. My name’s Moffam.”
+
+The young man seemed a trifle taken aback.
+
+“Sorry,” he said.
+
+“Not at all,” said Archie.
+
+“I was only going by what my father said in his letters,” he explained,
+in extenuation.
+
+Archie nodded.
+
+“I’m afraid your jolly old father doesn’t appreciate me. But I’m hoping
+for the best. If I can rope in that rummy-looking little china thing
+that Jo-Jo the dog-faced boy is showing the customers, he will be all
+over me. I mean to say, you know, he’s got another like it, and, if he
+can get a full house, as it were, I’m given to understand he’ll be
+bucked, cheered, and even braced.”
+
+The young man stared.
+
+“Are _you_ the fellow who’s been bidding against me?”
+
+“Eh, what? Were you bidding against _me?_”
+
+“I wanted to buy the thing for my father. I’ve a special reason for
+wanting to get in right with him just now. Are you buying it for him,
+too?”
+
+“Absolutely. As a surprise. It was Lucille’s idea. His valet, a chappie
+named Parker, tipped us off that the thing was to be sold.”
+
+“Parker? Great Scot! It was Parker who tipped _me_ off. I met him on
+Broadway, and he told me about it.”
+
+“Rummy he never mentioned it in his letter to me. Why, dash it, we
+could have got the thing for about two dollars if we had pooled our
+bids.”
+
+“Well, we’d better pool them now, and extinguish that pill at the back
+there. I can’t go above eleven hundred. That’s all I’ve got.”
+
+“I can’t go above eleven hundred myself.”
+
+“There’s just one thing. I wish you’d let me be the one to hand the
+thing over to Father. I’ve a special reason for wanting to make a hit
+with him.”
+
+“Absolutely!” said Archie, magnanimously. “It’s all the same to me. I
+only wanted to get him generally braced, as it were, if you know what I
+mean.”
+
+“That’s awfully good of you.”
+
+“Not a bit, laddie, no, no, and far from it. Only too glad.”
+
+Willie had returned from his rambles among the connoisseurs, and
+Pongo’s brother was back on his pedestal. The high-priest cleared his
+throat and resumed his discourse.
+
+“Now that you have all seen this superb figure we will—I was offered
+one thousand—one thousand-one-one-one-one—eleven hundred. Thank you,
+sir. Eleven hundred I am offered.”
+
+The high-priest was now exuberant. You could see him doing figures in
+his head.
+
+“You do the bidding,” said Brother Bill.
+
+“Right-o!” said Archie.
+
+He waved a defiant hand.
+
+“Thirteen,” said the man at the back.
+
+“Fourteen, dash it!”
+
+“Fifteen!”
+
+“Sixteen!”
+
+“Seventeen!”
+
+“Eighteen!”
+
+“Nineteen!”
+
+“Two thousand!”
+
+The high-priest did everything but sing. He radiated good will and
+bonhomie.
+
+“Two thousand I am offered. Is there any advance on two thousand? Come,
+gentlemen, I don’t want to give this superb figure away. Twenty-one
+hundred. Twenty-one-one-one-one. This is more the sort of thing I have
+been accustomed to. When I was at Sotheby’s Rooms in London, this kind
+of bidding was a common-place. Twenty-two-two-two-two-two. One hardly
+noticed it. Three-three-three. Twenty-three-three-three. Twenty-three
+hundred dollars I am offered.”
+
+He gazed expectantly at Archie, as a man gazes at some favourite dog
+whom he calls upon to perform a trick. But Archie had reached the end
+of his tether. The hand that had twiddled so often and so bravely lay
+inert beside his trouser-leg, twitching feebly. Archie was through.
+
+“Twenty-three hundred,” said the high-priest, ingratiatingly.
+
+Archie made no movement. There was a tense pause. The high-priest gave
+a little sigh, like one waking from a beautiful dream.
+
+“Twenty-three hundred,” he said. “Once twenty-three. Twice
+twenty-three. Third, last, and final call, twenty-three. Sold at
+twenty-three hundred. I congratulate you, sir, on a genuine bargain!”
+
+Reggie van Tuyl had dozed off again. Archie tapped his brother-in-law
+on the shoulder.
+
+“May as well be popping, what?”
+
+They threaded their way sadly together through the crowd, and made for
+the street. They passed into Fifth Avenue without breaking the silence.
+
+“Bally nuisance,” said Archie, at last.
+
+“Rotten!”
+
+“Wonder who that chappie was?”
+
+“Some collector, probably.”
+
+“Well, it can’t be helped,” said Archie.
+
+Brother Bill attached himself to Archie’s arm, and became
+communicative.
+
+“I didn’t want to mention it in front of van Tuyl,” he said, “because
+he’s such a talking-machine, and it would have been all over New York
+before dinner-time. But you’re one of the family, and you can keep a
+secret.”
+
+“Absolutely! Silent tomb and what not.”
+
+“The reason I wanted that darned thing was because I’ve just got
+engaged to a girl over in England, and I thought that, if I could hand
+my father that china figure-thing with one hand and break the news with
+the other, it might help a bit. She’s the most wonderful girl!”
+
+“I’ll bet she is,” said Archie, cordially.
+
+“The trouble is she’s in the chorus of one of the revues over there,
+and Father is apt to kick. So I thought—oh, well, it’s no good worrying
+now. Come along where it’s quiet, and I’ll tell you all about her.”
+
+“That’ll be jolly,” said Archie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+SALVATORE CHOOSES THE WRONG MOMENT
+
+
+Archie reclaimed the family jewellery from its temporary home next
+morning; and, having done so, sauntered back to the Cosmopolis. He was
+surprised, on entering the lobby, to meet his father-in-law. More
+surprising still, Mr. Brewster was manifestly in a mood of
+extraordinary geniality. Archie could hardly believe his eyes when the
+other waved cheerily to him—nor his ears a moment later when Mr.
+Brewster, addressing him as “my boy,” asked him how he was and
+mentioned that the day was a warm one.
+
+Obviously this jovial frame of mind must be taken advantage of; and
+Archie’s first thought was of the downtrodden Salvatore, to the tale of
+whose wrongs he had listened so sympathetically on the previous day.
+Now was plainly the moment for the waiter to submit his grievance,
+before some ebb-tide caused the milk of human kindness to flow out of
+Daniel Brewster. With a swift “Cheerio!” in his father-in-law’s
+direction, Archie bounded into the grill-room. Salvatore, the hour for
+luncheon being imminent but not yet having arrived, was standing
+against the far wall in an attitude of thought.
+
+“Laddie!” cried Archie.
+
+“Sare?”
+
+“A most extraordinary thing has happened. Good old Brewster has
+suddenly popped up through a trap and is out in the lobby now. And
+what’s still more weird, he’s apparently bucked.”
+
+“Sare?”
+
+“Braced, you know. In the pink. Pleased about something. If you go to
+him now with that yarn of yours, you can’t fail. He’ll kiss you on both
+cheeks and give you his bank-roll and collar-stud. Charge along and ask
+the head-waiter if you can have ten minutes off.”
+
+Salvatore vanished in search of the potentate named, and Archie
+returned to the lobby to bask in the unwonted sunshine.
+
+“Well, well, well, what!” he said. “I thought you were at Brookport.”
+
+“I came up this morning to meet a friend of mine,” replied Mr. Brewster
+genially. “Professor Binstead.”
+
+“Don’t think I know him.”
+
+“Very interesting man,” said Mr. Brewster, still with the same uncanny
+amiability. “He’s a dabbler in a good many things—science, phrenology,
+antiques. I asked him to bid for me at a sale yesterday. There was a
+little china figure—”
+
+Archie’s jaw fell.
+
+“China figure?” he stammered feebly.
+
+“Yes. The companion to one you may have noticed on my mantelpiece
+upstairs. I have been trying to get the pair of them for years. I
+should never have heard of this one if it had not been for that valet
+of mine, Parker. Very good of him to let me know of it, considering I
+had fired him. Ah, here is Binstead.”—He moved to greet the small,
+middle-aged man with the tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles who was
+bustling across the lobby.—“Well, Binstead, so you got it?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I suppose the price wasn’t particularly stiff?”
+
+“Twenty-three hundred.”
+
+“Twenty-three hundred!” Mr. Brewster seemed to reel in his tracks.
+“Twenty-three _hundred!_”
+
+“You gave me carte blanche.”
+
+“Yes, but twenty-three hundred!”
+
+“I could have got it for a few dollars, but unfortunately I was a
+little late, and, when I arrived, some young fool had bid it up to a
+thousand, and he stuck to me till I finally shook him off at
+twenty-three hundred. Why, this is the very man! Is he a friend of
+yours?”
+
+Archie coughed.
+
+“More a relation than a friend, what? Son-in-law, don’t you know!”
+
+Mr. Brewster’s amiability had vanished.
+
+“What damned foolery have you been up to _now?_” he demanded. “Can’t I
+move a step without stubbing my toe on you? Why the devil did you bid?”
+
+“We thought it would be rather a fruity scheme. We talked it over and
+came to the conclusion that it was an egg. Wanted to get hold of the
+rummy little object, don’t you know, and surprise you.”
+
+“Who’s we?”
+
+“Lucille and I.”
+
+“But how did you hear of it at all?”
+
+“Parker, the valet-chappie, you know, wrote me a letter about it.”
+
+“Parker! Didn’t he tell you that he had told me the figure was to be
+sold?”
+
+“Absolutely not!” A sudden suspicion came to Archie. He was normally a
+guileless young man, but even to him the extreme fishiness of the part
+played by Herbert Parker had become apparent. “I say, you know, it
+looks to me as if friend Parker had been having us all on a bit, what?
+I mean to say it was jolly old Herb, who tipped your son off—Bill, you
+know—to go and bid for the thing.”
+
+“Bill! Was Bill there?”
+
+“Absolutely in person! We were bidding against each other like the
+dickens till we managed to get together and get acquainted. And then
+this bird—this gentleman—sailed in and started to slip it across us.”
+
+Professor Binstead chuckled—the care-free chuckle of a man who sees all
+those around him smitten in the pocket, while he himself remains
+untouched.
+
+“A very ingenious rogue, this Parker of yours, Brewster. His method
+seems to have been simple but masterly. I have no doubt that either he
+or a confederate obtained the figure and placed it with the auctioneer,
+and then he ensured a good price for it by getting us all to bid
+against each other. Very ingenious!”
+
+Mr. Brewster struggled with his feelings. Then he seemed to overcome
+them and to force himself to look on the bright side.
+
+“Well, anyway,” he said. “I’ve got the pair of figures, and that’s what
+I wanted. Is that it in that parcel?”
+
+“This is it. I wouldn’t trust an express company to deliver it. Suppose
+we go up to your room and see how the two look side by side.”
+
+They crossed the lobby to the lift.-The cloud was still on Mr.
+Brewster’s brow as they stepped out and made their way to his suite.
+Like most men who have risen from poverty to wealth by their own
+exertions, Mr. Brewster objected to parting with his money
+unnecessarily, and it was plain that that twenty-three hundred dollars
+still rankled.
+
+Mr. Brewster unlocked the door and crossed the room. Then, suddenly, he
+halted, stared, and stared again. He sprang to the bell and pressed it,
+then stood gurgling wordlessly.
+
+“Anything wrong, old bean?” queried Archie, solicitously.
+
+“Wrong! Wrong! It’s gone!”
+
+“Gone?”
+
+“The figure!”
+
+The floor-waiter had manifested himself silently in answer to the bell,
+and was standing in the doorway.
+
+“Simmons!” Mr. Brewster turned to him wildly. “Has anyone been in this
+suite since I went away?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Nobody?”
+
+“Nobody except your valet, sir—Parker. He said he had come to fetch
+some things away. I supposed he had come from you, sir, with
+instructions.”
+
+“Get out!”
+
+Professor Binstead had unwrapped his parcel, and had placed the Pongo
+on the table. There was a weighty silence. Archie picked up the little
+china figure and balanced it on the palm of his hand. It was a small
+thing, he reflected philosophically, but it had made quite a stir in
+the world.
+
+Mr. Brewster fermented for a while without speaking.
+
+“So,” he said, at last, in a voice trembling with self-pity, “I have
+been to all this trouble—”
+
+“And expense,” put in Professor Binstead, gently.
+
+“Merely to buy back something which had been stolen from me! And, owing
+to your damned officiousness,” he cried, turning on Archie, “I have had
+to pay twenty-three hundred dollars for it! I don’t know why they make
+such a fuss about Job. Job never had anything like you around!”
+
+“Of course,” argued Archie, “he had one or two boils.”
+
+“Boils! What are boils?”
+
+“Dashed sorry,” murmured Archie. “Acted for the best. Meant well. And
+all that sort of rot!”
+
+Professor Binstead’s mind seemed occupied to the exclusion of all other
+aspects of the affair, with the ingenuity of the absent Parker.
+
+“A cunning scheme!” he said. “A very cunning scheme! This man Parker
+must have a brain of no low order. I should like to feel his bumps!”
+
+“I should like to give him some!” said the stricken Mr. Brewster. He
+breathed a deep breath. “Oh, well,” he said, “situated as I am, with a
+crook valet and an imbecile son-in-law, I suppose I ought to be
+thankful that I’ve still got my own property, even if I have had to pay
+twenty-three hundred dollars for the privilege of keeping it.” He
+rounded on Archie, who was in a reverie. The thought of the unfortunate
+Bill had just crossed Archie’s mind. It would be many moons, many weary
+moons, before Mr. Brewster would be in a suitable mood to listen
+sympathetically to the story of love’s young dream. “Give me that
+figure!”
+
+Archie continued to toy absently with Pongo. He was wondering now how
+best to break this sad occurrence to Lucille. It would be a
+disappointment for the poor girl.
+
+“_Give me that figure!_”
+
+Archie started violently. There was an instant in which Pongo seemed to
+hang suspended, like Mohammed’s coffin, between heaven and earth, then
+the force of gravity asserted itself. Pongo fell with a sharp crack and
+disintegrated. And as it did so there was a knock at the door, and in
+walked a dark, furtive person, who to the inflamed vision of Mr. Daniel
+Brewster looked like something connected with the executive staff of
+the Black Hand. With all time at his disposal, the unfortunate
+Salvatore had selected this moment for stating his case.
+
+“Get out!” bellowed Mr. Brewster. “I didn’t ring for a waiter.”
+
+Archie, his mind reeling beneath the catastrophe, recovered himself
+sufficiently to do the honours. It was at his instigation that
+Salvatore was there, and, greatly as he wished that he could have seen
+fit to choose a more auspicious moment for his business chat, he felt
+compelled to do his best to see him through.
+
+“Oh, I say, half a second,” he said. “You don’t quite understand. As a
+matter of fact, this chappie is by way of being downtrodden and
+oppressed and what not, and I suggested that he should get hold of you
+and speak a few well-chosen words. Of course, if you’d rather—some
+other time—”
+
+But Mr. Brewster was not permitted to postpone the interview. Before he
+could get his breath, Salvatore had begun to talk. He was a strong,
+ambidextrous talker, whom it was hard to interrupt; and it was not for
+some moments that Mr. Brewster succeeded in getting a word in. When he
+did, he spoke to the point. Though not a linguist, he had been able to
+follow the discourse closely enough to realise that the waiter was
+dissatisfied with conditions in his hotel; and Mr. Brewster, as has
+been indicated, had a short way with people who criticised the
+Cosmopolis.
+
+“You’re fired!” said Mr. Brewster.
+
+“Oh, I say!” protested Archie.
+
+Salvatore muttered what sounded like a passage from Dante.
+
+“Fired!” repeated Mr. Brewster resolutely. “And I wish to heaven,” he
+added, eyeing his son-in-law malignantly, “I could fire _you!_”
+
+“Well,” said Professor Binstead cheerfully, breaking the grim silence
+which followed this outburst, “if you will give me your cheque,
+Brewster, I think I will be going. Two thousand three hundred dollars.
+Make it open, if you will, and then I can run round the corner and cash
+it before lunch. That will be capital!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+BRIGHT EYES—AND A FLY
+
+
+The Hermitage (unrivalled scenery, superb cuisine, Daniel Brewster,
+proprietor) was a picturesque summer hotel in the green heart of the
+mountains, built by Archie’s father-in-law shortly after he assumed
+control of the Cosmopolis. Mr. Brewster himself seldom went there,
+preferring to concentrate his attention on his New York establishment;
+and Archie and Lucille, breakfasting in the airy dining-room some ten
+days after the incidents recorded in the last chapter, had consequently
+to be content with two out of the three advertised attractions of the
+place. Through the window at their side quite a slab of the unrivalled
+scenery was visible; some of the superb cuisine was already on the
+table; and the fact that the eye searched in vain for Daniel Brewster,
+proprietor, filled Archie, at any rate, with no sense of aching loss.
+He bore it with equanimity and even with positive enthusiasm. In
+Archie’s opinion, practically all a place needed to make it an earthly
+Paradise was for Mr. Daniel Brewster to be about forty-seven miles away
+from it.
+
+It was at Lucille’s suggestion that they had come to the Hermitage.
+Never a human sunbeam, Mr. Brewster had shown such a bleak front to the
+world, and particularly to his son-in-law, in the days following the
+Pongo incident, that Lucille had thought that he and Archie would for a
+time at least be better apart—a view with which her husband cordially
+agreed. He had enjoyed his stay at the Hermitage, and now he regarded
+the eternal hills with the comfortable affection of a healthy man who
+is breakfasting well.
+
+“It’s going to be another perfectly topping day,” he observed, eyeing
+the shimmering landscape, from which the morning mists were swiftly
+shredding away like faint puffs of smoke. “Just the day you ought to
+have been here.”
+
+“Yes, it’s too bad I’ve got to go. New York will be like an oven.”
+
+“Put it off.”
+
+“I can’t, I’m afraid. I’ve a fitting.”
+
+Archie argued no further. He was a married man of old enough standing
+to know the importance of fittings.
+
+“Besides,” said Lucille, “I want to see father.” Archie repressed an
+exclamation of astonishment. “I’ll be back to-morrow evening. You will
+be perfectly happy.”
+
+“Queen of my soul, you know I can’t be happy with you away. You know—”
+
+“Yes?” murmured Lucille, appreciatively. She never tired of hearing
+Archie say this sort of thing.
+
+Archie’s voice had trailed off. He was looking across the room.
+
+“By Jove!” he exclaimed. “What an awfully pretty woman!”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“Over there. Just coming in, I say, what wonderful eyes! I don’t think
+I ever saw such eyes. Did you notice her eyes? Sort of flashing!
+Awfully pretty woman!”
+
+Warm though the morning was, a suspicion of chill descended upon the
+breakfast-table. A certain coldness seemed to come into Lucille’s face.
+She could not always share Archie’s fresh young enthusiasms.
+
+“Do you think so?”
+
+“Wonderful figure, too!”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“Well, what I mean to say, fair to medium,” said Archie, recovering a
+certain amount of that intelligence which raises man above the level of
+the beasts of the field. “Not the sort of type I admire myself, of
+course.”
+
+“You know her, don’t you?”
+
+“Absolutely not and far from it,” said Archie, hastily. “Never met her
+in my life.”
+
+“You’ve seen her on the stage. Her name’s Vera Silverton. We saw her
+in—”
+
+“Of course, yes. So we did. I say, I wonder what she’s doing here? She
+ought to be in New York, rehearsing. I remember meeting
+what’s-his-name—you know—chappie who writes plays and what not—George
+Benham—I remember meeting George Benham, and he told me she was
+rehearsing in a piece of his called—I forget the name, but I know it
+was called something or other. Well, why isn’t she?”
+
+“She probably lost her temper and broke her contract and came away.
+She’s always doing that sort of thing. She’s known for it. She must be
+a horrid woman.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I don’t want to talk about her. She used to be married to someone, and
+she divorced him. And then she was married to someone else, and he
+divorced her. And I’m certain her hair wasn’t that colour two years
+ago, and I don’t think a woman ought to make up like that, and her
+dress is all wrong for the country, and those pearls can’t be genuine,
+and I hate the way she rolls her eyes about, and pink doesn’t suit her
+a bit. I think she’s an awful woman, and I wish you wouldn’t keep on
+talking about her.”
+
+“Right-o!” said Archie, dutifully.
+
+They finished breakfast, and Lucille went up to pack her bag. Archie
+strolled out on to the terrace outside the hotel, where he smoked,
+communed with nature, and thought of Lucille. He always thought of
+Lucille when he was alone, especially when he chanced to find himself
+in poetic surroundings like those provided by the unrivalled scenery
+encircling the Hotel Hermitage. The longer he was married to her the
+more did the sacred institution seem to him a good egg. Mr. Brewster
+might regard their marriage as one of the world’s most unfortunate
+incidents, but to Archie it was, and always had been, a bit of all
+right. The more he thought of it the more did he marvel that a girl
+like Lucille should have been content to link her lot with that of a
+Class C specimen like himself. His meditations were, in fact, precisely
+what a happily-married man’s meditations ought to be.
+
+He was roused from them by a species of exclamation or cry almost at
+his elbow, and turned to find that the spectacular Miss Silverton was
+standing beside him. Her dubious hair gleamed in the sunlight, and one
+of the criticised eyes was screwed up. The other gazed at Archie with
+an expression of appeal.
+
+“There’s something in my eye,” she said.
+
+“No, really!”
+
+“I wonder if you would mind? It would be so kind of you!”
+
+Archie would have preferred to remove himself, but no man worthy of the
+name can decline to come to the rescue of womanhood in distress. To
+twist the lady’s upper lid back and peer into it and jab at it with the
+corner of his handkerchief was the only course open to him. His conduct
+may be classed as not merely blameless but definitely praiseworthy.
+King Arthur’s knights used to do this sort of thing all the time, and
+look what people think of them. Lucille, therefore, coming out of the
+hotel just as the operation was concluded, ought not to have felt the
+annoyance she did. But, of course, there is a certain superficial
+intimacy about the attitude of a man who is taking a fly out of a
+woman’s eye which may excusably jar upon the sensibilities of his wife.
+It is an attitude which suggests a sort of _rapprochement_ or
+_camaraderie_ or, as Archie would have put it, what not.
+
+“Thanks so much!” said Miss Silverton.
+
+“Oh no, rather not,” said Archie.
+
+“Such a nuisance getting things in your eye.”
+
+“Absolutely!”
+
+“I’m always doing it!”
+
+“Rotten luck!”
+
+“But I don’t often find anyone as clever as you to help me.”
+
+Lucille felt called upon to break in on this feast of reason and flow
+of soul.
+
+“Archie,” she said, “if you go and get your clubs now, I shall just
+have time to walk round with you before my train goes.”
+
+“Oh, ah!” said Archie, perceiving her for the first time. “Oh, ah, yes,
+right-o, yes, yes, yes!”
+
+On the way to the first tee it seemed to Archie that Lucille was
+distrait and abstracted in her manner; and it occurred to him, not for
+the first time in his life, what a poor support a clear conscience is
+in moments of crisis. Dash it all, he didn’t see what else he could
+have done. Couldn’t leave the poor female staggering about the place
+with squads of flies wedged in her eyeball. Nevertheless—
+
+“Rotten thing getting a fly in your eye,” he hazarded at length.
+“Dashed awkward, I mean.”
+
+“Or convenient.”
+
+“Eh?”
+
+“Well, it’s a very good way of dispensing with an introduction.”
+
+“Oh, I say! You don’t mean you think—”
+
+“She’s a horrid woman!”
+
+“Absolutely! Can’t think what people see in her.”
+
+“Well, you seemed to enjoy fussing over her!”
+
+“No, no! Nothing of the kind! She inspired me with absolute
+what-d’you-call-it—the sort of thing chappies do get inspired with, you
+know.”
+
+“You were beaming all over your face.”
+
+“I wasn’t. I was just screwing up my face because the sun was in my
+eye.”
+
+“All sorts of things seem to be in people’s eyes this morning!”
+
+Archie was saddened. That this sort of misunderstanding should have
+occurred on such a topping day and at a moment when they were to be
+torn asunder for about thirty-six hours made him feel—well, it gave him
+the pip. He had an idea that there were words which would have
+straightened everything out, but he was not an eloquent young man and
+could not find them. He felt aggrieved. Lucille, he considered, ought
+to have known that he was immune as regarded females with flashing eyes
+and experimentally-coloured hair. Why, dash it, he could have extracted
+flies from the eyes of Cleopatra with one hand and Helen of Troy with
+the other, simultaneously, without giving them a second thought. It was
+in depressed mood that he played a listless nine holes; nor had life
+brightened for him when he came back to the hotel two hours later,
+after seeing Lucille off in the train to New York. Never till now had
+they had anything remotely resembling a quarrel. Life, Archie felt, was
+a bit of a wash-out. He was disturbed and jumpy, and the sight of Miss
+Silverton, talking to somebody on a settee in the corner of the hotel
+lobby, sent him shooting off at right angles and brought him up with a
+bump against the desk behind which the room-clerk sat.
+
+The room-clerk, always of a chatty disposition, was saying something to
+him, but Archie did not listen. He nodded mechanically. It was
+something about his room. He caught the word “satisfactory.”
+
+“Oh, rather, quite!” said Archie.
+
+A fussy devil, the room-clerk! He knew perfectly well that Archie found
+his room satisfactory. These chappies gassed on like this so as to try
+to make you feel that the management took a personal interest in you.
+It was part of their job. Archie beamed absently and went in to lunch.
+Lucille’s empty seat stared at him mournfully, increasing his sense of
+desolation.
+
+He was half-way through his lunch, when the chair opposite ceased to be
+vacant. Archie, transferring his gaze from the scenery outside the
+window, perceived that his friend, George Benham, the playwright, had
+materialised from nowhere and was now in his midst.
+
+“Hallo!” he said.
+
+George Benham was a grave young man whose spectacles gave him the look
+of a mournful owl. He seemed to have something on his mind besides the
+artistically straggling mop of black hair which swept down over his
+brow. He sighed wearily, and ordered fish-pie.
+
+“I thought I saw you come through the lobby just now,” he said.
+
+“Oh, was that you on the settee, talking to Miss Silverton?”
+
+“She was talking to _me_,” said the playwright, moodily.
+
+“What are you doing here?” asked Archie. He could have wished Mr.
+Benham elsewhere, for he intruded on his gloom, but, the chappie being
+amongst those present, it was only civil to talk to him. “I thought you
+were in New York, watching the rehearsals of your jolly old drama.”
+
+“The rehearsals are hung up. And it looks as though there wasn’t going
+to be any drama. Good Lord!” cried George Benham, with honest warmth,
+“with opportunities opening out before one on every side—with life
+extending prizes to one with both hands—when you see coal-heavers
+making fifty dollars a week and the fellows who clean out the sewers
+going happy and singing about their work—why does a man deliberately
+choose a job like writing plays? Job was the only man that ever lived
+who was really qualified to write a play, and he would have found it
+pretty tough going if his leading woman had been anyone like Vera
+Silverton!”
+
+Archie—and it was this fact, no doubt, which accounted for his
+possession of such a large and varied circle of friends—was always able
+to shelve his own troubles in order to listen to other people’s
+hard-luck stories.
+
+“Tell me all, laddie,” he said. “Release the film! Has she walked out
+on you?”
+
+“Left us flat! How did you hear about it? Oh, she told you, of course?”
+
+Archie hastened to try to dispel the idea that he was on any such terms
+of intimacy with Miss Silverton.
+
+“No, no! My wife said she thought it must be something of that nature
+or order when we saw her come in to breakfast. I mean to say,” said
+Archie, reasoning closely, “woman can’t come into breakfast here and be
+rehearsing in New York at the same time. Why did she administer the
+raspberry, old friend?”
+
+Mr. Benham helped himself to fish-pie, and spoke dully through the
+steam.
+
+“Well, what happened was this. Knowing her as intimately as you do—”
+
+“I _don’t_ know her!”
+
+“Well, anyway, it was like this. As you know, she has a dog—”
+
+“I didn’t know she had a dog,” protested Archie. It seemed to him that
+the world was in conspiracy to link him with this woman.
+
+“Well, she has a dog. A beastly great whacking brute of a bulldog. And
+she brings it to rehearsal.” Mr. Benham’s eyes filled with tears, as in
+his emotion he swallowed a mouthful of fish-pie some eighty-three
+degrees Fahrenheit hotter than it looked. In the intermission caused by
+this disaster his agile mind skipped a few chapters of the story, and,
+when he was able to speak again, he said, “So then there was a lot of
+trouble. Everything broke loose!”
+
+“Why?” Archie was puzzled. “Did the management object to her bringing
+the dog to rehearsal?”
+
+“A lot of good that would have done! She does what she likes in the
+theatre.”
+
+“Then why was there trouble?”
+
+“You weren’t listening,” said Mr. Benham, reproachfully. “I told you.
+This dog came snuffling up to where I was sitting—it was quite dark in
+the body of the theatre, you know—and I got up to say something about
+something that was happening on the stage, and somehow I must have
+given it a push with my foot.”
+
+“I see,” said Archie, beginning to get the run of the plot. “You kicked
+her dog.”
+
+“Pushed it. Accidentally. With my foot.”
+
+“I understand. And when you brought off this kick—”
+
+“Push,” said Mr. Benham, austerely.
+
+“This kick or push. When you administered this kick or push—”
+
+“It was more a sort of light shove.”
+
+“Well, when you did whatever you did, the trouble started?”
+
+Mr. Benham gave a slight shiver.
+
+“She talked for a while, and then walked out, taking the dog with her.
+You see, this wasn’t the first time it had happened.”
+
+“Good Lord! Do you spend your whole time doing that sort of thing?”
+
+“It wasn’t me the first time. It was the stage-manager. He didn’t know
+whose dog it was, and it came waddling on to the stage, and he gave it
+a sort of pat, a kind of flick—”
+
+“A slosh?”
+
+“_Not_ a slosh,” corrected Mr. Benham, firmly. “You might call it a
+tap—with the promptscript. Well, we had a lot of difficulty smoothing
+her over that time. Still, we managed to do it, but she said that if
+anything of the sort occurred again she would chuck up her part.”
+
+“She must be fond of the dog,” said Archie, for the first time feeling
+a touch of goodwill and sympathy towards the lady.
+
+“She’s crazy about it. That’s what made it so awkward when I
+happened—quite inadvertently—to give it this sort of accidental shove.
+Well, we spent the rest of the day trying to get her on the ’phone at
+her apartment, and finally we heard that she had come here. So I took
+the next train, and tried to persuade her to come back. She wouldn’t
+listen. And that’s how matters stand.”
+
+“Pretty rotten!” said Archie, sympathetically.
+
+“You can bet it’s pretty rotten—for me. There’s nobody else who can
+play the part. Like a chump, I wrote the thing specially for her. It
+means the play won’t be produced at all, if she doesn’t do it. So
+you’re my last hope!”
+
+Archie, who was lighting a cigarette, nearly swallowed it.
+
+“_I_ am?”
+
+“I thought you might persuade her. Point out to her what a lot hangs on
+her coming back. Jolly her along, _you_ know the sort of thing!”
+
+“But, my dear old friend, I tell you I don’t know her!”
+
+Mr. Benham’s eyes opened behind their zareba of glass.
+
+“Well, she knows _you_. When you came through the lobby just now she
+said that you were the only real human being she had ever met.”
+
+“Well, as a matter of fact, I did take a fly out of her eye. But—”
+
+“You did? Well, then, the whole thing’s simple. All you have to do is
+to ask her how her eye is, and tell her she has the most beautiful eyes
+you ever saw, and coo a bit.”
+
+“But, my dear old son!” The frightful programme which his friend had
+mapped out stunned Archie. “I simply can’t! Anything to oblige and all
+that sort of thing, but when it comes to cooing, distinctly Napoo!”
+
+“Nonsense! It isn’t hard to coo.”
+
+“You don’t understand, laddie. You’re not a married man. I mean to say,
+whatever you say for or against marriage—personally I’m all for it and
+consider it a ripe egg—the fact remains that it practically makes a
+chappie a spent force as a cooer. I don’t want to dish you in any way,
+old bean, but I must firmly and resolutely decline to coo.”
+
+Mr. Benham rose and looked at his watch.
+
+“I’ll have to be moving,” he said. “I’ve got to get back to New York
+and report. I’ll tell them that I haven’t been able to do anything
+myself, but that I’ve left the matter in good hands. I know you will do
+your best.”
+
+“But, laddie!”
+
+“Think,” said Mr. Benham, solemnly, “of all that depends on it! The
+other actors! The small-part people thrown out of a job! Myself—but no!
+Perhaps you had better touch very lightly or not at all on my
+connection with the thing. Well, you know how to handle it. I feel I
+can leave it to you. Pitch it strong! Good-bye, my dear old man, and a
+thousand thanks. I’ll do the same for you another time.” He moved
+towards the door, leaving Archie transfixed. Half-way there he turned
+and came back. “Oh, by the way,” he said, “my lunch. Have it put on
+your bill, will you? I haven’t time to stay and settle. Good-bye!
+Good-bye!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+RALLYING ROUND PERCY
+
+
+It amazed Archie through the whole of a long afternoon to reflect how
+swiftly and unexpectedly the blue and brilliant sky of life can cloud
+over and with what abruptness a man who fancies that his feet are on
+solid ground can find himself immersed in Fate’s gumbo. He recalled,
+with the bitterness with which one does recall such things, that that
+morning he had risen from his bed without a care in the world, his
+happiness unruffled even by the thought that Lucille would be leaving
+him for a short space. He had sung in his bath. Yes, he had chirruped
+like a bally linnet. And now—
+
+Some men would have dismissed the unfortunate affairs of Mr. George
+Benham from their mind as having nothing to do with themselves, but
+Archie had never been made of this stern stuff. The fact that Mr.
+Benham, apart from being an agreeable companion with whom he had
+lunched occasionally in New York, had no claims upon him affected him
+little. He hated to see his fellowman in trouble. On the other hand,
+what could he do? To seek Miss Silverton out and plead with her—even if
+he did it without cooing—would undoubtedly establish an intimacy
+between them which, instinct told him, might tinge her manner after
+Lucille’s return with just that suggestion of Auld Lang Syne which
+makes things so awkward.
+
+His whole being shrank from extending to Miss Silverton that inch which
+the female artistic temperament is so apt to turn into an ell; and
+when, just as he was about to go in to dinner, he met her in the lobby
+and she smiled brightly at him and informed him that her eye was now
+completely recovered, he shied away like a startled mustang of the
+prairie, and, abandoning his intention of worrying the table d’hote in
+the same room with the amiable creature, tottered off to the
+smoking-room, where he did the best he could with sandwiches and
+coffee.
+
+Having got through the time as best he could till eleven o’clock, he
+went up to bed.
+
+The room to which he and Lucille had been assigned by the management
+was on the second floor, pleasantly sunny by day and at night filled
+with cool and heartening fragrance of the pines. Hitherto Archie had
+always enjoyed taking a final smoke on the balcony overlooking the
+woods, but, to-night such was his mental stress that he prepared to go
+to bed directly he had closed the door. He turned to the cupboard to
+get his pyjamas.
+
+His first thought, when even after a second scrutiny no pyjamas were
+visible, was that this was merely another of those things which happen
+on days when life goes wrong. He raked the cupboard for a third time
+with an annoyed eye. From every hook hung various garments of
+Lucille’s, but no pyjamas. He was breathing a soft malediction
+preparatory to embarking on a point-to-point hunt for his missing
+property, when something in the cupboard caught his eye and held him
+for a moment puzzled.
+
+He could have sworn that Lucille did not possess a mauve _négligé_.
+Why, she had told him a dozen times that mauve was a colour which she
+did not like. He frowned perplexedly; and as he did so, from near the
+window came a soft cough.
+
+Archie spun round and subjected the room to as close a scrutiny as that
+which he had bestowed upon the cupboard. Nothing was visible. The
+window opening on to the balcony gaped wide. The balcony was manifestly
+empty.
+
+“_Urrf!_”
+
+This time there was no possibility of error. The cough had come from
+the immediate neighbourhood of the window.
+
+Archie was conscious of a pringly sensation about the roots of his
+closely-cropped back-hair, as he moved cautiously across the room. The
+affair was becoming uncanny; and, as he tip-toed towards the window,
+old ghost stories, read in lighter moments before cheerful fires with
+plenty of light in the room, flitted through his mind. He had the
+feeling—precisely as every chappie in those stories had had—that he was
+not alone.
+
+Nor was he. In a basket behind an arm-chair, curled up, with his
+massive chin resting on the edge of the wicker-work, lay a fine
+bulldog.
+
+“Urrf!” said the bulldog.
+
+“Good God!” said Archie.
+
+There was a lengthy pause in which the bulldog looked earnestly at
+Archie and Archie looked earnestly at the bulldog.
+
+Normally, Archie was a dog-lover. His hurry was never so great as to
+prevent him stopping, when in the street, and introducing himself to
+any dog he met. In a strange house, his first act was to assemble the
+canine population, roll it on its back or backs, and punch it in the
+ribs. As a boy, his earliest ambition had been to become a veterinary
+surgeon; and, though the years had cheated him of his career, he knew
+all about dogs, their points, their manners, their customs, and their
+treatment in sickness and in health. In short, he loved dogs, and, had
+they met under happier conditions, he would undoubtedly have been on
+excellent terms with this one within the space of a minute. But, as
+things were, he abstained from fraternising and continued to goggle
+dumbly.
+
+And then his eye, wandering aside, collided with the following objects:
+a fluffy pink dressing-gown, hung over the back of a chair, an entirely
+strange suit-case, and, on the bureau, a photograph in a silver frame
+of a stout gentleman in evening-dress whom he had never seen before in
+his life.
+
+Much has been written of the emotions of the wanderer who, returning to
+his childhood home, finds it altered out of all recognition; but poets
+have neglected the theme—far more poignant—of the man who goes up to
+his room in an hotel and finds it full of somebody else’s
+dressing-gowns and bulldogs.
+
+Bulldogs! Archie’s heart jumped sideways and upwards with a wiggling
+movement, turning two somersaults, and stopped beating. The hideous
+truth, working its way slowly through the concrete, had at last
+penetrated to his brain. He was not only in somebody else’s room, and a
+woman’s at that. He was in the room belonging to Miss Vera Silverton.
+
+He could not understand it. He would have been prepared to stake the
+last cent he could borrow from his father-in-law on the fact that he
+had made no error in the number over the door. Yet, nevertheless, such
+was the case, and, below par though his faculties were at the moment,
+he was sufficiently alert to perceive that it behoved him to withdraw.
+
+He leaped to the door, and, as he did so, the handle began to turn.
+
+The cloud which had settled on Archie’s mind lifted abruptly. For an
+instant he was enabled to think about a hundred times more quickly than
+was his leisurely wont. Good fortune had brought him to within easy
+reach of the electric-light switch. He snapped it back, and was in
+darkness. Then, diving silently and swiftly to the floor, he wriggled
+under the bed. The thud of his head against what appeared to be some
+sort of joist or support, unless it had been placed there by the maker
+as a practical joke, on the chance of this kind of thing happening some
+day, coincided with the creak of the opening door. Then the light was
+switched on again, and the bulldog in the corner gave a welcoming
+woofle.
+
+“And how is mamma’s precious angel?”
+
+Rightly concluding that the remark had not been addressed to himself
+and that no social obligation demanded that he reply, Archie pressed
+his cheek against the boards and said nothing. The question was not
+repeated, but from the other side of the room came the sound of a
+patted dog.
+
+“Did he think his muzzer had fallen down dead and was never coming up?”
+
+The beautiful picture which these words conjured up filled Archie with
+that yearning for the might-have-been which is always so painful. He
+was finding his position physically as well as mentally distressing. It
+was cramped under the bed, and the boards were harder than anything he
+had ever encountered. Also, it appeared to be the practice of the
+housemaids at the Hotel Hermitage to use the space below the beds as a
+depository for all the dust which they swept off the carpet, and much
+of this was insinuating itself into his nose and mouth. The two things
+which Archie would have liked most to do at that moment were first to
+kill Miss Silverton—if possible, painfully—and then to spend the
+remainder of his life sneezing.
+
+After a prolonged period he heard a drawer open, and noted the fact as
+promising. As the old married man, he presumed that it signified the
+putting away of hair-pins. About now the dashed woman would be looking
+at herself in the glass with her hair down. Then she would brush it.
+Then she would twiddle it up into thingummies. Say, ten minutes for
+this. And after that she would go to bed and turn out the light, and he
+would be able, after giving her a bit of time to go to sleep, to creep
+out and leg it. Allowing at a conservative estimate three-quarters of—
+
+“Come out!”
+
+Archie stiffened. For an instant a feeble hope came to him that this
+remark, like the others, might be addressed to the dog.
+
+“Come out from under that bed!” said a stern voice. “And mind how you
+come! I’ve got a pistol!”
+
+“Well, I mean to say, you know,” said Archie, in a propitiatory voice,
+emerging from his lair like a tortoise and smiling as winningly as a
+man can who has just bumped his head against the leg of a bed, “I
+suppose all this seems fairly rummy, but—”
+
+“For the love of Mike!” said Miss Silverton.
+
+The point seemed to Archie well taken and the comment on the situation
+neatly expressed.
+
+“What are you doing in my room?”
+
+“Well, if it comes to that, you know—shouldn’t have mentioned it if you
+hadn’t brought the subject up in the course of general chit-chat—what
+are you doing in mine?”
+
+“Yours?”
+
+“Well, apparently there’s been a bloomer of some species somewhere, but
+this was the room I had last night,” said Archie.
+
+“But the desk-clerk said that he had asked you if it would be quite
+satisfactory to you giving it up to me, and you said yes. I come here
+every summer, when I’m not working, and I always have this room.”
+
+“By Jove! I remember now. The chappie did say something to me about the
+room, but I was thinking of something else and it rather went over the
+top. So that’s what he was talking about, was it?”
+
+Miss Silverton was frowning. A moving-picture director, scanning her
+face, would have perceived that she was registering disappointment.
+
+“Nothing breaks right for me in this darned world,” she said,
+regretfully. “When I caught sight of your leg sticking out from under
+the bed, I did think that everything was all lined up for a real find
+and, at last, I could close my eyes and see the thing in the papers. On
+the front page, with photographs: ‘Plucky Actress Captures Burglar.’
+Darn it!”
+
+“Fearfully sorry, you know!”
+
+“I just needed something like that. I’ve got a Press-agent, and I will
+say for him that he eats well and sleeps well and has just enough
+intelligence to cash his monthly cheque without forgetting what he went
+into the bank for, but outside of that you can take it from me he’s not
+one of the world’s workers! He’s about as much solid use to a girl with
+aspirations as a pain in the lower ribs. It’s three weeks since he got
+me into print at all, and then the brightest thing he could think up
+was that my favourite breakfast-fruit was an apple. Well, I ask you!”
+
+“Rotten!” said Archie.
+
+“I did think that for once my guardian angel had gone back to work and
+was doing something for me. ‘Stage Star and Midnight Marauder,’”
+murmured Miss Silverton, wistfully. “‘Footlight Favourite Foils
+Felon.’”
+
+“Bit thick!” agreed Archie, sympathetically. “Well, you’ll probably be
+wanting to get to bed and all that sort of rot, so I may as well be
+popping, what! Cheerio!”
+
+A sudden gleam came into Miss Silverton’s compelling eyes.
+
+“Wait!”
+
+“Eh?”
+
+“Wait! I’ve got an idea!” The wistful sadness had gone from her manner.
+She was bright and alert. “Sit down!”
+
+“Sit down?”
+
+“Sure. Sit down and take the chill off the arm-chair. I’ve thought of
+something.”
+
+Archie sat down as directed. At his elbow the bulldog eyed him gravely
+from the basket.
+
+“Do they know you in this hotel?”
+
+“Know me? Well, I’ve been here about a week.”
+
+“I mean, do they know who you are? Do they know you’re a good citizen?”
+
+“Well, if it comes to that, I suppose they don’t. But—”
+
+“Fine!” said Miss Silverton, appreciatively. “Then it’s all right. We
+can carry on!”
+
+“Carry on!”
+
+“Why, sure! All I want is to get the thing into the papers. It doesn’t
+matter to me if it turns out later that there was a mistake and that
+you weren’t a burglar trying for my jewels after all. It makes just as
+good a story either way. I can’t think why that never struck me before.
+Here have I been kicking because you weren’t a real burglar, when it
+doesn’t amount to a hill of beans whether you are or not. All I’ve got
+to do is to rush out and yell and rouse the hotel, and they come in and
+pinch you, and I give the story to the papers, and everything’s fine!”
+
+Archie leaped from his chair.
+
+“I say! What!”
+
+“What’s on your mind?” enquired Miss Silverton, considerately. “Don’t
+you think it’s a nifty scheme?”
+
+“Nifty! My dear old soul! It’s frightful!”
+
+“Can’t see what’s wrong with it,” grumbled Miss Silverton. “After I’ve
+had someone get New York on the long-distance ’phone and give the story
+to the papers you can explain, and they’ll let you out. Surely to
+goodness you don’t object, as a personal favour to me, to spending an
+hour or two in a cell? Why, probably they haven’t got a prison at all
+out in these parts, and you’ll simply be locked in a room. A child of
+ten could do it on his head,” said Miss Silverton. “A child of six,”
+she emended.
+
+“But, dash it—I mean—what I mean to say—I’m married!”
+
+“Yes?” said Miss Silverton, with the politeness of faint interest.
+“I’ve been married myself. I wouldn’t say it’s altogether a bad thing,
+mind you, for those that like it, but a little of it goes a long way.
+My first husband,” she proceeded, reminiscently, “was a travelling man.
+I gave him a two-weeks’ try-out, and then I told him to go on
+travelling. My second husband—now, _he_ wasn’t a gentleman in any sense
+of the word. I remember once—”
+
+“You don’t grasp the point. The jolly old point! You fail to grasp it.
+If this bally thing comes out, my wife will be most frightfully sick!”
+
+Miss Silverton regarded him with pained surprise.
+
+“Do you mean to say you would let a little thing like that stand in the
+way of my getting on the front page of all the papers—_with_
+photographs? Where’s your chivalry?”
+
+“Never mind my dashed chivalry!”
+
+“Besides, what does it matter if she does get a little sore? She’ll
+soon get over it. You can put that right. Buy her a box of candy. Not
+that I’m strong for candy myself. What I always say is, it may taste
+good, but look what it does to your hips! I give you my honest word
+that, when I gave up eating candy, I lost eleven ounces the first week.
+My second husband—no, I’m a liar, it was my third—my third husband
+said—Say, what’s the big idea? Where are you going?”
+
+“Out!” said Archie, firmly. “Bally out!”
+
+A dangerous light flickered in Miss Silverton’s eyes.
+
+“That’ll be all of that!” she said, raising the pistol. “You stay right
+where you are, or I’ll fire!”
+
+“Right-o!”
+
+“I mean it!”
+
+“My dear old soul,” said Archie, “in the recent unpleasantness in
+France I had chappies popping off things like that at me all day and
+every day for close on five years, and here I am, what! I mean to say,
+if I’ve got to choose between staying here and being pinched in your
+room by the local constabulary and having the dashed thing get into the
+papers and all sorts of trouble happening, and my wife getting the wind
+up and—I say, if I’ve got to choose—”
+
+“Suck a lozenge and start again!” said Miss Silverton.
+
+“Well, what I mean to say is, I’d much rather take a chance of getting
+a bullet in the old bean than that. So loose it off and the best o’
+luck!”
+
+Miss Silverton lowered the pistol, sank into a chair, and burst into
+tears.
+
+“I think you’re the meanest man I ever met!” she sobbed. “You know
+perfectly well the bang would send me into a fit!”
+
+“In that case,” said Archie, relieved, “cheerio, good luck, pip-pip,
+toodle-oo, and good-bye-ee! I’ll be shifting!”
+
+“Yes, you will!” cried Miss Silverton, energetically, recovering with
+amazing swiftness from her collapse. “Yes, you will, I by no means
+suppose! You think, just because I’m no champion with a pistol, I’m
+helpless. You wait! Percy!”
+
+“My name is not Percy.”
+
+“I never said it was. Percy! Percy, come to muzzer!”
+
+There was a creaking rustle from behind the arm-chair. A heavy body
+flopped on the carpet. Out into the room, heaving himself along as
+though sleep had stiffened his joints, and breathing stertorously
+through his tilted nose, moved the fine bulldog. Seen in the open, he
+looked even more formidable than he had done in his basket.
+
+“Guard him, Percy! Good dog, guard him! Oh, heavens! What’s the matter
+with him?”
+
+And with these words the emotional woman, uttering a wail of anguish,
+flung herself on the floor beside the animal.
+
+Percy was, indeed, in manifestly bad shape. He seemed quite unable to
+drag his limbs across the room. There was a curious arch in his back,
+and, as his mistress touched him, he cried out plaintively,
+
+“Percy! Oh, what _is_ the matter with him? His nose is burning!”
+
+Now was the time, with both sections of the enemy’s forces occupied,
+for Archie to have departed softly from the room. But never, since the
+day when at the age of eleven he had carried a large, damp, and muddy
+terrier with a sore foot three miles and deposited him on the best sofa
+in his mother’s drawing-room, had he been able to ignore the spectacle
+of a dog in trouble.
+
+“He does look bad, what!”
+
+“He’s dying! Oh, he’s dying! Is it distemper? He’s never had
+distemper.”
+
+Archie regarded the sufferer with the grave eye of the expert. He shook
+his head.
+
+“It’s not that,” he said. “Dogs with distemper make a sort of snifting
+noise.”
+
+“But he _is_ making a snifting noise!”
+
+“No, he’s making a snuffling noise. Great difference between snuffling
+and snifting. Not the same thing at all. I mean to say, when they snift
+they snift, and when they snuffle they—as it were—snuffle. That’s how
+you can tell. If you ask _me_”—he passed his hand over the dog’s back.
+Percy uttered another cry. “I know what’s the matter with him.”
+
+“A brute of a man kicked him at rehearsal. Do you think he’s injured
+internally?”
+
+“It’s rheumatism,” said Archie. “Jolly old rheumatism. That’s all
+that’s the trouble.”
+
+“Are you sure?”
+
+“Absolutely!”
+
+“But what can I do?”
+
+“Give him a good hot bath, and mind and dry him well. He’ll have a good
+sleep then, and won’t have any pain. Then, first thing to-morrow, you
+want to give him salicylate of soda.”
+
+“I’ll never remember that.”—“I’ll write it down for you. You ought to
+give him from ten to twenty grains three times a day in an ounce of
+water. And rub him with any good embrocation.”
+
+“And he won’t die?”
+
+“Die! He’ll live to be as old as you are!-I mean to say—”
+
+“I could kiss you!” said Miss Silverton, emotionally.
+
+Archie backed hastily.
+
+“No, no, absolutely not! Nothing like that required, really!”
+
+“You’re a darling!”
+
+“Yes. I mean no. No, no, really!”
+
+“I don’t know what to say. What can I say?”
+
+“Good night,” said Archie.
+
+“I wish there was something I could do! If you hadn’t been here, I
+should have gone off my head!”
+
+A great idea flashed across Archie’s brain.
+
+“Do you really want to do something?”
+
+“Anything!”
+
+“Then I do wish, like a dear sweet soul, you would pop straight back to
+New York to-morrow and go on with those rehearsals.”
+
+Miss Silverton shook her head.
+
+“I can’t do that!”
+
+“Oh, right-o! But it isn’t much to ask, what!”
+
+“Not much to ask! I’ll never forgive that man for kicking Percy!”
+
+“Now listen, dear old soul. You’ve got the story all wrong. As a matter
+of fact, jolly old Benham told me himself that he has the greatest
+esteem and respect for Percy, and wouldn’t have kicked him for the
+world. And, you know it was more a sort of push than a kick. You might
+almost call it a light shove. The fact is, it was beastly dark in the
+theatre, and he was legging it sideways for some reason or other, no
+doubt with the best motives, and unfortunately he happened to stub his
+toe on the poor old bean.”
+
+“Then why didn’t he say so?”
+
+“As far as I could make out, you didn’t give him a chance.”
+
+Miss Silverton wavered.
+
+“I always hate going back after I’ve walked out on a show,” she said.
+“It seems so weak!”
+
+“Not a bit of it! They’ll give three hearty cheers and think you a
+topper. Besides, you’ve got to go to New York in any case. To take
+Percy to a vet., you know, what!”
+
+“Of course. How right you always are!” Miss Silverton hesitated again.
+“Would you really be glad if I went back to the show?”
+
+“I’d go singing about the hotel! Great pal of mine, Benham. A
+thoroughly cheery old bean, and very cut up about the whole affair.
+Besides, think of all the coves thrown out of work—the thingummabobs
+and the poor what-d’you-call-’ems!”
+
+“Very well.”
+
+“You’ll do it?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I say, you really are one of the best! Absolutely like mother made!
+That’s fine! Well, I think I’ll be saying good night.”
+
+“Good night. And thank you so much!”
+
+“Oh, no, rather not!”
+
+Archie moved to the door.
+
+“Oh, by the way.”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“If I were you, I think I should catch the very first train you can get
+to New York. You see—er—you ought to take Percy to the vet. as soon as
+ever you can.”
+
+“You really do think of everything,” said Miss Silverton.
+
+“Yes,” said Archie, meditatively.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+THE SAD CASE OF LOONEY BIDDLE
+
+
+Archie was a simple soul, and, as is the case with most simple souls,
+gratitude came easily to him. He appreciated kind treatment. And when,
+on the following day, Lucille returned to the Hermitage, all smiles and
+affection, and made no further reference to Beauty’s Eyes and the flies
+that got into them, he was conscious of a keen desire to show some
+solid recognition of this magnanimity. Few wives, he was aware, could
+have had the nobility and what not to refrain from occasionally turning
+the conversation in the direction of the above-mentioned topics. It had
+not needed this behaviour on her part to convince him that Lucille was
+a topper and a corker and one of the very best, for he had been
+cognisant of these facts since the first moment he had met her: but
+what he did feel was that she deserved to be rewarded in no uncertain
+manner. And it seemed a happy coincidence to him that her birthday
+should be coming along in the next week or so. Surely, felt Archie, he
+could whack up some sort of a not unjuicy gift for that
+occasion—something pretty ripe that would make a substantial hit with
+the dear girl. Surely something would come along to relieve his chronic
+impecuniosity for just sufficient length of time to enable him to
+spread himself on this great occasion.
+
+And, as if in direct answer to prayer, an almost forgotten aunt in
+England suddenly, out of an absolutely blue sky, shot no less a sum
+than five hundred dollars across the ocean. The present was so lavish
+and unexpected that Archie had the awed feeling of one who participates
+in a miracle. He felt, like Herbert Parker, that the righteous was not
+forsaken. It was the sort of thing that restored a fellow’s faith in
+human nature. For nearly a week he went about in a happy trance: and
+when, by thrift and enterprise—that is to say, by betting Reggie van
+Tuyl that the New York Giants would win the opening game of the series
+against the Pittsburg baseball team—he contrived to double his capital,
+what it amounted to was simply that life had nothing more to offer. He
+was actually in a position to go to a thousand dollars for Lucille’s
+birthday present. He gathered in Mr. van Tuyl, of whose taste in these
+matters he had a high opinion, and dragged him off to a jeweller’s on
+Broadway.
+
+The jeweller, a stout, comfortable man, leaned on the counter and
+fingered lovingly the bracelet which he had lifted out of its nest of
+blue plush. Archie, leaning on the other side of the counter, inspected
+the bracelet searchingly, wishing that he knew more about these things;
+for he had rather a sort of idea that the merchant was scheming to do
+him in the eyeball. In a chair by his side, Reggie van Tuyl, half
+asleep as usual, yawned despondently. He had permitted Archie to lug
+him into this shop; and he wanted to buy something and go. Any form of
+sustained concentration fatigued Reggie.
+
+“Now this,” said the jeweller, “I could do at eight hundred and fifty
+dollars.”
+
+“Grab it!” murmured Mr. van Tuyl.
+
+The jeweller eyed him approvingly, a man after his own heart; but
+Archie looked doubtful. It was all very well for Reggie to tell him to
+grab it in that careless way. Reggie was a dashed millionaire, and no
+doubt bought bracelets by the pound or the gross or what not; but he
+himself was in an entirely different position.
+
+“Eight hundred and fifty dollars!” he said, hesitating.
+
+“Worth it,” mumbled Reggie van Tuyl.
+
+“More than worth it,” amended the jeweller. “I can assure you that it
+is better value than you could get anywhere on Fifth Avenue.”
+
+“Yes?” said Archie. He took the bracelet and twiddled it thoughtfully.
+“Well, my dear old jeweller, one can’t say fairer than that, can one—or
+two, as the case may be!” He frowned. “Oh, well, all right! But it’s
+rummy that women are so fearfully keen on these little thingummies,
+isn’t it? I mean to say, can’t see what they see in them. Stones, and
+all that. Still, there it is, of course!”
+
+“There,” said the jeweller, “as you say, it is, sir.”
+
+“Yes, there it is!”
+
+“Yes, there it is,” said the jeweller, “fortunately for people in my
+line of business. Will you take it with you, sir?”
+
+Archie reflected.
+
+“No. No, not take it with me. The fact is, you know, my wife’s coming
+back from the country to-night, and it’s her birthday to-morrow, and
+the thing’s for her, and, if it was popping about the place to-night,
+she might see it, and it would sort of spoil the surprise. I mean to
+say, she doesn’t know I’m giving it her, and all that!”
+
+“Besides,” said Reggie, achieving a certain animation now that the
+tedious business interview was concluded, “going to the ball-game this
+afternoon—might get pocket picked—yes, better have it sent.”
+
+“Where shall I send it, sir?”
+
+“Eh? Oh, shoot it along to Mrs. Archibald Moffam, at the Cosmopolis.
+Not to-day, you know. Buzz it in first thing to-morrow.”
+
+Having completed the satisfactory deal, the jeweller threw off the
+business manner and became chatty.
+
+“So you are going to the ball-game? It should be an interesting
+contest.”
+
+Reggie van Tuyl, now—by his own standards—completely awake, took
+exception to this remark.
+
+“Not a bit of it!” he said, decidedly. “No contest! Can’t call it a
+contest! Walkover for the Pirates!”
+
+Archie was stung to the quick. There is that about baseball which
+arouses enthusiasm and the partisan spirit in the unlikeliest bosoms.
+It is almost impossible for a man to live in America and not become
+gripped by the game; and Archie had long been one of its warmest
+adherents. He was a whole-hearted supporter of the Giants, and his only
+grievance against Reggie, in other respects an estimable young man, was
+that the latter, whose money had been inherited from steel-mills in
+that city, had an absurd regard for the Pirates of Pittsburg.
+
+“What absolute bally rot!” he exclaimed. “Look what the Giants did to
+them yesterday!”
+
+“Yesterday isn’t to-day,” said Reggie.
+
+“No, it’ll be a jolly sight worse,” said Archie. “Looney Biddle’ll be
+pitching for the Giants to-day.”
+
+“That’s just what I mean. The Pirates have got him rattled. Look what
+happened last time.”
+
+Archie understood, and his generous nature chafed at the innuendo.
+Looney Biddle—so-called by an affectionately admiring public as the
+result of certain marked eccentricities—was beyond dispute the greatest
+left-handed pitcher New York had possessed in the last decade. But
+there was one blot on Mr. Biddle’s otherwise stainless scutcheon. Five
+weeks before, on the occasion of the Giants’ invasion of Pittsburg, he
+had gone mysteriously to pieces. Few native-born partisans, brought up
+to baseball from the cradle, had been plunged into a profounder gloom
+on that occasion than Archie; but his soul revolted at the thought that
+that sort of thing could ever happen again.
+
+“I’m not saying,” continued Reggie, “that Biddle isn’t a very fair
+pitcher, but it’s cruel to send him against the Pirates, and somebody
+ought to stop it. His best friends should interfere. Once a team gets a
+pitcher rattled, he’s never any good against them again. He loses his
+nerve.”
+
+The jeweller nodded approval of this sentiment.
+
+“They never come back,” he said, sententiously.
+
+The fighting blood of the Moffams was now thoroughly stirred. Archie
+eyed his friend sternly. Reggie was a good chap—in many respects an
+extremely sound egg—but he must not be allowed to talk rot of this
+description about the greatest left-handed pitcher of the age.
+
+“It seems to me, old companion,” he said, “that a small bet is
+indicated at this juncture. How about it?”
+
+“Don’t want to take your money.”
+
+“You won’t have to! In the cool twilight of the merry old summer
+evening I, friend of my youth and companion of my riper years, shall be
+trousering yours.”
+
+Reggie yawned. The day was very hot, and this argument was making him
+feel sleepy again.
+
+“Well, just as you like, of course. Double or quits on yesterday’s bet,
+if that suits you.”
+
+For a moment Archie hesitated. Firm as his faith was in Mr. Biddle’s
+stout left arm, he had not intended to do the thing on quite this
+scale. That thousand dollars of his was earmarked for Lucille’s
+birthday present, and he doubted whether he ought to risk it. Then the
+thought that the honour of New York was in his hands decided him.
+Besides, the risk was negligible. Betting on Looney Biddle was like
+betting on the probable rise of the sun in the east. The thing began to
+seem to Archie a rather unusually sound and conservative investment. He
+remembered that the jeweller, until he drew him firmly but kindly to
+earth and urged him to curb his exuberance and talk business on a
+reasonable plane, had started brandishing bracelets that cost about two
+thousand. There would be time to pop in at the shop this evening after
+the game and change the one he had selected for one of those. Nothing
+was too good for Lucille on her birthday.
+
+“Right-o!” he said. “Make it so, old friend!”
+
+Archie walked back to the Cosmopolis. No misgivings came to mar his
+perfect contentment. He felt no qualms about separating Reggie from
+another thousand dollars. Except for a little small change in the
+possession of the Messrs. Rockefeller and Vincent Astor, Reggie had all
+the money in the world and could afford to lose. He hummed a gay air as
+he entered the lobby and crossed to the cigar-stand to buy a few
+cigarettes to see him through the afternoon.
+
+The girl behind the cigar counter welcomed him with a bright smile.
+Archie was popular with all the employés of the Cosmopolis.
+
+“’S a great day, Mr. Moffam!”
+
+“One of the brightest and best,” agreed Archie. “Could you dig me out
+two, or possibly three, cigarettes of the usual description? I shall
+want something to smoke at the ball-game.”
+
+“You going to the ball-game?”
+
+“Rather! Wouldn’t miss it for a fortune.”
+
+“No?”
+
+“Absolutely no! Not with jolly old Biddle pitching.”
+
+The cigar-stand girl laughed amusedly.
+
+“Is he pitching this afternoon? Say, that feller’s a nut? D’you know
+him?”
+
+“Know him? Well, I’ve seen him pitch and so forth.”
+
+“I’ve got a girl friend who’s engaged to him!”
+
+Archie looked at her with positive respect. It would have been more
+dramatic, of course, if she had been engaged to the great man herself,
+but still the mere fact that she had a girl friend in that astounding
+position gave her a sort of halo.
+
+“No, really!” he said. “I say, by Jove, really! Fancy that!”
+
+“Yes, she’s engaged to him all right. Been engaged close on a coupla
+months now.”
+
+“I say! That’s frightfully interesting! Fearfully interesting, really!”
+
+“It’s funny about that guy,” said the cigar-stand girl. “He’s a nut!
+The fellow who said there’s plenty of room at the top must have been
+thinking of Gus Biddle’s head! He’s crazy about m’ girl friend, y’
+know, and, whenever they have a fuss, it seems like he sort of flies
+right off the handle.”
+
+“Goes in off the deep end, eh?”
+
+“Yes, _sir!_ Loses what little sense he’s got. Why, the last time him
+and m’ girl friend got to scrapping was when he was going on to
+Pittsburg to play, about a month ago. He’d been out with her the day he
+left for there, and he had a grouch or something, and he started making
+low, sneaky cracks about her Uncle Sigsbee. Well, m’ girl friend’s got
+a nice disposition, but she c’n get mad, and she just left him flat and
+told him all was over. And he went off to Pittsburg, and, when he
+started in to pitch the opening game, he just couldn’t keep his mind on
+his job, and look what them assassins done to him! Five runs in the
+first innings! Yessir, he’s a nut all right!”
+
+Archie was deeply concerned. So this was the explanation of that
+mysterious disaster, that weird tragedy which had puzzled the sporting
+press from coast to coast.
+
+“Good God! Is he often taken like that?”
+
+“Oh, he’s all right when he hasn’t had a fuss with m’ girl friend,”
+said the cigar-stand girl, indifferently. Her interest in baseball was
+tepid. Women are too often like this—mere butterflies, with no concern
+for the deeper side of life.
+
+“Yes, but I say! What I mean to say, you know! Are they pretty pally
+now? The good old Dove of Peace flapping its little wings fairly
+briskly and all that?”
+
+“Oh, I guess everything’s nice and smooth just now. I seen m’ girl
+friend yesterday, and Gus was taking her to the movies last night, so I
+guess everything’s nice and smooth.”
+
+Archie breathed a sigh of relief.
+
+“Took her to the movies, did he? Stout fellow!”
+
+“I was at the funniest picture last week,” said the cigar-stand girl.
+“Honest, it was a scream! It was like this—”
+
+Archie listened politely; then went in to get a bite of lunch. His
+equanimity, shaken by the discovery of the rift in the peerless one’s
+armour, was restored. Good old Biddle had taken the girl to the movies
+last night. Probably he had squeezed her hand a goodish bit in the
+dark. With what result? Why, the fellow would be feeling like one of
+those chappies who used to joust for the smiles of females in the
+Middle Ages. What he meant to say, presumably the girl would be at the
+game this afternoon, whooping him on, and good old Biddle would be so
+full of beans and buck that there would be no holding him.
+
+Encouraged by these thoughts, Archie lunched with an untroubled mind.
+Luncheon concluded, he proceeded to the lobby to buy back his hat and
+stick from the boy brigand with whom he had left them. It was while he
+was conducting this financial operation that he observed that at the
+cigar-stand, which adjoined the coat-and-hat alcove, his friend behind
+the counter had become engaged in conversation with another girl.
+
+This was a determined looking young woman in a blue dress and a large
+hat of a bold and flowery species. Archie happening to attract her
+attention, she gave him a glance out of a pair of fine brown eyes,
+then, as if she did not think much of him, turned to her companion and
+resumed their conversation—which, being of an essentially private and
+intimate nature, she conducted, after the manner of her kind, in a
+ringing soprano which penetrated into every corner of the lobby.
+Archie, waiting while the brigand reluctantly made change for a dollar
+bill, was privileged to hear every word.
+
+“Right from the start I seen he was in a ugly mood. _You_ know how he
+gets, dearie! Chewing his upper lip and looking at you as if you were
+so much dirt beneath his feet! How was _I_ to know he’d lost fifteen
+dollars fifty-five playing poker, and anyway, I don’t see where he gets
+a licence to work off his grouches on me. And I told him so. I said to
+him, ‘Gus,’ I said, ‘if you can’t be bright and smiling and cheerful
+when you take me out, why do you come round at all? Was I wrong or
+right, dearie?”
+
+The girl behind the counter heartily endorsed her conduct. “Once you
+let a man think he could use you as a door-mat, where were you?”
+
+“What happened then, honey?”
+
+“Well, after that we went to the movies.”
+
+Archie started convulsively. The change from his dollar-bill leaped in
+his hand. Some of it sprang overboard and tinkled across the floor,
+with the brigand in pursuit. A monstrous suspicion had begun to take
+root in his mind.
+
+“Well, we got good seats, but—well, you know how it is, once things
+start going wrong. You know that hat of mine, the one with the daisies
+and cherries and the feather—I’d taken it off and given it him to hold
+when we went in, and what do you think that fell’r’d done? Put it on
+the floor and crammed it under the seat, just to save himself the
+trouble of holding it on his lap! And, when I showed him I was upset,
+all he said was that he was a pitcher and not a hatstand!”
+
+Archie was paralysed. He paid no attention to the hat-check boy, who
+was trying to induce him to accept treasure-trove to the amount of
+forty-five cents. His whole being was concentrated on this frightful
+tragedy which had burst upon him like a tidal wave. No possible room
+for doubt remained. “Gus” was the only Gus in New York that mattered,
+and this resolute and injured female before him was the Girl Friend, in
+whose slim hands rested the happiness of New York’s baseball followers,
+the destiny of the unconscious Giants, and the fate of his thousand
+dollars. A strangled croak proceeded from his parched lips.
+
+“Well, I didn’t say anything at the moment. It just shows how them
+movies can work on a girl’s feelings. It was a Bryant Washburn film,
+and somehow, whenever I see him on the screen, nothing else seems to
+matter. I just get that goo-ey feeling, and couldn’t start a fight if
+you asked me to. So we go off to have a soda, and I said to him, ‘That
+sure was a lovely film, Gus!’ and would you believe me, he says
+straight out that he didn’t think it was such a much, and he thought
+Bryant Washburn was a pill! A pill!” The Girl Friend’s penetrating
+voice shook with emotion.
+
+“He never!” exclaimed the shocked cigar-stand girl.
+
+“He did, if I die the next moment! I wasn’t more than half-way through
+my vanilla and maple, but I got up without a word and left him. And I
+ain’t seen a sight of him since. So there you are, dearie! Was I right
+or wrong?”
+
+The cigar-stand girl gave unqualified approval. What men like Gus
+Biddle needed for the salvation of their souls was an occasional good
+jolt right where it would do most good.
+
+“I’m glad you think I acted right, dearie,” said the Girl Friend. “I
+guess I’ve been too weak with Gus, and he’s took advantage of it. I
+s’pose I’ll have to forgive him one of these old days, but, believe me,
+it won’t be for a week.”
+
+The cigar-stand girl was in favour of a fortnight.
+
+“No,” said the Girl Friend, regretfully. “I don’t believe I could hold
+out that long. But, if I speak to him inside a week, well—! Well, I
+gotta be going. Goodbye, honey.”
+
+The cigar-stand girl turned to attend to an impatient customer, and the
+Girl Friend, walking with the firm and decisive steps which indicate
+character, made for the swing-door leading to the street. And as she
+went, the paralysis which had pipped Archie released its hold. Still
+ignoring the forty-five cents which the boy continued to proffer, he
+leaped in her wake like a panther and came upon her just as she was
+stepping into a car. The car was full, but not too full for Archie. He
+dropped his five cents into the box and reached for a vacant strap. He
+looked down upon the flowered hat. There she was. And there he was.
+Archie rested his left ear against the forearm of a long,
+strongly-built young man in a grey suit who had followed him into the
+car and was sharing his strap, and pondered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+SUMMER STORMS
+
+
+Of course, in a way, the thing was simple. The wheeze was, in a sense,
+straightforward and uncomplicated. What he wanted to do was to point
+out to the injured girl all that hung on her. He wished to touch her
+heart, to plead with her, to desire her to restate her war-aims, and to
+persuade her—before three o’clock when that stricken gentleman would be
+stepping into the pitcher’s box to loose off the first ball against the
+Pittsburg Pirates—to let bygones be bygones and forgive Augustus
+Biddle. But the blighted problem was, how the deuce to find the
+opportunity to start. He couldn’t yell at the girl in a crowded
+street-car; and, if he let go of his strap and bent over her, somebody
+would step on his neck.
+
+The Girl Friend, who for the first five minutes had remained entirely
+concealed beneath her hat, now sought diversion by looking up and
+examining the faces of the upper strata of passengers. Her eye caught
+Archie’s in a glance of recognition, and he smiled feebly, endeavouring
+to register bonhomie and good-will. He was surprised to see a startled
+expression come into her brown eyes. Her face turned pink. At least, it
+was pink already, but it turned pinker. The next moment, the car having
+stopped to pick up more passengers, she jumped off and started to hurry
+across the street.
+
+Archie was momentarily taken aback. When embarking on this business he
+had never intended it to become a blend of otter-hunting and a
+moving-picture chase. He followed her off the car with a sense that his
+grip on the affair was slipping. Preoccupied with these thoughts, he
+did not perceive that the long young man who had shared his strap had
+alighted too. His eyes were fixed on the vanishing figure of the Girl
+Friend, who, having buzzed at a smart pace into Sixth Avenue, was now
+legging it in the direction of the staircase leading to one of the
+stations of the Elevated Railroad. Dashing up the stairs after her, he
+shortly afterwards found himself suspended as before from a strap,
+gazing upon the now familiar flowers on top of her hat. From another
+strap farther down the carriage swayed the long young man in the grey
+suit.
+
+The train rattled on. Once or twice, when it stopped, the girl seemed
+undecided whether to leave or remain. She half rose, then sank back
+again. Finally she walked resolutely out of the car, and Archie,
+following, found himself in a part of New York strange to him. The
+inhabitants of this district appeared to eke out a precarious
+existence, not by taking in one another’s washing, but by selling one
+another second-hand clothes.
+
+Archie glanced at his watch. He had lunched early, but so crowded with
+emotions had been the period following lunch that he was surprised to
+find that the hour was only just two. The discovery was a pleasant one.
+With a full hour before the scheduled start of the game, much might be
+achieved. He hurried after the girl, and came up with her just as she
+turned the corner into one of those forlorn New York side-streets which
+are populated chiefly by children, cats, desultory loafers, and empty
+meat-tins.
+
+The girl stopped and turned. Archie smiled a winning smile.
+
+“I say, my dear sweet creature!” he said. “I say, my dear old thing,
+one moment!”
+
+“Is that so?” said the Girl Friend.
+
+“I beg your pardon?”
+
+“Is that so?”
+
+Archie began to feel certain tremors. Her eyes were gleaming, and her
+determined mouth had become a perfectly straight line of scarlet. It
+was going to be difficult to be chatty to this girl. She was going to
+be a hard audience. Would mere words be able to touch her heart? The
+thought suggested itself that, properly speaking, one would need to use
+a pick-axe.
+
+“If you could spare me a couple of minutes of your valuable time—”
+
+“Say!” The lady drew herself up menacingly. “You tie a can to yourself
+and disappear! Fade away, or I’ll call a cop!”
+
+Archie was horrified at this misinterpretation of his motives. One or
+two children, playing close at hand, and a loafer who was trying to
+keep the wall from falling down, seemed pleased. Theirs was a
+colourless existence and to the rare purple moments which had enlivened
+it in the past the calling of a cop had been the unfailing preliminary.
+The loafer nudged a fellow-loafer, sunning himself against the same
+wall. The children, abandoning the meat-tin round which their game had
+centred, drew closer.
+
+“My dear old soul!” said Archie. “You don’t understand!”
+
+“Don’t I! I know your sort, you trailing arbutus!”
+
+“No, no! My dear old thing, believe me! I wouldn’t dream!”
+
+“Are you going or aren’t you?”
+
+Eleven more children joined the ring of spectators. The loafers stared
+silently, like awakened crocodiles.
+
+“But, I say, listen! I only wanted—”
+
+At this point another voice spoke.
+
+“Say!”
+
+The word “Say!” more almost than any word in the American language, is
+capable of a variety of shades of expression. It can be genial, it can
+be jovial, it can be appealing. It can also be truculent. The “Say!”
+which at this juncture smote upon Archie’s ear-drum with a suddenness
+which made him leap in the air was truculent; and the two loafers and
+twenty-seven children who now formed the audience were well satisfied
+with the dramatic development of the performance. To their experienced
+ears the word had the right ring.
+
+Archie spun round. At his elbow stood a long, strongly-built young man
+in a grey suit.
+
+“Well!” said the young man, nastily. And he extended a large, freckled
+face toward Archie’s. It seemed to the latter, as he backed against the
+wall, that the young man’s neck must be composed of india-rubber. It
+appeared to be growing longer every moment. His face, besides being
+freckled, was a dull brick-red in colour; his lips curled back in an
+unpleasant snarl, showing a gold tooth; and beside him, swaying in an
+ominous sort of way, hung two clenched red hands about the size of two
+young legs of mutton. Archie eyed him with a growing apprehension.
+There are moments in life when, passing idly on our way, we see a
+strange face, look into strange eyes, and with a sudden glow of human
+warmth say to ourselves, “We have found a friend!” This was not one of
+those moments. The only person Archie had ever seen in his life who
+looked less friendly was the sergeant-major who had trained him in the
+early days of the war, before he had got his commission.
+
+“I’ve had my eye on you!” said the young man.
+
+He still had his eye on him. It was a hot, gimlet-like eye, and it
+pierced the recesses of Archie’s soul. He backed a little farther
+against the wall.
+
+Archie was frankly disturbed. He was no poltroon, and had proved the
+fact on many occasions during the days when the entire German army
+seemed to be picking on him personally, but he hated and shrank from
+anything in the nature of a bally public scene.
+
+“What,” enquired the young man, still bearing the burden of the
+conversation, and shifting his left hand a little farther behind his
+back, “do you mean by following this young lady?”
+
+Archie was glad he had asked him. This was precisely what he wanted to
+explain.
+
+“My dear old lad—” he began.
+
+In spite of the fact that he had asked a question and presumably
+desired a reply, the sound of Archie’s voice seemed to be more than the
+young man could endure. It deprived him of the last vestige of
+restraint. With a rasping snarl he brought his left fist round in a
+sweeping semicircle in the direction of Archie’s head.
+
+Archie was no novice in the art of self-defence. Since his early days
+at school he had learned much from leather-faced professors of the
+science. He had been watching this unpleasant young man’s eyes with
+close attention, and the latter could not have indicated his scheme of
+action more clearly if he had sent him a formal note. Archie saw the
+swing all the way. He stepped nimbly aside, and the fist crashed
+against the wall. The young man fell back with a yelp of anguish.
+
+“Gus!” screamed the Girl Friend, bounding forward.
+
+She flung her arms round the injured man, who was ruefully examining a
+hand which, always of an out-size, was now swelling to still further
+dimensions.
+
+“Gus, darling!”
+
+A sudden chill gripped Archie. So engrossed had he been with his
+mission that it had never occurred to him that the love-lorn pitcher
+might have taken it into his head to follow the girl as well in the
+hope of putting in a word for himself. Yet such apparently had been the
+case. Well, this had definitely torn it. Two loving hearts were united
+again in complete reconciliation, but a fat lot of good that was. It
+would be days before the misguided Looney Biddle would be able to pitch
+with a hand like that. It looked like a ham already, and was still
+swelling. Probably the wrist was sprained. For at least a week the
+greatest left-handed pitcher of his time would be about as much use to
+the Giants in any professional capacity as a cold in the head. And on
+that crippled hand depended the fate of all the money Archie had in the
+world. He wished now that he had not thwarted the fellow’s simple
+enthusiasm. To have had his head knocked forcibly through a brick wall
+would not have been pleasant, but the ultimate outcome would not have
+been as unpleasant as this. With a heavy heart Archie prepared to
+withdraw, to be alone with his sorrow.
+
+At this moment, however, the Girl Friend, releasing her wounded lover,
+made a sudden dash for him, with the plainest intention of blotting him
+from the earth.
+
+“No, I say! Really!” said Archie, bounding backwards. “I mean to say!”
+
+In a series of events, all of which had been a bit thick, this, in his
+opinion, achieved the maximum of thickness. It was the extreme ragged,
+outside edge of the limit. To brawl with a fellow-man in a public
+street had been bad, but to be brawled with by a girl—the shot was not
+on the board. Absolutely not on the board. There was only one thing to
+be done. It was dashed undignified, no doubt, for a fellow to pick up
+the old waukeesis and leg it in the face of the enemy, but there was no
+other course. Archie started to run; and, as he did so, one of the
+loafers made the mistake of gripping him by the collar of his coat.
+
+“I got him!” observed the loafer.
+
+There is a time for all things. This was essentially not the time for
+anyone of the male sex to grip the collar of Archie’s coat. If a
+syndicate of Dempsey, Carpentier, and one of the Zoo gorillas had
+endeavoured to stay his progress at that moment, they would have had
+reason to consider it a rash move. Archie wanted to be elsewhere, and
+the blood of generations of Moffams, many of whom had swung a wicked
+axe in the free-for-all mix-ups of the Middle Ages, boiled within him
+at any attempt to revise his plans. There was a good deal of the
+loafer, but it was all soft. Releasing his hold when Archie’s heel took
+him shrewdly on the shin, he received a nasty punch in what would have
+been the middle of his waistcoat if he had worn one, uttered a gurgling
+bleat like a wounded sheep, and collapsed against the wall. Archie,
+with a torn coat, rounded the corner, and sprinted down Ninth Avenue.
+
+The suddenness of the move gave him an initial advantage. He was
+halfway down the first block before the vanguard of the pursuit poured
+out of the side street. Continuing to travel well, he skimmed past a
+large dray which had pulled up across the road, and moved on. The noise
+of those who pursued was loud and clamorous in the rear, but the dray
+hid him momentarily from their sight, and it was this fact which led
+Archie, the old campaigner, to take his next step.
+
+It was perfectly obvious—he was aware of this even in the novel
+excitement of the chase—that a chappie couldn’t hoof it at twenty-five
+miles an hour indefinitely along a main thoroughfare of a great city
+without exciting remark. He must take cover. Cover! That was the
+wheeze. He looked about him for cover.
+
+“You want a nice suit?”
+
+It takes a great deal to startle your commercial New Yorker. The small
+tailor, standing in his doorway, seemed in no way surprised at the
+spectacle of Archie, whom he had seen pass at a conventional walk some
+five minutes before, returning like this at top speed. He assumed that
+Archie had suddenly remembered that he wanted to buy something.
+
+This was exactly what Archie had done. More than anything else in the
+world, what he wanted to do now was to get into that shop and have a
+long talk about gents’ clothing. Pulling himself up abruptly, he shot
+past the small tailor into the dim interior. A confused aroma of cheap
+clothing greeted him. Except for a small oasis behind a grubby counter,
+practically all the available space was occupied by suits. Stiff suits,
+looking like the body when discovered by the police, hung from hooks.
+Limp suits, with the appearance of having swooned from exhaustion, lay
+about on chairs and boxes. The place was a cloth morgue, a Sargasso Sea
+of serge.
+
+Archie would not have had it otherwise. In these quiet groves of
+clothing a regiment could have lain hid.
+
+“Something nifty in tweeds?” enquired the business-like proprietor of
+this haven, following him amiably into the shop, “Or, maybe, yes, a
+nice serge? Say, mister, I got a sweet thing in blue serge that’ll fit
+you like the paper on the wall!”
+
+Archie wanted to talk about clothes, but not yet.
+
+“I say, laddie,” he said, hurriedly. “Lend me your ear for half a
+jiffy!” Outside the baying of the pack had become imminent. “Stow me
+away for a moment in the undergrowth, and I’ll buy anything you want.”
+
+He withdrew into the jungle. The noise outside grew in volume. The
+pursuit had been delayed for a priceless few instants by the arrival of
+another dray, moving northwards, which had drawn level with the first
+dray and dexterously bottled up the fairway. This obstacle had now been
+overcome, and the original searchers, their ranks swelled by a few
+dozen more of the leisured classes, were hot on the trail again.
+
+“You done a murder?” enquired the voice of the proprietor, mildly
+interested, filtering through a wall of cloth. “Well, boys will be
+boys!” he said, philosophically. “See anything there that you like?
+There some sweet things there!”
+
+“I’m inspecting them narrowly,” replied Archie. “If you don’t let those
+chappies find me, I shouldn’t be surprised if I bought one.”
+
+“One?” said the proprietor, with a touch of austerity.
+
+“Two,” said Archie, quickly. “Or possibly three or six.”
+
+The proprietor’s cordiality returned.
+
+“You can’t have too many nice suits,” he said, approvingly, “not a
+young feller like you that wants to look nice. All the nice girls like
+a young feller that dresses nice. When you go out of here in a suit I
+got hanging up there at the back, the girls’ll be all over you like
+flies round a honey-pot.”
+
+“Would you mind,” said Archie, “would you mind, as a personal favour to
+me, old companion, not mentioning that word ‘girls’?”
+
+He broke off. A heavy foot had crossed the threshold of the shop.
+
+“Say, uncle,” said a deep voice, one of those beastly voices that only
+the most poisonous blighters have, “you seen a young feller run past
+here?”
+
+“Young feller?” The proprietor appeared to reflect. “Do you mean a
+young feller in blue, with a Homburg hat?”
+
+“That’s the duck! We lost him. Where did he go?”
+
+“Him! Why, he come running past, quick as he could go. I wondered what
+he was running for, a hot day like this. He went round the corner at
+the bottom of the block.”
+
+There was a silence.
+
+“Well, I guess he’s got away,” said the voice, regretfully.
+
+“The way he was travelling,” agreed the proprietor, “I wouldn’t be
+surprised if he was in Europe by this. You want a nice suit?”
+
+The other, curtly expressing a wish that the proprietor would go to
+eternal perdition and take his entire stock with him, stumped out.
+
+“This,” said the proprietor, tranquilly, burrowing his way to where
+Archie stood and exhibiting a saffron-coloured outrage, which appeared
+to be a poor relation of the flannel family, “would put you back fifty
+dollars. And cheap!”
+
+“Fifty dollars!”
+
+“Sixty, I said. I don’t speak always distinct.”
+
+Archie regarded the distressing garment with a shuddering horror. A
+young man with an educated taste in clothes, it got right in among his
+nerve centres.
+
+“But, honestly, old soul, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but that
+isn’t a suit, it’s just a regrettable incident!”
+
+The proprietor turned to the door in a listening attitude.
+
+“I believe I hear that feller coming back,” he said.
+
+Archie gulped.
+
+“How about trying it on?” he said. “I’m not sure, after all, it isn’t
+fairly ripe.”
+
+“That’s the way to talk,” said the proprietor, cordially. “You try it
+on. You can’t judge a suit, not a real nice suit like this, by looking
+at it. You want to put it on. There!” He led the way to a dusty mirror
+at the back of the shop. “Isn’t that a bargain at seventy
+dollars?...Why, say, your mother would be proud if she could see her
+boy now!”
+
+A quarter of an hour later, the proprietor, lovingly kneading a little
+sheaf of currency bills, eyed with a fond look the heap of clothes
+which lay on the counter.
+
+“As nice a little lot as I’ve ever had in my shop!” Archie did not deny
+this. It was, he thought, probably only too true.
+
+“I only wish I could see you walking up Fifth Avenue in them!”
+rhapsodised the proprietor. “You’ll give ’em a treat! What you going to
+do with ’em? Carry ’em under your arm?” Archie shuddered strongly.
+“Well, then, I can send ’em for you anywhere you like. It’s all the
+same to me. Where’ll I send ’em?”
+
+Archie meditated. The future was black enough as it was. He shrank from
+the prospect of being confronted next day, at the height of his misery,
+with these appalling reach-me-downs.
+
+An idea struck him.
+
+“Yes, send ’em,” he said.
+
+“What’s the name and address?”
+
+“Daniel Brewster,” said Archie, “Hotel Cosmopolis.”
+
+It was a long time since he had given his father-in-law a present.
+
+Archie went out into the street, and began to walk pensively down a now
+peaceful Ninth Avenue. Out of the depths that covered him, black as the
+pit from pole to pole, no single ray of hope came to cheer him. He
+could not, like the poet, thank whatever gods there be for his
+unconquerable soul, for his soul was licked to a splinter. He felt
+alone and friendless in a rotten world. With the best intentions, he
+had succeeded only in landing himself squarely amongst the ribstons.
+Why had he not been content with his wealth, instead of risking it on
+that blighted bet with Reggie? Why had he trailed the Girl Friend, dash
+her! He might have known that he would only make an ass of himself.
+And, because he had done so, Looney Biddle’s left hand, that priceless
+left hand before which opposing batters quailed and wilted, was out of
+action, resting in a sling, careened like a damaged battleship; and any
+chance the Giants might have had of beating the Pirates was
+gone—gone—as surely as that thousand dollars which should have bought a
+birthday present for Lucille.
+
+A birthday present for Lucille! He groaned in bitterness of spirit. She
+would be coming back to-night, dear girl, all smiles and happiness,
+wondering what he was going to give her tomorrow. And when to-morrow
+dawned, all he would be able to give her would be a kind smile. A nice
+state of things! A jolly situation! A thoroughly good egg, he did _not_
+think!
+
+It seemed to Archie that Nature, contrary to her usual custom of
+indifference to human suffering, was mourning with him. The sky was
+overcast, and the sun had ceased to shine. There was a sort of
+sombreness in the afternoon, which fitted in with his mood. And then
+something splashed on his face.
+
+It says much for Archie’s pre-occupation that his first thought, as,
+after a few scattered drops, as though the clouds were submitting
+samples for approval, the whole sky suddenly began to stream like a
+shower-bath, was that this was simply an additional infliction which he
+was called upon to bear, On top of all his other troubles he would get
+soaked to the skin or have to hang about in some doorway. He cursed
+richly, and sped for shelter.
+
+The rain was setting about its work in earnest. The world was full of
+that rending, swishing sound which accompanies the more violent summer
+storms. Thunder crashed, and lightning flicked out of the grey heavens.
+Out in the street the raindrops bounded up off the stones like fairy
+fountains. Archie surveyed them morosely from his refuge in the
+entrance of a shop.
+
+And then, suddenly, like one of those flashes which were lighting up
+the gloomy sky, a thought lit up his mind.
+
+“By Jove! If this keeps up, there won’t be a ball-game to-day!”
+
+With trembling fingers he pulled out his watch. The hands pointed to
+five minutes to three. A blessed vision came to him of a moist and
+disappointed crowd receiving rain-checks up at the Polo Grounds.
+
+“Switch it on, you blighters!” he cried, addressing the leaden clouds.
+“Switch it on more and more!”
+
+It was shortly before five o’clock that a young man bounded into a
+jeweller’s shop near the Hotel Cosmopolis—a young man who, in spite of
+the fact that his coat was torn near the collar and that he oozed water
+from every inch of his drenched clothes, appeared in the highest
+spirits. It was only when he spoke that the jeweller recognised in the
+human sponge the immaculate youth who had looked in that morning to
+order a bracelet.
+
+“I say, old lad,” said this young man, “you remember that jolly little
+what-not you showed me before lunch?”
+
+“The bracelet, sir?”
+
+“As you observe with a manly candour which does you credit, my dear old
+jeweller, the bracelet. Well, produce, exhibit, and bring it forth,
+would you mind? Trot it out! Slip it across on a lordly dish!”
+
+“You wished me, surely, to put it aside and send it to the Cosmopolis
+to-morrow?”
+
+The young man tapped the jeweller earnestly on his substantial chest.
+
+“What I wished and what I wish now are two bally separate and dashed
+distinct things, friend of my college days! Never put off till
+to-morrow what you can do to-day, and all that! I’m not taking any more
+chances. Not for me! For others, yes, but not for Archibald! Here are
+the doubloons, produce the jolly bracelet. Thanks!”
+
+The jeweller counted the notes with the same unction which Archie had
+observed earlier in the day in the proprietor of the second-hand
+clothes-shop. The process made him genial.
+
+“A nasty, wet day, sir, it’s been,” he observed, chattily.
+
+Archie shook his head.
+
+“Old friend,” he said, “you’re all wrong. Far otherwise, and not a bit
+like it, my dear old trafficker in gems! You’ve put your finger on the
+one aspect of this blighted p.m. that really deserves credit and
+respect. Rarely in the experience of a lifetime have I encountered a
+day so absolutely bally in nearly every shape and form, but there was
+one thing that saved it, and that was its merry old wetness! Toodle-oo,
+laddie!”
+
+“Good evening, sir,” said the jeweller.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+ARCHIE ACCEPTS A SITUATION
+
+
+Lucille moved her wrist slowly round, the better to examine the new
+bracelet.
+
+“You really are an angel, angel!” she murmured.
+
+“Like it?” said Archie complacently.
+
+“_Like_ it! Why, it’s gorgeous! It must have cost a fortune.”
+
+“Oh, nothing to speak of. Just a few hard-earned pieces of eight. Just
+a few doubloons from the old oak chest.”
+
+“But I didn’t know there were any doubloons in the old oak chest.”
+
+“Well, as a matter of fact,” admitted Archie, “at one point in the
+proceedings there weren’t. But an aunt of mine in England—peace be on
+her head!—happened to send me a chunk of the necessary at what you
+might call the psychological moment.”
+
+“And you spent it all on a birthday present for me! Archie!” Lucille
+gazed at her husband adoringly. “Archie, do you know what I think?”
+
+“What?”
+
+“You’re the perfect man!”
+
+“No, really! What ho!”
+
+“Yes,” said Lucille firmly. “I’ve long suspected it, and now I know. I
+don’t think there’s anybody like you in the world.”
+
+Archie patted her hand.
+
+“It’s a rummy thing,” he observed, “but your father said almost exactly
+that to me only yesterday. Only I don’t fancy he meant the same as you.
+To be absolutely frank, his exact expression was that he thanked God
+there was only one of me.”
+
+A troubled look came into Lucille’s grey eyes.
+
+“It’s a shame about father. I do wish he appreciated you. But you
+mustn’t be too hard on him.”
+
+“Me?” said Archie. “Hard on your father? Well, dash it all, I don’t
+think I treat him with what you might call actual brutality, what! I
+mean to say, my whole idea is rather to keep out of the old lad’s way
+and curl up in a ball if I can’t dodge him. I’d just as soon be hard on
+a stampeding elephant! I wouldn’t for the world say anything
+derogatory, as it were, to your jolly old pater, but there is no
+getting away from the fact that he’s by way of being one of our leading
+man-eating fishes. It would be idle to deny that he considers that you
+let down the proud old name of Brewster a bit when you brought me in
+and laid me on the mat.”
+
+“Anyone would be lucky to get you for a son-in-law, precious.”
+
+“I fear me, light of my life, the dad doesn’t see eye to eye with you
+on that point. No, every time I get hold of a daisy, I give him another
+chance, but it always works out at ‘He loves me not!’”
+
+“You must make allowances for him, darling.”
+
+“Right-o! But I hope devoutly that he doesn’t catch me at it. I’ve a
+sort of idea that if the old dad discovered that I was making
+allowances for him, he would have from ten to fifteen fits.”
+
+“He’s worried just now, you know.”
+
+“I didn’t know. He doesn’t confide in me much.”
+
+“He’s worried about that waiter.”
+
+“What waiter, queen of my soul?”
+
+“A man called Salvatore. Father dismissed him some time ago.”
+
+“Salvatore!”
+
+“Probably you don’t remember him. He used to wait on this table.”
+
+“Why—”
+
+“And father dismissed him, apparently, and now there’s all sorts of
+trouble. You see, father wants to build this new hotel of his, and he
+thought he’d got the site and everything and could start building right
+away: and now he finds that this man Salvatore’s mother owns a little
+newspaper and tobacco shop right in the middle of the site, and there’s
+no way of getting him out without buying the shop, and he won’t sell.
+At least, he’s made his mother promise that she won’t sell.”
+
+“A boy’s best friend is his mother,” said Archie approvingly. “I had a
+sort of idea all along—”
+
+“So father’s in despair.”
+
+Archie drew at his cigarette meditatively.
+
+“I remember a chappie—a policeman he was, as a matter of fact, and
+incidentally a fairly pronounced blighter—remarking to me some time ago
+that you could trample on the poor man’s face but you mustn’t be
+surprised if he bit you in the leg while you were doing it. Apparently
+this is what has happened to the old dad. I had a sort of idea all
+along that old friend Salvatore would come out strong in the end if you
+only gave him time. Brainy sort of feller! Great pal of
+mine.”—Lucille’s small face lightened. She gazed at Archie with proud
+affection. She felt that she ought to have known that he was the one to
+solve this difficulty.
+
+“You’re wonderful, darling! Is he really a friend of yours?”
+
+“Absolutely. Many’s the time he and I have chatted in this very
+grill-room.”
+
+“Then it’s all right. If you went to him and argued with him, he would
+agree to sell the shop, and father would be happy. Think how grateful
+father would be to you! It would make all the difference.”
+
+Archie turned this over in his mind.
+
+“Something in that,” he agreed.
+
+“It would make him see what a pet lambkin you really are!”
+
+“Well,” said Archie, “I’m bound to say that any scheme which what you
+might call culminates in your father regarding me as a pet lambkin
+ought to receive one’s best attention. How much did he offer Salvatore
+for his shop?”
+
+“I don’t know. There is father.—Call him over and ask him.”
+
+Archie glanced over to where Mr. Brewster had sunk moodily into a chair
+at a neighbouring table. It was plain even at that distance that Daniel
+Brewster had his troubles and was bearing them with an ill grace. He
+was scowling absently at the table-cloth.
+
+“_You_ call him,” said Archie, having inspected his formidable
+relative. “You know him better.”
+
+“Let’s go over to him.”
+
+They crossed the room. Lucille sat down opposite her father. Archie
+draped himself over a chair in the background.
+
+“Father, dear,” said Lucille. “Archie has got an idea.”
+
+“Archie?” said Mr. Brewster incredulously.
+
+“This is me,” said Archie, indicating himself with a spoon. “The tall,
+distinguished-looking bird.”
+
+“What new fool-thing is he up to now?”
+
+“It’s a splendid idea, father. He wants to help you over your new
+hotel.”
+
+“Wants to run it for me, I suppose?”
+
+“By Jove!” said Archie, reflectively. “That’s not a bad scheme! I never
+thought of running an hotel. I shouldn’t mind taking a stab at it.”
+
+“He has thought of a way of getting rid of Salvatore and his shop.”
+
+For the first time Mr. Brewster’s interest in the conversation seemed
+to stir. He looked sharply at his son-in-law.
+
+“He has, has he?” he said.
+
+Archie balanced a roll on a fork and inserted a plate underneath. The
+roll bounded away into a corner.
+
+“Sorry!” said Archie. “My fault, absolutely! I owe you a roll. I’ll
+sign a bill for it. Oh, about this sportsman Salvatore, Well, it’s like
+this, you know. He and I are great pals. I’ve known him for years and
+years. At least, it seems like years and years. Lu was suggesting that
+I seek him out in his lair and ensnare him with my diplomatic manner
+and superior brain power and what not.”
+
+“It was your idea, precious,” said Lucille.
+
+Mr. Brewster was silent.—Much as it went against the grain to have to
+admit it, there seemed to be something in this.
+
+“What do you propose to do?”
+
+“Become a jolly old ambassador. How much did you offer the chappie?”
+
+“Three thousand dollars. Twice as much as the place is worth. He’s
+holding out on me for revenge.”
+
+“Ah, but how did you offer it to him, what? I mean to say, I bet you
+got your lawyer to write him a letter full of whereases, peradventures,
+and parties of the first part, and so forth. No good, old companion!”
+
+“Don’t call me old companion!”
+
+“All wrong, laddie! Nothing like it, dear heart! No good at all, friend
+of my youth! Take it from your Uncle Archibald! I’m a student of human
+nature, and I know a thing or two.”
+
+“That’s not much,” growled Mr. Brewster, who was finding his
+son-in-law’s superior manner a little trying.
+
+“Now, don’t interrupt, father,” said Lucille, severely. “Can’t you see
+that Archie is going to be tremendously clever in a minute?”
+
+“He’s got to show me!”
+
+“What you ought to do,” said Archie, “is to let me go and see him,
+taking the stuff in crackling bills. I’ll roll them about on the table
+in front of him. That’ll fetch him!” He prodded Mr. Brewster
+encouragingly with a roll. “I’ll tell you what to do. Give me three
+thousand of the best and crispest, and I’ll undertake to buy that shop.
+It can’t fail, laddie!”
+
+“Don’t call me laddie!” Mr. Brewster pondered. “Very well,” he said at
+last. “I didn’t know you had so much sense,” he added grudgingly.
+
+“Oh, positively!” said Archie. “Beneath a rugged exterior I hide a
+brain like a buzz-saw. Sense? I exude it, laddie; I drip with it.”
+
+There were moments during the ensuing days when Mr. Brewster permitted
+himself to hope; but more frequent were the moments when he told
+himself that a pronounced chump like his son-in-law could not fail
+somehow to make a mess of the negotiations. His relief, therefore, when
+Archie curveted into his private room and announced that he had
+succeeded was great.
+
+“You really managed to make that wop sell out?”
+
+Archie brushed some papers off the desk with a careless gesture, and
+seated himself on the vacant spot.
+
+“Absolutely! I spoke to him as one old friend to another, sprayed the
+bills all over the place; and he sang a few bars from ‘Rigoletto,’ and
+signed on the dotted line.”
+
+“You’re not such a fool as you look,” owned Mr. Brewster.
+
+Archie scratched a match on the desk and lit a cigarette.
+
+“It’s a jolly little shop,” he said. “I took quite a fancy to it. Full
+of newspapers, don’t you know, and cheap novels, and some weird-looking
+sort of chocolates, and cigars with the most fearfully attractive
+labels. I think I’ll make a success of it. It’s bang in the middle of a
+dashed good neighbourhood. One of these days somebody will be building
+a big hotel round about there, and that’ll help trade a lot. I look
+forward to ending my days on the other side of the counter with a full
+set of white whiskers and a skull-cap, beloved by everybody.
+Everybody’ll say, ‘Oh, you _must_ patronise that quaint, delightful old
+blighter! He’s quite a character.’”
+
+Mr. Brewster’s air of grim satisfaction had given way to a look of
+discomfort, almost of alarm. He presumed his son-in-law was merely
+indulging in _badinage;_ but even so, his words were not soothing.
+
+“Well, I’m much obliged,” he said. “That infernal shop was holding up
+everything. Now I can start building right away.”
+
+Archie raised his eyebrows.
+
+“But, my dear old top, I’m sorry to spoil your daydreams and stop you
+chasing rainbows, and all that, but aren’t you forgetting that the shop
+belongs to me? I don’t at all know that I want to sell, either!”
+
+“I gave you the money to buy that shop!”
+
+“And dashed generous of you it was, too!” admitted Archie,
+unreservedly. “It was the first money you ever gave me, and I shall
+always tell interviewers that it was you who founded my fortunes. Some
+day, when I’m the Newspaper-and-Tobacco-Shop King, I’ll tell the world
+all about it in my autobiography.”
+
+Mr. Brewster rose dangerously from his seat.
+
+“Do you think you can hold me up, you—you worm?”
+
+“Well,” said Archie, “the way I look at it is this. Ever since we met,
+you’ve been after me to become one of the world’s workers, and earn a
+living for myself, and what not; and now I see a way to repay you for
+your confidence and encouragement. You’ll look me up sometimes at the
+good old shop, won’t you?” He slid off the table and moved towards the
+door. “There won’t be any formalities where you are concerned. You can
+sign bills for any reasonable amount any time you want a cigar or a
+stick of chocolate. Well, toodle-oo!”
+
+“Stop!”
+
+“Now what?”
+
+“How much do you want for that damned shop?”
+
+“I don’t want money.-I want a job.-If you are going to take my
+life-work away from me, you ought to give me something else to do.”
+
+“What job?”
+
+“You suggested it yourself the other day. I want to manage your new
+hotel.”
+
+“Don’t be a fool! What do you know about managing an hotel?”
+
+“Nothing. It will be your pleasing task to teach me the business while
+the shanty is being run up.”
+
+There was a pause, while Mr. Brewster chewed three inches off a
+pen-holder.
+
+“Very well,” he said at last.
+
+“Topping!” said Archie. “I knew you’d see it. I’ll study your methods,
+what! Adding some of my own, of course. You know, I’ve thought of one
+improvement on the Cosmopolis already.”
+
+“Improvement on the Cosmopolis!” cried Mr. Brewster, gashed in his
+finest feelings.
+
+“Yes. There’s one point where the old Cosmop slips up badly, and I’m
+going to see that it’s corrected at my little shack. Customers will be
+entreated to leave their boots outside their doors at night, and
+they’ll find them cleaned in the morning. Well, pip, pip! I must be
+popping. Time is money, you know, with us business men.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+BROTHER BILL’S ROMANCE
+
+
+“Her eyes,” said Bill Brewster, “are like—like—what’s the word I want?”
+
+He looked across at Lucille and Archie. Lucille was leaning forward
+with an eager and interested face; Archie was leaning back with his
+finger-tips together and his eyes closed. This was not the first time
+since their meeting in Beale’s Auction Rooms that his brother-in-law
+had touched on the subject of the girl he had become engaged to marry
+during his trip to England. Indeed, Brother Bill had touched on very
+little else: and Archie, though of a sympathetic nature and fond of his
+young relative, was beginning to feel that he had heard all he wished
+to hear about Mabel Winchester. Lucille, on the other hand, was
+absorbed. Her brother’s recital had thrilled her.
+
+“Like—” said Bill. “Like—”
+
+“Stars?” suggested Lucille.
+
+“Stars,” said Bill gratefully. “Exactly the word. Twin stars shining in
+a clear sky on a summer night. Her teeth are like—what shall I say?”
+
+“Pearls?”
+
+“Pearls. And her hair is a lovely brown, like leaves in autumn. In
+fact,” concluded Bill, slipping down from the heights with something of
+a jerk, “she’s a corker. Isn’t she, Archie?”
+
+Archie opened his eyes.
+
+“Quite right, old top!” he said. “It was the only thing to do.”
+
+“What the devil are you talking about?” demanded Bill coldly. He had
+been suspicious all along of Archie’s statement that he could listen
+better with his eyes shut.
+
+“Eh? Oh, sorry! Thinking of something else.”
+
+“You were asleep.”
+
+“No, no, positively and distinctly not. Frightfully interested and rapt
+and all that, only I didn’t quite get what you said.”
+
+“I said that Mabel was a corker.”
+
+“Oh, absolutely in every respect.”
+
+“There!” Bill turned to Lucille triumphantly. “You hear that? And
+Archie has only seen her photograph. Wait till he sees her in the
+flesh.”
+
+“My dear old chap!” said Archie, shocked. “Ladies present! I mean to
+say, what!”
+
+“I’m afraid that father will be the one you’ll find it hard to
+convince.”
+
+“Yes,” admitted her brother gloomily.
+
+“Your Mabel sounds perfectly charming, but—well, you know what father
+is. It _is_ a pity she sings in the chorus.”
+
+“She hasn’t much of a voice,”—argued Bill—in extenuation.
+
+“All the same—”
+
+Archie, the conversation having reached a topic on which he considered
+himself one of the greatest living authorities—to wit, the unlovable
+disposition of his father-in-law—addressed the meeting as one who has a
+right to be heard.
+
+“Lucille’s absolutely right, old thing.—Absolutely correct-o! Your
+esteemed progenitor is a pretty tough nut, and it’s no good trying to
+get away from it.-And I’m sorry to have to say it, old bird, but, if
+you come bounding in with part of the personnel of the ensemble on your
+arm and try to dig a father’s blessing out of him, he’s extremely apt
+to stab you in the gizzard.”
+
+“I wish,” said Bill, annoyed, “you wouldn’t talk as though Mabel were
+the ordinary kind of chorus-girl. She’s only on the stage because her
+mother’s hard-up and she wants to educate her little brother.”
+
+“I say,” said Archie, concerned. “Take my tip, old top. In chatting the
+matter over with the pater, don’t dwell too much on that aspect of the
+affair.—I’ve been watching him closely, and it’s about all he can
+stick, having to support _me_. If you ring in a mother and a little
+brother on him, he’ll crack under the strain.”
+
+“Well, I’ve got to do something about it. Mabel will be over here in a
+week.”
+
+“Great Scot! You never told us that.”
+
+“Yes. She’s going to be in the new Billington show. And, naturally, she
+will expect to meet my family. I’ve told her all about you.”
+
+“Did you explain father to her?” asked Lucille.
+
+“Well, I just said she mustn’t mind him, as his bark was worse than his
+bite.”
+
+“Well,” said Archie, thoughtfully, “he hasn’t bitten me yet, so you may
+be right. But you’ve got to admit that he’s a bit of a barker.”
+
+Lucille considered.
+
+“Really, Bill, I think your best plan would be to go straight to father
+and tell him the whole thing.—You don’t want him to hear about it in a
+roundabout way.”
+
+“The trouble is that, whenever I’m with father, I can’t think of
+anything to say.”
+
+Archie found himself envying his father-in-law this merciful
+dispensation of Providence; for, where he himself was concerned, there
+had been no lack of eloquence on Bill’s part. In the brief period in
+which he had known him, Bill had talked all the time and always on the
+one topic. As unpromising a subject as the tariff laws was easily
+diverted by him into a discussion of the absent Mabel.
+
+“When I’m with father,” said Bill, “I sort of lose my nerve, and
+yammer.”
+
+“Dashed awkward,” said Archie, politely. He sat up suddenly. “I say! By
+Jove! I know what you want, old friend! Just thought of it!”
+
+“That busy brain is never still,” explained Lucille.
+
+“Saw it in the paper this morning. An advertisement of a book, don’t
+you know.”
+
+“I’ve no time for reading.”
+
+“You’ve time for reading this one, laddie, for you can’t afford to miss
+it. It’s a what-d’you-call-it book. What I mean to say is, if you read
+it and take its tips to heart, it guarantees to make you a convincing
+talker. The advertisement says so. The advertisement’s all about a
+chappie whose name I forget, whom everybody loved because he talked so
+well. And, mark you, before he got hold of this book—_The Personality
+That Wins_ was the name of it, if I remember rightly—he was known to
+all the lads in the office as Silent Samuel or something. Or it may
+have been Tongue-Tied Thomas. Well, one day he happened by good luck to
+blow in the necessary for the good old P. that W.’s, and now, whenever
+they want someone to go and talk Rockefeller or someone into lending
+them a million or so, they send for Samuel. Only now they call him
+Sammy the Spell-Binder and fawn upon him pretty copiously and all that.
+How about it, old son? How do we go?”
+
+“What perfect nonsense,” said Lucille.
+
+“I don’t know,” said Bill, plainly impressed. “There might be something
+in it.”
+
+“Absolutely!” said Archie. “I remember it said, ‘Talk convincingly, and
+no man will ever treat you with cold, unresponsive indifference.’ Well,
+cold, unresponsive indifference is just what you don’t want the pater
+to treat you with, isn’t it, or is it, or isn’t it, what? I mean,
+what?”
+
+“It sounds all right,” said Bill.
+
+“It _is_ all right,” said Archie. “It’s a scheme! I’ll go farther. It’s
+an egg!”
+
+“The idea I had,” said Bill, “was to see if I couldn’t get Mabel a job
+in some straight comedy. That would take the curse off the thing a bit.
+Then I wouldn’t have to dwell on the chorus end of the business, you
+see.”
+
+“Much more sensible,” said Lucille.
+
+“But what a-deuce of a sweat”—argued Archie. “I mean to say, having to
+pop round and nose about and all that.”
+
+“Aren’t you willing to take a little trouble for your stricken
+brother-in-law, worm?” said Lucille severely.
+
+“Oh, absolutely! My idea was to get this book and coach the dear old
+chap. Rehearse him, don’t you know. He could bone up the early chapters
+a bit and then drift round and try his convincing talk on me.”
+
+“It might be a good idea,” said Bill reflectively.
+
+“Well, I’ll tell you what _I’m_ going to do,” said Lucille. “I’m going
+to get Bill to introduce me to his Mabel, and, if she’s as nice as he
+says she is, _I’ll_ go to father and talk convincingly to him.”
+
+“You’re an ace!” said Bill.
+
+“Absolutely!” agreed Archie cordially. “_My_ partner, what! All the
+same, we ought to keep the book as a second string, you know. I mean to
+say, you are a young and delicately nurtured girl—full of sensibility
+and shrinking what’s-its-name and all that—and you know what the jolly
+old pater is. He might bark at you and put you out of action in the
+first round. Well, then, if anything like that happened, don’t you see,
+we could unleash old Bill, the trained silver-tongued expert, and let
+him have a shot. Personally, I’m all for the P. that W.’s.”—“Me, too,”
+said Bill.
+
+Lucille looked at her watch.
+
+“Good gracious! It’s nearly one o’clock!”
+
+“No!” Archie heaved himself up from his chair. “Well, it’s a shame to
+break up this feast of reason and flow of soul and all that, but, if we
+don’t leg it with some speed, we shall be late.”
+
+“We’re lunching at the Nicholson’s!” explained Lucille to her brother.
+“I wish you were coming too.”
+
+“Lunch!” Bill shook his head with a kind of tolerant scorn. “Lunch
+means nothing to me these days. I’ve other things to think of besides
+food.” He looked as spiritual as his rugged features would permit. “I
+haven’t written to Her yet to-day.”
+
+“But, dash it, old scream, if she’s going to be over here in a week,
+what’s the good of writing? The letter would cross her.”
+
+“I’m not mailing my letters to England,” said Bill. “I’m keeping them
+for her to read when she arrives.”
+
+“My sainted aunt!” said Archie.
+
+Devotion like this was something beyond his outlook.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+THE SAUSAGE CHAPPIE
+
+
+_The Personality That Wins_ cost Archie two dollars in cash and a lot
+of embarrassment when he asked for it at the store. To buy a treatise
+of that name would automatically seem to argue that you haven’t a
+winning personality already, and Archie was at some pains to explain to
+the girl behind the counter that he wanted it for a friend. The girl
+seemed more interested in his English accent than in his explanation,
+and Archie was uncomfortably aware, as he receded, that she was
+practising it in an undertone for the benefit of her colleagues and
+fellow-workers. However, what is a little discomfort, if endured in
+friendship’s name?
+
+He was proceeding up Broadway after leaving the store when he
+encountered Reggie van Tuyl, who was drifting along in somnambulistic
+fashion near Thirty-Ninth Street.
+
+“Hullo, Reggie old thing!” said Archie.
+
+“Hullo!” said Reggie, a man of few words.
+
+“I’ve just been buying a book for Bill Brewster,” went on Archie. “It
+appears that old Bill—What’s the matter?”
+
+He broke off his recital abruptly. A sort of spasm had passed across
+his companion’s features. The hand holding Archie’s arm had tightened
+convulsively. One would have said that Reginald had received a shock.
+
+“It’s nothing,” said Reggie. “I’m all right now. I caught sight of that
+fellow’s clothes rather suddenly. They shook me a bit. I’m all right
+now,” he said, bravely.
+
+Archie, following his friend’s gaze, understood. Reggie van Tuyl was
+never at his strongest in the morning, and he had a sensitive eye for
+clothes. He had been known to resign from clubs because members
+exceeded the bounds in the matter of soft shirts with dinner-jackets.
+And the short, thick-set man who was standing just in front of them in
+attitude of restful immobility was certainly no dandy. His best friend
+could not have called him dapper. Take him for all in all and on the
+hoof, he might have been posing as a model for a sketch of What the
+Well-Dressed Man Should Not Wear.
+
+In costume, as in most other things, it is best to take a definite line
+and stick to it. This man had obviously vacillated. His neck was
+swathed in a green scarf; he wore an evening-dress coat; and his lower
+limbs were draped in a pair of tweed trousers built for a larger man.
+To the north he was bounded by a straw hat, to the south by brown
+shoes.
+
+Archie surveyed the man’s back carefully.
+
+“Bit thick!” he said, sympathetically. “But of course Broadway isn’t
+Fifth Avenue. What I mean to say is, Bohemian licence and what not.
+Broadway’s crammed with deuced brainy devils who don’t care how they
+look. Probably this bird is a master-mind of some species.”
+
+“All the same, man’s no right to wear evening-dress coat with tweed
+trousers.”
+
+“Absolutely not! I see what you mean.”
+
+At this point the sartorial offender turned. Seen from the front, he
+was even more unnerving. He appeared to possess no shirt, though this
+defect was offset by the fact that the tweed trousers fitted snugly
+under the arms. He was not a handsome man. At his best he could never
+have been that, and in the recent past he had managed to acquire a scar
+that ran from the corner of his mouth half-way across his cheek. Even
+when his face was in repose he had an odd expression; and when, as he
+chanced to do now, he smiled, odd became a mild adjective, quite
+inadequate for purposes of description. It was not an unpleasant face,
+however. Unquestionably genial, indeed. There was something in it that
+had a quality of humorous appeal.
+
+Archie started. He stared at the man, Memory stirred.
+
+“Great Scot!” he cried. “It’s the Sausage Chappie!”
+
+Reginald van Tuyl gave a little moan. He was not used to this sort of
+thing. A sensitive young man as regarded scenes, Archie’s behaviour
+unmanned him. For Archie, releasing his arm, had bounded forward and
+was shaking the other’s hand warmly.
+
+“Well, well, well! My dear old chap! You must remember me, what? No?
+Yes?”
+
+The man with the scar seemed puzzled. He shuffled the brown shoes,
+patted the straw hat, and eyed Archie questioningly.
+
+“I don’t seem to place you,” he said.
+
+Archie slapped the back of the evening-dress coat. He linked his arm
+affectionately with that of the dress-reformer.
+
+“We met outside St Mihiel in the war. You gave me a bit of sausage. One
+of the most sporting events in history. Nobody but a real sportsman
+would have parted with a bit of sausage at that moment to a stranger.
+Never forgotten it, by Jove. Saved my life, absolutely. Hadn’t chewed a
+morsel for eight hours. Well, have you got anything on? I mean to say,
+you aren’t booked for lunch or any rot of that species, are you? Fine!
+Then I move we all toddle off and get a bite somewhere.” He squeezed
+the other’s arm fondly. “Fancy meeting you again like this! I’ve often
+wondered what became of you. But, by Jove, I was forgetting. Dashed
+rude of me. My friend, Mr. van Tuyl.”
+
+Reggie gulped. The longer he looked at it, the harder this man’s
+costume was to bear. His eye passed shudderingly from the brown shoes
+to the tweed trousers, to the green scarf, from the green scarf to the
+straw hat.
+
+“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Just remembered. Important date. Late already.
+Er—see you some time—”
+
+He melted away, a broken man. Archie was not sorry to see him go.
+Reggie was a good chap, but he would undoubtedly have been _de trop_ at
+this reunion.
+
+“I vote we go to the Cosmopolis,” he said, steering his newly-found
+friend through the crowd. “The browsing and sluicing isn’t bad there,
+and I can sign the bill which is no small consideration nowadays.”
+
+The Sausage Chappie chuckled amusedly.
+
+“I can’t go to a place like the Cosmopolis looking like this.”
+
+Archie, was a little embarrassed.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know, you know, don’t you know!” he said. “Still, since
+you have brought the topic up, you _did_ get the good old wardrobe a
+bit mixed this morning what? I mean to say, you seem absent-mindedly,
+as it were, to have got hold of samples from a good number of your
+various suitings.”
+
+“Suitings? How do you mean, suitings? I haven’t any suitings! Who do
+you think I am? Vincent Astor? All I have is what I stand up in.”
+
+Archie was shocked. This tragedy touched him. He himself had never had
+any money in his life, but somehow he had always seemed to manage to
+have plenty of clothes. How this was he could not say. He had always
+had a vague sort of idea that tailors were kindly birds who never
+failed to have a pair of trousers or something up their sleeve to
+present to the deserving. There was the drawback, of course, that once
+they had given you things they were apt to write you rather a lot of
+letters about it; but you soon managed to recognise their handwriting,
+and then it was a simple task to extract their communications from your
+morning mail and drop them in the waste-paper basket. This was the
+first case he had encountered of a man who was really short of clothes.
+
+“My dear old lad,” he said, briskly, “this must be remedied! Oh,
+positively! This must be remedied at once! I suppose my things wouldn’t
+fit you? No. Well, I tell you what. We’ll wangle something from my
+father-in-law. Old Brewster, you know, the fellow who runs the
+Cosmopolis. His’ll fit you like the paper on the wall, because he’s a
+tubby little blighter, too. What I mean to say is, he’s also one of
+those sturdy, square, fine-looking chappies of about the middle height.
+By the way, where are you stopping these days?”
+
+“Nowhere just at present. I thought of taking one of those
+self-contained Park benches.”
+
+“Are you broke?”
+
+“Am I!”
+
+Archie was concerned.
+
+“You ought to get a job.”
+
+“I ought. But somehow I don’t seem able to.”
+
+“What did you do before the war?”
+
+“I’ve forgotten.”
+
+“Forgotten!”
+
+“Forgotten.”
+
+“How do you mean—forgotten? You can’t mean—_forgotten?_”
+
+“Yes. It’s quite gone.”
+
+“But I mean to say. You can’t have forgotten a thing like that.”
+
+“Can’t I! I’ve forgotten all sorts of things. Where I was born. How old
+I am. Whether I’m married or single. What my name is—”
+
+“Well, I’m dashed!” said Archie, staggered. “But you remembered about
+giving me a bit of sausage outside St. Mihiel?”
+
+“No, I didn’t. I’m taking your word for it. For all I know you may be
+luring me into some den to rob me of my straw hat. I don’t know you
+from Adam. But I like your conversation—especially the part about
+eating—and I’m taking a chance.”
+
+Archie was concerned.
+
+“Listen, old bean. Make an effort. You must remember that sausage
+episode? It was just outside St. Mihiel, about five in the evening.
+Your little lot were lying next to my little lot, and we happened to
+meet, and I said ‘What ho!’ and you said ‘Halloa!’ and I said ‘What ho!
+What ho!’ and you said ‘Have a bit of sausage?’ and I said ‘What ho!
+What ho! What _ho!_’”
+
+“The dialogue seems to have been darned sparkling but I don’t remember
+it. It must have been after that that I stopped one. I don’t seem quite
+to have caught up with myself since I got hit.”
+
+“Oh! That’s how you got that scar?”
+
+“No. I got that jumping through a plate-glass window in London on
+Armistice night.”
+
+“What on earth did you do that for?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t know. It seemed a good idea at the time.”
+
+“But if you can remember a thing like that, why can’t you remember your
+name?”
+
+“I remember everything that happened after I came out of hospital. It’s
+the part before that’s gone.”
+
+Archie patted him on the shoulder.
+
+“I know just what you want. You need a bit of quiet and repose, to
+think things over and so forth. You mustn’t go sleeping on Park
+benches. Won’t do at all. Not a bit like it. You must shift to the
+Cosmopolis. It isn’t half a bad spot, the old Cosmop. I didn’t like it
+much the first night I was there, because there was a dashed tap that
+went drip-drip-drip all night and kept me awake, but the place has its
+points.”
+
+“Is the Cosmopolis giving free board and lodging these days?”
+
+“Rather! That’ll be all right. Well, this is the spot. We’ll start by
+trickling up to the old boy’s suite and looking over his
+reach-me-downs. I know the waiter on his floor. A very sound chappie.
+He’ll let us in with his pass-key.”
+
+And so it came about that Mr. Daniel Brewster, returning to his suite
+in the middle of lunch in order to find a paper dealing with the
+subject he was discussing with his guest, the architect of his new
+hotel, was aware of a murmur of voices behind the closed door of his
+bedroom. Recognising the accents of his son-in-law, he breathed an oath
+and charged in. He objected to Archie wandering at large about his
+suite.
+
+The sight that met his eyes when he opened the door did nothing to
+soothe him. The floor was a sea of clothes. There were coats on the
+chairs, trousers on the bed, shirts on the bookshelf. And in the middle
+of his welter stood Archie, with a man who, to Mr. Brewster’s heated
+eye, looked like a tramp comedian out of a burlesque show.
+
+“Great Godfrey!” ejaculated Mr. Brewster.
+
+Archie looked up with a friendly smile.
+
+“Oh, halloa-halloa!” he said, affably, “We were just glancing through
+your spare scenery to see if we couldn’t find something for my pal
+here. This is Mr. Brewster, my father-in-law, old man.”
+
+Archie scanned his relative’s twisted features. Something in his
+expression seemed not altogether encouraging. He decided that the
+negotiations had better be conducted in private. “One moment, old lad,”
+he said to his new friend. “I just want to have a little talk with my
+father-in-law in the other room. Just a little friendly business chat.
+You stay here.”
+
+In the other room Mr. Brewster turned on Archie like a wounded lion of
+the desert.
+
+“What the—!”
+
+Archie secured one of his coat-buttons and began to massage it
+affectionately.
+
+“Ought to have explained!” said Archie, “only didn’t want to interrupt
+your lunch. The sportsman on the horizon is a dear old pal of mine—”
+
+Mr. Brewster wrenched himself free.
+
+“What the devil do you mean, you worm, by bringing tramps into my
+bedroom and messing about with my clothes?”
+
+“That’s just what I’m trying to explain, if you’ll only listen. This
+bird is a bird I met in France during the war. He gave me a bit of
+sausage outside St. Mihiel—”
+
+“Damn you and him and the sausage!”
+
+“Absolutely. But listen. He can’t remember who he is or where he was
+born or what his name is, and he’s broke; so, dash it, I must look
+after him. You see, he gave me a bit of sausage.”
+
+Mr. Brewster’s frenzy gave way to an ominous calm.
+
+“I’ll give him two seconds to clear out of here. If he isn’t gone by
+then I’ll have him thrown out.”
+
+Archie was shocked.
+
+“You don’t mean that?”
+
+“I do mean that.”
+
+“But where is he to go?”
+
+“Outside.”
+
+“But you don’t understand. This chappie has lost his memory because he
+was wounded in the war. Keep that fact firmly fixed in the old bean. He
+fought for you. Fought and bled for you. Bled profusely, by Jove. _And_
+he saved my life!”
+
+“If I’d got nothing else against him, that would be enough.”
+
+“But you can’t sling a chappie out into the cold hard world who bled in
+gallons to make the world safe for the Hotel Cosmopolis.”
+
+Mr. Brewster looked ostentatiously at his watch.
+
+“Two seconds!” he said.
+
+There was a silence. Archie appeared to be thinking. “Right-o!” he said
+at last. “No need to get the wind up. I know where he can go. It’s just
+occurred to me I’ll put him up at my little shop.”
+
+The purple ebbed from Mr. Brewster’s face. Such was his emotion that he
+had forgotten that infernal shop. He sat down. There was more silence.
+
+“Oh, gosh!” said Mr. Brewster.
+
+“I knew you would be reasonable about it,” said Archie, approvingly.
+“Now, honestly, as man to man, how do we go?”
+
+“What do you want me to do?” growled Mr. Brewster.
+
+“I thought you might put the chappie up for a while, and give him a
+chance to look round and nose about a bit.”
+
+“I absolutely refuse to give any more loafers free board and lodging.”
+
+“Any _more?_”
+
+“Well, he would be the second, wouldn’t he?”
+
+Archie looked pained.
+
+“It’s true,” he said, “that when I first came here I was temporarily
+resting, so to speak; but didn’t I go right out and grab the
+managership of your new hotel? Positively!”
+
+“I will _not_ adopt this tramp.”
+
+“Well, find him a job, then.”
+
+“What sort of a job?”
+
+“Oh, any old sort.”
+
+“He can be a waiter if he likes.”
+
+“All right; I’ll put the matter before him.”
+
+He returned to the bedroom. The Sausage Chappie was gazing fondly into
+the mirror with a spotted tie draped round his neck.
+
+“I say, old top,” said Archie, apologetically, “the Emperor of the
+Blighters out yonder says you can have a job here as waiter, and he
+won’t do another dashed thing for you. How about it?”
+
+“Do waiters eat?”
+
+“I suppose so. Though, by Jove, come to think of it, I’ve never seen
+one at it.”
+
+“That’s good enough for me!” said the Sausage Chappie. “When do I
+begin?”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+REGGIE COMES TO LIFE
+
+
+The advantage of having plenty of time on one’s hands is that one has
+leisure to attend to the affairs of all one’s circle of friends; and
+Archie, assiduously as he watched over the destinies of the Sausage
+Chappie, did not neglect the romantic needs of his brother-in-law Bill.
+A few days later, Lucille, returning one morning to their mutual suite,
+found her husband seated in an upright chair at the table, an unusually
+stern expression on his amiable face. A large cigar was in the corner
+of his mouth. The fingers of one hand rested in the armhole of his
+waistcoat: with the other hand he tapped menacingly on the table.
+
+As she gazed upon him, wondering what could be the matter with him,
+Lucille was suddenly aware of Bill’s presence. He had emerged sharply
+from the bedroom and was walking briskly across the floor. He came to a
+halt in front of the table.
+
+“Father!” said Bill.
+
+Archie looked up sharply, frowning heavily over his cigar.
+
+“Well, my boy,” he said in a strange, rasping voice. “What is it? Speak
+up, my boy, speak up! Why the devil can’t you speak up? This is my busy
+day!”
+
+“What on earth are you doing?” asked Lucille.
+
+Archie waved her away with the large gesture of a man of blood and iron
+interrupted while concentrating.
+
+“Leave us, woman! We would be alone! Retire into the jolly old
+background and amuse yourself for a bit. Read a book. Do acrostics.
+Charge ahead, laddie.”
+
+“Father!” said Bill, again.
+
+“Yes, my boy, yes? What is it?”
+
+“Father!”
+
+Archie picked up the red-covered volume that lay on the table.
+
+“Half a mo’, old son. Sorry to stop you, but I knew there was
+something. I’ve just remembered. Your walk. All wrong!”
+
+“All wrong?”
+
+“All wrong! Where’s the chapter on the Art. of Walking? Here we are.
+Listen, dear old soul. Drink this in. ‘In walking, one should strive to
+acquire that swinging, easy movement from the hips. The
+correctly-poised walker seems to float along, as it were.’ Now, old
+bean, you didn’t float a dam’ bit. You just galloped in like a chappie
+charging into a railway restaurant for a bowl of soup when his train
+leaves in two minutes. Dashed important, this walking business, you
+know. Get started wrong, and where are you? Try it again.... Much
+better.” He turned to Lucille. “Notice him float along that time?
+Absolutely skimmed, what?”
+
+Lucille had taken a seat,-and was waiting for enlightenment.
+
+“Are you and Bill going into vaudeville?” she asked.
+
+Archie, scrutinising-his-brother-in-law closely, had further criticism
+to make.
+
+“‘The man of self-respect and self-confidence,’” he read, “‘stands
+erect in an easy, natural, graceful attitude. Heels not too far apart,
+head erect, eyes to the front with a level gaze’—get your gaze level,
+old thing!—‘shoulders thrown back, arms hanging naturally at the sides
+when not otherwise employed’—that means that, if he tries to hit you,
+it’s all right to guard—‘chest expanded naturally, and abdomen’—this is
+no place for you, Lucille. Leg it out of earshot—‘ab—what I said
+before—drawn in somewhat and above all not protruded.’ Now, have you
+got all that? Yes, you look all right. Carry on, laddie, carry on.
+Let’s have two-penn’orth of the Dynamic Voice and the Tone of
+Authority—some of the full, rich, round stuff we hear so much about!”
+
+Bill fastened a gimlet eye upon his brother-in-law and drew a deep
+breath.
+
+“Father!” he said. “Father!”
+
+“You’ll have to brighten up Bill’s dialogue a lot,” said Lucille,
+critically, “or you will never get bookings.”
+
+“Father!”
+
+“I mean, it’s all right as far as it goes, but it’s sort of monotonous.
+Besides, one of you ought to be asking questions and the other
+answering. Bill ought to be saying, ‘Who was that lady I saw you coming
+down the street with?’ so that you would be able to say, ‘That wasn’t a
+lady. That was my wife.’ I _know!_ I’ve been to lots of vaudeville
+shows.”
+
+Bill relaxed his attitude. He deflated his chest, spread his heels, and
+ceased to draw in his abdomen.
+
+“We’d better try this another time, when we’re alone,” he said,
+frigidly. “I can’t do myself justice.”
+
+“Why do you want to do yourself justice?” asked Lucille.
+
+“Right-o!” said Archie, affably, casting off his forbidding expression
+like a garment. “Rehearsal postponed. I was just putting old Bill
+through it,” he explained, “with a view to getting him into mid-season
+form for the jolly old pater.”
+
+“Oh!” Lucille’s voice was the voice of one who sees light in darkness.
+“When Bill walked in like a cat on hot bricks and stood there looking
+stuffed, that was just the Personality That Wins!”
+
+“That was it.”
+
+“Well, you couldn’t blame me for not recognising it, could you?”
+
+Archie patted her head paternally.
+
+“A little less of the caustic critic stuff,” he said. “Bill will be all
+right on the night. If you hadn’t come in then and put him off his
+stroke, he’d have shot out some amazing stuff, full of authority and
+dynamic accents and what not. I tell you, light of my soul, old Bill is
+all right! He’s got the winning personality up a tree, ready whenever
+he wants to go and get it. Speaking as his backer and trainer, I think
+he’ll twist your father round his little finger. Absolutely! It
+wouldn’t surprise me if at the end of five minutes the good old dad
+started jumping through hoops and sitting up for lumps of sugar.”
+
+“It would surprise _me_.”
+
+“Ah, that’s because you haven’t seen old Bill in action. You crabbed
+his act before he had begun to spread himself.”
+
+“It isn’t that at all. The reason why I think that Bill, however
+winning his personality may be, won’t persuade father to let him marry
+a girl in the chorus is something that happened last night.”
+
+“Last night?”
+
+“Well, at three o’clock this morning. It’s on the front page of the
+early editions of the evening papers. I brought one in for you to see,
+only you were so busy. Look! There it is!”
+
+Archie seized the paper.
+
+“Oh, Great Scot!”
+
+“What is it?” asked Bill, irritably. “Don’t stand goggling there! What
+the devil is it?”
+
+“Listen to this, old thing!”
+
+REVELRY BY NIGHT.
+SPIRITED BATTLE ROYAL AT HOTEL
+COSMOPOLIS.
+THE HOTEL DETECTIVE HAD A GOOD HEART
+BUT PAULINE PACKED THE PUNCH.
+
+
+The logical contender for Jack Dempsey’s championship honours has been
+discovered; and, in an age where women are stealing men’s jobs all the
+time, it will not come as a surprise to our readers to learn that she
+belongs to the sex that is more deadly than the male. Her name is Miss
+Pauline Preston, and her wallop is vouched for under oath—under many
+oaths—by Mr. Timothy O’Neill, known to his intimates as Pie-Face, who
+holds down the arduous job of detective at the Hotel Cosmopolis.
+
+At three o’clock this morning, Mr. O’Neill was advised by the
+night-clerk that the occupants of every room within earshot of number
+618 had ’phoned the desk to complain of a disturbance, a noise, a vocal
+uproar proceeding from the room mentioned. Thither, therefore, marched
+Mr. O’Neill, his face full of cheese-sandwich, (for he had been
+indulging in an early breakfast or a late supper) and his heart of
+devotion to duty. He found there the Misses Pauline Preston and
+“Bobbie” St. Clair, of the personnel of the chorus of the Frivolities,
+entertaining a few friends of either sex. A pleasant time was being had
+by all, and at the moment of Mr. O’Neill’s entry the entire strength of
+the company was rendering with considerable emphasis that touching
+ballad, “There’s a Place For Me In Heaven, For My Baby-Boy Is There.”
+
+The able and efficient officer at once suggested that there was a place
+for them in the street and the patrol-wagon was there; and, being a man
+of action as well as words, proceeded to gather up an armful of
+assorted guests as a preliminary to a personally-conducted tour onto
+the cold night. It was at this point that Miss Preston stepped into the
+limelight. Mr. O’Neill contends that she hit him with a brick, an iron
+casing, and the Singer Building. Be that as it may, her efforts were
+sufficiently able to induce him to retire for reinforcements, which,
+arriving, arrested the supper-party regardless of age or sex.
+
+At the police-court this morning Miss Preston maintained that she and
+her friends were merely having a quiet home-evening and that Mr.
+O’Neill was no gentleman. The male guests gave their names respectively
+as Woodrow Wilson, David Lloyd-George, and William J. Bryan. These,
+however, are believed to be incorrect. But the moral is, if you want
+excitement rather than sleep, stay at the Hotel Cosmopolis.
+
+Bill may have quaked inwardly as he listened to this epic but outwardly
+he was unmoved.
+
+“Well,” he said, “what about it?”
+
+“What about it!” said Lucille.
+
+“What about it!” said Archie. “Why, my dear old friend, it simply means
+that all the time we’ve been putting in making your personality winning
+has been chucked away. Absolutely a dead loss! We might just as well
+have read a manual on how to knit sweaters.”
+
+“I don’t see it,” maintained Bill, stoutly.
+
+Lucille turned apologetically to her husband.
+
+“You mustn’t judge me by him, Archie, darling. This sort of thing
+doesn’t run in the family.-We are supposed to be rather bright on the
+whole. But poor Bill was dropped by his nurse when he was a baby, and
+fell on his head.”
+
+“I suppose what you’re driving at,” said the goaded Bill, “is that what
+has happened will make father pretty sore against girls who happen to
+be in the chorus?”
+
+“That’s absolutely it, old thing, I’m sorry to say. The next person who
+mentions the word chorus-girl in the jolly old governor’s presence is
+going to take his life in his hands. I tell you, as one man to another,
+that I’d much rather be back in France hopping over the top than do it
+myself.”
+
+“What darned nonsense! Mabel may be in the chorus, but she isn’t like
+those girls.”
+
+“Poor old Bill!” said Lucille. “I’m awfully sorry, but it’s no use not
+facing facts. You know perfectly well that the reputation of the hotel
+is the thing father cares more about than anything else in the world,
+and that this is going to make him furious with all the chorus-girls in
+creation. It’s no good trying to explain to him that your Mabel is in
+the chorus but not of the chorus, so to speak.”
+
+“Deuced well put!” said Archie, approvingly. “You’re absolutely right.
+A chorus-girl by the river’s brim, so to speak, a simple chorus-girl is
+to him, as it were, and she is nothing more, if you know what I mean.”
+
+“So now,” said Lucille, “having shown you that the imbecile scheme
+which you concocted with my poor well-meaning husband is no good at
+all, I will bring you words of cheer. Your own original plan—of getting
+your Mabel a part in a comedy—was always the best one. And you can do
+it. I wouldn’t have broken the bad news so abruptly if I hadn’t had
+some consolation to give you afterwards. I met Reggie van Tuyl just
+now, wandering about as if the cares of the world were on his
+shoulders, and he told me that he was putting up most of the money for
+a new play that’s going into rehearsal right away. Reggie’s an old
+friend of yours. All you have to do is to go to him and ask him to use
+his influence to get your Mabel a small part. There’s sure to be a maid
+or something with only a line or two that won’t matter.”
+
+“A ripe scheme!” said Archie. “Very sound and fruity!”
+
+The cloud did not lift from Bill’s corrugated brow.
+
+“That’s all very well,” he said. “But you know what a talker Reggie is.
+He’s an obliging sort of chump, but his tongue’s fastened on at the
+middle and waggles at both ends. I don’t want the whole of New York to
+know about my engagement, and have somebody spilling the news to
+father, before I’m ready.”
+
+“That’s all right,” said Lucille. “Archie can speak to him. There’s no
+need for him to mention your name at all. He can just say there’s a
+girl he wants to get a part for. You would do it, wouldn’t you,
+angel-face?”
+
+“Like a bird, queen of my soul.”
+
+“Then that’s splendid. You’d better give Archie that photograph of
+Mabel to give to Reggie, Bill.”
+
+“Photograph?” said Bill. “Which photograph? I have twenty-four!”
+
+Archie found Reggie van Tuyl brooding in a window of his club that
+looked over Fifth Avenue. Reggie was a rather melancholy young man who
+suffered from elephantiasis of the bank-roll and the other evils that
+arise from that complaint. Gentle and sentimental by nature, his
+sensibilities had been much wounded by contact with a sordid world; and
+the thing that had first endeared Archie to him was the fact that the
+latter, though chronically hard-up, had never made any attempt to
+borrow money from him. Reggie would have parted with it on demand, but
+it had delighted him to find that Archie seemed to take a pleasure in
+his society without having any ulterior motives. He was fond of Archie,
+and also of Lucille; and their happy marriage was a constant source of
+gratification to him.
+
+For Reggie was a sentimentalist. He would have liked to live in a world
+of ideally united couples, himself ideally united to some charming and
+affectionate girl. But, as a matter of cold fact, he was a bachelor,
+and most of the couples he knew were veterans of several divorces. In
+Reggie’s circle, therefore, the home-life of Archie and Lucille shone
+like a good deed in a naughty world. It inspired him. In moments of
+depression it restored his waning faith in human nature.
+
+Consequently, when Archie, having greeted him and slipped into a chair
+at his side, suddenly produced from his inside pocket the photograph of
+an extremely pretty girl and asked him to get her a small part in the
+play which he was financing, he was shocked and disappointed. He was in
+a more than usually sentimental mood that afternoon, and had, indeed,
+at the moment of Archie’s arrival, been dreaming wistfully of soft arms
+clasped snugly about his collar and the patter of little feet and all
+that sort of thing.-He gazed reproachfully at Archie.
+
+“Archie!” his voice quivered with emotion. “Is it worth it?, is it
+worth it, old man?-Think of the poor little woman at home!”
+
+Archie was puzzled.
+
+“Eh, old top? Which poor little woman?”
+
+“Think of her trust in you, her faith—“.
+
+“I don’t absolutely get you, old bean.”
+
+“What would Lucille say if she knew about this?”
+
+“Oh, she does. She knows all about it.”
+
+“Good heavens!” cried Reggie. He was shocked to the core of his
+being. One of the articles of his faith was that the union of Lucille
+and Archie was different from those loose partnerships which were the
+custom in his world. He had not been conscious of such a poignant
+feeling that the foundations of the universe were cracked and tottering
+and that there was no light and sweetness in life since the morning,
+eighteen months back, when a negligent valet had sent him out into
+Fifth Avenue with only one spat on.
+
+“It was Lucille’s idea,” explained Archie. He was about to mention his
+brother-in-law’s connection with the matter, but checked himself in
+time, remembering Bill’s specific objection to having his secret
+revealed to Reggie. “It’s like this, old thing, I’ve never met this
+female, but she’s a pal of Lucille’s”—he comforted his conscience by
+the reflection that, if she wasn’t now, she would be in a few days-“and
+Lucille wants to do her a bit of good. She’s been on the stage in
+England, you know, supporting a jolly old widowed mother and educating
+a little brother and all that kind and species of rot, you understand,
+and now she’s coming over to America, and Lucille wants you to rally
+round and shove her into your show and generally keep the home fires
+burning and so forth. How do we go?”
+
+Reggie beamed with relief. He felt just as he had felt on that other
+occasion at the moment when a taxi-cab had rolled up and enabled him to
+hide his spatless leg from the public gaze.
+
+“Oh, I see!” he said. “Why, delighted, old man, quite delighted!”
+
+“Any small part would do. Isn’t there a maid or something in your
+bob’s-worth of refined entertainment who drifts about saying, ‘Yes,
+madam,’ and all that sort of thing? Well, then that’s just the thing.
+Topping! I knew I could rely on you, old bird. I’ll get Lucille to ship
+her round to your address when she arrives. I fancy she’s due to totter
+in somewhere in the next few days. Well, I must be popping. Toodle-oo!”
+
+“Pip-pip!” said Reggie.
+
+It was about a week later that Lucille came into the suite at the Hotel
+Cosmopolis that was her home, and found Archie lying on the couch,
+smoking a refreshing pipe after the labours of the day. It seemed to
+Archie that his wife was not in her usual cheerful frame of mind. He
+kissed her, and, having relieved her of her parasol, endeavoured
+without success to balance it on his chin. Having picked it up from the
+floor and placed it on the table, he became aware that Lucille was
+looking at him in a despondent sort of way. Her grey eyes were clouded.
+
+“Halloa, old thing,” said Archie. “What’s up?”
+
+Lucille sighed wearily.
+
+“Archie, darling, do you know any really good swear-words?”
+
+“Well,” said Archie, reflectively, “let me see. I did pick up a few
+tolerably ripe and breezy expressions out in France. All through my
+military career there was something about me—some subtle magnetism,
+don’t you know, and that sort of thing—that seemed to make colonels and
+blighters of that order rather inventive. I sort of inspired them,
+don’t you know. I remember one brass-hat addressing me for quite ten
+minutes, saying something new all the time. And even then he seemed to
+think he had only touched the fringe of the subject. As a matter of
+fact, he said straight out in the most frank and confiding way that
+mere words couldn’t do justice to me. But why?”
+
+“Because I want to relieve my feelings.”
+
+“Anything wrong?”
+
+“Everything’s wrong. I’ve just been having tea with Bill and his
+Mabel.”
+
+“Oh, ah!” said Archie, interested. “And what’s the verdict?”
+
+“Guilty!” said Lucille. “And the sentence, if I had anything to do with
+it, would be transportation for life.” She peeled off her gloves
+irritably. “What fools men are! Not you, precious! You’re the only man
+in the world that isn’t, it seems to me. You did marry a nice girl,
+didn’t you? _You_ didn’t go running round after females with crimson
+hair, goggling at them with your eyes popping out of your head like a
+bulldog waiting for a bone.”
+
+“Oh, I say! Does old Bill look like that?”
+
+“Worse!”
+
+Archie rose to a point of order.
+
+“But one moment, old lady. You speak of crimson hair. Surely old
+Bill—in the extremely jolly monologues he used to deliver whenever I
+didn’t see him coming and he got me alone—used to allude to her hair as
+brown.”
+
+“It isn’t brown now. It’s bright scarlet. Good gracious, I ought to
+know. I’ve been looking at it all the afternoon. It dazzled me. If I’ve
+got to meet her again, I mean to go to the oculist’s and get a pair of
+those smoked glasses you wear at Palm Beach.” Lucille brooded silently
+for a while over the tragedy. “I don’t want to say anything against
+her, of course.”
+
+“No, no, of course not.”
+
+“But of all the awful, second-rate girls I ever met, she’s the worst!
+She has vermilion hair and an imitation Oxford manner. She’s so
+horribly refined that it’s dreadful to listen to her. She’s a sly,
+creepy, slinky, made-up, insincere vampire! She’s common! She’s awful!
+She’s a cat!”
+
+“You’re quite right not to say anything against her,” said Archie,
+approvingly. “It begins to look,” he went on, “as if the good old pater
+was about due for another shock. He has a hard life!”
+
+“If Bill _dares_ to introduce that girl to father, he’s taking his life
+in his hands.”
+
+“But surely that was the idea—the scheme—the wheeze, wasn’t it? Or do
+you think there’s any chance of his weakening?”
+
+“Weakening! You should have seen him looking at her! It was like a
+small boy flattening his nose against the window of a candy-store.”
+
+“Bit thick!”
+
+Lucille kicked the leg of the table.
+
+“And to think,” she said, “that, when I was a little girl, I used to
+look up to Bill as a monument of wisdom. I used to hug his knees and
+gaze into his face and wonder how anyone could be so magnificent.” She
+gave the unoffending table another kick. “If I could have looked into
+the future,” she said, with feeling, “I’d have bitten him in the
+ankle!”
+
+In the days which followed, Archie found himself a little out of touch
+with Bill and his romance. Lucille referred to the matter only when he
+brought the subject up, and made it plain that the topic of her future
+sister-in-law was not one which she enjoyed discussing. Mr. Brewster,
+senior, when Archie, by way of delicately preparing his mind for what
+was about to befall, asked him if he liked red hair, called him a fool,
+and told him to go away and bother someone else when they were busy.
+The only person who could have kept him thoroughly abreast of the trend
+of affairs was Bill himself; and experience had made Archie wary in the
+matter of meeting Bill. The position of confidant to a young man in the
+early stages of love is no sinecure, and it made Archie sleepy even to
+think of having to talk to his brother-in-law. He sedulously avoided
+his love-lorn relative, and it was with a sinking feeling one day that,
+looking over his shoulder as he sat in the Cosmopolis grill-room
+preparatory to ordering lunch, he perceived Bill bearing down upon him,
+obviously resolved upon joining his meal.
+
+To his surprise, however, Bill did not instantly embark upon his usual
+monologue. Indeed, he hardly spoke at all. He champed a chop, and
+seemed to Archie to avoid his eye. It was not till lunch was over and
+they were smoking that he unburdened himself.
+
+“Archie!” he said.
+
+“Hallo, old thing!” said Archie. “Still there? I thought you’d died or
+something. Talk about our old pals, Tongue-tied Thomas and Silent
+Sammy! You could beat ’em both on the same evening.”
+
+“It’s enough to make me silent.”
+
+“What is?”
+
+Bill had relapsed into a sort of waking dream. He sat frowning
+sombrely, lost to the world. Archie, having waited what seemed to him a
+sufficient length of time for an answer to his question, bent forward
+and touched his brother-in-law’s hand gently with the lighted end of
+his cigar. Bill came to himself with a howl.
+
+“What is?” said Archie.
+
+“What is what?” said Bill.
+
+“Now listen, old thing,” protested Archie. “Life is short and time is
+flying. Suppose we cut out the cross-talk. You hinted there was
+something on your mind—something worrying the old bean—and I’m waiting
+to hear what it is.”
+
+Bill fiddled a moment with his coffee-spoon.
+
+“I’m in an awful hole,” he said at last.
+
+“What’s the trouble?”
+
+“It’s about that darned girl!”
+
+Archie blinked.
+
+“What!”
+
+“That darned girl!”
+
+Archie could scarcely credit his senses. He had been prepared—indeed,
+he had steeled himself—to hear Bill allude to his affinity in a number
+of ways. But “that darned girl” was not one of them.
+
+“Companion of my riper years,” he said, “let’s get this thing straight.
+When you say ‘that darned girl,’ do you by any possibility allude to—?”
+
+“Of course I do!”
+
+“But, William, old bird—”
+
+“Oh, I know, I know, I know!” said Bill, irritably. “You’re surprised
+to hear me talk like that about her?”
+
+“A trifle, yes. Possibly a trifle. When last heard from, laddie, you
+must recollect, you were speaking of the lady as your soul-mate, and at
+least once—if I remember rightly—you alluded to her as your little
+dusky-haired lamb.”
+
+A sharp howl escaped Bill.
+
+“Don’t!” A strong shudder convulsed his frame. “Don’t remind me of it!”
+
+“There’s been a species of slump, then, in dusky-haired lambs?”
+
+“How,” demanded Bill, savagely, “can a girl be a dusky-haired lamb when
+her hair’s bright scarlet?”
+
+“Dashed difficult!” admitted Archie.
+
+“I suppose Lucille told you about that?”
+
+“She did touch on it. Lightly, as it were. With a sort of gossamer
+touch, so to speak.”
+
+Bill threw off the last fragments of reserve.
+
+“Archie, I’m in the devil of a fix. I don’t know why it was, but
+directly I saw her—things seemed so different over in England—I mean.”
+He swallowed ice-water in gulps. “I suppose it was seeing her with
+Lucille. Old Lu is such a thoroughbred. Seemed to kind of show her up.
+Like seeing imitation pearls by the side of real pearls. And that
+crimson hair! It sort of put the lid on it.” Bill brooded morosely. “It
+ought to be a criminal offence for women to dye their hair. Especially
+red. What the devil do women do that sort of thing for?”
+
+“Don’t blame me, old thing. It’s not my fault.”
+
+Bill looked furtive and harassed.
+
+“It makes me feel such a cad. Here am I, feeling that I would give all
+I’ve got in the world to get out of the darned thing, and all the time
+the poor girl seems to be getting fonder of me than ever.”
+
+“How do you know?” Archie surveyed his brother-in-law critically.
+“Perhaps her feelings have changed too. Very possibly she may not like
+the colour of _your_ hair. I don’t myself. Now if you were to dye
+yourself crimson—”
+
+“Oh, shut up! Of course a man knows when a girl’s fond of him.”
+
+“By no means, laddie. When you’re my age—”
+
+“I _am_ your age.”
+
+“So you are! I forgot that. Well, now, approaching the matter from
+another angle, let us suppose, old son, that Miss What’s-Her-Name—the
+party of the second part—”
+
+“Stop it!” said Bill suddenly. “Here comes Reggie!”
+
+“Eh?”
+
+“Here comes Reggie van Tuyl. I don’t want him to hear us talking about
+the darned thing.”
+
+Archie looked over his shoulder and perceived that it was indeed so.
+Reggie was threading his way among the tables.
+
+“Well, _he_ looks pleased with things, anyway,” said Bill, enviously.
+“Glad somebody’s happy.”
+
+He was right. Reggie van Tuyl’s usual mode of progress through a
+restaurant was a somnolent slouch. Now he was positively bounding
+along. Furthermore, the usual expression on Reggie’s face was a sleepy
+sadness. Now he smiled brightly and with animation. He curveted towards
+their table, beaming and erect, his head up, his gaze level, and his
+chest expanded, for all the world as if he had been reading the hints
+in _The Personality That Wins_.
+
+Archie was puzzled. Something had plainly happened to Reggie. But what?
+It was idle to suppose that somebody had left him money, for he had
+been left practically all the money there was a matter of ten years
+before.
+
+“Hallo, old bean,” he said, as the new-comer, radiating good will and
+bonhomie, arrived at the table and hung over it like a noon-day sun.
+“We’ve finished. But rally round and we’ll watch you eat. Dashed
+interesting, watching old Reggie eat. Why go to the Zoo?”
+
+Reggie shook his head.
+
+“Sorry, old man. Can’t. Just on my way to the Ritz. Stepped in because
+I thought you might be here. I wanted you to be the first to hear the
+news.”
+
+“News?”
+
+“I’m the happiest man alive!”
+
+“You look it, darn you!” growled Bill, on whose mood of grey gloom this
+human sunbeam was jarring heavily.
+
+“I’m engaged to be married!”
+
+“Congratulations, old egg!” Archie shook his hand cordially. “Dash it,
+don’t you know, as an old married man I like to see you young fellows
+settling down.”
+
+“I don’t know how to thank you enough, Archie, old man,” said Reggie,
+fervently.
+
+“Thank me?”
+
+“It was through you that I met her. Don’t you remember the girl you
+sent to me? You wanted me to get her a small part—”
+
+He stopped, puzzled. Archie had uttered a sound that was half gasp and
+half gurgle, but it was swallowed up in the extraordinary noise from
+the other side of the table. Bill Brewster was leaning forward with
+bulging eyes and soaring eyebrows.
+
+“Are you engaged to Mabel Winchester?”
+
+“Why, by George!” said Reggie. “Do you know her?”
+
+Archie recovered himself.
+
+“Slightly,” he said. “Slightly. Old Bill knows her slightly, as it
+were. Not very well, don’t you know, but—how shall I put it?”
+
+“Slightly,” suggested Bill.
+
+“Just the word. Slightly.”
+
+“Splendid!” said Reggie van Tuyl. “Why don’t you come along to the Ritz
+and meet her now?”
+
+Bill stammered. Archie came to the rescue again.
+
+“Bill can’t come now. He’s got a date.”
+
+“A date?” said Bill.
+
+“A date,” said Archie. “An appointment, don’t you know. A—a—in fact, a
+date.”
+
+“But—er—wish her happiness from me,” said Bill, cordially.
+
+“Thanks very much, old man,” said Reggie.
+
+“And say I’m delighted, will you?”
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+“You won’t forget the word, will you? Delighted.”
+
+“Delighted.”
+
+“That’s right. Delighted.”
+
+Reggie looked at his watch.
+
+“Halloa! I must rush!”
+
+Bill and Archie watched him as he bounded out of the restaurant.
+
+“Poor old Reggie!” said Bill, with a fleeting compunction.
+
+“Not necessarily,” said Archie. “What I mean to say is, tastes differ,
+don’t you know. One man’s peach is another man’s poison, and vice
+versa.”
+
+“There’s something in that.”
+
+“Absolutely! Well,” said Archie, judicially, “this would appear to be,
+as it were, the maddest, merriest day in all the glad New Year, yes,
+no?”
+
+Bill drew a deep breath.
+
+“You bet your sorrowful existence it is!” he said. “I’d like to do
+something to celebrate it.”
+
+“The right spirit!” said Archie. “Absolutely the right spirit! Begin by
+paying for my lunch!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+THE-SAUSAGE-CHAPPIE-CLICKS
+
+
+Rendered restless by relief, Bill Brewster did not linger long at the
+luncheon-table. Shortly after Reggie van Tuyl had retired, he got up
+and announced his intention of going for a bit of a walk to calm his
+excited mind. Archie dismissed him with a courteous wave of the hand;
+and, beckoning to the Sausage Chappie, who in his role of waiter was
+hovering near, requested him to bring the best cigar the hotel could
+supply. The padded seat in which he sat was comfortable; he had no
+engagements; and it seemed to him that a pleasant half-hour could be
+passed in smoking dreamily and watching his fellow-men eat.
+
+The grill-room had filled up. The Sausage Chappie, having brought
+Archie his cigar, was attending to a table close by, at which a woman
+with a small boy in a sailor suit had seated themselves. The woman was
+engrossed with the bill of fare, but the child’s attention seemed
+riveted upon the Sausage Chappie. He was drinking him in with wide
+eyes. He seemed to be brooding on him.
+
+Archie, too, was brooding on the Sausage Chappie, The latter made an
+excellent waiter: he was brisk and attentive, and did the work as if he
+liked it; but Archie was not satisfied. Something seemed to tell him
+that the man was fitted for higher things. Archie was a grateful soul.
+That sausage, coming at the end of a five-hour hike, had made a deep
+impression on his plastic nature. Reason told him that only an
+exceptional man could have parted with half a sausage at such a moment;
+and he could not feel that a job as waiter at a New York hotel was an
+adequate job for an exceptional man. Of course, the root of the trouble
+lay in the fact that the fellow could not remember what his real
+life-work had been before the war. It was exasperating to reflect, as
+the other moved away to take his order to the kitchen, that there, for
+all one knew, went the dickens of a lawyer or doctor or architect or
+what not.
+
+His meditations were broken by the voice of the child.
+
+“Mummie,” asked the child interestedly, following the Sausage Chappie
+with his eyes as the latter disappeared towards the kitchen, “why has
+that man got such a funny face?”
+
+“Hush, darling.”
+
+“Yes, but why HAS he?”
+
+“I don’t know, darling.”
+
+The child’s faith in the maternal omniscience seemed to have received a
+shock. He had the air of a seeker after truth who has been baffled. His
+eyes roamed the room discontentedly.
+
+“He’s got a funnier face than that man there,” he said, pointing to
+Archie.
+
+“Hush, darling!”
+
+“But he has. Much funnier.”
+
+In a way it was a sort of compliment, but Archie felt embarrassed. He
+withdrew coyly into the cushioned recess. Presently the Sausage Chappie
+returned, attended to the needs of the woman and the child, and came
+over to Archie. His homely face was beaming.
+
+“Say, I had a big night last night,” he said, leaning on the table.
+
+“Yes?” said Archie. “Party or something?”
+
+“No, I mean I suddenly began to remember things. Something seems to
+have happened to the works.”
+
+Archie sat up excitedly. This was great news.
+
+“No, really? My dear old lad, this is absolutely topping. This is
+priceless.”
+
+“Yessir! First thing I remembered was that I was born at Springfield,
+Ohio. It was like a mist starting to lift. Springfield, Ohio. That was
+it. It suddenly came back to me.”
+
+“Splendid! Anything else?”
+
+“Yessir! Just before I went to sleep I remembered my name as well.”
+
+Archie was stirred to his depths.
+
+“Why, the thing’s a walk-over!” he exclaimed. “Now you’ve once got
+started, nothing can stop you. What is your name?”
+
+“Why, it’s—That’s funny! It’s gone again. I have an idea it began with
+an S. What was it? Skeffington? Skillington?”
+
+“Sanderson?”
+
+“No; I’ll get it in a moment. Cunningham? Carrington? Wilberforce?
+Debenham?”
+
+“Dennison?” suggested Archie, helpfully.—“No, no, no. It’s on the tip
+of my tongue. Barrington? Montgomery? Hepplethwaite? I’ve got it!
+Smith!”
+
+“By Jove! Really?”
+
+“Certain of it.”
+
+“What’s the first name?”
+
+An anxious expression came into the man’s eyes. He hesitated. He
+lowered his voice.
+
+“I have a horrible feeling that it’s Lancelot!”
+
+“Good God!” said Archie.
+
+“It couldn’t really be that, could it?”
+
+Archie looked grave. He hated to give pain, but he felt he must be
+honest.
+
+“It might,” he said. “People give their children all sorts of rummy
+names. My second name’s Tracy. And I have a pal in England who was
+christened Cuthbert de la Hay Horace. Fortunately everyone calls him
+Stinker.”
+
+The head-waiter began to drift up like a bank of fog, and the Sausage
+Chappie returned to his professional duties. When he came back, he was
+beaming again.
+
+“Something else I remembered,” he said, removing the cover. “I’m
+married!”
+
+“Good Lord!”
+
+“At least I was before the war. She had blue eyes and brown hair and a
+Pekingese dog.”
+
+“What was her name?”
+
+“I don’t know.”
+
+“Well, you’re coming on,” said Archie. “I’ll admit that. You’ve still
+got a bit of a way to go before you become like one of those blighters
+who take the Memory Training Courses in the magazine advertisements—I
+mean to say, you know, the lads who meet a fellow once for five
+minutes, and then come across him again ten years later and grasp him
+by the hand and say, ‘Surely this is Mr. Watkins of Seattle?’ Still,
+you’re doing fine. You only need patience. Everything comes to him who
+waits.” Archie sat up, electrified. “I say, by Jove, that’s rather
+good, what! Everything comes to him who waits, and you’re a waiter,
+what, what. I mean to say, what!”
+
+“Mummie,” said the child at the other table, still speculative, “do you
+think something trod on his face?”
+
+“Hush, darling.”
+
+“Perhaps it was bitten by something?”
+
+“Eat your nice fish, darling,” said the mother, who seemed to be one of
+those dull-witted persons whom it is impossible to interest in a
+discussion on first causes.
+
+Archie felt stimulated. Not even the advent of his father-in-law, who
+came in a few moments later and sat down at the other end of the room,
+could depress his spirits.
+
+The Sausage Chappie came to his table again.
+
+“It’s a funny thing,” he said. “Like waking up after you’ve been
+asleep. Everything seems to be getting clearer. The dog’s name was
+Marie. My wife’s dog, you know. And she had a mole on her chin.”
+
+“The dog?”
+
+“No. My wife. Little beast! She bit me in the leg once.”
+
+“Your wife?”
+
+“No. The dog. Good Lord!” said the Sausage Chappie.
+
+Archie looked up and followed his gaze.
+
+A couple of tables away, next to a sideboard on which the management
+exposed for view the cold meats and puddings and pies mentioned in
+volume two of the bill of fare (“Buffet Froid”), a man and a girl had
+just seated themselves. The man was stout and middle-aged. He bulged in
+practically every place in which a man can bulge, and his head was
+almost entirely free from hair. The girl was young and pretty. Her eyes
+were blue. Her hair was brown. She had a rather attractive little mole
+on the left side of her chin.
+
+“Good Lord!” said the Sausage Chappie.
+
+“Now what?” said Archie.
+
+“Who’s that? Over at the table there?”
+
+Archie, through long attendance at the Cosmopolis Grill, knew most of
+the habitues by sight.
+
+“That’s a man named Gossett. James J. Gossett. He’s a motion-picture
+man. You must have seen his name around.”
+
+“I don’t mean him. Who’s the girl?”
+
+“I’ve never seen her before.”
+
+“It’s my wife!” said the Sausage Chappie.
+
+“Your wife!”
+
+“Yes!”
+
+“Are you sure?”
+
+“Of course I’m sure!”
+
+“Well, well, well!” said Archie. “Many happy returns of the day!”
+
+At the other table, the girl, unconscious of the drama which was about
+to enter her life, was engrossed in conversation with the stout man.
+And at this moment the stout man leaned forward and patted her on the
+cheek.
+
+It was a paternal pat, the pat which a genial uncle might bestow on a
+favourite niece, but it did not strike the Sausage Chappie in that
+light. He had been advancing on the table at a fairly rapid pace, and
+now, stirred to his depths, he bounded forward with a hoarse cry.
+
+Archie was at some pains to explain to his father-in-law later that, if
+the management left cold pies and things about all over the place, this
+sort of thing was bound to happen sooner or later. He urged that it was
+putting temptation in people’s way, and that Mr. Brewster had only
+himself to blame. Whatever the rights of the case, the Buffet Froid
+undoubtedly came in remarkably handy at this crisis in the Sausage
+Chappie’s life. He had almost reached the sideboard when the stout man
+patted the girl’s cheek, and to seize a huckleberry pie was with him
+the work of a moment. The next instant the pie had whizzed past the
+other’s head and burst like a shell against the wall.
+
+There are, no doubt, restaurants where this sort of thing would have
+excited little comment, but the Cosmopolis was not one of them.
+Everybody had something to say, but the only one among those present
+who had anything sensible to say was the child in the sailor suit.
+
+“Do it again!” said the child, cordially.
+
+The Sausage Chappie did it again. He took up a fruit salad, poised it
+for a moment, then decanted it over Mr. Gossett’s bald head. The
+child’s happy laughter rang over the restaurant. Whatever anybody else
+might think of the affair, this child liked it and was prepared to go
+on record to that effect.
+
+Epic events have a stunning quality. They paralyse the faculties. For a
+moment there was a pause. The world stood still. Mr. Brewster bubbled
+inarticulately. Mr. Gossett dried himself sketchily with a napkin. The
+Sausage Chappie snorted.
+
+The girl had risen to her feet and was staring wildly.
+
+“John!” she cried.
+
+Even at this moment of crisis the Sausage Chappie was able to look
+relieved.
+
+“So it is!” he said. “And I thought it was Lancelot!”
+
+“I thought you were dead!”
+
+“I’m not!” said the Sausage Chappie.
+
+Mr. Gossett, speaking thickly through the fruit-salad, was understood
+to say that he regretted this. And then confusion broke loose again.
+Everybody began to talk at once.
+
+“I say!” said Archie. “I say! One moment!”
+
+Of the first stages of this interesting episode Archie had been a
+paralysed spectator. The thing had numbed him. And then—
+
+Sudden a thought came, like a full-blown rose.
+Flushing his brow.
+
+
+When he reached the gesticulating group, he was calm and business-like.
+He had a constructive policy to suggest.
+
+“I say,” he said. “I’ve got an idea!”
+
+“Go away!” said Mr. Brewster. “This is bad enough without you butting
+in.”
+
+Archie quelled him with a gesture.
+
+“Leave us,” he said. “We would be alone. I want to have a little
+business-talk with Mr. Gossett.” He turned to the movie-magnate, who
+was gradually emerging from the fruit-salad rather after the manner of
+a stout Venus rising from the sea. “Can you spare me a moment of your
+valuable time?”
+
+“I’ll have him arrested!”
+
+“Don’t you do it, laddie. Listen!”
+
+“The man’s mad. Throwing pies!”
+
+Archie attached himself to his coat-button.
+
+“Be calm, laddie. Calm and reasonable!”
+
+For the first time Mr. Gossett seemed to become aware that what he had
+been looking on as a vague annoyance was really an individual.
+
+“Who the devil are you?”
+
+Archie drew himself up with dignity.
+
+“I am this gentleman’s representative,” he replied, indicating the
+Sausage Chappie with a motion of the hand. “His jolly old personal
+representative. I act for him. And on his behalf I have a pretty ripe
+proposition to lay before you. Reflect, dear old bean,” he proceeded
+earnestly. “Are you going to let this chance slip? The opportunity of a
+lifetime which will not occur again. By Jove, you ought to rise up and
+embrace this bird. You ought to clasp the chappie to your bosom! He has
+thrown pies at you, hasn’t he? Very well. You are a movie-magnate. Your
+whole fortune is founded on chappies who throw pies. You probably scour
+the world for chappies who throw pies. Yet, when one comes right to you
+without any fuss or trouble and demonstrates before your very eyes the
+fact that he is without a peer as a pie-propeller, you get the wind up
+and talk about having him arrested. Consider! (There’s a bit of cherry
+just behind your left ear.) Be sensible. Why let your personal feeling
+stand in the way of doing yourself a bit of good? Give this chappie a
+job and give it him quick, or we go elsewhere. Did you ever see Fatty
+Arbuckle handle pastry with a surer touch? Has Charlie Chaplin got this
+fellow’s speed and control. Absolutely not. I tell you, old friend,
+you’re in danger of throwing away a good thing!”
+
+He paused. The Sausage Chappie beamed.
+
+“I’ve aways wanted to go into the movies,” he said. “I was an actor
+before the war. Just remembered.”
+
+Mr. Brewster attempted to speak. Archie waved him down.
+
+“How many times have I got to tell you not to butt in?” he said,
+severely.
+
+Mr. Gossett’s militant demeanour had become a trifle modified during
+Archie’s harangue. First and foremost a man of business, Mr. Gossett
+was not insensible to the arguments which had been put forward. He
+brushed a slice of orange from the back of his neck, and mused awhile.
+
+“How do I know this fellow would screen well?” he said, at length.
+
+“Screen well!” cried Archie. “Of course he’ll screen well. Look at his
+face. I ask you! The map! I call your attention to it.” He turned
+apologetically to the Sausage Chappie. “Awfully sorry, old lad, for
+dwelling on this, but it’s business, you know.” He turned to Mr.
+Gossett. “Did you ever see a face like that? Of course not. Why should
+I, as this gentleman’s personal representative, let a face like that go
+to waste? There’s a fortune in it. By Jove, I’ll give you two minutes
+to think the thing over, and, if you don’t talk business then, I’ll
+jolly well take my man straight round to Mack Sennett or someone. We
+don’t have to ask for jobs. We consider offers.”
+
+There was a silence. And then the clear voice of the child in the
+sailor suit made itself heard again.
+
+“Mummie!”
+
+“Yes, darling?”
+
+“Is the man with the funny face going to throw any more pies?”
+
+“No, darling.”
+
+The child uttered a scream of disappointed fury.
+
+“I want the funny man to throw some more pies! I want the funny man to
+throw some more pies!”
+
+A look almost of awe came into Mr. Gossett’s face. He had heard the
+voice of the Public. He had felt the beating of the Public’s pulse.
+
+“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,” he said, picking a piece of
+banana off his right eyebrow, “Out of the mouths of babes and
+sucklings. Come round to my office!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+THE GROWING BOY
+
+
+The lobby of the Cosmopolis Hotel was a favourite stamping-ground of
+Mr. Daniel Brewster, its proprietor. He liked to wander about there,
+keeping a paternal eye on things, rather in the manner of the Jolly
+Innkeeper (hereinafter to be referred to as Mine Host) of the
+old-fashioned novel. Customers who, hurrying in to dinner, tripped over
+Mr. Brewster, were apt to mistake him for the hotel detective—for his
+eye was keen and his aspect a trifle austere—but, nevertheless, he was
+being as jolly an innkeeper as he knew how. His presence in the lobby
+supplied a personal touch to the Cosmopolis which other New York hotels
+lacked, and it undeniably made the girl at the book-stall
+extraordinarily civil to her clients, which was all to the good.
+
+Most of the time Mr. Brewster stood in one spot and just looked
+thoughtful; but now and again he would wander to the marble slab behind
+which he kept the desk-clerk and run his eye over the register, to see
+who had booked rooms—like a child examining the stocking on Christmas
+morning to ascertain what Santa Claus had brought him.
+
+As a rule, Mr. Brewster concluded this performance by shoving the book
+back across the marble slab and resuming his meditations. But one night
+a week or two after the Sausage Chappie’s sudden restoration to the
+normal, he varied this procedure by starting rather violently, turning
+purple, and uttering an exclamation which was manifestly an exclamation
+of chagrin. He turned abruptly and cannoned into Archie, who, in
+company with Lucille, happened to be crossing the lobby at the moment
+on his way to dine in their suite.
+
+Mr. Brewster apologised gruffly; then, recognising his victim, seemed
+to regret having done so.
+
+“Oh, it’s you! Why can’t you look where you’re going?” he demanded. He
+had suffered much from his son-in-law.
+
+“Frightfully sorry,” said Archie, amiably. “Never thought you were
+going to fox-trot backwards all over the fairway.”
+
+“You mustn’t bully Archie,” said Lucille, severely, attaching herself
+to her father’s back hair and giving it a punitive tug, “because he’s
+an angel, and I love him, and you must learn to love him, too.”
+
+“Give you lessons at a reasonable rate,” murmured Archie.
+
+Mr. Brewster regarded his young relative with a lowering eye.
+
+“What’s the matter, father darling?” asked Lucille. “You seem upset.”
+
+“I am upset!” Mr. Brewster snorted. “Some people have got a nerve!” He
+glowered forbiddingly at an inoffensive young man in a light overcoat
+who had just entered, and the young man, though his conscience was
+quite clear and Mr. Brewster an entire stranger to him, stopped dead,
+blushed, and went out again—to dine elsewhere. “Some people have got
+the nerve of an army mule!”
+
+“Why, what’s happened?”
+
+“Those darned McCalls have registered here!”
+
+“No!”
+
+“Bit beyond me, this,” said Archie, insinuating himself into the
+conversation. “Deep waters and what not! Who are the McCalls?”
+
+“Some people father dislikes,” said Lucille. “And they’ve chosen his
+hotel to stop at. But, father dear, you mustn’t mind. It’s really a
+compliment. They’ve come because they know it’s the best hotel in New
+York.”
+
+“Absolutely!” said Archie. “Good accommodation for man and beast! All
+the comforts of home! Look on the bright side, old bean. No good
+getting the wind up. Cherrio, old companion!”
+
+“Don’t call me old companion!”
+
+“Eh, what? Oh, right-o!”
+
+Lucille steered her husband out of the danger zone, and they entered
+the lift.
+
+“Poor father!” she said, as they went to their suite, “it’s a shame.
+They must have done it to annoy him. This man McCall has a place next
+to some property father bought in Westchester, and he’s bringing a
+law-suit against father about a bit of land which he claims belongs to
+him. He might have had the tact to go to another hotel. But, after all,
+I don’t suppose it was the poor little fellow’s fault. He does whatever
+his wife tells him to.”
+
+“We all do that,” said Archie the married man.
+
+Lucille eyed him fondly.
+
+“Isn’t it a shame, precious, that all husbands haven’t nice wives like
+me?”
+
+“When I think of you, by Jove,” said Archie, fervently, “I want to
+babble, absolutely babble!”
+
+“Oh, I was telling you about the McCalls. Mr. McCall is one of those
+little, meek men, and his wife’s one of those big, bullying women. It
+was she who started all the trouble with father. Father and Mr. McCall
+were very fond of each other till she made him begin the suit. I feel
+sure she made him come to this hotel just to annoy father. Still,
+they’ve probably taken the most expensive suite in the place, which is
+something.”
+
+Archie was at the telephone. His mood was now one of quiet peace. Of
+all the happenings which went to make up existence in New York, he
+liked best the cosy _tête-à-tête_ dinners with Lucille in their suite,
+which, owing to their engagements—for Lucille was a popular girl, with
+many friends—occurred all too seldom.
+
+“Touching now the question of browsing and sluicing,” he said. “I’ll be
+getting them to send along a waiter.”
+
+“Oh, good gracious!”
+
+“What’s the matter?”
+
+“I’ve just remembered. I promised faithfully I would go and see Jane
+Murchison to-day. And I clean forgot. I must rush.”
+
+“But light of my soul, we are about to eat. Pop around and see her
+after dinner.”
+
+“I can’t. She’s going to a theatre to-night.”
+
+“Give her the jolly old miss-in-baulk, then, for the nonce, and spring
+round to-morrow.”
+
+“She’s sailing for England to-morrow morning, early. No, I must go and
+see her now. What a shame! She’s sure to make me stop to dinner, I tell
+you what. Order something for me, and, if I’m not back in half an hour,
+start.”
+
+“Jane Murchison,” said Archie, “is a bally nuisance.”
+
+“Yes. But I’ve known her since she was eight.”
+
+“If her parents had had any proper feeling,” said Archie, “they would
+have drowned her long before that.”
+
+He unhooked the receiver, and asked despondently to be connected with
+Room Service. He thought bitterly of the exigent Jane, whom he
+recollected dimly as a tall female with teeth. He half thought of going
+down to the grill-room on the chance of finding a friend there, but the
+waiter was on his way to the room. He decided that he might as well
+stay where he was.
+
+The waiter arrived, booked the order, and departed. Archie had just
+completed his toilet after a shower-bath when a musical clinking
+without announced the advent of the meal. He opened the door. The
+waiter was there with a table congested with things under covers, from
+which escaped a savoury and appetising odour. In spite of his
+depression, Archie’s soul perked up a trifle.
+
+Suddenly he became aware that he was not the only person present who
+was deriving enjoyment from the scent of the meal. Standing beside the
+waiter and gazing wistfully at the foodstuffs was a long, thin boy of
+about sixteen. He was one of those boys who seem all legs and knuckles.
+He had pale red hair, sandy eyelashes, and a long neck; and his eyes,
+as he removed them from the-table and raised them to Archie’s, had a
+hungry look. He reminded Archie of a half-grown, half-starved hound.
+
+“That smells good!” said the long boy. He inhaled deeply. “Yes, sir,”
+he continued, as one whose mind is definitely made up, “that smells
+good!”
+
+Before Archie could reply, the telephone bell rang. It was Lucille,
+confirming her prophecy that the pest Jane would insist on her staying
+to dine.
+
+“Jane,” said Archie, into the telephone, “is a pot of poison. The
+waiter is here now, setting out a rich banquet, and I shall have to eat
+two of everything by myself.”
+
+He hung up the receiver, and, turning, met the pale eye of the long
+boy, who had propped himself up in the doorway.
+
+“Were you expecting somebody to dinner?” asked the boy.
+
+“Why, yes, old friend, I was.”
+
+“I wish—”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“Oh, nothing.”
+
+The waiter left. The long boy hitched his back more firmly against the
+doorpost, and returned to his original theme.
+
+“That surely does smell good!” He basked a moment in the aroma. “Yes,
+sir! I’ll tell the world it does!”
+
+Archie was not an abnormally rapid thinker, but he began at this point
+to get a clearly defined impression that this lad, if invited, would
+waive the formalities and consent to join his meal. Indeed, the idea
+Archie got was that, if he were not invited pretty soon, he would
+invite himself.
+
+“Yes,” he agreed. “It doesn’t smell bad, what!”
+
+“It smells _good!_” said the boy. “Oh, doesn’t it! Wake me up in the
+night and ask me if it doesn’t!”
+
+“_Poulet en casserole_,” said Archie.
+
+“Golly!” said the boy, reverently.
+
+There was a pause. The situation began to seem to Archie a trifle
+difficult. He wanted to start his meal, but it began to appear that he
+must either do so under the penetrating gaze of his new friend or else
+eject the latter forcibly. The boy showed no signs of ever wanting to
+leave the doorway.
+
+“You’ve dined, I suppose, what?” said Archie.
+
+“I never dine.”
+
+“What!”
+
+“Not really dine, I mean. I only get vegetables and nuts and things.”
+
+“Dieting?”
+
+“Mother is.”
+
+“I don’t absolutely catch the drift, old bean,” said Archie. The boy
+sniffed with half-closed eyes as a wave of perfume from the _poulet en
+casserole_ floated past him. He seemed to be anxious to intercept as
+much of it as possible before it got through the door.
+
+“Mother’s a food-reformer,” he vouchsafed. “She lectures on it. She
+makes Pop and me live on vegetables and nuts and things.”
+
+Archie was shocked. It was like listening to a tale from the abyss.
+
+“My dear old chap, you must suffer agonies—absolute shooting pains!” He
+had no hesitation now. Common humanity pointed out his course. “Would
+you care to join me in a bite now?”
+
+“Would I!” The boy smiled a wan smile. “Would I! Just stop me on the
+street and ask me!”
+
+“Come on in, then,” said Archie, rightly taking this peculiar phrase
+for a formal acceptance. “And close the door. The fatted calf is
+getting cold.”
+
+Archie was not a man with a wide visiting-list among people with
+families, and it was so long since he had seen a growing boy in action
+at the table that he had forgotten what sixteen is capable of doing
+with a knife and fork, when it really squares its elbows, takes a deep
+breath, and gets going. The spectacle which he witnessed was
+consequently at first a little unnerving. The long boy’s idea of
+trifling with a meal appeared to be to swallow it whole and reach out
+for more. He ate like a starving Eskimo. Archie, in the time he had
+spent in the trenches making the world safe for the working-man to
+strike in, had occasionally been quite peckish, but he sat dazed before
+this majestic hunger. This was real eating.
+
+There was little conversation. The growing boy evidently did not
+believe in table-talk when he could use his mouth for more practical
+purposes. It was not until the final roll had been devoured to its last
+crumb that the guest found leisure to address his host. Then he leaned
+back with a contented sigh.
+
+“Mother,” said the human python, “says you ought to chew every mouthful
+thirty-three times....”
+
+“Yes, sir! Thirty-three times!” He sighed again, “I haven’t ever had a
+meal like that.”
+
+“All right, was it, what?”
+
+“Was it! Was it! Call me up on the ’phone and ask me!-Yes,
+sir!-Mother’s tipped off these darned waiters not to serve me anything
+but vegetables and nuts and things, darn it!”
+
+“The mater seems to have drastic ideas about the good old feed-bag,
+what!”
+
+“I’ll say she has! Pop hates it as much as me, but he’s scared to kick.
+Mother says vegetables contain all the proteins you want. Mother says,
+if you eat meat, your blood-pressure goes all blooey. Do you think it
+does?”
+
+“Mine seems pretty well in the pink.”
+
+“She’s great on talking,” conceded the boy. “She’s out to-night
+somewhere, giving a lecture on Rational Eating to some ginks. I’ll have
+to be slipping up to our suite before she gets back.” He rose,
+sluggishly. “That isn’t a bit of roll under that napkin, is it?” he
+asked, anxiously.
+
+Archie raised the napkin.
+
+“No. Nothing of that species.”
+
+“Oh, well!” said the boy, resignedly. “Then I believe I’ll be going.
+Thanks very much for the dinner.”
+
+“Not a bit, old top. Come again if you’re ever trickling round in this
+direction.”
+
+The long boy removed himself slowly, loath to leave. At the door he
+cast an affectionate glance back at the table.
+
+“Some meal!” he said, devoutly. “Considerable meal!”
+
+Archie lit a cigarette. He felt like a Boy Scout who has done his day’s
+Act of Kindness.
+
+On the following morning it chanced that Archie needed a fresh supply
+of tobacco. It was his custom, when this happened, to repair to a small
+shop on Sixth Avenue which he had discovered accidentally in the course
+of his rambles about the great city. His relations with Jno. Blake, the
+proprietor, were friendly and intimate. The discovery that Mr. Blake
+was English and had, indeed, until a few years back maintained an
+establishment only a dozen doors or so from Archie’s London club, had
+served as a bond.
+
+To-day he found Mr. Blake in a depressed mood. The tobacconist was a
+hearty, red-faced man, who looked like an English sporting publican—the
+kind of man who wears a fawn-coloured top-coat and drives to the Derby
+in a dog-cart; and usually there seemed to be nothing on his mind
+except the vagaries of the weather, concerning which he was a great
+conversationalist. But now moodiness had claimed him for its own. After
+a short and melancholy “Good morning,” he turned to the task of
+measuring out the tobacco in silence.
+
+Archie’s sympathetic nature was perturbed.—“What’s the matter, laddie?”
+he enquired. “You would seem to be feeling a bit of an onion this
+bright morning, what, yes, no? I can see it with the naked eye.”
+
+Mr. Blake grunted sorrowfully.
+
+“I’ve had a knock, Mr. Moffam.”
+
+“Tell me all, friend of my youth.”
+
+Mr. Blake, with a jerk of his thumb, indicated a poster which hung on
+the wall behind the counter. Archie had noticed it as he came in, for
+it was designed to attract the eye. It was printed in black letters on
+a yellow ground, and ran as follows:
+
+CLOVER-LEAF SOCIAL AND OUTING CLUB
+
+GRAND CONTEST
+
+PIE-EATING CHAMPIONSHIP OF THE WEST SIDE
+
+SPIKE O’DOWD
+(Champion)
+
+_v_.
+
+BLAKE’S UNKNOWN
+
+FOR A PURSE OF $50 AND SIDE-BET
+
+
+Archie examined this document gravely. It conveyed nothing to him
+except—what he had long suspected—that his sporting-looking friend had
+sporting blood as well as that kind of exterior. He expressed a kindly
+hope that the other’s Unknown would bring home the bacon.
+
+Mr. Blake laughed one of those hollow, mirthless laughs.
+
+“There ain’t any blooming Unknown,” he said, bitterly. This man had
+plainly suffered. “Yesterday, yes, but not now.”
+
+Archie sighed.
+
+“In the midst of life—Dead?” he enquired, delicately.
+
+“As good as,” replied the stricken tobacconist. He cast aside his
+artificial restraint and became voluble. Archie was one of those
+sympathetic souls in whom even strangers readily confided their most
+intimate troubles. He was to those in travail of spirit very much what
+catnip is to a cat. “It’s ’ard, sir, it’s blooming ’ard! I’d got the
+event all sewed up in a parcel, and now this young feller-me-lad ’as to
+give me the knock. This lad of mine—sort of cousin ’e is; comes from
+London, like you and me—’as always ’ad, ever since he landed in this
+country, a most amazing knack of stowing away grub. ’E’d been a bit
+underfed these last two or three years over in the old country, what
+with food restrictions and all, and ’e took to the food over ’ere
+amazing. I’d ’ave backed ’im against a ruddy orstridge! Orstridge! I’d
+’ave backed ’im against ’arff a dozen orstridges—take ’em on one after
+the other in the same ring on the same evening—and given ’em a
+handicap, too! ’E was a jewel, that boy. I’ve seen him polish off four
+pounds of steak and mealy potatoes and then look round kind of wolfish,
+as much as to ask when dinner was going to begin! That’s the kind of a
+lad ’e was till this very morning. ’E would have out-swallowed this
+’ere O’Dowd without turning a hair, as a relish before ’is tea! I’d got
+a couple of ’undred dollars on ’im, and thought myself lucky to get the
+odds. And now—”
+
+Mr. Blake relapsed into a tortured silence.
+
+“But what’s the matter with the blighter? Why can’t he go over the top?
+Has he got indigestion?”
+
+“Indigestion?” Mr. Blaife laughed another of his hollow laughs. “You
+couldn’t give that boy indigestion if you fed ’im in on safety-razor
+blades. Religion’s more like what ’e’s got.”
+
+“Religion?”
+
+“Well, you can call it that. Seems last night, instead of goin’ and
+resting ’is mind at a picture-palace like I told him to, ’e sneaked off
+to some sort of a lecture down on Eighth Avenue. ’E said ’e’d seen a
+piece about it in the papers, and it was about Rational Eating, and
+that kind of attracted ’im. ’E sort of thought ’e might pick up a few
+hints, like. ’E didn’t know what rational eating was, but it sounded to
+’im as if it must be something to do with food, and ’e didn’t want to
+miss it. ’E came in here just now,” said Mr. Blake, dully, “and ’e was
+a changed lad! Scared to death ’e was! Said the way ’e’d been goin’ on
+in the past, it was a wonder ’e’d got any stummick left! It was a lady
+that give the lecture, and this boy said it was amazing what she told
+’em about blood-pressure and things ’e didn’t even know ’e ’ad. She
+showed ’em pictures, coloured pictures, of what ’appens inside the
+injudicious eater’s stummick who doesn’t chew his food, and it was like
+a battlefield! ’E said ’e would no more think of eatin’ a lot of pie
+than ’e would of shootin’ ’imself, and anyhow eating pie would be a
+quicker death. I reasoned with ’im, Mr. Moffam, with tears in my eyes.
+I asked ’im was he goin’ to chuck away fame and wealth just because a
+woman who didn’t know what she was talking about had shown him a lot of
+faked pictures. But there wasn’t any doin’ anything with him. ’E give
+me the knock and ’opped it down the street to buy nuts.” Mr. Blake
+moaned. “Two ’undred dollars and more gone pop, not to talk of the
+fifty dollars ’e would have won and me to get twenty-five of!”
+
+Archie took his tobacco and walked pensively back to the hotel. He was
+fond of Jno. Blake, and grieved for the trouble that had come upon him.
+It was odd, he felt, how things seemed to link themselves up together.
+The woman who had delivered the fateful lecture to injudicious eaters
+could not be other than the mother of his young guest of last night. An
+uncomfortable woman! Not content with starving her own family—Archie
+stopped in his tracks. A pedestrian, walking behind him, charged into
+his back, but Archie paid no attention. He had had one of those sudden,
+luminous ideas, which help a man who does not do much thinking as a
+rule to restore his average. He stood there for a moment, almost dizzy
+at the brilliance of his thoughts; then hurried on. Napoleon, he mused
+as he walked, must have felt rather like this after thinking up a hot
+one to spring on the enemy.
+
+As if Destiny were suiting her plans to his, one of the first persons
+he saw as he entered the lobby of the Cosmopolis was the long boy. He
+was standing at the bookstall, reading as much of a morning paper as
+could be read free under the vigilant eyes of the presiding girl. Both
+he and she were observing the unwritten rules which govern these
+affairs—to wit, that you may read without interference as much as can
+be read without touching the paper. If you touch the paper, you lose,
+and have to buy.
+
+“Well, well, well!” said Archie. “Here we are again, what!” He prodded
+the boy amiably in the lower ribs. “You’re just the chap I was looking
+for. Got anything on for the time being?”
+
+The boy said he had no engagements.
+
+“Then I want you to stagger round with me to a chappie I know on Sixth
+Avenue. It’s only a couple of blocks away. I think I can do you a bit
+of good. Put you on to something tolerably ripe, if you know what I
+mean. Trickle along, laddie. You don’t need a hat.”
+
+They found Mr. Blake brooding over his troubles in an empty shop.
+
+“Cheer up, old thing!” said Archie. “The relief expedition has
+arrived.” He directed his companion’s gaze to the poster. “Cast your
+eye over that. How does that strike you?”
+
+The long boy scanned the poster. A gleam appeared in his rather dull
+eye.
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Some people have all the luck!” said the long boy, feelingly.
+
+“Would you like to compete, what?”
+
+The boy smiled a sad smile.
+
+“Would I! Would I! Say!...”
+
+“I know,” interrupted Archie. “Wake you up in the night and ask you! I
+knew I could rely on you, old thing.” He turned to Mr. Blake. “Here’s
+the fellow you’ve been wanting to meet. The finest left-and-right-hand
+eater east of the Rockies! He’ll fight the good fight for you.”
+
+Mr. Blake’s English training had not been wholly overcome by residence
+in New York. He still retained a nice eye for the distinctions of
+class.
+
+“But this young gentleman’s a young gentleman,” he urged, doubtfully,
+yet with hope shining in his eye. “He wouldn’t do it.”
+
+“Of course, he would. Don’t be ridic, old thing.”
+
+“Wouldn’t do what?” asked the boy.
+
+“Why save the old homestead by taking on the champion. Dashed sad case,
+between ourselves! This poor egg’s nominee has given him the raspberry
+at the eleventh hour, and only you can save him. And you owe it to him
+to do something you know, because it was your jolly old mater’s lecture
+last night that made the nominee quit. You must charge in and take his
+place. Sort of poetic justice, don’t you know, and what not!” He turned
+to Mr. Blake. “When is the conflict supposed to start? Two-thirty? You
+haven’t any important engagement for two-thirty, have you?”
+
+“No. Mother’s lunching at some ladies’ club, and giving a lecture
+afterwards. I can slip away.”
+
+Archie patted his head.
+
+“Then leg it where glory waits you, old bean!”
+
+The long boy was gazing earnestly at the poster. It seemed to fascinate
+him.
+
+“Pie!” he said in a hushed voice.
+
+The word was like a battle-cry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+WASHY STEPS INTO THE HALL OF FAME
+
+
+At about nine o’clock next morning, in a suite at the Hotel Cosmopolis,
+Mrs. Cora Bates McCall, the eminent lecturer on Rational Eating, was
+seated at breakfast with her family. Before her sat Mr. McCall, a
+little hunted-looking man, the natural peculiarities of whose face were
+accentuated by a pair of glasses of semicircular shape, like half-moons
+with the horns turned up. Behind these, Mr. McCall’s eyes played a
+perpetual game of peekaboo, now peering over them, anon ducking down
+and hiding behind them. He was sipping a cup of anti-caffeine. On his
+right, toying listlessly with a plateful of cereal, sat his son,
+Washington. Mrs. McCall herself was eating a slice of Health Bread and
+nut butter. For she practised as well as preached the doctrines which
+she had striven for so many years to inculcate in an unthinking
+populace. Her day always began with a light but nutritious breakfast,
+at which a peculiarly uninviting cereal, which looked and tasted like
+an old straw hat that had been run through a meat chopper, competed for
+first place in the dislike of her husband and son with a more than
+usually offensive brand of imitation coffee. Mr. McCall was inclined to
+think that he loathed the imitation coffee rather more than the cereal,
+but Washington held strong views on the latter’s superior ghastliness.
+Both Washington and his father, however, would have been fair-minded
+enough to admit that it was a close thing.
+
+Mrs. McCall regarded her offspring with grave approval.
+
+“I am glad to see, Lindsay,” she said to her husband, whose eyes sprang
+dutifully over the glass fence as he heard his name, “that Washy has
+recovered his appetite. When he refused his dinner last night, I was
+afraid that he might be sickening for something. Especially as he had
+quite a flushed look. You noticed his flushed look?”
+
+“He did look flushed.”
+
+“Very flushed. And his breathing was almost stertorous. And, when he
+said that he had no appetite, I am bound to say that I was anxious. But
+he is evidently perfectly well this morning. You do feel perfectly well
+this morning, Washy?”
+
+The heir of the McCall’s looked up from his cereal. He was a long, thin
+boy of about sixteen, with pale red hair, sandy eyelashes, and a long
+neck.
+
+“Uh-huh,” he said.
+
+Mrs. McCall nodded.
+
+“Surely now you will agree, Lindsay, that a careful and rational diet
+is what a boy needs? Washy’s constitution is superb. He has a
+remarkable stamina, and I attribute it entirely to my careful
+supervision of his food. I shudder when I think of the growing boys who
+are permitted by irresponsible people to devour meat, candy, pie—” She
+broke off. “What is the matter, Washy?”
+
+It seemed that the habit of shuddering at the thought of pie ran in the
+McCall family, for at the mention of the word a kind of internal shimmy
+had convulsed Washington’s lean frame, and over his face there had come
+an expression that was almost one of pain. He had been reaching out his
+hand for a slice of Health Bread, but now he withdrew it rather
+hurriedly and sat back breathing hard.
+
+“I’m all right,” he said, huskily.
+
+“Pie,” proceeded Mrs. McCall, in her platform voice. She stopped again
+abruptly. “Whatever is the matter, Washington? You are making me feel
+nervous.”
+
+“I’m all right.”
+
+Mrs. McCall had lost the thread of her remarks. Moreover, having now
+finished her breakfast, she was inclined for a little light reading.
+One of the subjects allied to the matter of dietary on which she felt
+deeply was the question of reading at meals. She was of the opinion
+that the strain on the eye, coinciding with the strain on the
+digestion, could not fail to give the latter the short end of the
+contest; and it was a rule at her table that the morning paper should
+not even be glanced at till the conclusion of the meal. She said that
+it was upsetting to begin the day by reading the paper, and events were
+to prove that she was occasionally right.
+
+All through breakfast the _New York Chronicle_ had been lying neatly
+folded beside her plate. She now opened it, and, with a remark about
+looking for the report of her yesterday’s lecture at the Butterfly
+Club, directed her gaze at the front page, on which she hoped that an
+editor with the best interests of the public at heart had decided to
+place her.
+
+Mr. McCall, jumping up and down behind his glasses, scrutinised her
+face closely as she began to read. He always did this on these
+occasions, for none knew better than he that his comfort for the day
+depended largely on some unknown reporter whom he had never met. If
+this unseen individual had done his work properly and as befitted the
+importance of his subject, Mrs. McCall’s mood for the next twelve hours
+would be as uniformly sunny as it was possible for it to be. But
+sometimes the fellows scamped their job disgracefully; and once, on a
+day which lived in Mr. McCall’s memory, they had failed to make a
+report at all.
+
+To-day, he noted with relief, all seemed to be well. The report
+actually was on the front page, an honour rarely accorded to his wife’s
+utterances. Moreover, judging from the time it took her to read the
+thing, she had evidently been reported at length.
+
+“Good, my dear?” he ventured. “Satisfactory?”
+
+“Eh?” Mrs. McCall smiled meditatively. “Oh, yes, excellent. They have
+used my photograph, too. Not at all badly reproduced.”
+
+“Splendid!” said Mr. McCall.
+
+Mrs. McCall gave a sharp shriek, and the paper fluttered from her hand.
+
+“My dear!” said Mr. McCall, with concern.
+
+His wife had recovered the paper, and was reading with burning eyes. A
+bright wave of colour had flowed over her masterful features. She was
+breathing as stertorously as ever her son Washington had done on the
+previous night.
+
+“Washington!”
+
+A basilisk glare shot across the table and turned the long boy to
+stone—all except his mouth, which opened feebly.
+
+“Washington! Is this true?”
+
+Washy closed his mouth, then let it slowly open again.
+
+“My dear!” Mr. McCall’s voice was alarmed. “What is it?” His eyes had
+climbed up over his glasses and remained there. “What is the matter? Is
+anything wrong?”
+
+“Wrong! Read for yourself!”
+
+Mr. McCall was completely mystified. He could not even formulate a
+guess at the cause of the trouble. That it appeared to concern his son
+Washington seemed to be the one solid fact at his disposal, and that
+only made the matter still more puzzling. Where, Mr. McCall asked
+himself, did Washington come in?
+
+He looked at the paper, and received immediate enlightenment. Headlines
+met his eyes:
+
+GOOD STUFF IN THIS BOY.
+ABOUT A TON OF IT.
+SON OF CORA BATES McCALL
+FAMOUS FOOD-REFORM LECTURER
+WINS PIE-EATING CHAMPIONSHIP OF WEST SIDE.
+
+
+There followed a lyrical outburst. So uplifted had the reporter
+evidently felt by the importance of his news that he had been unable to
+confine himself to prose:—
+
+My children, if you fail to shine or triumph in your special line; if,
+let us say, your hopes are bent on some day being President, and folks
+ignore your proper worth, and say you’ve not a chance on earth—Cheer
+up! for in these stirring days Fame may be won in many ways. Consider,
+when your spirits fall, the case of Washington McCall.
+
+Yes, cast your eye on Washy, please! He looks just like a piece of
+cheese: he’s not a brilliant sort of chap: he has a dull and vacant
+map: his eyes are blank, his face is red, his ears stick out beside his
+head. In fact, to end these compliments, he would be dear at thirty
+cents. Yet Fame has welcomed to her Hall this self-same Washington
+McCall.
+
+His mother (nee Miss Cora Bates) is one who frequently orates upon the
+proper kind of food which every menu should include. With eloquence the
+world she weans from chops and steaks and pork and beans. Such horrid
+things she’d like to crush, and make us live on milk and mush. But oh!
+the thing that makes her sigh is when she sees us eating pie. (We heard
+her lecture last July upon “The Nation’s Menace—Pie.”) Alas, the hit it
+made was small with Master Washington McCall.
+
+For yesterday we took a trip to see the great Pie Championship, where
+men with bulging cheeks and eyes consume vast quantities of pies. A
+fashionable West Side crowd beheld the champion, Spike O’Dowd,
+endeavour to defend his throne against an upstart, Blake’s Unknown. He
+wasn’t an Unknown at all. He was young Washington McCall.
+
+We freely own we’d give a leg if we could borrow, steal, or beg the
+skill old Homer used to show. (He wrote the _Iliad_, you know.) Old
+Homer swung a wicked pen, but we are ordinary men, and cannot even
+start to dream of doing justice to our theme. The subject of that great
+repast is too magnificent and vast. We can’t describe (or even try) the
+way those rivals wolfed their pie. Enough to say that, when for hours
+each had extended all his pow’rs, toward the quiet evenfall O’Dowd
+succumbed to young McCall.
+
+The champion was a willing lad. He gave the public all he had. His was
+a genuine fighting soul. He’d lots of speed and much control. No yellow
+streak did he evince. He tackled apple-pie and mince. This was the
+motto on his shield—“O’Dowds may burst. They never yield.” His eyes
+began to start and roll. He eased his belt another hole. Poor fellow!
+With a single glance one saw that he had not a chance. A python would
+have had to crawl and own defeat from young McCall.
+
+At last, long last, the finish came. His features overcast with shame,
+O’Dowd, who’d faltered once or twice, declined to eat another slice. He
+tottered off, and kindly men rallied around with oxygen. But Washy,
+Cora Bates’s son, seemed disappointed it was done. He somehow made
+those present feel he’d barely started on his meal. We ask him, “Aren’t
+you feeling bad?” “Me!” said the lion-hearted lad. “Lead me”—he started
+for the street—“where I can get a bite to eat!” Oh, what a lesson does
+it teach to all of us, that splendid speech! How better can the curtain
+fall on Master Washington McCall!
+
+Mr. McCall read this epic through, then he looked at his son. He first
+looked at him over his glasses, then through his glasses, then over his
+glasses again, then through his glasses once more. A curious expression
+was in his eyes. If such a thing had not been so impossible, one would
+have said that his gaze had in it something of respect, of admiration,
+even of reverence.
+
+“But how did they find out your name?” he asked, at length.
+
+Mrs. McCall exclaimed impatiently.
+
+“Is _that_ all you have to say?”
+
+“No, no, my dear, of course not, quite so. But the point struck me as
+curious.”
+
+“Wretched boy,” cried Mrs. McCall, “were you insane enough to reveal
+your name?”
+
+Washington wriggled uneasily. Unable to endure the piercing stare of
+his mother, he had withdrawn to the window, and was looking out with
+his back turned. But even there he could feel her eyes on the back of
+his neck.
+
+“I didn’t think it ’ud matter,” he mumbled. “A fellow with
+tortoiseshell-rimmed specs asked me, so I told him. How was I to know—”
+
+His stumbling defence was cut short by the opening of the door.
+
+“Hallo-allo-allo! What ho! What ho!”
+
+Archie was standing in the doorway, beaming ingratiatingly on the
+family.
+
+The apparition of an entire stranger served to divert the lightning of
+Mrs. McCall’s gaze from the unfortunate Washy. Archie, catching it
+between the eyes, blinked and held on to the wall. He had begun to
+regret that he had yielded so weakly to Lucille’s entreaty that he
+should look in on the McCalls and use the magnetism of his personality
+upon them in the hope of inducing them to settle the lawsuit. He
+wished, too, if the visit had to be paid that he had postponed it till
+after lunch, for he was never at his strongest in the morning. But
+Lucille had urged him to go now and get it over, and here he was.
+
+“I think,” said Mrs. McCall, icily, “that you must have mistaken your
+room.”
+
+Archie rallied his shaken forces.
+
+“Oh, no. Rather not. Better introduce myself, what? My name’s Moffam,
+you know. I’m old Brewster’s son-in-law, and all that sort of rot, if
+you know what I mean.” He gulped and continued. “I’ve come about this
+jolly old lawsuit, don’t you know.”
+
+Mr. McCall seemed about to speak, but his wife anticipated him.
+
+“Mr. Brewster’s attorneys are in communication with ours. We do not
+wish to discuss the matter.”
+
+Archie took an uninvited seat, eyed the Health Bread on the breakfast
+table for a moment with frank curiosity, and resumed his discourse.
+
+“No, but I say, you know! I’ll tell you what happened. I hate to totter
+in where I’m not wanted and all that, but my wife made such a point of
+it. Rightly or wrongly she regards me as a bit of a hound in the
+diplomacy line, and she begged me to look you up and see whether we
+couldn’t do something about settling the jolly old thing. I mean to
+say, you know, the old bird—old Brewster, you know—is considerably
+perturbed about the affair—hates the thought of being in a posish where
+he has either got to bite his old pal McCall in the neck or be bitten
+by him—and—well, and so forth, don’t you know! How about it?” He broke
+off. “Great Scot! I say, what!”
+
+So engrossed had he been in his appeal that he had not observed the
+presence of the pie-eating champion, between whom and himself a large
+potted plant intervened. But now Washington, hearing the familiar
+voice, had moved from the window and was confronting him with an
+accusing stare.
+
+“_He_ made me do it!” said Washy, with the stern joy a sixteen-year-old
+boy feels when he sees somebody on to whose shoulders he can shift
+trouble from his own. “That’s the fellow who took me to the place!”
+
+“What are you talking about, Washington?”
+
+“I’m telling you! He got me into the thing.”
+
+“Do you mean this—this—” Mrs. McCall shuddered. “Are you referring to
+this pie-eating contest?”
+
+“You bet I am!”
+
+“Is this true?” Mrs. McCall glared stonily at Archie, “Was it you who
+lured my poor boy into that—that—”
+
+“Oh, absolutely. The fact is, don’t you know, a dear old pal of mine
+who runs a tobacco shop on Sixth Avenue was rather in the soup. He had
+backed a chappie against the champion, and the chappie was converted by
+one of your lectures and swore off pie at the eleventh hour. Dashed
+hard luck on the poor chap, don’t you know! And then I got the idea
+that our little friend here was the one to step in and save the
+situash, so I broached the matter to him. And I’ll tell you one thing,”
+said Archie, handsomely, “I don’t know what sort of a capacity the
+original chappie had, but I’ll bet he wasn’t in your son’s class. Your
+son has to be seen to be believed! Absolutely! You ought to be proud of
+him!” He turned in friendly fashion to Washy. “Rummy we should meet
+again like this! Never dreamed I should find you here. And, by Jove,
+it’s absolutely marvellous how fit you look after yesterday. I had a
+sort of idea you would be groaning on a bed of sickness and all that.”
+
+There was a strange gurgling sound in the background. It resembled
+something getting up steam. And this, curiously enough, is precisely
+what it was. The thing that was getting up steam was Mr. Lindsay
+McCall.
+
+The first effect of the Washy revelations on Mr. McCall had been merely
+to stun him. It was not until the arrival of Archie that he had had
+leisure to think; but since Archie’s entrance he had been thinking
+rapidly and deeply.
+
+For many years Mr. McCall had been in a state of suppressed revolution.
+He had smouldered, but had not dared to blaze. But this startling
+upheaval of his fellow-sufferer, Washy, had acted upon him like a high
+explosive. There was a strange gleam in his eye, a gleam of
+determination. He was breathing hard.
+
+“Washy!”
+
+His voice had lost its deprecating mildness. It rang strong and clear.
+
+“Yes, pop?”
+
+“How many pies did you eat yesterday?”
+
+Washy considered.
+
+“A good few.”
+
+“How many? Twenty?”
+
+“More than that. I lost count. A good few.”
+
+“And you feel as well as ever?”
+
+“I feel fine.”
+
+Mr. McCall dropped his glasses. He glowered for a moment at the
+breakfast table. His eye took in the Health Bread, the imitation
+coffee-pot, the cereal, the nut-butter. Then with a swift movement he
+seized the cloth, jerked it forcibly, and brought the entire contents
+rattling and crashing to the floor.
+
+“Lindsay!”
+
+Mr. McCall met his wife’s eye with quiet determination. It was plain
+that something had happened in the hinterland of Mr. McCall’s soul.
+
+“Cora,” he said, resolutely, “I have come to a decision. I’ve been
+letting you run things your own way a little too long in this family.
+I’m going to assert myself. For one thing, I’ve had all I want of this
+food-reform foolery. Look at Washy! Yesterday that boy seems to have
+consumed anything from a couple of hundredweight to a ton of pie, and
+he has thriven on it! Thriven! I don’t want to hurt your feelings,
+Cora, but Washington and I have drunk our last cup of anti-caffeine! If
+you care to go on with the stuff, that’s your look-out. But Washy and I
+are through.”
+
+He silenced his wife with a masterful gesture and turned to Archie.
+“And there’s another thing. I never liked the idea of that lawsuit, but
+I let you talk me into it. Now I’m going to do things my way. Mr.
+Moffam, I’m glad you looked in this morning. I’ll do just what you
+want. Take me to Dan Brewster now, and let’s call the thing off, and
+shake hands on it.”
+
+“Are you mad, Lindsay?”
+
+It was Cora Bates McCall’s last shot. Mr. McCall paid no attention to
+it. He was shaking hands with Archie.
+
+“I consider you, Mr. Moffam,” he said, “the most sensible young man I
+have ever met!”
+
+Archie blushed modestly.
+
+“Awfully good of you, old bean,” he said. “I wonder if you’d mind
+telling my jolly old father-in-law that? It’ll be a bit of news for
+him!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+MOTHER’S KNEE
+
+
+Archie Moffam’s connection with that devastatingly popular ballad,
+“Mother’s Knee,” was one to which he always looked back later with a
+certain pride. “Mother’s Knee,” it will be remembered, went through the
+world like a pestilence. Scots elders hummed it on their way to kirk;
+cannibals crooned it to their offspring in the jungles of Borneo; it
+was a best-seller among the Bolshevists. In the United States alone
+three million copies were disposed of. For a man who has not
+accomplished anything outstandingly great in his life, it is something
+to have been in a sense responsible for a song like that; and, though
+there were moments when Archie experienced some of the emotions of a
+man who has punched a hole in the dam of one of the larger reservoirs,
+he never really regretted his share in the launching of the thing.
+
+It seems almost bizarre now to think that there was a time when even
+one person in the world had not heard “Mother’s Knee”; but it came
+fresh to Archie one afternoon some weeks after the episode of Washy, in
+his suite at the Hotel Cosmopolis, where he was cementing with
+cigarettes and pleasant conversation his renewed friendship with Wilson
+Hymack, whom he had first met in the neighbourhood of Armentières
+during the war.
+
+“What are you doing these days?” enquired Wilson Hymack.
+
+“Me?” said Archie. “Well, as a matter of fact, there is what you might
+call a sort of species of lull in my activities at the moment. But my
+jolly old father-in-law is bustling about, running up a new hotel a bit
+farther down-town, and the scheme is for me to be manager when it’s
+finished. From what I have seen in this place, it’s a simple sort of
+job, and I fancy I shall be somewhat hot stuff. How are you filling in
+the long hours?”
+
+“I’m in my uncle’s office, darn it!”
+
+“Starting at the bottom and learning the business and all that? A noble
+pursuit, no doubt, but I’m bound to say it would give me the pip in no
+uncertain manner.”
+
+“It gives me,” said Wilson Hymack, “a pain in the thorax. I want to be
+a composer.”
+
+“A composer, eh?”
+
+Archie felt that he should have guessed this. The chappie had a
+distinctly artistic look. He wore a bow-tie and all that sort of thing.
+His trousers bagged at the knees, and his hair, which during the
+martial epoch of his career had been pruned to the roots, fell about
+his ears in luxuriant disarray.
+
+“Say! Do you want to hear the best thing I’ve ever done?”
+
+“Indubitably,” said Archie, politely. “Carry on, old bird!”
+
+“I wrote the lyric as well as the melody,” said Wilson Hymack, who had
+already seated himself at the piano. “It’s got the greatest title you
+ever heard. It’s a lallapaloosa! It’s called ‘It’s a Long Way Back to
+Mother’s Knee.’ How’s that? Poor, eh?”
+
+Archie expelled a smoke-ring doubtfully.
+
+“Isn’t it a little stale?”
+
+“Stale? What do you mean, stale? There’s always room for another song
+boosting Mother.”
+
+“Oh, is it boosting Mother?” Archie’s face cleared. “I thought it was a
+hit at the short skirts. Why, of course, that makes all the difference.
+In that case, I see no reason why it should not be ripe, fruity, and
+pretty well all to the mustard. Let’s have it.”
+
+Wilson Hymack pushed as much of his hair out of his eyes as he could
+reach with one hand, cleared his throat, looked dreamily over the top
+of the piano at a photograph of Archie’s father-in-law, Mr. Daniel
+Brewster, played a prelude, and began to sing in a weak, high,
+composer’s voice. All composers sing exactly alike, and they have to be
+heard to be believed.
+
+“One night a young man wandered through the glitter of Broadway:
+His money he had squandered. For a meal he couldn’t pay.”
+
+
+“Tough luck!” murmured Archie, sympathetically.
+
+“He thought about the village where his boyhood he had spent,
+And yearned for all the simple joys with which he’d been content.”
+
+
+“The right spirit!” said Archie, with approval. “I’m beginning to like
+this chappie!”
+
+“Don’t interrupt!”
+
+“Oh, right-o! Carried away and all that!”
+
+“He looked upon the city, so frivolous and gay; And,
+as he heaved a weary sigh, these words he then did say:
+     It’s a long way back to Mother’s knee,
+                             Mother’s knee,
+                             Mother’s knee:
+     It’s a long way back to Mother’s knee,
+          Where I used to stand and prattle
+          With my teddy-bear and rattle:
+     Oh, those childhood days in Tennessee,
+     They sure look good to me!
+It’s a long, long way, but I’m gonna start to-day!
+     I’m going back,
+     Believe me, oh!
+I’m going back
+     (I want to go!)
+I’m going back—back—on the seven-three
+To the dear old shack where I used to be!
+I’m going back to Mother’s knee!”
+
+
+Wilson Hymack’s voice cracked on the final high note, which was of an
+altitude beyond his powers. He turned with a modest cough.
+
+“That’ll give you an idea of it!”
+
+“It has, old thing, it has!”
+
+“Is it or is it not a ball of fire?”
+
+“It has many of the earmarks of a sound egg,” admitted Archie. “Of
+course—”
+
+“Of course, it wants singing.”
+
+“Just what I was going to suggest.”
+
+“It wants a woman to sing it. A woman who could reach out for that last
+high note and teach it to take a joke. The whole refrain is working up
+to that. You need Tetrazzini or someone who would just pick that note
+off the roof and hold it till the janitor came round to lock up the
+building for the night.”
+
+“I must buy a copy for my wife. Where can I get it?”
+
+“You can’t get it! It isn’t published. Writing music’s the darndest
+job!” Wilson Hymack snorted fiercely. It was plain that the man was
+pouring out the pent-up emotion of many days. “You write the biggest
+thing in years and you go round trying to get someone to sing it, and
+they say you’re a genius and then shove the song away in a drawer and
+forget about it.”
+
+Archie lit another cigarette.
+
+“I’m a jolly old child in these matters, old lad,” he said, “but why
+don’t you take it direct to a publisher? As a matter of fact, if it
+would be any use to you, I was foregathering with a music-publisher
+only the other day. A bird of the name of Blumenthal. He was lunching
+in here with a pal of mine, and we got tolerably matey. Why not let me
+tool you round to the office to-morrow and play it to him?”
+
+“No, thanks. Much obliged, but I’m not going to play that melody in any
+publisher’s office with his hired gang of Tin-Pan Alley composers
+listening at the keyhole and taking notes. I’ll have to wait till I can
+find somebody to sing it. Well, I must be going along. Glad to have
+seen you again. Sooner or later I’ll take you to hear that high note
+sung by someone in a way that’ll make your spine tie itself in knots
+round the back of your neck.”
+
+“I’ll count the days,” said Archie, courteously. “Pip-pip!”
+
+Hardly had the door closed behind the composer when it opened again to
+admit Lucille.
+
+“Hallo, light of my soul!” said Archie, rising and embracing his wife.
+“Where have you been all the afternoon? I was expecting you this many
+an hour past. I wanted you to meet—”
+
+“I’ve been having tea with a girl down in Greenwich Village. I couldn’t
+get away before. Who was that who went out just as I came along the
+passage?”
+
+“Chappie of the name of Hymack. I met him in France. A composer and
+what not.”
+
+“We seem to have been moving in artistic circles this afternoon. The
+girl I went to see is a singer. At least, she wants to sing, but gets
+no encouragement.”
+
+“Precisely the same with my bird. He wants to get his music sung but
+nobody’ll sing it. But I didn’t know you knew any Greenwich Village
+warblers, sunshine of my home. How did you meet this female?”
+
+Lucille sat down and gazed forlornly at him with her big grey eyes. She
+was registering something, but Archie could not gather what it was.
+
+“Archie, darling, when you married me you undertook to share my
+sorrows, didn’t you?”
+
+“Absolutely! It’s all in the book of words. For better or for worse, in
+sickness and in health, all-down-set-’em-up-in-the-other-alley. Regular
+iron-clad contract!”
+
+“Then share ’em!” said Lucille. “Bill’s in love again!”
+
+Archie blinked.
+
+“Bill? When you say Bill, do you mean Bill? Your brother Bill? My
+brother-in-law Bill? Jolly old William, the son and heir of the
+Brewsters?”
+
+“I do.”
+
+“You say he’s in love? Cupid’s dart?”
+
+“Even so!”
+
+“But, I say! Isn’t this rather—What I mean to say is, the lad’s an
+absolute scourge! The Great Lover, what! Also ran, Brigham Young, and
+all that sort of thing! Why, it’s only a few weeks ago that he was
+moaning brokenly about that vermilion-haired female who subsequently
+hooked on to old Reggie van Tuyl!”
+
+“She’s a little better than that girl, thank goodness. All the same, I
+don’t think Father will approve.”
+
+“Of what calibre is the latest exhibit?”
+
+“Well, she comes from the Middle West, and seems to be trying to be
+twice as Bohemian as the rest of the girls down in Greenwich Village.
+She wears her hair bobbed and goes about in a kimono. She’s probably
+read magazine stories about Greenwich Village, and has modelled herself
+on them. It’s so silly, when you can see Hicks Corners sticking out of
+her all the time.”
+
+“That one got past me before I could grab it. What did you say she had
+sticking out of her?”
+
+“I meant that anybody could see that she came from somewhere out in the
+wilds. As a matter of fact, Bill tells me that she was brought up in
+Snake Bite, Michigan.”
+
+“Snake Bite? What rummy names you have in America! Still, I’ll admit
+there’s a village in England called Nether Wallop, so who am I to cast
+the first stone? How is old Bill? Pretty feverish?”
+
+“He says this time it is the real thing.”
+
+“That’s what they all say! I wish I had a dollar for every
+time—Forgotten what I was going to say!” broke off Archie, prudently.
+“So you think,” he went on, after a pause, “that William’s latest is
+going to be one more shock for the old dad?”
+
+“I can’t imagine Father approving of her.”
+
+“I’ve studied your merry old progenitor pretty closely,” said Archie,
+“and, between you and me, I can’t imagine him approving of anybody!”
+
+“I can’t understand why it is that Bill goes out of his way to pick
+these horrors. I know at least twenty delightful girls, all pretty and
+with lots of money, who would be just the thing for him; but he sneaks
+away and goes falling in love with someone impossible. And the worst of
+it is that one always feels one’s got to do one’s best to see him
+through.”
+
+“Absolutely! One doesn’t want to throw a spanner into the works of
+Love’s young dream. It behoves us to rally round. Have you heard this
+girl sing?”
+
+“Yes. She sang this afternoon.”
+
+“What sort of a voice has she got?”
+
+“Well, it’s—loud!”
+
+“Could she pick a high note off the roof and hold it till the janitor
+came round to lock up the building for the night?”
+
+“What on earth do you mean?”
+
+“Answer me this, woman, frankly. How is her high note? Pretty lofty?”
+
+“Why, yes.”
+
+“Then say no more,” said Archie. “Leave this to me, my dear old better
+four-fifths! Hand the whole thing over to Archibald, the man who never
+lets you down. I have a scheme!”
+
+As Archie approached his suite on the following afternoon he heard
+through the closed door the drone of a gruff male voice; and, going in,
+discovered Lucille in the company of his brother-in-law. Lucille,
+Archie thought, was looking a trifle fatigued. Bill, on the other hand,
+was in great shape. His eyes were shining, and his face looked so like
+that of a stuffed frog that Archie had no difficulty in gathering that
+he had been lecturing on the subject of his latest enslaver.
+
+“Hallo, Bill, old crumpet!” he said.
+
+“Hallo, Archie!”
+
+“I’m so glad you’ve come,” said Lucille. “Bill is telling me all about
+Spectatia.”
+
+“Who?”
+
+“Spectatia. The girl, you know. Her name is Spectatia Huskisson.”
+
+“It can’t be!” said Archie, incredulously.
+
+“Why not?” growled Bill.
+
+“Well, how could it?” said Archie, appealing to him as a reasonable
+man. “I mean to say! Spectatia Huskisson! I gravely doubt whether there
+is such a name.”
+
+“What’s wrong with it?” demanded the incensed Bill. “It’s a darned
+sight better name than Archibald Moffam.”
+
+“Don’t fight, you two children!” intervened Lucille, firmly. “It’s a
+good old Middle West name. Everybody knows the Huskissons of Snake
+Bite, Michigan. Besides, Bill calls her Tootles.”
+
+“Pootles,” corrected Bill, austerely.
+
+“Oh, yes, Pootles. He calls her Pootles.”
+
+“Young blood! Young blood!” sighed Archie.
+
+“I wish you wouldn’t talk as if you were my grandfather.”
+
+“I look on you as a son, laddie, a favourite son!”
+
+“If I had a father like you—!”-“Ah, but you haven’t,
+young-feller-me-lad, and that’s the trouble. If you had, everything
+would be simple. But as your actual father, if you’ll allow me to say
+so, is one of the finest specimens of the human vampire-bat in
+captivity, something has got to be done about it, and you’re dashed
+lucky to have me in your corner, a guide, philosopher, and friend, full
+of the fruitiest ideas. Now, if you’ll kindly listen to me for a
+moment—”
+
+“I’ve been listening to you ever since you came in.”
+
+“You wouldn’t speak in that harsh tone of voice if you knew all!
+William, I have a scheme!”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“The scheme to which I allude is what Maeterlinck would call a
+lallapaloosa!”
+
+“What a little marvel he is!” said Lucille, regarding her husband
+affectionately. “He eats a lot of fish, Bill. That’s what makes him so
+clever!”
+
+“Shrimps!” diagnosed Bill, churlishly.
+
+“Do you know the leader of the orchestra in the restaurant downstairs?”
+asked Archie, ignoring the slur.
+
+“I know there _is_ a leader of the orchestra. What about him?”
+
+“A sound fellow. Great pal of mine. I’ve forgotten his name—”
+
+“Call him Pootles!” suggested Lucille.
+
+“Desist!” said Archie, as a wordless growl proceeded from his stricken
+brother-in-law. “Temper your hilarity with a modicum of reserve. This
+girlish frivolity is unseemly. Well, I’m going to have a chat with this
+chappie and fix it all up.”
+
+“Fix what up?”
+
+“The whole jolly business. I’m going to kill two birds with one stone.
+I’ve a composer chappie popping about in the background whose one
+ambish. is to have his pet song sung before a discriminating audience.
+You have a singer straining at the leash. I’m going to arrange with
+this egg who leads the orchestra that your female shall sing my
+chappie’s song downstairs one night during dinner. How about it? Is it
+or is it not a ball of fire?”
+
+“It’s not a bad idea,” admitted Bill, brightening visibly. “I wouldn’t
+have thought you had it in you.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Well—”
+
+“It’s a capital idea,” said Lucille. “Quite out of the question, of
+course.”
+
+“How do you mean?”
+
+“Don’t you know that the one thing Father hates more than anything else
+in the world is anything like a cabaret? People are always coming to
+him, suggesting that it would brighten up the dinner hour if he had
+singers and things, and he crushes them into little bits. He thinks
+there’s nothing that lowers the tone of a place more. He’ll bite you in
+three places when you suggest it to him!”
+
+“Ah! But has it escaped your notice, lighting system of my soul, that
+the dear old dad is not at present in residence? He went off to fish at
+Lake What’s-its-name this morning.”
+
+“You aren’t dreaming of doing this without asking him?”
+
+“That was the general idea.”
+
+“But he’ll be furious when he finds out.”
+
+“But will he find out? I ask you, will he?”
+
+“Of course he will.”
+
+“I don’t see why he should,” said Bill, on whose plastic mind the plan
+had made a deep impression.
+
+“He won’t,” said Archie, confidently. “This wheeze is for one night
+only. By the time the jolly old guv’nor returns, bitten to the bone by
+mosquitoes, with one small stuffed trout in his suit-case, everything
+will be over and all quiet once more along the Potomac. The scheme is
+this. My chappie wants his song heard by a publisher. Your girl wants
+her voice heard by one of the blighters who get up concerts and all
+that sort of thing. No doubt you know such a bird, whom you could
+invite to the hotel for a bit of dinner?”
+
+“I know Carl Steinburg. As a matter of fact, I was thinking of writing
+to him about Spectatia.”
+
+“You’re absolutely sure that _is_ her name?” said Archie, his voice
+still tinged with incredulity. “Oh, well, I suppose she told you so
+herself, and no doubt she knows best. That will be topping. Rope in
+your pal and hold him down at the table till the finish. Lucille, the
+beautiful vision on the sky-line yonder, and I will be at another table
+entertaining Maxie Blumenthal.”
+
+“Who on earth is Maxie Blumenthal?” asked Lucille.
+
+“One of my boyhood chums. A music-publisher. I’ll get him to come
+along, and then we’ll all be set. At the conclusion of the performance
+Miss—” Archie winced—“Miss Spectatia Huskisson will be signed up for a
+forty weeks’ tour, and jovial old Blumenthal will be making all
+arrangements for publishing the song. Two birds, as I indicated before,
+with one stone! How about it?”
+
+“It’s a winner,” said Bill.
+
+“Of course,” said Archie, “I’m not urging you. I merely make the
+suggestion. If you know a better ’ole go to it!”
+
+“It’s terrific!” said Bill.
+
+“It’s absurd!” said Lucille.
+
+“My dear old partner of joys and sorrows,” said Archie, wounded, “we
+court criticism, but this is mere abuse. What seems to be the
+difficulty?”
+
+“The leader of the orchestra would be afraid to do it.”
+
+“Ten dollars—supplied by William here—push it over, Bill, old man—will
+remove his tremors.”
+
+“And Father’s certain to find out.”
+
+“Am I afraid of Father?” cried Archie, manfully. “Well, yes, I am!” he
+added, after a moment’s reflection. “But I don’t see how he can
+possibly get to know.”
+
+“Of course he can’t,” said Bill, decidedly. “Fix it up as soon as you
+can, Archie. This is what the doctor ordered.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+THE MELTING OF MR. CONNOLLY
+
+
+The main dining-room of the Hotel Cosmopolis is a decorous place. The
+lighting is artistically dim, and the genuine old tapestries on the
+walls seem, with their mediaeval calm, to discourage any essay in the
+riotous. Soft-footed waiters shimmer to and fro over thick, expensive
+carpets to the music of an orchestra which abstains wholly from the
+noisy modernity of jazz. To Archie, who during the past few days had
+been privileged to hear Miss Huskisson rehearsing, the place had a sort
+of brooding quiet, like the ocean just before the arrival of a cyclone.
+As Lucille had said, Miss Huskisson’s voice was loud. It was a powerful
+organ, and there was no doubt that it would take the cloistered
+stillness of the Cosmopolis dining-room and stand it on one ear. Almost
+unconsciously, Archie found himself bracing his muscles and holding his
+breath as he had done in France at the approach of the zero hour, when
+awaiting the first roar of a barrage. He listened mechanically to the
+conversation of Mr. Blumenthal.
+
+The music-publisher was talking with some vehemence on the subject of
+Labour. A recent printers’ strike had bitten deeply into Mr.
+Blumenthal’s soul. The working man, he considered, was rapidly landing
+God’s Country in the soup, and he had twice upset his glass with the
+vehemence of his gesticulation. He was an energetic right-and-left-hand
+talker.
+
+“The more you give ’em the more they want!” he complained. “There’s no
+pleasing ’em! It isn’t only in my business. There’s your father, Mrs.
+Moffam!”
+
+“Good God! Where?” said Archie, starting.
+
+“I say, take your father’s case. He’s doing all he knows to get this
+new hotel of his finished, and what happens? A man gets fired for
+loafing on his job, and Connolly calls a strike. And the building
+operations are held up till the thing’s settled! It isn’t right!”
+
+“It’s a great shame,” agreed Lucille. “I was reading about it in the
+paper this morning.”
+
+“That man Connolly’s a tough guy. You’d think, being a personal friend
+of your father, he would—”
+
+“I didn’t know they were friends.”
+
+“Been friends for years. But a lot of difference that makes. Out come
+the men just the same. It isn’t right! I was saying it wasn’t right!”
+repeated Mr. Blumenthal to Archie, for he was a man who liked the
+attention of every member of his audience.
+
+Archie did not reply. He was staring glassily across the room at two
+men who had just come in. One was a large, stout, square-faced man of
+commanding personality. The other was Mr. Daniel Brewster.
+
+Mr. Blumenthal followed his gaze.
+
+“Why, there is Connolly coming in now!”
+
+“Father!” gasped Lucille.
+
+Her eyes met Archie’s. Archie took a hasty drink of ice-water.
+
+“This,” he murmured, “has torn it!”
+
+“Archie, you must do something!”
+
+“I know! But what?”
+
+“What’s the trouble?” enquired Mr. Blumenthal, mystified.
+
+“Go over to their table and talk to them,” said Lucille.
+
+“Me!” Archie quivered. “No, I say, old thing, really!”
+
+“Get them away!”
+
+“How do you mean?”
+
+“I know!” cried Lucille, inspired, “Father promised that you should be
+manager of the new hotel when it was built. Well, then, this strike
+affects you just as much as anybody else. You have a perfect right to
+talk it over with them. Go and ask them to have dinner up in our suite
+where you can discuss it quietly. Say that up there they won’t be
+disturbed by the—the music.”
+
+At this moment, while Archie wavered, hesitating like a diver on the
+edge of a spring-board who is trying to summon up the necessary nerve
+to project himself into the deep, a bell-boy approached the table where
+the Messrs. Brewster and Connolly had seated themselves. He murmured
+something in Mr. Brewster’s ear, and the proprietor of the Cosmopolis
+rose and followed him out of the room.
+
+“Quick! Now’s your chance!” said Lucille, eagerly. “Father’s been
+called to the telephone. Hurry!”
+
+Archie took another drink of ice-water to steady his shaking
+nerve-centers, pulled down his waistcoat, straightened his tie, and
+then, with something of the air of a Roman gladiator entering the
+arena, tottered across the room. Lucille turned to entertain the
+perplexed music-publisher.
+
+The nearer Archie got to Mr. Aloysius Connolly the less did he like the
+looks of him. Even at a distance the Labour leader had had a formidable
+aspect. Seen close to, he looked even more uninviting. His face had the
+appearance of having been carved out of granite, and the eye which
+collided with Archie’s as the latter, with an attempt at an
+ingratiating smile, pulled up a chair and sat down at the table was
+hard and frosty. Mr. Connolly gave the impression that he would be a
+good man to have on your side during a rough-and-tumble fight down on
+the water-front or in some lumber-camp, but he did not look chummy.
+
+“Hallo-allo-allo!” said Archie.
+
+“Who the devil,” inquired Mr. Connolly, “are you?”
+
+“My name’s Archibald Moffam.”
+
+“That’s not my fault.”
+
+“I’m jolly old Brewster’s son-in-law.”
+
+“Glad to meet you.”
+
+“Glad to meet _you_,” said Archie, handsomely.
+
+“Well, good-bye!” said Mr. Connolly.
+
+“Eh?”
+
+“Run along and sell your papers. Your father-in-law and I have business
+to discuss.”
+
+“Yes, I know.”
+
+“Private,” added Mr. Connolly.
+
+“Oh, but I’m in on this binge, you know. I’m going to be the manager of
+the new hotel.”
+
+“You!”
+
+“Absolutely!”
+
+“Well, well!” said Mr. Connolly, noncommittally.
+
+Archie, pleased with the smoothness with which matters had opened, bent
+forward winsomely.
+
+“I say, you know! It won’t do, you know! Absolutely no! Not a bit like
+it! No, no, far from it! Well, how about it? How do we go? What? Yes?
+No?”
+
+“What on earth are you talking about?”
+
+“Call it off, old thing!”
+
+“Call what off?”
+
+“This festive old strike.”
+
+“Not on your—hallo, Dan! Back again?”
+
+Mr. Brewster, looming over the table like a thundercloud, regarded
+Archie with more than his customary hostility. Life was no pleasant
+thing for the proprietor of the Cosmopolis just now. Once a man starts
+building hotels, the thing becomes like dram-drinking. Any hitch, any
+sudden cutting-off of the daily dose, has the worst effects; and the
+strike which was holding up the construction of his latest effort had
+plunged Mr. Brewster into a restless gloom. In addition to having this
+strike on his hands, he had had to abandon his annual fishing-trip just
+when he had begun to enjoy it; and, as if all this were not enough,
+here was his son-in-law sitting at his table. Mr. Brewster had a
+feeling that this was more than man was meant to bear.
+
+“What do you want?” he demanded.
+
+“Hallo, old thing!” said Archie. “Come and join the party!”
+
+“Don’t call me old thing!”
+
+“Right-o, old companion, just as you say. I say, I was just going to
+suggest to Mr. Connolly that we should all go up to my suite and talk
+this business over quietly.”
+
+“He says he’s the manager of your new hotel,” said Mr. Connolly. “Is
+that right?”
+
+“I suppose so,” said Mr. Brewster, gloomily.
+
+“Then I’m doing you a kindness,” said Mr. Connolly, “in not letting it
+be built.”
+
+Archie dabbed at his forehead with his handkerchief. The moments were
+flying, and it began to seem impossible to shift these two men. Mr.
+Connolly was as firmly settled in his chair as some primeval rock. As
+for Mr. Brewster, he, too, had seated himself, and was gazing at Archie
+with a weary repulsion. Mr. Brewster’s glance always made Archie feel
+as though there were soup on his shirt-front.
+
+And suddenly from the orchestra at the other end of the room there came
+a familiar sound, the prelude of “Mother’s Knee.”
+
+“So you’ve started a cabaret, Dan?” said Mr. Connolly, in a satisfied
+voice. “I always told you you were behind the times here!”
+
+Mr. Brewster jumped.
+
+“Cabaret!”
+
+He stared unbelievingly at the white-robed figure which had just
+mounted the orchestra dais, and then concentrated his gaze on Archie.
+
+Archie would not have looked at his father-in-law at this juncture if
+he had had a free and untrammelled choice; but Mr. Brewster’s eye drew
+his with something of the fascination which a snake’s has for a rabbit.
+Mr. Brewster’s eye was fiery and intimidating. A basilisk might have
+gone to him with advantage for a course of lessons. His gaze went right
+through Archie till the latter seemed to feel his back-hair curling
+crisply in the flames.
+
+“Is this one of your fool-tricks?”
+
+Even in this tense moment Archie found time almost unconsciously to
+admire his father-in-law’s penetration and intuition. He seemed to have
+a sort of sixth sense. No doubt this was how great fortunes were made.
+
+“Well, as a matter of fact—to be absolutely accurate—it was like this—”
+
+“Say, cut it out!” said Mr. Connolly. “Can the chatter! I want to
+listen.”
+
+Archie was only too ready to oblige him. Conversation at the moment was
+the last thing he himself desired. He managed with a strong effort to
+disengage himself from Mr. Brewster’s eye, and turned to the orchestra
+dais, where Miss Spectatia Huskisson was now beginning the first verse
+of Wilson Hymack’s masterpiece.
+
+Miss Huskisson, like so many of the female denizens of the Middle West,
+was tall and blonde and constructed on substantial lines. She was a
+girl whose appearance suggested the old homestead and fried pancakes
+and pop coming home to dinner after the morning’s ploughing. Even her
+bobbed hair did not altogether destroy this impression. She looked big
+and strong and healthy, and her lungs were obviously good. She attacked
+the verse of the song with something of the vigour and breadth of
+treatment with which in other days she had reasoned with refractory
+mules. Her diction was the diction of one trained to call the cattle
+home in the teeth of Western hurricanes. Whether you wanted to or not,
+you heard every word.
+
+The subdued clatter of knives and forks had ceased. The diners, unused
+to this sort of thing at the Cosmopolis, were trying to adjust their
+faculties to cope with the outburst. Waiters stood transfixed, frozen,
+in attitudes of service. In the momentary lull between verse and
+refrain Archie could hear the deep breathing of Mr. Brewster.
+Involuntarily he turned to gaze at him once more, as refugees from
+Pompeii may have turned to gaze upon Vesuvius; and, as he did so, he
+caught sight of Mr. Connolly, and paused in astonishment.
+
+Mr. Connolly was an altered man. His whole personality had undergone a
+subtle change. His face still looked as though hewn from the living
+rock, but into his eyes had crept an expression which in another man
+might almost have been called sentimental. Incredible as it seemed to
+Archie, Mr. Connolly’s eyes were dreamy. There was even in them a
+suggestion of unshed tears. And when with a vast culmination of sound
+Miss Huskisson reached the high note at the end of the refrain and,
+after holding it as some storming-party, spent but victorious, holds
+the summit of a hard-won redoubt, broke off suddenly, in the stillness
+which followed there proceeded from Mr. Connolly a deep sigh.
+
+Miss Huskisson began the second verse. And Mr. Brewster, seeming to
+recover from some kind of a trance, leaped to his feet.
+
+“Great Godfrey!”
+
+“Sit down!” said Mr. Connolly, in a broken voice. “Sit down, Dan!”
+
+“He went back to his mother on the train that very day:
+He knew there was no other who could make him bright and gay:
+He kissed her on the forehead and he whispered, ‘I’ve come home!’
+He told her he was never going any more to roam.
+And onward through the happy years, till he grew old and grey,
+He never once regretted those brave words he once did say:
+It’s a long way back to mother’s knee—”
+
+
+The last high note screeched across the room like a shell, and the
+applause that followed was like a shell’s bursting. One could hardly
+have recognised the refined interior of the Cosmopolis dining-room.
+Fair women were waving napkins; brave men were hammering on the tables
+with the butt-end of knives, for all the world as if they imagined
+themselves to be in one of those distressing midnight-revue places.
+Miss Huskisson bowed, retired, returned, bowed, and retired again, the
+tears streaming down her ample face. Over in a corner Archie could see
+his brother-in-law clapping strenuously. A waiter, with a display of
+manly emotion that did him credit, dropped an order of new peas.
+
+“Thirty years ago last October,” said Mr. Connolly, in a shaking voice,
+“I—”
+
+Mr. Brewster interrupted him violently.
+
+“I’ll fire that orchestra-leader! He goes to-morrow! I’ll fire—” He
+turned on Archie. “What the devil do you mean by it, you—you—”
+
+“Thirty years ago,” said Mr. Connolly, wiping away a tear with his
+napkin, “I left me dear old home in the old country—”
+
+“_My_ hotel a bear-garden!”
+
+“Frightfully sorry and all that, old companion—”
+
+“Thirty years ago last October! ’Twas a fine autumn evening the finest
+ye’d ever wish to see. Me old mother, she came to the station to see me
+off.”
+
+Mr. Brewster, who was not deeply interested in Mr. Connolly’s old
+mother, continued to splutter inarticulately, like a firework trying to
+go off.
+
+“‘Ye’ll always be a good boy, Aloysius?’ she said to me,” said Mr.
+Connolly, proceeding with, his autobiography. “And I said: ‘Yes,
+Mother, I will!’” Mr. Connolly sighed and applied the napkin again.
+“’Twas a liar I was!” he observed, remorsefully. “Many’s the dirty I’ve
+played since then. ‘It’s a long way back to Mother’s knee.’ ’Tis a true
+word!” He turned impulsively to Mr. Brewster. “Dan, there’s a deal of
+trouble in this world without me going out of me way to make more. The
+strike is over! I’ll send the men back tomorrow! There’s me hand on
+it!”
+
+Mr. Brewster, who had just managed to co-ordinate his views on the
+situation and was about to express them with the generous strength
+which was ever his custom when dealing with his son-in-law, checked
+himself abruptly. He stared at his old friend and business enemy,
+wondering if he could have heard aright. Hope began to creep back into
+Mr. Brewster’s heart, like a shamefaced dog that has been away from
+home hunting for a day or two.
+
+“You’ll what!”
+
+“I’ll send the men back to-morrow! That song was sent to guide me, Dan!
+It was meant! Thirty years ago last October me dear old mother—”
+
+Mr. Brewster bent forward attentively. His views on Mr. Connolly’s dear
+old mother had changed. He wanted to hear all about her.
+
+“’Twas that last note that girl sang brought it all back to me as if
+’twas yesterday. As we waited on the platform, me old mother and I, out
+comes the train from the tunnel, and the engine lets off a screech the
+way ye’d hear it ten miles away. ’Twas thirty years ago—”
+
+Archie stole softly from the table. He felt that his presence, if it
+had ever been required, was required no longer. Looking back, he could
+see his father-in-law patting Mr. Connolly affectionately on the
+shoulder.
+
+Archie and Lucille lingered over their coffee. Mr. Blumenthal was out
+in the telephone-box settling the business end with Wilson Hymack. The
+music-publisher had been unstinted in his praise of “Mother’s Knee.” It
+was sure-fire, he said. The words, stated Mr. Blumenthal, were gooey
+enough to hurt, and the tune reminded him of every other song-hit he
+had ever heard. There was, in Mr. Blumenthal’s opinion, nothing to stop
+this thing selling a million copies.
+
+Archie smoked contentedly.
+
+“Not a bad evening’s work, old thing,” he said. “Talk about birds with
+one stone!” He looked at Lucille reproachfully. “You don’t seem
+bubbling over with joy.”
+
+“Oh, I am, precious!” Lucille sighed. “I was only thinking about Bill.”
+
+“What about Bill?”
+
+“Well, it’s rather awful to think of him tied for life to that-that
+steam-siren.”
+
+“Oh, we mustn’t look on the jolly old dark side. Perhaps—Hallo, Bill,
+old top! We were just talking about you.”
+
+“Were you?” said Bill Brewster, in a dispirited voice.
+
+“I take it that you want congratulations, what?”
+
+“I want sympathy!”
+
+“Sympathy?”
+
+“Sympathy! And lots of it! She’s gone!”
+
+“Gone! Who?”
+
+“Spectatia!”
+
+“How do you mean, gone?”
+
+Bill glowered at the tablecloth.
+
+“Gone home. I’ve just seen her off in a cab. She’s gone back to
+Washington Square to pack. She’s catching the ten o’clock train back to
+Snake Bite. It was that damned song!” muttered Bill, in a stricken
+voice. “She says she never realised before she sang it to-night how
+hollow New York was. She said it suddenly came over her. She says she’s
+going to give up her career and go back to her mother. What the deuce
+are you twiddling your fingers for?” he broke off, irritably.
+
+“Sorry, old man. I was just counting.”
+
+“Counting? Counting what?”
+
+“Birds, old thing. Only birds!” said Archie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+THE WIGMORE VENUS
+
+
+The morning was so brilliantly fine; the populace popped to and fro in
+so active and cheery a manner; and everybody appeared to be so
+absolutely in the pink, that a casual observer of the city of New York
+would have said that it was one of those happy days. Yet Archie Moffam,
+as he turned out of the sun-bathed street into the ramshackle building
+on the third floor of which was the studio belonging to his artist
+friend, James B. Wheeler, was faintly oppressed with a sort of a kind
+of feeling that something was wrong. He would not have gone so far as
+to say that he had the pip—it was more a vague sense of discomfort.
+And, searching for first causes as he made his way upstairs, he came to
+the conclusion that the person responsible for this nebulous depression
+was his wife, Lucille. It seemed to Archie that at breakfast that
+morning Lucille’s manner had been subtly rummy. Nothing you could put
+your finger on, still—rummy.
+
+Musing thus, he reached the studio, and found the door open and the
+room empty. It had the air of a room whose owner has dashed in to fetch
+his golf-clubs and biffed off, after the casual fashion of the artist
+temperament, without bothering to close up behind him. And such,
+indeed, was the case. The studio had seen the last of J. B. Wheeler for
+that day: but Archie, not realising this and feeling that a chat with
+Mr. Wheeler, who was a light-hearted bird, was what he needed this
+morning, sat down to wait. After a few moments, his gaze, straying over
+the room, encountered a handsomely framed picture, and he went across
+to take a look at it.
+
+J. B. Wheeler was an artist who made a large annual income as an
+illustrator for the magazines, and it was a surprise to Archie to find
+that he also went in for this kind of thing. For the picture, dashingly
+painted in oils, represented a comfortably plump young woman who, from
+her rather weak-minded simper and the fact that she wore absolutely
+nothing except a small dove on her left shoulder, was plainly intended
+to be the goddess Venus. Archie was not much of a lad around the
+picture-galleries, but he knew enough about Art to recognise Venus when
+he saw her; though once or twice, it is true, artists had
+double-crossed him by ringing in some such title as “Day Dreams,” or
+“When the Heart is Young.”
+
+He inspected this picture for awhile, then, returning to his seat, lit
+a cigarette and began to meditate on Lucille once more. “Yes, the dear
+girl had been rummy at breakfast. She had not exactly said anything or
+done anything out of the ordinary; but—well, you know how it is. We
+husbands, we lads of the for-better-or-for-worse brigade, we learn to
+pierce the mask. There had been in Lucille’s manner that curious,
+strained sweetness which comes to women whose husbands have failed to
+match the piece of silk or forgotten to post an important letter. If
+his conscience had not been as clear as crystal, Archie would have said
+that that was what must have been the matter. But, when Lucille wrote
+letters, she just stepped out of the suite and dropped them in the
+mail-chute attached to the elevator. It couldn’t be that. And he
+couldn’t have forgotten anything else, because—”
+
+“Oh my sainted aunt!”
+
+Archie’s cigarette smouldered, neglected, between his fingers. His jaw
+had fallen and his eyes were staring glassily before him. He was
+appalled. His memory was weak, he knew; but never before had it let him
+down so scurvily as this. This was a record. It stood in a class by
+itself, printed in red ink and marked with a star, as the bloomer of a
+lifetime. For a man may forget many things: he may forget his name, his
+umbrella, his nationality, his spats, and the friends of his youth: but
+there is one thing which your married man, your
+in-sickness-and-in-health lizard must not forget: and that is the
+anniversary of his wedding-day.
+
+Remorse swept over Archie like a wave. His heart bled for Lucille. No
+wonder the poor girl had been rummy at breakfast. What girl wouldn’t be
+rummy at breakfast, tied for life to a ghastly outsider like himself?
+He groaned hollowly, and sagged forlornly in his chair: and, as he did
+so, the Venus caught his eye. For it was an eye-catching picture. You
+might like it or dislike it, but you could not ignore it.
+
+As a strong swimmer shoots to the surface after a high dive, Archie’s
+soul rose suddenly from the depths to which it had descended. He did
+not often get inspirations, but he got one now. Hope dawned with a
+jerk. The one way out had presented itself to him. A rich present! That
+was the wheeze. If he returned to her bearing a rich present, he might,
+with the help of Heaven and a face of brass, succeed in making her
+believe that he had merely pretended to forget the vital date in order
+to enhance the surprise.
+
+It was a scheme. Like some great general forming his plan of campaign
+on the eve of battle, Archie had the whole binge neatly worked out
+inside a minute. He scribbled a note to Mr. Wheeler, explaining the
+situation and promising reasonable payment on the instalment system;
+then, placing the note in a conspicuous position on the easel, he
+leaped to the telephone: and presently found himself connected with
+Lucille’s room at the Cosmopolis.
+
+“Hullo, darling,” he cooed.
+
+There was a slight pause at the other end of the wire.
+
+“Oh, hullo, Archie!”
+
+Lucille’s voice was dull and listless, and Archie’s experienced ear
+could detect that she had been crying. He raised his right foot, and
+kicked himself indignantly on the left ankle.
+
+“Many happy returns of the day, old thing!”
+
+A muffled sob floated over the wire.
+
+“Have you only just remembered?” said Lucille in a small voice.
+
+Archie, bracing himself up, cackled gleefully into the receiver.
+
+“Did I take you in, light of my home? Do you mean to say you really
+thought I had forgotten? For Heaven’s sake!”
+
+“You didn’t say a word at breakfast.”
+
+“Ah, but that was all part of the devilish cunning. I hadn’t got a
+present for you then. At least, I didn’t know whether it was ready.”
+
+“Oh, Archie, you darling!” Lucille’s voice had lost its crushed
+melancholy. She trilled like a thrush, or a linnet, or any bird that
+goes in largely for trilling. “Have you really got me a present?”
+
+“It’s here now. The dickens of a fruity picture. One of J. B. Wheeler’s
+things. You’ll like it.”
+
+“Oh, I know I shall. I love his work. You are an angel. We’ll hang it
+over the piano.”
+
+“I’ll be round with it in something under three ticks, star of my soul.
+I’ll take a taxi.”
+
+“Yes, do hurry! I want to hug you!”
+
+“Right-o!” said Archie. “I’ll take two taxis.”
+
+It is not far from Washington Square to the Hotel Cosmopolis, and
+Archie made the journey without mishap. There was a little
+unpleasantness with the cabman before starting—he, on the prudish plea
+that he was a married man with a local reputation to keep up, declining
+at first to be seen in company with the masterpiece. But, on Archie
+giving a promise to keep the front of the picture away from the public
+gaze, he consented to take the job on; and, some ten minutes later,
+having made his way blushfully through the hotel lobby and endured the
+frank curiosity of the boy who worked the elevator, Archie entered his
+suite, the picture under his arm.
+
+He placed it carefully against the wall in order to leave himself more
+scope for embracing Lucille, and when the joyful reunion—or the sacred
+scene, if you prefer so to call it, was concluded, he stepped forward
+to turn it round and exhibit it.
+
+“Why, it’s enormous,” said Lucille. “I didn’t know Mr. Wheeler ever
+painted pictures that size. When you said it was one of his, I thought
+it must be the original of a magazine drawing or something like—Oh!”
+
+Archie had moved back and given her an uninterrupted view of the work
+of art, and she had started as if some unkindly disposed person had
+driven a bradawl into her.
+
+“Pretty ripe, what?” said Archie enthusiastically.
+
+Lucille did not speak for a moment. It may have been sudden joy that
+kept her silent. Or, on the other hand, it may not. She stood looking
+at the picture with wide eyes and parted lips.
+
+“A bird, eh?” said Archie.
+
+“Y—yes,” said Lucille.
+
+“I knew you’d like it,” proceeded Archie with animation, “You see?
+you’re by way of being a picture-hound—know all about the things, and
+what not—inherit it from the dear old dad, I shouldn’t wonder.
+Personally, I can’t tell one picture from another as a rule, but I’m
+bound to say, the moment I set eyes on this, I said to myself ‘What
+ho!’ or words to that effect, I rather think this will add a touch of
+distinction to the home, yes, no? I’ll hang it up, shall I? ’Phone down
+to the office, light of my soul, and tell them to send up a nail, a bit
+of string, and the hotel hammer.”
+
+“One moment, darling. I’m not quite sure.”
+
+“Eh?”
+
+“Where it ought to hang, I mean. You see—”
+
+“Over the piano, you said. The jolly old piano.”
+
+“Yes, but I hadn’t seen it then.”
+
+A monstrous suspicion flitted for an instant into Archie’s mind.
+
+“I say, you _do_ like it, don’t you?” he said anxiously.
+
+“Oh, Archie, darling! Of _course_ I do! And it was so sweet of you to
+give it to me. But, what I was trying to say was that this picture is
+so—so striking that I feel that we ought to wait a little while and
+decide where it would have the best effect. The light over the piano is
+rather strong.”
+
+“You think it ought to hang in a dimmish light, what?”
+
+“Yes, yes. The dimmer the—I mean, yes, in a dim light. Suppose we leave
+it in the corner for the moment—over there—behind the sofa, and—and
+I’ll think it over. It wants a lot of thought, you know.”
+
+“Right-o! Here?”
+
+“Yes, that will do splendidly. Oh, and, Archie.”
+
+“Hullo?”
+
+“I think perhaps... Just turn its face to the wall, will you?” Lucille
+gave a little gulp. “It will prevent it getting dusty.”
+
+It perplexed Archie a little during the next few days to notice in
+Lucille, whom he had always looked on as pre-eminently a girl who knew
+her own mind, a curious streak of vacillation. Quite half a dozen times
+he suggested various spots on the wall as suitable for the Venus, but
+Lucille seemed unable to decide. Archie wished that she would settle on
+something definite, for he wanted to invite J. B. Wheeler to the suite
+to see the thing. He had heard nothing from the artist since the day he
+had removed the picture, and one morning, encountering him on Broadway,
+he expressed his appreciation of the very decent manner in which the
+other had taken the whole affair.
+
+“Oh, that!” said J. B. Wheeler. “My dear fellow, you’re welcome.” He
+paused for a moment. “More than welcome,” he added. “You aren’t much of
+an expert on pictures, are you?”
+
+“Well,” said Archie, “I don’t know that you’d call me an absolute nib,
+don’t you know, but of course I know enough to see that this particular
+exhibit is not a little fruity. Absolutely one of the best things
+you’ve ever done, laddie.”
+
+A slight purple tinge manifested itself in Mr. Wheeler’s round and rosy
+face. His eyes bulged.
+
+“What are you talking about, you Tishbite? You misguided son of Belial,
+are you under the impression that _I_ painted that thing?”
+
+“Didn’t you?”
+
+Mr. Wheeler swallowed a little convulsively.
+
+“My fiancée painted it,” he said shortly.
+
+“Your fiancée? My dear old lad, I didn’t know you were engaged. Who is
+she? Do I know her?”
+
+“Her name is Alice Wigmore. You don’t know her.”
+
+“And she painted that picture?” Archie was perturbed. “But, I say!
+Won’t she be apt to wonder where the thing has got to?”
+
+“I told her it had been stolen. She thought it a great compliment, and
+was tickled to death. So that’s all right.”
+
+“And, of course, she’ll paint you another.”
+
+“Not while I have my strength she won’t,” said J. B. Wheeler firmly.
+“She’s given up painting since I taught her golf, thank goodness, and
+my best efforts shall be employed in seeing that she doesn’t have a
+relapse.”
+
+“But, laddie,” said Archie, puzzled, “you talk as though there were
+something wrong with the picture. I thought it dashed hot stuff.”
+
+“God bless you!” said J. B. Wheeler.
+
+Archie proceeded on his way, still mystified. Then he reflected that
+artists as a class were all pretty weird and rummy and talked more or
+less consistently through their hats. You couldn’t ever take an
+artist’s opinion on a picture. Nine out of ten of them had views on Art
+which would have admitted them to any looney-bin, and no questions
+asked. He had met several of the species who absolutely raved over
+things which any reasonable chappie would decline to be found dead in a
+ditch with. His admiration for the Wigmore Venus, which had faltered
+for a moment during his conversation with J. B. Wheeler, returned in
+all its pristine vigour. Absolute rot, he meant to say, to try to make
+out that it wasn’t one of the ones and just like mother used to make.
+Look how Lucille had liked it!
+
+At breakfast next morning, Archie once more brought up the question of
+the hanging of the picture. It was absurd to let a thing like that go
+on wasting its sweetness behind a sofa with its face to the wall.
+
+“Touching the jolly old masterpiece,” he said, “how about it? I think
+it’s time we hoisted it up somewhere.”
+
+Lucille fiddled pensively with her coffee-spoon.
+
+“Archie, dear,” she said, “I’ve been thinking.”
+
+“And a very good thing to do,” said Archie. “I’ve often meant to do it
+myself when I got a bit of time.”
+
+“About that picture, I mean. Did you know it was father’s birthday
+to-morrow?”
+
+“Why no, old thing, I didn’t, to be absolutely honest. Your revered
+parent doesn’t confide in me much these days, as a matter of fact.”
+
+“Well, it is. And I think we ought to give him a present.”
+
+“Absolutely. But how? I’m all for spreading sweetness and light, and
+cheering up the jolly old pater’s sorrowful existence, but I haven’t a
+bean. And, what is more, things have come to such a pass that I scan
+the horizon without seeing a single soul I can touch. I suppose I could
+get into Reggie van Tuyl’s ribs for a bit, but—I don’t know—touching
+poor old Reggie always seems to me rather like potting a sitting bird.”
+
+“Of course, I don’t want you to do anything like that. I was
+thinking—Archie, darling, would you be very hurt if I gave father the
+picture?”
+
+“Oh, I say!”
+
+“Well, I can’t think of anything else.”
+
+“But wouldn’t you miss it most frightfully?”
+
+“Oh, of course I should. But you see—father’s birthday—”
+
+Archie had always thought Lucille the dearest and most unselfish angel
+in the world, but never had the fact come home to him so forcibly as
+now. He kissed her fondly.
+
+“By Jove!” he exclaimed. “You really are, you know! This is the biggest
+thing since jolly old Sir Philip What’s-his-name gave the drink of
+water to the poor blighter whose need was greater than his, if you
+recall the incident. I had to sweat it up at school, I remember. Sir
+Philip, poor old bean, had a most ghastly thirst on, and he was just
+going to have one on the house, so to speak, when... but it’s all in
+the history-books. This is the sort of thing Boy Scouts do! Well, of
+course, it’s up to you, queen of my soul. If you feel like making the
+sacrifice, right-o! Shall I bring the pater up here and show him the
+picture?”
+
+“No, I shouldn’t do that. Do you think you could get into his suite
+to-morrow morning and hang it up somewhere? You see, if he had the
+chance of—what I mean is, if—yes, I think it would be best to hang it
+up and let him discover it there.”
+
+“It would give him a surprise, you mean, what?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Lucille sighed inaudibly. She was a girl with a conscience, and that
+conscience was troubling her a little. She agreed with Archie that the
+discovery of the Wigmore Venus in his artistically furnished suite
+would give Mr. Brewster a surprise. Surprise, indeed, was perhaps an
+inadequate word. She was sorry for her father, but the instinct of
+self-preservation is stronger than any other emotion.
+
+Archie whistled merrily on the following morning as, having driven a
+nail into his father-in-law’s wallpaper, he adjusted the cord from
+which the Wigmore Venus was suspended. He was a kind-hearted young man,
+and, though Mr. Daniel Brewster had on many occasions treated him with
+a good deal of austerity, his simple soul was pleased at the thought of
+doing him a good turn, He had just completed his work and was stepping
+cautiously down, when a voice behind him nearly caused him to
+overbalance.
+
+“What the devil?”
+
+Archie turned beamingly.
+
+“Hullo, old thing! Many happy returns of the day!”
+
+Mr. Brewster was standing in a frozen attitude. His strong face was
+slightly flushed.
+
+“What—what—?” he gurgled.
+
+Mr. Brewster was not in one of his sunniest moods that morning. The
+proprietor of a large hotel has many things to disturb him, and to-day
+things had been going wrong. He had come up to his suite with the idea
+of restoring his shaken nerve system with a quiet cigar, and the sight
+of his son-in-law had, as so frequently happened, made him feel worse
+than ever. But, when Archie had descended from the chair and moved
+aside to allow him an uninterrupted view of the picture, Mr. Brewster
+realised that a worse thing had befallen him than a mere visit from one
+who always made him feel that the world was a bleak place.
+
+He stared at the Venus dumbly. Unlike most hotel-proprietors, Daniel
+Brewster was a connoisseur of Art. Connoisseuring was, in fact, his
+hobby. Even the public rooms of the Cosmopolis were decorated with
+taste, and his own private suite was a shrine of all that was best and
+most artistic. His tastes were quiet and restrained, and it is not too
+much to say that the Wigmore Venus hit him behind the ear like a
+stuffed eel-skin.
+
+So great was the shock that for some moments it kept him silent, and
+before he could recover speech Archie had explained.
+
+“It’s a birthday present from Lucille, don’t you know.”
+
+Mr. Brewster crushed down the breezy speech he had intended to utter.
+
+“Lucille gave me—that?” he muttered.
+
+He swallowed pathetically. He was suffering, but the iron courage of
+the Brewsters stood him in good stead. This man was no weakling.
+Presently the rigidity of his face relaxed. He was himself again. Of
+all things in the world he loved his daughter most, and if, in whatever
+mood of temporary insanity, she had brought herself to suppose that
+this beastly daub was the sort of thing he would like for a birthday
+present, he must accept the situation like a man. He would on the whole
+have preferred death to a life lived in the society of the Wigmore
+Venus, but even that torment must be endured if the alternative was the
+hurting of Lucille’s feelings.
+
+“I think I’ve chosen a pretty likely spot to hang the thing, what?”
+said Archie cheerfully. “It looks well alongside those Japanese prints,
+don’t you think? Sort of stands out.”
+
+Mr. Brewster licked his dry lips and grinned a ghastly grin.
+
+“It does stand out!” he agreed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+A TALE OF A GRANDFATHER
+
+
+Archie was not a man who readily allowed himself to become worried,
+especially about people who were not in his own immediate circle of
+friends, but in the course of the next week he was bound to admit that
+he was not altogether easy in his mind about his father-in-law’s mental
+condition. He had read all sorts of things in the Sunday papers and
+elsewhere about the constant strain to which captains of industry are
+subjected, a strain which sooner or later is only too apt to make the
+victim go all blooey, and it seemed to him that Mr. Brewster was
+beginning to find the going a trifle too tough for his stamina.
+Undeniably he was behaving in an odd manner, and Archie, though no
+physician, was aware that, when the American business-man, that
+restless, ever-active human machine, starts behaving in an odd manner,
+the next thing you know is that two strong men, one attached to each
+arm, are hurrying him into the cab bound for Bloomingdale.
+
+He did not confide his misgivings to Lucille, not wishing to cause her
+anxiety. He hunted up Reggie van Tuyl at the club, and sought advice
+from him.
+
+“I say, Reggie, old thing—present company excepted—have there been any
+loonies in your family?”
+
+Reggie stirred in the slumber which always gripped him in the early
+afternoon.
+
+“Loonies?” he mumbled, sleepily. “Rather! My uncle Edgar thought he was
+twins.”
+
+“Twins, eh?”
+
+“Yes. Silly idea! I mean, you’d have thought one of my uncle Edgar
+would have been enough for any man.”
+
+“How did the thing start?” asked Archie.
+
+“Start? Well, the first thing we noticed was when he began wanting two
+of everything. Had to set two places for him at dinner and so on.
+Always wanted two seats at the theatre. Ran into money, I can tell
+you.”
+
+“He didn’t behave rummily up till then? I mean to say, wasn’t sort of
+jumpy and all that?”
+
+“Not that I remember. Why?”
+
+Archie’s tone became grave.
+
+“Well, I’ll tell you, old man, though I don’t want it to go any
+farther, that I’m a bit worried about my jolly old father-in-law. I
+believe he’s about to go in off the deep-end. I think he’s cracking
+under the strain. Dashed weird his behaviour has been the last few
+days.”
+
+“Such as?” murmured Mr. van Tuyl.
+
+“Well, the other morning I happened to be in his suite—incidentally he
+wouldn’t go above ten dollars, and I wanted twenty-five-and he suddenly
+picked up a whacking big paper-weight and bunged it for all he was
+worth.”
+
+“At you?”
+
+“Not at me. That was the rummy part of it. At a mosquito on the wall,
+he said. Well, I mean to say, do chappies bung paper-weights at
+mosquitoes? I mean, is it done?”
+
+“Smash anything?”
+
+“Curiously enough, no. But he only just missed a rather decent picture
+which Lucille had given him for his birthday. Another foot to the left
+and it would have been a goner.”
+
+“Sounds queer.”
+
+“And, talking of that picture, I looked in on him about a couple of
+afternoons later, and he’d taken it down from the wall and laid it on
+the floor and was staring at it in a dashed marked sort of manner. That
+was peculiar, what?”
+
+“On the floor?”
+
+“On the jolly old carpet. When I came in, he was goggling at it in a
+sort of glassy way. Absolutely rapt, don’t you know. My coming in gave
+him a start—seemed to rouse him from a kind of trance, you know—and he
+jumped like an antelope; and, if I hadn’t happened to grab him, he
+would have trampled bang on the thing. It was deuced unpleasant, you
+know. His manner was rummy. He seemed to be brooding on something. What
+ought I to do about it, do you think? It’s not my affair, of course,
+but it seems to me that, if he goes on like this, one of these days
+he’ll be stabbing someone with a pickle-fork.”
+
+To Archie’s relief, his father-in-law’s symptoms showed no signs of
+development. In fact, his manner reverted to the normal once more, and
+a few days later, meeting Archie in the lobby of the hotel, he seemed
+quite cheerful. It was not often that he wasted his time talking to his
+son-in-law, but on this occasion he chatted with him for several
+minutes about the big picture-robbery which had formed the chief item
+of news on the front pages of the morning papers that day. It was Mr.
+Brewster’s opinion that the outrage had been the work of a gang and
+that nobody was safe.
+
+Daniel Brewster had spoken of this matter with strange earnestness, but
+his words had slipped from Archie’s mind when he made his way that
+night to his father-in-law’s suite. Archie was in an exalted mood. In
+the course of dinner he had had a bit of good news which was occupying
+his thoughts to the exclusion of all other matters. It had left him in
+a comfortable, if rather dizzy, condition of benevolence to all created
+things. He had smiled at the room-clerk as he crossed the lobby, and if
+he had had a dollar, he would have given it to the boy who took him up
+in the elevator.
+
+He found the door of the Brewster suite unlocked, which at any other
+time would have struck him as unusual; but to-night he was in no frame
+of mind to notice these trivialities. He went in, and, finding the room
+dark and no one at home, sat down, too absorbed in his thoughts to
+switch on the lights, and gave himself up to dreamy meditation.
+
+There are certain moods in which one loses count of time, and Archie
+could not have said how long he had been sitting in the deep arm-chair
+near the window when he first became aware that he was not alone in the
+room. He had closed his eyes, the better to meditate, so had not seen
+anyone enter. Nor had he heard the door open. The first intimation he
+had that somebody had come in was when some hard substance knocked
+against some other hard object, producing a sharp sound which brought
+him back to earth with a jerk.
+
+He sat up silently. The fact that the room was still in darkness made
+it obvious that something nefarious was afoot. Plainly there was dirty
+work in preparation at the cross-roads. He stared into the blackness,
+and, as his eyes grew accustomed to it, was presently able to see an
+indistinct form bending over something on the floor. The sound of
+rather stertorous breathing came to him.
+
+Archie had many defects which prevented him being the perfect man, but
+lack of courage was not one of them. His somewhat rudimentary
+intelligence had occasionally led his superior officers during the war
+to thank God that Great Britain had a Navy, but even these stern
+critics had found nothing to complain of in the manner in which he
+bounded over the top. Some of us are thinkers, others men of action.
+Archie was a man of action, and he was out of his chair and sailing in
+the direction of the back of the intruder’s neck before a wiser man
+would have completed his plan of campaign. The miscreant collapsed
+under him with a squashy sound, like the wind going out of a pair of
+bellows, and Archie, taking a firm seat on his spine, rubbed the
+other’s face in the carpet and awaited the progress of events.
+
+At the end of half a minute it became apparent that there was going to
+be no counter-attack. The dashing swiftness of the assault had
+apparently had the effect of depriving the marauder of his entire stock
+of breath. He was gurgling to himself in a pained sort of way and
+making no effort to rise. Archie, feeling that it would be safe to get
+up and switch on the light, did so, and, turning after completing this
+manoeuvre, was greeted by the spectacle of his father-in-law, seated on
+the floor in a breathless and dishevelled condition, blinking at the
+sudden illumination. On the carpet beside Mr. Brewster lay a long
+knife, and beside the knife lay the handsomely framed masterpiece of J.
+B. Wheeler’s fiancée, Miss Alice Wigmore. Archie stared at this
+collection dumbly.
+
+“Oh, what-ho!” he observed at length, feebly.
+
+A distinct chill manifested itself in the region of Archie’s spine.
+This could mean only one thing. His fears had been realised. The strain
+of modern life, with all its hustle and excitement, had at last proved
+too much for Mr. Brewster. Crushed by the thousand and one anxieties
+and worries of a millionaire’s existence, Daniel Brewster had gone off
+his onion.
+
+Archie was nonplussed. This was his first experience of this kind of
+thing. What, he asked himself, was the proper procedure in a situation
+of this sort? What was the local rule? Where, in a word, did he go from
+here? He was still musing in an embarrassed and baffled way, having
+taken the precaution of kicking the knife under the sofa, when Mr.
+Brewster spoke. And there was in, both the words and the method of
+their delivery so much of his old familiar self that Archie felt quite
+relieved.
+
+“So it’s you, is it, you wretched blight, you miserable weed!” said Mr.
+Brewster, having recovered enough breath to be going on with. He
+glowered at his son-in-law despondently. “I might have expected it! If
+I was at the North Pole, I could count on you butting in!”
+
+“Shall I get you a drink of water?” said Archie.
+
+“What the devil,” demanded Mr. Brewster, “do you imagine I want with a
+drink of water?”
+
+“Well—” Archie hesitated delicately. “I had a sort of idea that you had
+been feeling the strain a bit. I mean to say, rush of modern life and
+all that sort of thing—”
+
+“What are you doing in my room?” said Mr. Brewster, changing the
+subject.
+
+“Well, I came to tell you something, and I came in here and was waiting
+for you, and I saw some chappie biffing about in the dark, and I
+thought it was a burglar or something after some of your things, so,
+thinking it over, I got the idea that it would be a fairly juicy scheme
+to land on him with both feet. No idea it was you, old thing!
+Frightfully sorry and all that. Meant well!”
+
+Mr. Brewster sighed deeply. He was a just man, and he could not but
+realise that, in the circumstances, Archie had behaved not unnaturally.
+
+“Oh, well!” he said. “I might have known something would go wrong.”
+
+“Awfully sorry!”
+
+“It can’t be helped. What was it you wanted to tell me?” He eyed his
+son-in-law piercingly. “Not a cent over twenty dollars!” he said
+coldly.
+
+Archie hastened to dispel the pardonable error.
+
+“Oh, it wasn’t anything like that,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I
+think it’s a good egg. It has bucked me up to no inconsiderable degree.
+I was dining with Lucille just now, and, as we dallied with the
+food-stuffs, she told me something which—well, I’m bound to say, it
+made me feel considerably braced. She told me to trot along and ask you
+if you would mind—”
+
+“I gave Lucille a hundred dollars only last Tuesday.”
+
+Archie was pained.
+
+“Adjust this sordid outlook, old thing!” he urged. “You simply aren’t
+anywhere near it. Right off the target, absolutely! What Lucille told
+me to ask you was if you would mind—at some tolerably near date—being a
+grandfather! Rotten thing to be, of course,” proceeded Archie
+commiseratingly, “for a chappie of your age, but there it is!”
+
+Mr. Brewster gulped.
+
+“Do you mean to say—?”
+
+“I mean, apt to make a fellow feel a bit of a patriarch. Snowy hair and
+what not. And, of course, for a chappie in the prime of life like you—”
+
+“Do you mean to tell me—? Is this true?”
+
+“Absolutely! Of course, speaking for myself, I’m all for it. I don’t
+know when I’ve felt more bucked. I sang as I came up here—absolutely
+warbled in the elevator. But you—”
+
+A curious change had come over Mr. Brewster. He was one of those men
+who have the appearance of having been hewn out of the solid rock, but
+now in some indescribable way he seemed to have melted. For a moment he
+gazed at Archie, then, moving quickly forward, he grasped his hand in
+an iron grip.
+
+“This is the best news I’ve ever had!” he mumbled.
+
+“Awfully good of you to take it like this,” said Archie cordially. “I
+mean, being a grandfather—”
+
+Mr. Brewster smiled. Of a man of his appearance one could hardly say
+that he smiled playfully; but there was something in his expression
+that remotely suggested playfulness.
+
+“My dear old bean,” he said.
+
+Archie started.
+
+“My dear old bean,” repeated Mr. Brewster firmly, “I’m the happiest man
+in America!” His eye fell on the picture which lay on the floor. He
+gave a slight shudder, but recovered himself immediately. “After this,”
+he said, “I can reconcile myself to living with that thing for the rest
+of my life. I feel it doesn’t matter.”
+
+“I say,” said Archie, “how about that? Wouldn’t have brought the thing
+up if you hadn’t introduced the topic, but, speaking as man to man,
+what the dickens WERE you up to when I landed on your spine just now?”
+
+“I suppose you thought I had gone off my head?”
+
+“Well, I’m bound to say—”
+
+Mr. Brewster cast an unfriendly glance at the picture.
+
+“Well, I had every excuse, after living with that infernal thing for a
+week!”
+
+Archie looked at him, astonished.
+
+“I say, old thing, I don’t know if I have got your meaning exactly, but
+you somehow give me the impression that you don’t like that jolly old
+work of Art.”
+
+“Like it!” cried Mr. Brewster. “It’s nearly driven me mad! Every time
+it caught my eye, it gave me a pain in the neck. To-night I felt as if
+I couldn’t stand it any longer. I didn’t want to hurt Lucille’s
+feelings, by telling her, so I made up my mind I would cut the damned
+thing out of its frame and tell her it had been stolen.”
+
+“What an extraordinary thing! Why, that’s exactly what old Wheeler
+did.”
+
+“Who is old Wheeler?”
+
+“Artist chappie. Pal of mine. His fiancée painted the thing, and, when
+I lifted it off him, he told her it had been stolen. _He_ didn’t seem
+frightfully keen on it, either.”
+
+“Your friend Wheeler has evidently good taste.”
+
+Archie was thinking.
+
+“Well, all this rather gets past me,” he said. “Personally, I’ve always
+admired the thing. Dashed ripe bit of work, I’ve always considered.
+Still, of course, if you feel that way—”
+
+“You may take it from me that I do!”
+
+“Well, then, in that case—You know what a clumsy devil I am—You can
+tell Lucille it was all my fault—”
+
+The Wigmore Venus smiled up at Archie—it seemed to Archie with a
+pathetic, pleading smile. For a moment he was conscious of a feeling of
+guilt; then, closing his eyes and hardening his heart, he sprang
+lightly in the air and descended with both feet on the picture. There
+was a sound of rending canvas, and the Venus ceased to smile.
+
+“Golly!” said Archie, regarding the wreckage remorsefully.
+
+Mr. Brewster did not share his remorse. For the second time that night
+he gripped him by the hand.
+
+“My boy!” he quavered. He stared at Archie as if he were seeing him
+with new eyes. “My dear boy, you were through the war, were you not?”
+
+“Eh? Oh yes! Right through the jolly old war.”
+
+“What was your rank?”
+
+“Oh, second lieutenant.”
+
+“You ought to have been a general!” Mr. Brewster clasped his hand once
+more in a vigorous embrace. “I only hope,” he added “that your son will
+be like you!”
+
+There are certain compliments, or compliments coming from certain
+sources, before which modesty reels, stunned. Archie’s did.
+
+He swallowed convulsively. He had never thought to hear these words
+from Daniel Brewster.
+
+“How would it be, old thing,” he said almost brokenly, “if you and I
+trickled down to the bar and had a spot of sherbet?”
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
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